This is my response in this separate post, to your two-part comment of 21 January 2019 under my post, "`Poker holes' #29: Other marks and images: The evidence is overwhelming that the Turin Shroud is authentic!" Your words are bold and prefaced by ">" to distinguish them from mine. Emphases are mine unless otherwise indicated.
>You wrote a critique in connection our opinion : wrong is the radiocarbon dating of Shroud of Turin in the consequence of biological isotopfractionation.
[Above (enlarge)[2]: The differences between the three isotopes of carbon: Carbon (carbon 12) has 6 protons, 6 neutrons & 6 electrons (stable); carbon 13 has 6 protons, 7 neutrons & 6 electrons (stable); and carbon 14 has 6 protons, 8 neutrons & 6 electrons (unstable). For isotope fractionation to work at the microbiological level between these three isotopes of carbon requires that microbes can distinguish between molecules containing carbon atoms differing by 1 or 2 neutrons, and that they do `prefer' the latter over the former. Yet carbon-14 is exceedingly rare, making up only about 1 or 1.5 atoms per 1012 (1,000,000,000, 000 or one trillion, i.e. a million million) atoms of carbon in the atmosphere. The claim that microbiological isotope fractionation is responsible for the first-century Shroud having a radiocarbon date of 1260-1390 requires that microbes can, and did, distinguish between molecules containing those 1 in a trillion carbon 14 atoms in the linen of the Shroud such that they shifted the radiocarbon date of the first-century Shroud, thirteen centuries into the future, to not just any date, but 1325 ±65, the midpoint of which is a mere 30 years before the the Shroud first appeared in undisputed history at an exposition in the French village of Lirey in 1355.]
My first, and main point in my comment of 10 September 2018 was that:
"Microbe contamination (e.g. a bioplastic coating) might explain why the Shroud would not date 1st century (e.g. 4th century), but it would not explain why the 1st century Shroud's radiocarbon date was shifted 12-13 centuries into the future, let alone to the `bull's eye' date 1325 ±65."But you have not addressed that my main point. I assume this is because you cannot. In which case you have already tacitly conceded the entire argument!
>Let me now to respond to your comments. I already did let you respond to my comments, but you didn't, instead you ignored them and used my comments as a pretext to post a large block of your own comments. See above and future below.
>It is obvious, that a contradiction is between the radiocarbon dating of 3 labs and the Pray Codex. You know well the history. Agreed, but this is irrelevant to what we disagree on. Which is that microbial contamination (and in fact any contamination with new carbon 14):
1) While it can explain why the first century Shroud would not have a first century radiocarbon date, due to new carbon that the radiocarbon dating pre-cleaning process could not remove:
"In 1532 the Shroud was being kept inside a silver casket stored in the Sainte Chapelle, Chambéry, when a fire nearly destroyed the building. The intense heat melted a corner of the casket, scorching the folded linen within, and producing the now familiar scorch marks on the Shroud. Since silver melts only at 960 degrees centigrade, the heat inside the casket must have been intense. In these circumstances moisture in the Shroud would turn to steam, probably at superheat, trapped in the folds and layers of the Shroud. Any contaminants on the cloth would be dissolved by the steam and forced not only into the weave and yarn, but also into the flax fibres' very lumen and molecular structure. ... contaminants would have become part of the chemistry of the flax fibres themselves and would be impossible to remove satisfactorily by surface actants and ultrasonic cleaning. More drastic treatments to destroy the contaminants would inevitably damage the flax fibres themselves"[3].2) It cannot plausibly explain why the first century Shroud's radiocarbon date was shifted thirteen centuries into the future to the `bull's eye' date, 1325 +/- 65, the midpoint of which `just happened' to be a mere ~30 years before the Shroud first appeared in undisputed history at Lirey, France in ~1355.
But my hacking theory can and does (and is the only theory to date) which plausibly explains why the first-century Shroud had a 1325±65 radiocarbon date. See my "conventional explanations all fail."
>Therefore, we carried out model experiments to study the possible errors in the radiocarbon dating of the 3 labs. The basic problem in all these attempts (including yours) to reconcile the first century date of the Shroud with the 13th-14th century radiocarbon date is that they accept that the 1260-1390 date was valid.
But see my post [17Feb19a] that the 1260-1390 date was achieved through scientific fraud in combining Arizona's eight runs into 4 runs which never happened. And fraudulently done in such a way that dates that were after the Shroud's 1355 first appearance in undisputed history at Lirey, France, were almost eliminated[17Feb19b].
And also that there is a fatal flaw in the dating in that the agreement across the three laboratories of the control samples was "exceptionally good" yet the "spread of the measurements" of the Shroud samples across the three laboratories was "greater than would be expected"[17Feb19c]:
"An initial inspection of Table 2 shows that the agreement among the three laboratories for [control] samples 2, 3 and 4 is exceptionally good. The spread of the measurements for sample 1 [the Shroud] is somewhat greater than would be expected from the errors quoted"[4].Why would you, a Shroud pro-authenticist, want to reconcile the date of the first-century Shroud with a fraudulent 13th-14th century radiocarbon date?
>Our main conclusion was the possible radiocarbon enrichment by microbes wiches exist on linen material that caused the error in the radiocarbon dating. Only "possible"? Anything that is not self-contradictory is "possible". But is it likely that the mindless actions of countless billions of microbes `just happened' to shift the radiocarbon date of the first-century Shroud thirteen centuries into the future to the `bull's eye' date 1325±65?
The physicist Frank J. Tipler (1947-) noted that it "would be an extraordinary and very improbable coincidence if the amount of carbon added to the Shroud were exactly the amount needed to give the date that indicated a fraud" but he believes that is what actually happened, and it was literally a "miracle":
"A very plausible history of the Shroud from A.D. 30 to the present has been constructed ... the first time the Shroud is agreed by all scholars to have existed is 1355, when a French squire, Geoffrey de Charny of Lirey, in the bishopric of Troyes ... display[ed] it as the unique burial cloth of Jesus ... De Charny never explained how a completely unimportant person such as he managed to obtain possession of the most important relic in Christendom. ... A few decades after de Charny's death, the bishop of Troyes denounced the Shroud as a fake and said that he knew the name of the forger, who had confessed. So if the bishop and later skeptics were correct, we would expect the linen of which the Shroud is made to date from the time of the forgery. That is, the middle of the fourteenth century. When the radiocarbon date was discovered to be between 1260 and 1390 (95 percent confidence interval), most scientists (including myself until a few years ago) were convinced that the Shroud had been proven a fraud. If bacterial or other contamination had distorted the date, we would expect the measured radiocarbon date to be some random date between A.D. 30 and the present. It would be an extraordinary and very improbable coincidence if the amount of carbon added to the Shroud were exactly the amount needed to give the date that indicated a fraud. That is, unless the radiocarbon date were itself a miracle ..."[5].And that is what you are claiming: that the mindless growth of microbes on the Shroud's linen just happened to add enough new carbon-14 to shift the first-century Shroud's radiocarbon date thirteen century into the future to, not just any date, but 1325 +/-65, a date which is so close to the Shroud's 1355 first appearance in undisputed history that its upper limit is 1390, 35 years after it!
Tipler was right when he concluded that would be a miracle (if it had happened). But it would have been a deceptive miracle by God! Why would Jesus, the Man on the Shroud, who is ruling over all (Acts 10:36; Rom 9:5; Eph 1:21-22; Php 2:9), deliberately deceive His followers (like me) and provide evidence for anti-Christians that the Shroud (and Christianity) is false?
>You quote from Adler's publication. Adler listed the problems with Garza-Valdes bioplasting coating theory. We accept this opinion. There are no bioplastic coatings on the Shroud, This is just playing with words. The late Dr Alan D. Adler (1931-2000)'s criticisms of the late Dr Leoncio Garza-Valdes (1939-2010) bioplastic
[Right (enlarge)[6]: Dr Leoncio Garza-Valdes (left) and microbiologist Prof. Stephen Mattingly (right).]
coating theory apply to all theories (including yours) which claim that a build up of bacterial or microorganism carbon shifted the radiocarbon date of the first-century Shroud thirteen centuries into the future. My words above were "Microbe contamination (e.g. a bioplastic coating) ..."
Adler's main points were, "where does all this energy for growth come from?" and "Where does the" huge "[bio]mass come from?":
"In `The DNA of God?' Garza-Valdez makes a large number of extravagant claims, many of them self-contradictory, at odds with accepted Shroud scientific literature, or at odds with basic accepted biochemical, chemical, or physical knowledge ... His ... contention is that the entire cloth is more or less covered by a bioplastic coating deposited by a novel microbe that he himself has discovered in the Shroud samples in his possession. He claims this bioplastic has corrupted the radiocarbon date ... It should be noted that to corrupt the observed radiodate from a first century date to that reported requires about a 50% increase in the C14 mole fraction. This is a prodigious amount of bacterial metabolism. Even if we ignore the Second Law of Thermodynamics and only satisfy the First Law, where does all this energy for growth come from? Are the organisms photosynthetic? Where does the mass come from? Does this microorganism fix the nitrogen from air as required for its growth and metabolism? Where does it get its sulfur, phosphorus, and minerals from and to where have they disappeared?"[7].
>but there were always present different microorganism on the Shroud for many hundred years to date. This is so vague it is meaningless. How many different microorganism? What species were they? If you claim that you cannot know (but see below), then you don't have a scientific theory.
>They did not disappeared. First, they have disappeared. The same lack of evidence under the microscope for Garza-Valdes' microorganisms build-up, applies to your theory. Second, if your claimed bacteria on the Shroud have not disappeared, then you have no excuse not to name them. Third, in 1532 the Shroud was in a fire which melted silver at ~961°C into its casket [20Jan18]. Water that was poured into the casket to extinguish the fire would have turned to steam. This would likely have killed any bacteria then on the Shroud, resetting your bacterial `clock' back to zero. Previous to 1532 there are depictions of the Shroud being held by clergy by their bare hands. This presumably had gone on for centuries. But after the 1532 fire the Shroud has not been exhibited as frequently, nor by being held by hands. Your theory must take that into account. Fourth, Arizona laboratory still has part of its Shroud sample that was never dated (see below), and as can be seen, it does not look like it is contaminated by a huge build up of bacteria or micro-organisms that it would need to have, if your theory were true. 
[Above (enlarge)[8]: Photomicrograph taken by pro-authenticist STURP photographer Barrie Schwortz in 2012, of Arizona laboratory's remaining undated part of its Shroud sample[7]. As can be seen it is visually not ~60% contaminated with younger carbon in the form of a bacterial/microorganisms build-up, which it would need to have to shift the radiocarbon date of the 1st century Shroud 12-13 centuries into the future to 1260-1390[9].]
>It is well known, that the cellulose molecules of linen can change slowly particularly after a long time. Again this is too vague to be meaningful: "change" - how much? "slowly" how slowly? "long time" - how long?
And there are linen cloths that are much older than the first-century
[Above (enlarge):
"Pleated tunic (2435-2118 BC) ... linen pleated tunics and textiles crafted more than 4200 years ago are extremely rare artifacts. However, the Turin Egypt museum has about a dozen specimens. They were discovered in female burials mostly from the late Old Kingdom, during excavations conducted by the museum at the sites of Gebelein"[10].]
"There would appear to be no reason why the Shroud linen could not have survived from the first century. Much older linen fabrics are extant, for example, Tutankhamun [c.1341–c.1323 BC]'s curtains. Flax fibres are not attacked by moth grubs, which require keratin to feed on, and other insects tend to avoid flax if they can because of its hardness. When boiled or bleached, flax has a high resistance to bacteriological attack. Under certain conditions of warmth, dampness and contamination, micro-organisms may attack cellulose, notably cotton, but flax fibres will resist damage well if kept dry. The most important factor in the preservation from decay would seem to be the purity of the fibre and the effectiveness of the bleach"[11].So why didn't the above linen cloths that are thousands of years older than the Shroud, biofractionate?
"While in so many respects the Shroud is the most extraordinary cloth ever known, it is not close to being the oldest surviving cloth of its kind. If kept in dry climates and exposed to little air, textiles will survive for thousands and thousands of years. The examples are numerous. STURP scientist Dr. John Heller [1921-95] observed a cloth at the archaeological site of Diuropus [Dura-Europos?] that was five thousand years old and in good condition. Many surviving mummy cloths originated two thousand to three thousand years before Christ. At the Museum of Egyptology in Turin, I observed numerous cloths from Egyptian dynasties that predated the Shroud by thousands of years ... Throughout the Shroud's history, the cloth has always been kept in the ideal environment for preservation: dark, arid surroundings, either folded or rolled inside a container or sealed inside a wall. With the exception of a few public viewings each century, the linen has rarely been exposed to sunlight or open air ... STURP scientists described it as being in excellent condition ..."[12].
Control sample 3 was linen from an early second century AD Egyptian mummy and its radiocarbon date across the three laboratories of 110 BC - AD 75 agreed with its known date (the linen must be older than the mummy):
"Sample 3. Linen ... associated with an early second century AD mummy of Cleopatra [not Queen Cleopatra (51 BC-30 BC )] from Thebes (EA6707). This linen was dated ... giving a radiocarbon age of 2,010 ± 80 yr BP (BM-2558). This corresponds to a calendar age, rounded to the nearest 5 years, of 110 cal BC - AD 75 cal ... (where cal denotes calibrated radiocarbon dates)"[13].So why didn't this "early second century AD" mummy's linen biofractionate?
>These chemical reaction can proceed in the presence of bacteria and fungi, wich are present all type of linen. You don't name what species they are, nor provide any evidence that they have been found in your required quantity on the Shroud. And you cannot know that these unnamed bacteria were present in the first century through to 1988 when the Shroud was radiocarbon dated. Also there was the 1532 fire and steam (see above) which would have sterilised the Shroud, and reset your bacterial/fungi `clock,' back to zero. Then instead of 1988-30 = 1958 years for your proposed bacterial/fungi build up, you only have 1988-1532 = 456 years!
Bacterial growth is typically exponential until it hits limiting factors such as phosphorous, nitrogen, sulphur and other minerals and nutrients necessary for growth. So if there was "the presence of bacteria and fungi" at one time on the Shroud, it could have all be over in a matter of months!
>The microbiological cellulose degradation is also a serious problem in the bibliothecs. According to an online dictionary, "bibliothec" is a "collection of books", so I presume you meant "the literature"?
There are online articles on the biological degradation of cellulose and of linen in particular. Cellulose is a major component of plants and obviously dead plant material is decomposed by termites, fungi and bacteria. But it doesn't happen unless the conditions for those decomposers' growth is present.
The oldest wooden building (wood is comprised largely of cellulose) is a temple in Japan, part of which is 1,300 years old. It would have been even older but the previous temple burned down. But if wooden buildings are protected from fire, weather, wood rot (fungi), and demolition, they would
[Left (enlarge)[14]: Ancient Kauri wood in New Zealand which looks as good as new, yet it has been preserved under-ground for more than 45,000 years!]
last indefinitely. The world's oldest wood is 45,000 years old (above) because it has been protected from decomposition and fire by having been buried underground all that time.
Similarly with linen. It has been pointed out that there is no linen shroud still existing that was buried wrapped around a body. That is because they decompose with those bodies from the putrefaction products.
But there are many surviving linen shrouds covering mummified bodies in Egypt. That is because the mummification process involves removing a body's internal organs and brain and drying out the remaining body so that it doesn't decompose.
>The main reaction caused by microbes is the depolimerisation.
Depolymerization (or depolymerisation) is the process of converting a polymer into a monomer or a mixture of monomers. You need to show that this has happened to the Shroud. At least to any great degree that shifted its radiocarbon date thirteen centuries into the future.
>The beta-glucosidase enzyme of the microbes(many microbes have this enzyme) decompose slowly the cellulose macromolecules and the endproduct is beta-glucose. "Beta-glucosidase catalyzes the hydrolysis of the glycosidic bonds to terminal non-reducing residues in beta-D-glucosides and oligosaccharides, with release of glucose ... Cellulose is a polymer composed of beta-1,4-linked glucosyl residues. Cellulases (endoglucanases), cellobiosidases (exoglucanases), and beta-glucosidases are required by organisms (some fungi, bacteria) that can consume it. These enzymes are powerful tools for degradation of plant cell walls by pathogens and other organisms consuming plant biomass." But again (see above) you do not name what this/these bacterial or microorganism species is/are and whether it/them has been found in sufficient quantities on the Shroud. Also see above on the conditions necessary for these decomposers to work, and that they have not worked on the early second-century linen control sample 3.
>It was verified in this process. The microorganism use beta-glucose as energy substrate in their metabolism prroducing carbon dioxide and water. What "microorganism" is that exactly? Which has been found on the Shroud in sufficient quantity to shifted its radiocarbon date thirteen centuries into the future? And why did it/they not work on control sample 3? See above.
[...] I have deleted the rest of your comment because there is so much you need to address that it is pointless me wasting any more of my scarce time in responding to it.
>Dr. Tibor Szarvas>radiochemist, radioanalyst in, former in Institute of Isotopes, Hung.Acad Sci. Budapest) With all due respect Dr Szarvas, if you are reading this, which I doubt, the standard of your argument above falls far short of what I would expect of a Member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences!
But then you (like all the other proposers of the "conventional explanations which all fail") are trying to explain by conventional science why the first-century Shroud's radiocarbon date was shifted twelve to thirteen centuries into the future, to the `bull's eye' date 1325 ±65.
I predict that all conventional explanations of why the first-century Shroud had a 1325 ±65 radiocarbon date are doomed to fail, because the true explanation is, as I emailed Joe Marino and Ian Wilson in response to an Archaeometry article [see 11Apr19] about Oxford's "raw data strongly suggests that homogeneity is lacking":
"The Shroud samples radiocarbon dates were not true dates, but were generated by a hacker's (allegedly Arizona's Timothy W. Linick) computer program which substituted the actual Shroud samples' C14 dates with random numbers generated within limits imposed by the previous computer-generated dates of the Shroud sample at each laboratory."Notes
1. This post is copyright. I grant permission to quote from any part of it (but not the whole post), provided it includes a reference citing my name, its subject heading, its date, and a hyperlink back to this page. [return]
2. Combs, R., 2016, "A normal carbon atom has 6 neutrons, and carbon-12 has 6 neutrons, so how is carbon-12 an isotope?," Quora, 18 November. [return]
3. Tyrer, J., in Wilson, I., 1988, "So How Could the Carbon Dating Be Wrong?," British Society for the Turin Shroud Newsletter, No. 20, October, pp.10-12. [return]
4. Damon, P.E., et al., 1989, "Radiocarbon Dating of the Shroud of Turin," Nature, Vol. 337, 16 February, pp.611-615, 611. [return]
5. Tipler, F.J., 2007, "The Physics of Christianity," Doubleday: New York NY, p.178. [return]
6. "CURIOSEANDO: febrero 2013," YouTube, 2013. [return]
7. Adler, A.D., 1999, "The Nature of the Body Images on the Shroud of Turin," in Adler, A.D. & Crispino, D., ed., "The Orphaned Manuscript: A Gathering of Publications on the Shroud of Turin," Effatà Editrice: Cantalupa, Italy, 2002, pp.103-112, 108-109. [return]
8. Schwortz, B.M., 2012, "New Photographs of Arizona Radiocarbon Dating Laboratory Samples," Shroud.com, November 21. [return]
9. Wilson, I, 1989, "Lecture by Professor Hall of Oxford," BSTS Newsletter, No. 21, January/February, pp.7-10, 9-10; Petrosillo, O. & Marinelli, E., 1996, "The Enigma of the Shroud: A Challenge to Science," Scerri, L.J., transl., Publishers Enterprises Group: Malta, p.118; Oxley, M., 2010, "The Challenge of the Shroud: History, Science and the Shroud of Turin," AuthorHouse: Milton Keynes UK, p.225; Wilson, I., 2010, "The Shroud: The 2000-Year-Old Mystery Solved," Bantam Press: London, p.96. [return]
10. "Victory's Museum Trip II - The Museo Egizio of Turin X," — Steemit, 2018. [return]
11. Tyrer, J., 1983, "Looking at the Turin Shroud as a Textile," Shroud Spectrum International, No. 6, March, pp.35-45, 39. [return]
12. Antonacci, M., 2000, "Resurrection of the Shroud: New Scientific, Medical, and Archeological Evidence," M. Evans & Co: New York NY, p.97. [return]
13. Damon, 1989, p.612. [return]
14. "Ancient Kauri – World’s Oldest Wood Now at Woodcraft," Woodcraft, 4 October 2016 . [return]
Posted: 20 March 2019. Updated: 12 April 2021.
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