Freethought & Rationalism Archive

leonarde · 04-05-2002, 09:31 PM

Okay, I know that this won't satisfy Koy but I'm
going to have at the questions/arguments he refers
to in his more recent posts, but I am going to do
so in piecemeal fashion: that is just the way it
works out best for me but, I believe also for readers of this thread.
We return once again to the subject of the cause
of death. Now remember we are trying to compare
(potentially)TWO deaths: that of the Man of the
Shroud and that of Jesus. So in general terms what
do we have? This:
Jesus' mode of death: crucifixion.
Jesus' cause of death: ?????????
Man of Shroud's mode of death: crucifixion.
Man of Shroud's cause of death: ????????

So some perusal of the studies will be done to
try to determine the cause of death in each instance (though they may be the SAME death).
When, way back at the top of page 7 Koy took it
as a given that the cause of death was blood loss
what did I respond? Let's take a look:

Quote:

Partial post by Koy:
quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Explain to us all how a man who has died of blood loss[....]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Well, believe it or not, there is STILL a lot of
disagreement about what the exact cause of death was: the Crucifixion killed him but how exactly is
something that is NOT unanimous. A few of the
leading candidates:
1)(close to total)loss of blood.
2) asphixiation: the position of the crucified man
makes it more and more difficult to breath: the
victim must push painfully with his feet to raise
his head and torso. Eventually he runs out of strength. To speed up the process, the Romans
would break the legs of the victims so that they
couldn't push off with the legs and so a (quicker)
asphixiation death ensued. This is reported for the 2 criminals who were crucified with Jesus:
each had his legs broken to speed up the death
process (asphixiation)but when they came to Jesus
and saw that he was ALREADY dead they merely put
the lance/spear through him. The speedup was to
get the bodies disposed of before the Sabbath
sundown.
3)shock.
(there may be other speculation but these are the
most common ascribed immediate causes of death.)
A number of forensic pathologists have weighed in
on this question besides Bucklin.
Only scenario #1 would make the large amount
of blood on the Shroud and Sudarium questionable.

I put it this way because:
1)there IS no concensus about the (immediate) cause of death. (There's always a lot of blood loss in crucifixion but that doesn't NECESSARILY
mean that it is the IMMEDIATE cause of death).
2)those were the causes I best remembered from
my readings over years as a Shroudie.
3) I was too lazy/didn't have the time to look
in ALL the Shroud books and/or URLs to find yet
other theories.
4) in the case of Jesus we have some good information but the witness was NOT a medical
doctor as far as we know and a 1st Century MD would have limited knowledge of physiology anyway.
5) in the case of the Man of the Shroud we have,
not a body to examine but merely an image of one on some linen.
6)to my way of thinking since both the cause of
Jesus' death AND the cause of the Man of the Shroud's death might never be known for certain, a comparison might not be possible.

Since early in the 20th Century there have been
numerous investigators of the Shroud: many, if not
all of the major ones are either mentioned by Meacham or listed in Meacham's bibliography.
One pioneer in this area was Pierre Barbet. Barbet
is famous for having been curious about the location of the nails marks on the hands of the
Man of the Shroud: they were NOT where a medieval
artist would portray them: dead center of the palms. Instead they were in the wrist area. Curious, Barbet did some experiments with corpses:
he tried nailing them to makeshift crosses and found that when he nailed them thru the palms of
the hands that they would NOT support the weight of the body: the flesh was torn and the body fell.
Only when he nailed them thru the wrist area did
they support the body. This fact would have been
unknown to 13th and 14th Century artists who might
want to be True Shroud forgers.
Barbet also believed that the cause of death of
the Man of the Shroud was asphyxiation.
In Meacham's URL there are two papers by Zugibe: one I already referred to about the washing of the body and a SECOND one which touches on our concerns here. After praising Barbet as a pioneer,
Zugibe disagrees with him about a few things:

Quote:

Barbet's studies are centered around three major hypotheses:

The man of the Shroud of Turin was nailed through an area of the wrist called Destot's Space and not through the palm of the hand.

The missing thumb on the Shroud was due to injury to the median nerve by the passage of the nail.

The man of the Shroud died of asphyxiation.

It is the purpose of this paper to demonstrate that all three hypotheses of Barbet are, in fact, untenable.

So here we have Zugibe, writing
in 1995 disagreeing with Barbet whose work was in
the 1930s. The last point should be our focus.
Zugibe's paper describes experiments with volunteer "crucifixion victims" and goes into great detail. Space forbids the copying of much of
it but Zugibe does say:

Quote:

Cause of Death:
In order to arrive at the most probable cause of death, it is essential to examine the sequence of all the events from Gethsemani through Calvary; the severe mental anguish exhibited in the Garden of Gethsemani would cause some loss in blood volume both from sweating and hematidrosis and provoke marked weakness. The barbaric scourging that utilized a flagrum composed of leather tails containing metal weights or bone at the tip would cause penetration of the skin with trauma to the nerves, muscles and skin reducing the victim to an exhausted, wretched condition with shivering, severe sweating, frequent displays of seizures, and a craving for water. The results would cause a degree of traumatic (injury) shock and hypovolemia (fluid loss), the latter resulting from the sweating and the early stage of fluid accumulation around the lungs (pleural effusion) from the effects of the scourging. Animal experimentation by Daniels and Cate13 showed that blows to the chest in animals resulted in rupture of the air spaces in the lung (alveoli) and spasms of the air tubes (bronchi). Moreover the term "traumatic wet lung" refers to the accumulation of blood, fluid and mucous from severe trauma (injury) to the chest. The conclusion of traumatic shock from scourging, was also made by both Tenney14 and Primrose.15 The irritation of the trigeminal and greater occipital nerves of the scalp by the cap of thorns from the Syrian Christ Thorn plant, Zizziphus spina christi especially after he was struck several times with reeds would also contribute to traumatic shock. The bumpy, uphill road to Golgotha in the hot sun, with the crosspiece on the shoulder for a time, with falling some of the time, and being struck other times also added to the hypovolemia and traumatic shock. The progession of the pleural effusion would lead to increasing hypovolemia. The large square iron nails driven through both hands into the cross would damage the sensory branches of the median nerve resulting in one of the most exquisite pains ever experienced by people and known medically as causalgia. The nails through the feet would also elicit a great deal of pain. Both of these would cause additional traumatic shock and hypovolemia. The hours on the cross, with pressure of the weight of the body on the nails through the hands and feet would cause episodes of excruciating agony every time the cruciarius moved. These episodes and the unrelenting pains of the chest wall from the scourging would greatly worsen the state of traumatic shock and the excessive sweating induced by the ongoing trauma and by the hot sun, would cause an increasing degree of hypovolemic shock.

The pathophysiological events that occur as a result of these events leading to death are those of traumatic (injury) and hypovolemic (low blood and fluid volume) shock. Shock, regardless of its cause is defined " ... as a constellation of syndromes all characterized by low perfusion and circulatory insufficiency, leading to an imbalance between the metabolic needs of vital organs and the available blood flow.16 It is ".. a state of inadequate perfusion of all cells and tissues, which at first leads to reversible hypoxic injury, but if sufficiently protracted or grave, to irreversible cell and organ injury and sometimes to the death of the patient.17 This presents a very complex array of initiating factors, compensatory reactions and several interrelationships much too complex to include here. For an in depth discussion of the mechanisms of shock invoked during crucifixion from initiation to death please refer to my article, "Death by Crucifixion." 18

Then just below that in the conclusions section,
at the end is:

Quote:

The asphyxiation theory is completely untenable.
The cause of death in crucifixion is a consequence of shock.

Those who want MORE details should read the URL:
<a href="http://www.shroud.com/zugibe.htm" target="_blank">http://www.shroud.com/zugibe.htm</a>

In my next post I will get back to cause of death
(perhaps the most problematic of questions)...

Cheers!

[ April 05, 2002: Message edited by: leonarde ]

leonarde · 04-05-2002, 10:06 PM

Before calling it a night I thought I would do one
more post on this question.
To recap:
1)Barbet maintains that asphyxia is the cause of
the death of the man of the Shroud.
2)Zugibe, far more recently, based on experiments
delineated in the cited URL says that asphyxia is
seldom/never the cause of death. That cause is
shock.
3)Bucklin in one paragraph refers to both "postural
asphyxiation" AND "severe blood loss" AND "fluid accumulation in the chest cavities related to
terminal cardio-respiratory failure."

So in the case of Bucklin I would say he is talking about multiple causes/factors.

ALL the forensics texts I consulted in recent days
had "crucifixion" under "death by slow asphyxiation", "death by postural asphyxiation",
or in one case "death by smothering".

That is the best I can do in recapping the cause
of death controversy. It really isn't settled:
in general terms, in the case of the Man of the
Shroud, and in the case of Jesus.

Cheers!

Tercel · 04-05-2002, 10:26 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by britinusa:
Tercel
We must be looking at different threads. This thread has been largely dominated by Koy's demolition of Leonarde,

Clearly we are looking at very different threads: Apparently you are looking at a non-existent one. -A year spent reading Koy's points gives me absolute certainty that he could not possibly be demolishing anyone's arguments.

Quote:

BTW do you think the three teams that examined the shroud were handpicked by Madelyn Murray O'Hair?

I think the people in the three teams that examined the Shroud knew what they were talking about otherwise they'd damn well never have been put in the teams in the first place.
Do you seriously expect me to believe the opinion of every random atheist examiner (who, after all are hardly unbiased on the matter) who's ever come up with a crack-pot theory about the Shroud that has been disproven by several teams of experts?

Quote:

Is there some vast atheist conspiracy to cast doubt on the shroud?
I'm not in the least bit threatened by it. If it is 2000 years old, so what? The really hard part is proving that it was Jesus's. And if that can be done, I for one would be delighted. It would be really cool. Most atheists believe Jesus was a real person, and many of them think he was an OK guy. A genuine shroud of Turin, however, doesn't prove his divinity; doesn't even come close. So why would we be threatened by it?

The idea that the image on the shroud was not generated naturally (and hence is a direct result of whatever supernatural process raised Jesus from the dead) would seem to be extremely threatening to atheism.

Quote:

I'm not saying ALL xians believe the shroud is the real deal. I'm sure many don't, its just that I've never met one

Despite being brought up a Christian, I had never even heard of the Shroud of Turin until I was about 18 or so.

Tercel

Pomp · 04-05-2002, 10:32 PM

Tercel,

Quote:

BTW do you think the three teams that examined the shroud were handpicked by Madelyn Murray O'Hair?

I think the people in the three teams that examined the Shroud knew what they were talking about otherwise they'd damn well never have been put in the teams in the first place.
Do you seriously expect me to believe the opinion of every random atheist examiner (who, after all are hardly unbiased on the matter) who's ever come up with a crack-pot theory about the Shroud that has been disproven by several teams of experts?

I'm pretty sure that the three teams in question decided that the shroud was a medieval fake. The rhetorical question "Do you think the three teams were hand picked by MM O'Hare?" was meant to indicate that these were objective analysts, not raving atheist fundies.

Goliath · 04-05-2002, 10:35 PM

Tercel,

Please accept my apology for jumping in this late into the thread.

However, you said something that caught my attention.

Suppose, for the moment, that the shroud indeed is about 2,000 years old, and that it did belong to Christ. Note, of course, that these two assertions have yet to be proven, but suppose they are true.

You said:

Quote:

The image on the shroud was not generated naturally

Unproven assertion.

Quote:

(and hence is a direct result of whatever supernatural process raised Jesus from the dead)

Consider the following conditions:

1. The image on the shroud has no natural cause.

2. The image on the shroud is a direct result of whatever supernatural process raised Jesus from the dead.

I don't see how 1. implies 2. Could you please provide a proof?

Quote:

[this] would seem to be extremely threatening to atheism.

It might be somewhat threatening if you can actually prove your claims above.

Sincerely,

Goliath

[ April 05, 2002: Message edited by: Goliath ]

britinusa · 04-06-2002, 12:50 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Tercel:
The idea that the image on the shroud was not generated naturally (and hence is a direct result of whatever supernatural process raised Jesus from the dead) would seem to be extremely threatening to atheism.

Un-fucking-believable! This thread began on March 1st, is 14 pages and over 300 posts long, and at the end of it all we have Tercel giving us this bullshit!
We've talked about carbon-14 dating, "biofilm", and countless other natural scientific variables, and for what? Tercel has rendered this entire thread a waste of everyone's time.
If another team examined the shroud today and dated it back to a week last tuesday, xians can simply shrug their shoulders and say "Hey, god made it appear only ten days old."
It wouldn't matter to Tercel or any xian of his ilk if a thousand teams examined the shroud and every one of them declared it a 14th century fake, because how the fuck can you date something with miraculous properties?
It creases me when xians attempt to debate on a rational, scientific, naturalistic level, but when the going gets tough, they can switch to the supernatural level without a blush, and expect us to play along.
If you're forced to introduce miracles, you've lost the debate. At least around here. This isn't some Mickey Mouse fundie forum, you know.

Have a nice day.

Douglas J. Bender · 04-06-2002, 02:45 AM

Scientiae,

On April 4 (on page 13 or 14 of this thread, I believe), you said:

Quote:

I feel your pain, Koy.
Just in case you aren't aware, I post the following link for your own amusement. Lenny apparently still thinks he can teach himself forensics just by reading books. Kind of like how Douglas thinks he can get into graduate school by talking about his equations. Amusing....

If you would be so kind as to keep your lies about, and ad hominem attacks upon, me to just one thread, and not muck up other threads (such as this one) with your obsession with me, I'd greatly appreciate it. Thanks.

In Christ,

Douglas

leonarde · 04-06-2002, 05:44 AM

Two unrelated items here: though I believe Barbet's study of the Shroud did START in the 1930s as I stated, he wrote at least one paper on
it (cited by Meacham) in 1953 and thus had a long,
distinguished and (still) influential career.

The other item: posted by Britinusa:

Quote:

If another team examined the shroud today and dated it back to a week last tuesday, xians can
simply shrug their shoulders and say "Hey, god made it appear only ten days old."

You realize that if "another team examined the shroud"
and "dated it back to a week last tuesday," we
would know 100% certainly that the dating was wrong! Wrong! Wrong! Why? Because the Shroud's whereabouts are NOT in dispute by ANYONE since at
least the 1350s: it was in Lirey, then in Chambery
, France, and eventually Turin, Italy where it got
its present name. A "date" of "last week" would
be not just "off" but so stupidly off that not even most authenticity opponents would accept it.
That Britinusa can present and swallow this even as a mock-hypothetical argument shows how gullible
many anti-authenticity are about carbon dating: if THAT test tells them something they want to hear (and any date short of 1900 years will do) then it is the last word on the Shroud of Turin.
In the early going here, (first 5 pages or so), I
posted a link to a URL with an exchange between
the archaeologist, Meacham, and a radio-carbon dating specialist. Meacham states clearly ---and
even his opponent, the radio-carbon dating specialist acknowledges-----that C-14 dating routinely produces "anomalous" dates/date ranges
(ie ones that are off BY CENTURIES) and that archaeologists routinely put it in the footnotes of their studies but otherwise ignore them. For
a working archaeologist C-14 dating is merely one
tool among many and if a C-14 date conflicts with
ALL other skeins of evidence, it is almost always
ignored.
There are literally dozens of reasons why the Shroud of Turin cannot date from the 13th/14th Centuries: one of the biggest overarching ones is:
it is the burial cloth of a real crucifixion victim and people were just not being crucified in the 13th/14th Centuries.

(For the unlikelihood of the "snuff Shroud" scenario, see my exchanges with Jack the Bodiless
on pages 8 and 9)

Cheers!

[ April 06, 2002: Message edited by: leonarde ]

Principia · 04-06-2002, 05:47 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by leonarde:
ALL the forensics texts I consulted in recent days
had "crucifixion" under "death by slow asphyxiation", "death by postural asphyxiation",
or in one case "death by smothering".

What texts? I see no citations but only websites with references to journal articles. This statement appears to be another disingenuous attempt by leonarde to give credence to asphyxia as a more 'likely' cause of death. How many of these citations actually performed their own study as Zuigbe had or did they merely cite Barbet?

Zuigbe's conclusions are not merely contradictory with Barbet's but he specifically notes how the latter's hypotheses were fundamentally flawed. For those who do not know, Zuigbe is actually making a better attempt at science than leonarde is. The theories are not merely contradictory, but one is clearly more scientifically credible. However, the link only provides cursory presentation of Zuigbe's experimentation. Even for a supposedly scientific experiment, there are poorly defined controls here.

SC

[ April 06, 2002: Message edited by: Scientiae ]

leonarde · 04-06-2002, 05:53 AM

Posted by SC:

Quote:

Originally posted by leonarde:
ALL the forensics texts I consulted in recent days
had "crucifixion" under "death by slow asphyxiation", "death by postural asphyxiation",
or in one case "death by smothering".

What texts? I see no citations

Please read
the thread, SC: you are embarrassing yourself again on this thread.

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04-05-2002, 10:06 PM	#332
leonarde Veteran Member Join Date: Mar 2002 Location: North America Posts: 1,603	Before calling it a night I thought I would do one more post on this question. To recap: 1)Barbet maintains that asphyxia is the cause of the death of the man of the Shroud. 2)Zugibe, far more recently, based on experiments delineated in the cited URL says that asphyxia is seldom/never the cause of death. That cause is shock. 3)Bucklin in one paragraph refers to both "postural asphyxiation" AND "severe blood loss" AND "fluid accumulation in the chest cavities related to terminal cardio-respiratory failure." So in the case of Bucklin I would say he is talking about multiple causes/factors. ALL the forensics texts I consulted in recent days had "crucifixion" under "death by slow asphyxiation", "death by postural asphyxiation", or in one case "death by smothering". That is the best I can do in recapping the cause of death controversy. It really isn't settled: in general terms, in the case of the Man of the Shroud, and in the case of Jesus. Cheers!

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