Shroud of Doubt

An Italian scientist - who was funded by some atheists - says he has reproduced the Shroud of Turin, a feat that he says proves definitively that the linen some Christians revere as Jesus Christ's burial cloth is a medieval fake.

The shroud, measuring 14 feet, 4 inches by 3 feet, 7 inches bears the image, eerily reversed like a photographic negative, of a crucified man some believers say is Christ.

"We have shown that is possible to reproduce something which has the same characteristics as the Shroud," Luigi Garlaschelli, who is due to illustrate the results at a conference on the paranormal this weekend in northern Italy, said on Monday. Whoa, I'd be much more excited if it were a conference to promote 'science' rather than pseudo-science. Eh, I guess I should take what I can get.

Carbon dating tests by laboratories in Oxford, Zurich and Tucson, Arizona in 1988 caused a sensation by dating it from between 1260 and 1390. Skeptics said it was a hoax, possibly made to attract the profitable medieval pilgrimage business. So, the Shroud of Turin was a the t-shirt from Wisconsin Dells at the time?

But scientists have thus far been at a loss to explain how the image was left on the cloth.

Garlaschelli reproduced the full-sized shroud using materials and techniques that were available in the middle ages.

They placed a linen sheet flat over a volunteer and then rubbed it with a pigment containing traces of acid. A mask was used for the face. Sounds easier than a silk screen.

As for the funding, "Money has no odor," he said. "This was done scientifically. If the Church wants to fund me in the future, here I am."

Maybe this is will be the next Dan Brown book! Kill Gralaschell-i! Where the Pope puts a hit on Garlaschelli at his wedding and he survives, with the shroud hidden in his cumberbun...