I doubt he’d think much of it. I’m about 2/3rds through it. It’s all more of the same and not terribly convincing.
Fr. Andrew Dalton is a Sindonologist(?), somebody who studies the shroud, but not necessarily from a scientific perspective. Sindonology isn’t exactly embraced by Shermer in his article, or, apparently, by the scientific community in general. I hadn’t encountered the term before, but at a glance it seems to have all the scientific rigor of ufology or cryptozoology.
What I’ve heard so far in the video isn’t new evidence, but enthusiastic re-hashing of previous topics that have already been discussed to death. The video offers precisely the kinds of suspicious arguments that Shermer talks about. Exactly, in the case of C14 dating, “French invisible weaves”, and corner-holding-contamination.
I hadn’t encountered the AZ 1 & 2 C14 differences though and I’d be curious to get more details. He only briefly mentions them and doesn’t provide anything further. Fr. Dalton seems to point people to shroud.com which he calls “the most scientific of websites’ - that statement seems dubious at best, and browsing the site doesn’t change my impression.
I do appreciate that towards the end of the video that Fr. Dalton completely acknowledges that there is no evidence dating the shroud to the 1st century. All the other discussion around the “historical facts” surrounding JC, such as the kind of crown we supposedly wore, the kind of cross he supposedly carried, etc. is very eye-brow raising. The discussion of Eucharistic miracles and the prevalence of the AB blood type is similarly…interesting.
At the end of the day the authenticity of the shroud is a matter of faith. Evidence doesn’t seem like it should be important.
Setting aside religious discussion, what I found interesting is that the shroud has a lot of things that we simply cannot explain. For example, we have been unable to replicate the image as it exists (I think he said 200 nm thick), using highly advanced UV technology. If we can't figure it out now, how on earth would someone have created it centuries ago? I found other details, such as the absense of the photo-negative impression where blood stains were, fascinating.
I also thought the debunking of the 1988 "findings" made a lot of sense.
I'm not saying that it is "authentic" in that it is the impression of Christ from the Resurrection. What I am saying is that using our best scientific methods, we still have no explanation for how it came to exist.
I suppose I should ask, what kind of evidence are you looking for that would make something convincing to you?
The Pray codex is listed under “fringe theories” in the Wikipedia Shroud entry. That certainly make it wrong, but it does make it a little more suspect than the c14 dating criticism. The c14 contamination arguments seem more than adequately addressed in the entire last 3rd of the article.
Yes, the wikipedia article makes an argumentation error. Even if the Pray Codex doesn't show the shroud, it contains a very unique depiction of a nude Jesus. So the painter of the codex with high probability have seen the exact same picture as what is on the Shroud now. This doesn't prove that the shroud is earlier than the Pray codex, but this is something an unbiased scientist have to try to answer. I find it very annoying that all these very scientific-looking articles never try to explain how the hell is it possible that the Pray codex contains a depiction of the dead Jesus in a way, of which the first known depiction is from a century later in a photonegative form. Not to mention the other ridiculous arguments, that the shroud is one from the enormous amount of medieval forgeries. Where are all the other photonegative shrouds and pictures. I personally don't think that a supernatural creator omniscient etc god would create a photo of his resurrecting son, but I am really annoyed by all that bad science around the shroud. Ok, the C14 is real, because they told so (yeah, science never tries to find contradicting evidence, never challenges previous knowledge or belief...) but then you could still use Occam's razor to find simple explanations for like the Pray Codex depiction. At least please try to explain, why the drawing there is so different to all other drawings of Jesus in that era.
'Cause A caused both B and C? If you see the codex and the shroud contain the "same" information, doesn't it seem reasonably likely they got it from the same place? And people weren't bad at copying back then, so the "same place" could really be all over.
Fastmail allows for aliasing too - username@domain.tld -> bank@username.domain.tld, retailer@username.domain.tld, etc. Pretty convenient. I use that feature pretty often and I can only recall one instance which seemed to indicate my address was sold to spammers. It’s more useful for organizing incoming mail, like plus-aliasing in gmail.
Software is hard. AI can radically simplify this by writing the code for you, but that comes at a cost. If you don’t understand what was written, or you only understand it at a superficial level, maintenance is going to be a nightmare. It isn’t uncommon to come back to code you wrote yourself, say, 20 days ago, and need to reacquaint yourself. Extend that to AI.
I’d argue that relying on a tool like cursor to bang out whole routines and types, just using it as “advanced intellisense”, takes away from you truly understanding the solution you’re putting together. It’s fantastic if they make you more productive in the short term, but in the long term, if the generated code is convoluted, difficult to revisit, that’s where you (or a future maintainer like OP) are going to kill time.
The go spec today is ~130 pages [0]. Like golang’s Stalin, its spec remarkably approachable. The latest Java spec is ~800 [1], also very accessible, but clearly there’s more complexity there.
You have to admit, there’s something appealing about being able to read the entire spec for a popular, performant, production language over a lunch break. You don’t need to read and/or master a language’s specification in order to use it. But at 130 pages, you can.
> You have to admit, there’s something appealing about being able to read the entire spec for a popular, performant, production language over a lunch break. You don’t need to read and/or master a language’s specification in order to use it. But at 130 pages, you can.
you are probably programming language enthusiast, but I am not, I have long list of other things to read..
Relying on composition rather than inheritance often feels much more natural in my experience. C, Basic, Pascal, etc. are all missing inheritance and generics, are they similarly unorthodox and difficult?
Java-style OO has a place, but it’s not always a perfect fit. Java, C#, and arguably C++ have taken a kitchen-sink and grafted any and all constructs found in other languages so long as they look remotely useful. The result often is useful, but it also results in a more complex language.
While Go isn’t a perfect language, nor is it a great language, I /have/ found it to be a productive language in ways that Java, python, ruby, etc. are not. I attribute this productivity boost to the simplicity of the language (if not the runtime) and to the conservative approach taken to add new features.
> C, Basic, Pascal, etc. are all missing inheritance and generics, are they similarly unorthodox and difficult?
yes, they are unorthodox for this specific niche: enterprise devs, most languages have OOP and most devs know it.
> Java, C#, and arguably C++ have taken a kitchen-sink and grafted any and all constructs found in other languages so long as they look remotely useful.
I disagree with you, Java approach was very conservative, and original goal was to have simplified OOP. If you have specific examples: we can discuss.
I agree, but it doesn’t change the fact in my mind that despite golang’s nulls, I’ve found it to be a ridiculously productive language to work with in a lot of cases. I’d credit that to the simplicity of the language (if not the runtime), and, it least from that perspective, it’s something Golang shares with F#. F# has the obvious advantage of a significantly better type system and the disadvantage of not sharing the more familiar Algol/c syntax.
Records, tuples, pattern matching, immutability, error handling with Result<‘a>, distaste for nulls, it’s got everything that Microsoft is trying to shoehorn into C# today, without all the baggage that C# brings with it. It seems like F# (fortunately) does have many reasons /to/ change.
I think Murakami’s books are a great suggestion. Magical realism, nowhere near sci-fi, but very easy to slip into. However, 1Q84 feels a bit like a heavy recommendation even if you’re a Murakami fan. It’s a bit more of a commitment and I think it helps if you’re familiar with his other stories before diving into it. I’d say try Hardboiled Wonderland first - I thought it stepped away from some of his recurring themes but still a good example of his style. Also a quicker read. He has a few anthologies might be good intros as well - I read two, Dance, Dance, Dance and The Elephant Also Vanishes, but I think he’s got some others.
Along the lines of magical realism, Kurt Vonnegut seems like a great recommendation too. His books incorporate a bit more sci-fi - Galapagos, Cat’s Cradle, Sirens of Titan, slaughterhouse five, …
Fr. Andrew Dalton is a Sindonologist(?), somebody who studies the shroud, but not necessarily from a scientific perspective. Sindonology isn’t exactly embraced by Shermer in his article, or, apparently, by the scientific community in general. I hadn’t encountered the term before, but at a glance it seems to have all the scientific rigor of ufology or cryptozoology.
What I’ve heard so far in the video isn’t new evidence, but enthusiastic re-hashing of previous topics that have already been discussed to death. The video offers precisely the kinds of suspicious arguments that Shermer talks about. Exactly, in the case of C14 dating, “French invisible weaves”, and corner-holding-contamination.
I hadn’t encountered the AZ 1 & 2 C14 differences though and I’d be curious to get more details. He only briefly mentions them and doesn’t provide anything further. Fr. Dalton seems to point people to shroud.com which he calls “the most scientific of websites’ - that statement seems dubious at best, and browsing the site doesn’t change my impression.
I do appreciate that towards the end of the video that Fr. Dalton completely acknowledges that there is no evidence dating the shroud to the 1st century. All the other discussion around the “historical facts” surrounding JC, such as the kind of crown we supposedly wore, the kind of cross he supposedly carried, etc. is very eye-brow raising. The discussion of Eucharistic miracles and the prevalence of the AB blood type is similarly…interesting.
At the end of the day the authenticity of the shroud is a matter of faith. Evidence doesn’t seem like it should be important.