Why an Atheist Thinks the Shroud of Turin is the Real Deal

He Looks Like Leonardo da Vinci

But, the proponents of the da Vinci theory go on to say, the man on the shroud looks like Leonardo. Maybe. But he looks like John Lennon when he sported a beard, and Vincent Van Gogh, and Michelangelo. But, they go on to say, that they have made very precise comparative measurements to Leonardo’s face. No they have not! They have made very precise measurements to a drawing. Leonardo believed in ideal proportions in faces and bodies. He wrote about it and made drawings to demonstrate the idea. He applied those proportions in his drawings and paintings. The most we can say is that face of the man on the shroud compares favorably to ideal proportions. (But others, on web sites, argue that the shroud must be fake because the proportions of the face are unlike any real face. Go figure.)

I have never encountered a historian of the medieval, or an image analyst or a chemist who has studied the images who thinks that the shroud is a photograph. The scientific proof that it is not is something we will get to in time. It’s a cockamamie idea but it has mythical traction.