Pollen

Then just answer the question: how did the image of what forensic pathologists have determined to be a crucified Jewish male in a state of rigor mortis come to be impressed in negative, complete with pre- and postmortem bloodstains, on the topmost fibres of a linen shroud, the history of which we can trace from the 1390s onwards, without travelling in capillary fashion towards the bottom or even middle of these fibres?

Answer this one question Le Dieu and the whole of usenet will thank you for putting an end to a debate you started a month ago.

All of my posts so far dealing with the Shroud are scientific in content and deal only with the findings of scientists and medical men who have studied the Shroud at first hand. It's not a religious debate. Yves Delage, Sorbonne Professor of Comparative Anatomy, well-known for his agnosticism and aversion to anything smacking of the supernatural, said as much when he was mocked for his findings on the Shroud (which were based on the work of French biology professor, Paul Vignon). Ridiculed and ostracised by his colleagues and by the press, for presenting Vignon's findings to the French Academy of Sciences in 1902, he responded by saying that " a religious question had been needlessly injected into a problem that in itself is purely scientific." The Academy "lost" most of his presentation and dismissed the rest after 15 minutes of consultation.

The irony is that you too adopted an almost religious fanaticism in your opposition to scientific findings on the Shroud in the course of this debate.

That is the supreme irony facing us today as we buttess which of the two parties to the debate has been the more rational and which the more neurotic.

I've already told you -- it's not proof.

But since it is an inexplicable material artefact which corresponds in every physical detail with the Gospel records of his rest and burial it is only logical we should reasonably conclude that it comes tantalisingly close to proving the Resurrection, insofar as proof is ever possible.

Science draws conclusions too you know.

What proof do you have that the sun will appear on the horizon tomorrow morning?

LOL!

And then you attack religionists for letting their imagination run riot?

Yes I know. You truly have no idea. You have buttumptions and theories, delusions and superstitions.

So far not one credible idea.

I accept your bona fides, and it's not my intention to attack you personally but to expose as ridiculous the corner you've painted yourself into in this debate.

What is "all this stuff" anyway? I don't believe in 99% of what the world's religions teach. I believe specifically in one religion which is based empirically on a set of documents that have more historical credibility than all our sources for the Roman occupation of Britain put together.

If you want to know what purpose the Catholic liturgy serves you need to understand it from the point of view of Christ, who initiated its form and rhetoric. If I am correct in concluding that Christ is God then that would mean you would need to understand the mind of God, something none but the mystics have understoodf so far.

I was answering your first question. If the answer to that is, as i have said, that the world would not exist, then we don't get as far as the second question. Capiche?

God never tolerated bloodshed in the name of paganism. He did tolerate and endorse bloodshed in the name of truth.

How did you arrive at the conclusion that he didn't rise from the dead?

Simple question, simple answer please.

If you say so. I'm not a patient man Le Dieu and you'll have to put a more compelling argument together if you want to sway the minds of the world's one billion catholics.

So you accept that without religion the world is just as cruel, arbitrary and confusing?

Unless of course he did intervene. If the Shroud points to God raising Christ from the dead as the first fruits of the redemption then I think we can definitely ssay God intervened in human history.

-- + His Holiness Pope Pompous XVIII

"This is all Blarney!" -- Her Royal Highness Queen Elizabeth I