Intelligent Design Theory: Science or Religion?

It comes free with Sky Sports LW. They don't do computer similations on Sky Sports.

I have not seen DC for a long time now. I found it silly and very repetative. I hate those knowing confident voiceovers telling you things so dramatic that one thinks they will be headlines in tomorrow's papers. Which they never are because they are years behind the action.

It's a bloke in an office with a pile of videos.

spendi, You can't even criticize DC properly; most of what is on display are "historical" in nature; they are not about tomorrow's headlines. Have you ever visited the museums in London? They have stuff from most countries around the world that are "old" and historical.

I prefer the art. I don't need any specialists getting in the way. The most important aspect of articles by specialists is the tone of the ads juxtaposed to the drivel. They have you boxed off, taped up and defined like one of effemm's faked fossils.

I have indeed and I must say that they do keep the toilets in sparkling condition.

"Inside the museums infinity goes up on trial.
Mona Lisa musta had the highway blues
You can tell by the way she smiles."

Bob Dylan. Visions of Johanna.

Henry Ford didn't say that history was bunk. The reporters used "bunk" as a euphemism so the puritans wouldn't have a freak out.

Im aware of the erroneous C14 testing because an art student (a fibre artist) made the observation that the sample for C14 was taken from a new weave area(This was "missed" by the STURC group). The fibre artist was ignored and the sample was taken from an area that later was confirmed to be mixed with new and old fibre weaves. (A confirmatory analysis of the weave was done at the Winterthur conservation labs here in nearby Longwood PA)
So, to have the shroud test out at anything pre 1400 meant that it was older and the "brackets" of error need adjusting. The historiographic accounts of the SHroud go back to at least the late 900's as a "holy relic "acquired via the Holy Roman EMpire.
However, with the documented fire in the early 1500's and the use of carbon based solvents in the storage box, as well as wood fumes, I wonder whether there was anyone competent in C14 from the get-go. There was so much contamination from the outset that any C14 would be suspect.
I think that all they can do is to do a series of samplings and and subject them half to cleaning by non solvent means and then leave the other half of the samples uncleaned. Then C14 is run and a statistical sample is presented from all the cleaned v uncleaned samples. This would be the only way to "bracket" a closer determination of the shrouds "Sell by" date in which the samples would confer that the Shroud could not be any younger than but still could be significantly older. There were some decent (supposedly) radioisotope researchers involved and they all screwed up .
Im gonna say that the SHroud is probably from the early Mideaval times, and no amount of scientific testing is gonna bracket it any closer, theres just . been too much junk in the shroud

Writing about myth in The Classical Temper, S.L.Goldberg wrote-



Leaving aside the scientific validity of the hearsay of "an art student (a fibre artist)" the only scientific consideration in the above is speculation leading to hypothesis as to the mental states (motives) of those seeking to explode a myth and the sense of "wonder, awe, delight and human kinship, in the face of life and its manifold destinies" which the myth under scrutiny contains.

What are they seeking to achieve? To "get you facts when somebody attacks your imagination" as Dylan has it. And a nice easy job no doubt which will make their Moms and Pops proud of them when they publish their findings and leave the devout peasants stupified and the carpet moving under their feet. Wonderful. How clever they are. One gasps in admiration.

It is as if "wonder, awe, delight and human kinship, in the face of life and its manifold destinies" is of no account when compared with the team of gallant researchers and their sense of personal destiny and academic excellence.

Any other myths up for close examination effemm? Is art to be laid out on the dissecting table and its innards exposed to analysis so that "scientists" can rule the roost?

So, if I read you correctly, if there is a "beautiful myth" associated with anything, it should be left alone and allowed to persist just for the wonder of it.
SCylla and Charibdis have interesting origins from the more mundane views of oceanography. It appears that there were several episodes of tidal whirlpools that periodically occur there along the STraits of MEssina and these whirlpools have been recorded since ancient history. The myth that ascribes the monsters as the cause of the whirlpools , to me,just adds to the natural color of the area and the reference in Odesseus.
Understanding the phenomenon behind a myth (when one exists) doesnt reduce its literary or social effect, as stated by Selly in his defense of poetry when he used the reference of SCylla and Charibdis as metaphor for the sweet spot between anarchy and despotism.

I'm all for the sweet spot between anarchy and despotism. If myths help to get us there I'm all for myths. Which is to say I'm against people undermining them. I'm all for sweet spots generally. And I'm all for wonder too. And awe. And human kinship in the face of the bald scientific facts of life.

The point I made was that there is no understanding of myths or symbols. They are not the reality they seek to represent and never can be. The only reality is the people who construct them. The artist.

Has science any myths?

How like cotton candy your posts are. They appear, at the outset, to be pretty and substantive , but, after closer inspection, are mostly air.

Whats yer point then, You seem to be arguing with yourself. I shall not stand in the way of that dialogue

Well- the point was to do with the scientific undermining of the mythical Turin Shroud. Scientific authentications miss the point entirely. What are they for?

I don't think that you have ever closely inspected anything in your entire life effemm. Your ego is in the way.

Where do I begin.after this

Are you that afraid of the real world? Does fact get in the way of a good ripping yarn? Ned Ludd lives.

That's all accurate as far as I can remember. Where the mystery comes in is when the shroud was photographed and scanned into a computer, the image was obviously negative and the portrait portion was created using a photo emulsion coating applied to a cast of a face and exposed to a controlled light source. The reversal is a man's face which is what the art experts have and are still examining, especially the proportions compared to the two Da Vinci self-portraits. Is it conclusive? Of course not and if the Vatican is loosening up again on the examination of the shroud, there may be more testing in the near future. It wasn't unusual for an artist to purchase old linen, cleaning it, and then using it for coating with gesso and painting a new work. Or, for a tongue-in-cheek hoax.

What are any authentications for? Wonder if Spendi has ever passed counterfeit money, and if he did, would he mind getting arrested for it? Well, maybe until they find out how he might have received it and did not print it himself. Of course, I would think those printer's ink fingerprints on those pints at the pub should be washed thoroughly. We wouldn't want anyone to discover a forgery. Obviously the Vatican wants to know, not if Spendi is printing counterfeit money, but if the shroud is real. They let scientists perform with unprecedented access as many tests as they wanted. When it was going against the shroud being real and were concerned about damage (even though it had been on public display out in the open air, once hung from a balcony), they pulled it back into the vaults. Supposedly the Knights Templar kept it in "a secure place" but how much did they know about the science of preservation? The shroud even looks too new to art and science experts in examining it with the naked eye.

Spendi lives in a naive world where storks deliver babies and gods deliver hemorhoids when one sits on bar stools too long.

I never sit on bar stools. Perhaps that's why I have never suffered the condition you mention.

But I bow to your experience.

To show a modicum of respect to your readers you really ought to look up words you can't spell. Or was it a joke about skirts?

He must have been delivered by a careless stork who dropped him on his head.

It wouldn't enter my head that the Shroud was not a fake. But it's a nice one in many ways. I don't see the point in discrediting it.

It transposes, and thus re-creates, the mythical event it symbolises, the centre of which cannot be reached by it. In doing so in the "here and now" of the time of its making, it, in T.S. Eliot's phrase, alerts the imagination that renews it. Which would then apply thereafter to viewers of it.

A large number of symbolic patterns of such a nature exist. Flowered wallpaper for example. A photograph of a distant galaxy which might not now exist. Or a person who might not in a portrait or maybe never did.

The Shroud renews the myth of the suffering hero.

So does Alice in wonderland.

Yeah-well--it became a lot easier when cheap books came in that everybody could afford.