Brown, John L.
God Not of the Gaps
But there is a different perspective, one that seeks to find God, not in the gaps, but on the sum and substance of Reality. Kenneth R. Miller, a professor of biology at Brown University, and a crusader against Creationism and Intelligent Design, has written a wonderful book, Finding Darwin’s God. In it he writes:
The creationists . . . claim that the existence of life, the appearance of new species, and, most especially, the origins of mankind have not and cannot be explained by evolution or any other natural process. By denying the self-sufficiency of nature, they look for God (or at least a "designer") in the deficiencies of science. The trouble is that science, given enough time, generally explains even the most baffling things. As a matter of strategy, creationists would be well-advised to avoid telling scientists what they will never be able to figure out. History is against them. In a general way, we really do understand how nature works. . . . Evolution really does explain the very things that its critics say it does not. Claims disputing the antiquity of the earth, the validity of the fossil record, and the sufficiency of evolutionary mechanisms vanish upon close inspection. Even to the most fervent anti-evolutionists, the pattern should be clear - their favorite "gaps" are filling up: the molecular mechanisms of evolution are now well-understood, and the historical record of evolution becomes more compelling with each passing season. . . . If we accept a lack of scientific explanation as proof for God's existence, simple logic would dictate that we would have to regard a successful scientific explanation as an argument against God. That's why creationist reasoning, ultimately, is much more dangerous to religion than to science. . . . By arguing, as creationists do, that nature cannot be self-sufficient in the formation of new species, the creationists forge a logical link between the limits of natural processes to accomplish biological change and the existence of a designer (God). In other words, they show the proponents of atheism exactly how to disprove the existence of God - show that evolution works, and it's time to tear down the temple. This is an offer that the enemies of religion are all too happy to accept.
Putting it bluntly, the creationists have sought God in darkness. What we have not found and do not yet understand becomes their best - indeed their only - evidence for the divine. As a Christian, I find the flow of this logic particularly depressing. Not only does it teach us to fear the acquisition of knowledge (which might at any time disprove belief), but it suggests that God dwells only in the shadows of our understanding. I suggest that, if God is real, we should be able to find him somewhere else - in the bright light of human knowledge, spiritual and scientific.
Why this is important to the study of the Shroud is because it warns us to avoid gap thinking. For example, just because we cannot explain the images—and they do seem to be very complex, as we will see—we should not simply say, as some do, that they are miraculous. But it is important, as well, because it sheds some light on Ray Rogers, who would become one of the most significant names in Shroud research.
Is the Sudarium There?
There is, in the top layer of the cloth, an irregular raised spot, suggesting that there is something there between the lop layer and the bottom layer of the shroud. Is it the sudarium, the other cloth mentioned in John’s gospel wherein we read that Simon Peter “saw the linen wrappings lying there, and the cloth that had been on Jesus’ head, not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself”? (NRSV John 20:6-7)
Biblical scholar Raymond E. Brown, a Roman Catholic Priest and professor emeritus at the Union Theological Seminary, a Protestant seminary in New York where he taught for 23 years, suggested that . . .
John is very careful about the state of the linen cloths (bands?) used to wrap the corpse, and the separate piece for the head. Their position may have outlined the original position of Jesus’ body which passed through them, leaving them where they were. (31)
It is, for the modern reader, perhaps a strange idea more apropos for Hollywood special effects. But what else do we expect if we are the sort of Christian who believes in a bodily, physical resurrection (many Christians do and many do not)? Did Jesus instead get up and remove his burial cloths. If his jaw had been bound closed with a chin band to keep the mouth closed, as has been common in burials throughout history, would he have untied it? Or did he pass through it? The question is only important because the raised shape in the drawing looking very much like it could be a knotted chin band, in just the right place for such an item. This is certainly consistent with Anglican scholar John A. T. Robinson’s view that the other cloth, the second cloth, was a chin band.
Vanillin
It has been noticed that the Shroud of Turin—except for one rather tiny corner from which material was snipped away for carbon dating—does not contain any measurable quantity of vanillin. In 1782, French chemist from Dijon, Louis-Bernard Guyton de Morveau, best known to history for his pioneering use a hot air balloon, l'Entreprenant, for military reconnaissance during the French Revolution, suggested a simpler, less confusing method for naming chemicals to “help the intelligence and relieve the memory.” And so vanillin is simply called 4-hydroxy-3-methoxybenzaldehyde. Its chemical formula is C8H8O3. We will continue to call it Vanillin.
Vanillin is one of many ingredients in vanilla extract made from vanilla beans. However, because of the high cost of vanilla beans, most vanilla that we use today as flavoring agent or aromatic is made with synthetic vanillin produced from a nasty brown liquid left over from a wood pulping plant or from guaiacol which comes from wood tar.
Picknett and Prince
Nonetheless, from the computer keyboards of two enterprising and highly skilled conspiracy theorists, Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince, comes a tale that turns logic on its head. In a defense against a copyright infringement charge, Dan Brown states that works by Picknett and Prince were an important inspiration for The DaVinci Code. There works include:
· The Masks of Christ: Behind the Lies and Cover-ups About the Life of Jesus
· The Templar Revelation: Secret Guardians of the True Identity of Christ
· The Sion Revelation: The Truth About the Guardians of Christ's Sacred Bloodline
· The Stargate Conspiracy
· Turin Shroud: How Leonardo da Vinci Fooled History
Among the last two, it is hard to tell which conspiracy theory is easier to swallow. In Stargate we learn that the CIA and MI5 are manipulating a secret cult of powerful and rich leaders, including leading scientists who believe that they are in direct contact with extraterrestrial intelligent beings from the star Sirius. These extraterrestrial beings are claiming to be the gods of ancient Egypt, the very gods responsible for the image of a face on Mars. Why are secret American and British agents, with help from NASA, doing this? To create a new insidious mind-control religion. As icing on the cake:
We reveal the ground-breaking research that provides a plausible answer to the most enduring questions about the ancient Egyptians' achievements and beliefs - and, explosively, uncover the true nature of the gods themselves . . .
Seeing Teapots
Russell asks us to imagine him sitting at a brown table on which there are sheets of paper. “Although I believe that the table is 'really' of the same colour all over,” he writes, “the parts that reflect the light look much brighter than the other parts, and some parts look white because of reflected light.” He then explains how different people viewing the table from different angles, or because they might be color blind or wearing tinted glasses, see the table quite differently, all because of the way they see the reflected light. Though that realization may be unimportant to most people—we tend not to notice the play of light unless we are looking for it—to an artist it is “all-important.” He continues: “the painter has to unlearn the habit of thinking that things seem to have the colour which common sense says they 'really' have, and to learn the habit of seeing things as they appear.”
Definition of an Edge
We need to clarify what we mean by an edge and we can use Russell table to illustrate this. Let’s just consider the top surface and forget about the legs, just to make things simpler. Assuming it is rectangular it has four distinct edges: front, back and two sides. But there may be more edges when it comes to examining the top and edge may not be the best choice of words for these other edges. Nonetheless, it is the word that is used in edge enhancement and so we will use it and define it better. Let’s imagine his brown table is brown because it is oak or some other form of wood. If we look more closely, we see the grain of the wood and everywhere there is a change from lighter to darker or vice-versa we have a visual edge. If you remove yourself to a distance the appearance of the wood’s grain will diminish and eventually disappear if you get far enough away. This is a phenomenon called visual blending. We will speak more about visual blending later.
Another phenomenon about edges and edge enhancement takes place in the retina. Some high quality Red Maple wood has a unique almost indistinct grain. The transition from lighter tones to darker tones in the grain is very smooth and from just two or three feet away it is almost unnoticeable. But back away from the table surface and the grain begins to appear. As the field of view increases, that is the desk takes up less of everything you see, the different shades of color in the grain are spread out across a fewer number of photoreceptors and edge enhancement kicks in. In other words the intelligence built into the retina begins to tell the rest of our brain that there is something there to discern.
Chemical Changes and the Impurity Layer
If Rogers is right about the layer, then there are essentially two ways to chemically change the color of the sugary substance to a yellowish color. One, familiar to every cook, is carmelization. Just toss some slices of onion into a skillet. As the sugars in the onion are oxidized by the heat, a chemical substance known as a melanin is produced. Melanin is responsible for the brown color as well as the wonderful aroma and taste that onions take on. Melanin is also the product that forms within the outer layers of your skin when you get a suntan from the sun’s UV rays.
Maillard Reaction
The other way is through and extraordinarily complex chemical reaction called a Maillard reaction. It takes place when amino acid reacts with sugar. It also produces chemical substances, melanoidins, that have a distinctive brownish or yellowish color similar to melanin.
Maillard reactions are also common in cooking when heat starts the reaction of amino compounds and sugars that are both together in a food. The brown color on toast is because of a Maillard reaction and not carmelization.
Eva Wittgenstein, a medical researcher at the University of Cincinnati discovered that a substance, dihydroxyacetone (DHA), caused darkening appearance on the skin. She had been experimenting with the substance, testing it as a pharmaceutical drug for treating a metabolism defect called Glycogen Storage Disease. The discovery that the drug darkened skin was accidental. In 1960, Coppertone, a manufacturer of protective suntan lotions, introduced Coppertone QT. The QT stood for Quick Tan, and their advertisements touted sunless tans in three to five hours. It was DHA and it worked extraordinarily well if you wanted to be orange.
DHA, produced from sugar cane was not the only chemical that will react in this way with human amines. Erythrulose, a sugar syrup extracted from raspberries produces similar results but a less orange and more brownish color. Another chemical is Saponaria officinali. This a natural soap extracted from a wild perennial flower called Soapwort and Sweet William.
John L. Brown
Rogers also provided some material to John L. Brown, formerly Principal Research Scientist at the Georgia Tech Research Institute's Energy and Materials Sciences Laboratory at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Brown worked independently and with different methods, including a Scanning Electron Microscope. Rogers hoped for independent confirmation and he got it. Of one particular set of microscopic images, Brown wrote:
This would appear to be obvious evidence of a medieval artisan’s attempt to dye a newly added repair region of fabric to match the aged appearance of the remainder of the Shroud.
Robert Villarreal from the Los Alamos National Laboratory
In a presentation The Ohio State University’s Blackwell Center, Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) chemist, Robert Villarreal, disclosed new findings showing that the sample of material used in 1988 to Carbon dating could not have been from the original linen cloth because it was cotton. According to Villarreal, who lead the LANL team working on the project, thread samples they examined from directly adjacent to the sampling area were “definitely not linen” and, instead, matched cotton. Villarreal pointed out:
the [1988] age-dating process failed to recognize one of the first rules of analytical chemistry, that any sample taken for characterization of an area or population must necessarily be representative of the whole. The part must be representative of the whole. Our analyses of the three thread samples taken from the Raes and C-14 sampling corner showed that this was not the case.
Villarreal also revealed that, during testing, one of the threads came apart in the middle forming two separate pieces. A surface resin, that may have been holding the two pieces together, fell off and was analyzed. Surprisingly, the two ends of the thread had different chemical compositions, lending credence to Rogers’ finding in Thermochimica Acta.
After conducting analysis at high vacuum with the ToF-SIMS, the “spliced thread” broke into three distinct pieces; a fuzzy end (Region 1), a tight woven end (Region 2), and a micro-sized circular cocoon-shaped brown crust that seemed to be connecting the two end pieces. The ToF-SIMS results were the first to show that the spectra from the two ends were similar to cotton rather than linen (flax) and the Spectroscopist recommended that the next analysis should be with the FTIR instrument. After several scans of individual fibers or strands, the FTIR data showed that the two ends (Region 1 and 2) were definitely cotton and not linen (flax). The crust appeared to be an organic-based resin, perhaps a terpene species, with cotton as a main sub-component. After showing the FTIR data to Barrie Schwortz and Sue Benford, they were quite surprised at the results and decided to send me two other pieces of thread (No. 7 and 14) that were from the same sampling area and that had been in John Brown’s Lab in Marrietta, Georgia.
The results of the FTIR analysis on all three threads taken from the Raes sampling area (adjacent to the C-14 sampling corner) led to identification of the fibers as cotton and definitely not linen (flax). Note, that all age dating analyses were conducted on samples taken from this same area. Apparently, the age-dating process failed to recognize one of the first rules of analytical chemistry that any sample taken for characterization of an area or population must necessarily be representative of the whole. The part must be representative of the whole. Our analyses of the three thread samples taken from the Raes and C-14 sampling corner showed that this was not the case. What was true for the part was most certainly not true for the whole. This finding is supported by the spectroscopic data provided in this presentation.
The recommendations that stem from the above analytical study is that a new age dating should be conducted but assuring that the sample analyzed represents the original main shroud image area, i.e. the fibers must be linen (flax) and not cotton or some other material. It is only then that the age dating will be scientifically correct.
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