The Shroud, the Nazis and Freidrich Nietzsche

On Shroudstory.com, Dan Porter has posted a reflection on the discovery of the diaries of Alfred Rosenberg, a Nazi fanatic who scoured the conquered lands during WWII for treasures including religious relics of interest to Hitler. One of those was the Shroud of Turin which had been hidden in a Benedictine Monastery and nearly discovered. The Nazi’s were thwarted because the monks claimed to be in prayer in the Chapel.  They were kneeling around the altar.  The Nazis’ didn’t have the patience to wait out the monks prayers and left. The prize they were searching for had been hidden in the altar. See http://shroudstory.com/2013/06/14/will-the-alfred-rosenberg-diaries-tell-us-anything/

At times, feel sorry for those who are so dedicated to disbelief in either the concept of a deity or the authenticity of the Shroud so as to either ignore or disregard the evidence before us. I believe the main issue of the Shroud is not provenance but providence.

The Shroud's near misses with oblivion including at least three times  barely escaping consumption by fire may not be "miraculous" but is certainly "providential." Now we have the Nazis and the monks.

But the most important sign of  providence is that it waited for science to catch up with it. Pia's photographs were only a relatively  crude overture to the depth of the quantum examinations of STURP. Now even more vastly improved measurement devices functioning at the quantum level are available.

And we are being hit with circumstances apparently unrelated that are focusing attention on the Shroud. Certainly any reference to the Shroud in Rosenberg's diary will be a big, big story. Yet, it will only be a part of an inexorable tide of interest that is sweeping across the world.

In Thus Spake Zarathustra, Friedrich Nietzsche celebrated the death of God. It had  happened in the extreme end of the Universe but the news was traveling to the world. Nietzsche wrote in the Nineteenth Century. The news arrived  not with a bang, but many bangs in the Twentieth Century.

I realize that an agnostic or super physicist who reads this blog may be upset by this statement: God is being reborn in this time and place through the instrumentality of the Shroud. The news has arrived.

The Shroud, the Internet and the Margins

Dan Porter's Shroudstory blog as an interesting posting about an Australian science writer who lumps the Shroud of Turin in with such myths as the  "tooth fairy." 

"Do you hold any really odd beliefs—in ghosts, UFOs, tooth fairies, the sanctity of the Turin Shroud? While science often acts as a bulls**t filter, the internet rarely does." http://shroudstory.com/2013/06/13/argumentum-ad-populum-of-the-day/

There is a serious problem here. The issue is "marginalization." How the proponents of established "truth" use their establishment position to push dissent to the margins and unacceptability. More than once in history, proponents of seemingly fanciful scientific ideas are marginalized by established authority scientific, or otherwise. Remember, Galileo came with an inch of the stake - until he recanted the truth.

Einstein's relativity was mocked until it was proven. But some ideas simply evade traditional standards of proof. By the skeptics standard the Resurrection will always be wrong because it can't be repeated - at least by scientific methods.

When it comes to the Shroud, by   dismissively pushing adherents of its authenticity to the margins, the issue of the Resurrection is avoided. It was something that was noted about the Shroud in the initial debate after the Pia's photographs unlocked its mysteries. Were it the Shroud of Caesar or Aristotle it would have been universally hailed. But it was the Shroud of that annoying man, Jesus Christ and an authentic Shroud of JC, just isn't de rigueur.

And by the way, Lee Harvey Oswald, all around goof-off (who just happened to speak and write  fluent Russian) wasn’t a lone gunman. But that’s another debate. See http://www.johnklotz.com/new-jfk.htm