Actually the position of the blood makes zero physical sense in any scenario—except forgery.

See Tabor and Allen.

And please stop being this gullible. No one should be falling for the tinfoil hat of shrouder nonsense like this. You really can do better. You just have to think.

If you need a primer on that, see A Primer on Actually Doing Your Own Research and the articles on method cited and linked there.

Hello Richard, I’d like to share my reasons for believing Christ is risen. Please evaluate them when you have time🫱🏻‍🫲🏼

We can confidently say that it was not man-made. Here’s what the experts from the STURP group tell us:
“A number of tests indicate the authenticity of the blood on the shroud. Different substances absorb light of different frequencies differently: in particular, hemoglobin strongly absorbs ultraviolet light, and blood stains appear particularly dark in ultraviolet photographs. This is precisely how they appear on the shroud in this range.
A suspected 14th-century forger would therefore have needed knowledge of the blood clotting process, acquired only in the 20th century, and the ability to create historically authentic scourging marks visible only in ultraviolet light. Not to mention that for a forgery intended to mislead people of that era, all these details would have been completely unnecessary.”

Liberato De Caro and Giulio Fanti write: Despite the high level of modern scientific knowledge, there is no known physical or chemical process that could explain all the properties of the body image on the Shroud of Turin. According to our scientific knowledge, the body of a deceased person cannot generate energy capable of imprinting on linen cloth an image with all the microscopic and macroscopic properties discovered during the analysis of the body image on the Shroud of Turin, which has not yet been reproduced in any laboratory in the world. According to faith, the body of a living person can do this during the resurrection, passing into another state of matter. In this regard, the Shroud of Turin can be considered a two-thousand-year-old relic, testifying to the fact that even in the age of science, humanity has not lost faith in the resurrection.

In an article on the works of Giulio Fanti, they write the following:
If we wanted to reproduce a very similar image on fabric today at a 1/2 scale, we would need a voltage of approximately 300,000 volts, but according to the American scientist Igor Bensen, a 1/1 scale image of the Turin Shroud would require 50,000,000 volts.

Dr. Alan Adler explains:
The blood on the shroud dried on the body before contact with the fabric and imprinted itself on its surface without being absorbed. If the body had been removed, the blood would have shifted or smeared.

Surgeon Pierre Barbier:
Not only has he refuted much of the criticism leveled at the shroud, but, as far as I know, thanks to the unusual placement of the blood, he has also concluded that a person passed through the fabric.

Dr. Alan Walls explains:
Experiments have shown that if a body is removed from the cloth, the blood smears. On the shroud, the blood perfectly retains its shape, as if the body had passed through the cloth.

Dr. John Heller suggests:

The blood behaves as if the body had not been removed, but had passed through the cloth, leaving an imprint.

Conclusion:
Ordinary removal of the body would have left traces of mechanical action on the blood.
Natural decomposition would have destroyed the blood’s structure (but it was perfectly preserved).
Therefore, this position of the blood is explained by the resurrection of Christ (He passed through material objects).

Also, modern technology and scientific knowledge cannot provide us with an alternative explanation, unless it requires extremely powerful radiation (which would last for a very short period of time), but this fact, in particular, only proves the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

The ENEA group’s experiments suggest that such an image is possible with a high energy emission. I quote Irimey Johnson:
“The image is a chemical process. We believe it occurred at the moment of resurrection. 34×10¹² watts of energy in [≈] 0.025 × 10⁻⁹ seconds. A physicist, my friend, Paolo Di Lazzaro from ENEA spent five years. He’s a laser specialist. He’s a physicist who works with lasers. They managed to reproduce the chemical change that occurs in flax fibers. 34B watts of energy at peak power. But it was cold energy. It all happened in 0.025 × 10⁻⁹ seconds. This is what changed the chemical structure, leaving the image…”

By the way, this statement supports the energy release argument.

And here are the sources:
Adler, A. D. (1996). “The Orphaned Manuscript: A Gathering of Publications on the Shroud of Turin”, Legacy Publishers.

Whanger, A., & Whanger, M. (1998). “The Shroud of Turin: An Adventure of Discovery”, Providence House Publishers.

Barbet, “A Doctor at Calvary”

“The Shroud of Turin: An Adventure of Discovery”

Heller, J. (1983). “Report on the Shroud of Turin”, Houghton Mifflin, p. 124.

https://shroudstory.com/2013/03/27/giulio-fanti-the-image-of-a-man-who-lived-between-280-bc-and-220-ad/

Indeed. But even were they “highly accomplished hard scientists” their claims have all been systematically refuted anyway. Plenty of “highly accomplished hard scientists” have conspired to sell lies to the public (for big tobacco, big oil, and other designs), so we know that is not a guarantee of reliability. Proof is always in the pudding. They either have the goods or they don’t. And replication will find out. This is why science has to be a product of a community, and not of prestige. The fallacy of Argument from Authority is often, really, the fallacy of Argument from Prestige. This is why so many creationists endeavor to get “PhDs” in some science, for example: so they can claim they must be right (when in fact their claims are all refuted on replication). STURP is no different. That team was specifically selected for its biases. It wasn’t a random sampling of “the scientific community.”

Thanks a lot.

I was suspicious of the STURP team as I noticed from the scarce information present about a few of its members that they are mostly Christians. I don’t have full data or even substantial about the members but the perceived over representation of theists in general is not to be expected in a group of highly accomplished hard scientists.

As for your question about the STURP report, that is indeed their report. But those aren’t the guys who did the carbon testing; it was a band of ideologues tasked with authenticating the shroud, not questioning it (see Wikipedia). STURP indeed fought tooth and nail to prevent the carbon tests from being outsourced to other (independent) labs, and lost, so they lost control of the ability to rig those tests. That’s why those tests went against their report: they were three independent tests by independent (non-STURP) parties.

I meant the argument that the carbon dated samples must not be from the original cloth because they lack pigment. That’s a nonsequitur. There is no evidence the tested samples were from a later patch. That’s simply a myth.

As for the entire shroud, chemicals have been extensively identified on it—a confusing statement, I admit, since all matter “is chemicals,” so one has to parse which chemicals are meant by that word “chemicals” in a statement like this, but in no sense is there no identified pigment on the shroud. That has been chemically verified.

Likewise, the method of its production has been multiply corroborated (I linked to examples above). Their claim of any remaining mystery is simply made-up.

I noticed the pattern of not accepting any evidence and always moving the goalpost. However, I didn’t understand your response to the summary provided by the STURP team.

You said:

“That’s simply an irrelevant claim. Just because they took for testing a nondestructive sample (which obviously won’t be part of the pigmented image itself) does not mean the sample wasn’t representative.”

Did you mean “doesn’t mean that the sample was representative.”?

Their summary says:

“No pigments, paints, dyes or stains have been found on the fibrils. X-ray, fluorescence and microchemistry on the fibrils preclude the possibility of paint being used as a method for creating the image. Ultra Violet and infrared evaluation confirm these studies. Computer image enhancement and analysis by a device known as a VP-8 image analyzer show that the image has unique, three-dimensional information encoded in it. Microchemical evaluation has indicated no evidence of any spices, oils, or any biochemicals known to be produced by the body in life or in death. It is clear that there has been a direct contact of the Shroud with a body, which explains certain features such as scourge marks, as well as the blood. However, while this type of contact might explain some of the features of the torso, it is totally incapable of explaining the image of the face with the high resolution that has been amply demonstrated by photography.”

Can the samples being non-destructive explain the absence of chemicals? One thing is that McCrone also used non-destructive samples but contradicted them by saying he found multiple chemicals.

They also mention the unique encoded 3D information in the above paragraph.

They also said:

“The basic problem from a scientific point of view is that some explanations which might be tenable from a chemical point of view, are precluded by physics. Contrariwise, certain physical explanations which may be attractive are completely precluded by the chemistry. For an adequate explanation for the image of the Shroud, one must have an explanation which is scientifically sound, from a physical, chemical, biological and medical viewpoint. At the present, this type of solution does not appear to be obtainable by the best efforts of the members of the Shroud Team. Furthermore, experiments in physics and chemistry with old linen have failed to reproduce adequately the phenomenon presented by the Shroud of Turin. The scientific consensus is that the image was produced by something which resulted in oxidation, dehydration and conjugation of the polysaccharide structure of the microfibrils of the linen itself. Such changes can be duplicated in the laboratory by certain chemical and physical processes. A similar type of change in linen can be obtained by sulfuric acid or heat. However, there are no chemical or physical methods known which can account for the totality of the image, nor can any combination of physical, chemical, biological or medical circumstances explain the image adequately.

Thus, the answer to the question of how the image was produced or what produced the image remains, now, as it has in the past, a mystery.

We can conclude for now that the Shroud image is that of a real human form of a scourged, crucified man. It is not the product of an artist. The blood stains are composed of hemoglobin and also give a positive test for serum albumin. The image is an ongoing mystery and until further chemical studies are made, perhaps by this group of scientists, or perhaps by some scientists in the future, the problem remains unsolved.”

Which is also in stark contrast to what McCrone said.

Was this summary really provided by John Heller and approved by the rest of the STURP team after they concluded their investigation? I am specifically interested in this summary because it keeps being cited by the apologists and as far as I can search, I can’t prove nor refute that it came from the STURP team.

That’s simply an irrelevant claim. Just because they took for testing a nondestructive sample (which obviously won’t be part of the pigmented image itself) does not mean the sample wasn’t representative. There is no evidence to support the latter claim. This kind of reasoning by nonsequitur is typical of apologetics. But it has no place in serious discourse.

You are right to be suspicious. A lot of that is made-up and not an accurate account of what experts have said. Shroud apologists are just like flat earthers: delusional, unreliable, and sometimes outright dishonest.

There will never be a “point” when all their ravings will be rebutted, because, being insane, they will always build new wordwalls of myths, legends, claims, and complaints. As soon as one is refuted, they post ten more, and so on. It’s impossible to keep up with lunatics. At some point you just have to call the ball.

In general, you simply can’t trust them. So instead of trusting what they claim various experts said, you have to go back and read what those experts actually said. That is often already sufficient rebuttal. The leading works now are McCrone’s Judgment Day for the Shroud of Turin, revised ed. (1999), Gove’s Relic, Icon or Hoax? (1996), Nickell’s Inquest on the Shroud of Turin (1998), Freeman’s Holy Bones, Holy Dust (2012), and now Casper’s An Artful Relic (2021) and Nicolotti’s The Shroud of Turin (2019).

If you want to keep up with the latest crazy, you have to Google your way to it (e.g. the latest example, discussed; the Garlaschelli results; Wikipedia on the science and Wikipedia on the crazy; RationalWiki; etc.).

They usually cite this summary of the STURP team as evidence for the first claim:
https://www.shroud.com/78conclu.htm