The Fraud Of Turin - How Fundamentalists Lie To Us

The 'shroud' as displayed in Turin Cathedral

Following my post about the so-called 'Shroud of Turin' which reported on an article presenting compelling evidence of how the image was produced by the Early Medieval French artist who made it, I have been bombarded with messages on BlueSky by a user who goes by the name 'Gohan ProLife' who claims to have proof of the shroud's authenticity, although he has failed to produce anything resembling provenance connecting the cloth which suddenly turned up in Early Medieval France with the funeral of a man-god in 1st century Palestine, apart from some vague references to pollen. And so far, he has failed to explain how a cloth used in a funeral in 1st century Palestine came to be woven on a loom which was invented in Medieval Germany

The quality of his 'evidence' can be judged from his claim that a paper in the journal Thermochemica Acta is peer-reviews 'proof' that the radiocarbon dating that placed the flax from which the canvas was woven in the Early Middle Ages, was wrong because it was carried out on fabric used to repair the canvas in the Middle Ages. Even if this were true, how it proves that the cloth was once wrapped around the body of a dead man-god remains a mystery. Nor have we had any explanation of why the claim flatly contradicts the story in the Bible of there being TWO cloths - one for the body and one for the head. Apparently, it is considered much more likely that the story in the Bible is fake, than that a medieval relic is another in a lengthy list of fake relics currently stocking the reliquaries of European Catholic cathedrals.

In 'Gohan ProLife's initial ploy which he apparently thought he needed to reinforce with passive aggression, he claimed the paper proved the radiocarbon dating labs tested cotton, not linen. The only mention of cotton in the paper is a reference to what are assumed to have been cotton fibres, and nor does the "Preliminary estimates" the paper describes prove anything; it simply raises a few questions. All the substantive claims the author made in 2005 have subsequently been refuted by others - a fact that 'Gohan ProLife' seems to be unaware, having stopped his 'research' at the first paper that told him what he wanted. He has also apparently failed to comprehend the significance of the phrase, 'Preliminary estimates'

He is now quibbling over whether the link I sent him to a .txt copy of ChatGPT 5's assessment of his claim is really a link to Wikipedia (it isn't), which strongly suggests he hasn't found the courage or personal integrity to read it. So, I reproduce it below, together with more a more detailed AI analysis of the paper.

Firstly, the part of the cited paper that isn't behind a paywall:

Fake of Turin - More Evidence that the 'Shroud' of Turin Was a Medieval Creation

3D analysis reveals Shroud of Turin image likely came from sculpture, not Jesus’ body | Archaeology News Online Magazine

The 'shroud' as displayed in Turin Cathedral

More evidence has emerged indicating that the so-called 'Shroud of Turin'—which legend claims was the cloth used to wrap the body of Jesus for burial—is in fact a medieval artefact, likely created for use in religious ceremonies.

As I noted in a 2013 blog post, the 2D image on the cloth could not have been produced by wrapping it around a 3D human body. This can be easily demonstrated using an artist’s mannequin: coat it in paint, and while the paint is still wet, wrap a cloth around it as if preparing a body for burial. The resulting imprint bears little resemblance to the facial features or body contours of the mannequin, because the 3D form cannot transfer accurately to a 2D surface in that way.

There are, of course, many other reasons to doubt the shroud's authenticity. For example, the biblical account is inconsistent with the notion of a single burial cloth. The Gospel of John (20:5–7) clearly describes two cloths—one for the body and another for the head. But this inconsistency pales into insignificance compared to the forensic evidence showing that the cloth was woven on a loom not invented until the early Middle Ages in southern Germany, using flax grown in medieval France.

Even after disregarding or dismissing this wealth of contradictory evidence, believers are still faced with the insurmountable task of proving that the body supposedly wrapped in the cloth was that of the legendary founder of Christianity—Jesus of Nazareth.

In fact, the shroud was denounced as a forgery as far back as 1390 by Bishop Pierre d’Arcis, who, in a letter to Pope Clement VII, wrote:

[The Shroud is] a clever sleight of hand [by someone] falsely declaring this was the actual shroud in which Jesus was enfolded in the tomb to attract the multitude so that money might cunningly be wrung from them.

Bishop Pierre d’Arcis, Bishop of Troyes, 1390.

A. Image obtained from wrapping cloth round a body. B. The image on the 'shroud'. C. The image obtained from relief sculptures.

Moraes, C. 2025.

False Witnessing News - Another Christian Lying to Us.

Pastor Nik Walker, Nik Walker Ministries
Liar for Jesus, Plagiarist.

This Preacher Claims to Have Proof That Miracles Are Real. We Know He’s Lying. | Hemant Mehta | Friendly Atheist | Patheos

Fake miracles are the common currency of several Christian sects; used to fool the gullible into thinking there is a magic man in the sky who can suspend the natural laws at will and who sometimes grants this power to his preachers.

Here, for example is one such fraud, Pastor Nik Walker of Nik Walker Ministries, claiming to have healed a man's 'withered and useless' hand by simply baptising him. He even produces the 'evidence' in the form of x-rays, with a convincing (to anyone who doesn't know how hospitals work) backstory about how the x-rays were obtained.

Get a load of this. The ending is wild.

On his show yesterday, Pastor Perry Stone invited a guest who could PROVE miracles were real (with documentation!)...

Watch the clip. Pay attention to the last 30 seconds.

1/5 pic.twitter.com/z9fcCKDIJ1

— Hemant Mehta (@hemantmehta) July 27, 2021

What we aren't shown however, is the before x-rays, so we have nothing to compare them to. We also don't have the name of the hospital, nor the doctor, so there is no danger of the story being checked out. We just have Pastor Stone's word for it. A word which, as we shall see, is not worth the paper it's written on. In fact, it's a blatant lie.

Also, what we aren't told is that these x-rays are not of the hand of an adult man (as any decent radiographer would have noticed) taken in an American hospital, they are in fact of the hands of four different (Chinese) children, ranging from that of a 7-year-old boy to that of an 11-year-old girl, all suffering from a condition known as Kashin-Beck Disease (KBD). They were collected from various centres in China where the disease is endemic, as part of an effort by Chinese scientists working at the Institute for Kaschin-Beck Disease Control and Prevention, Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Harbin Medical University, Harbin, Heilongjiang, China, in order to get a better understanding of the disease. They have been plagiarised from a 2018, open access paper in the Nature journal, Scientific Reports in which these scientists published their findings.

In other words, the whole story is a blatant lie, concocted to deceive. There never was a man whose 'withered and useless' hand was miraculously cured by God when he was baptised. Nor was there a doctor in a hospital who was amazed at the change when he x-rayed the man's hand.

(A) Is a radiological image of the right hand with KBD-positive X-ray signs in an 8-year-old boy: some metaphyseal hardening signs, waviness or serration changes and small depressions (red arrows) are found in the zones of provisional metaphyseal calcification in the fingers (including index finger, middle finger and ring finger). (B) Is a radiological image of the right hand of a 7-year-old healthy boy: all metaphyses, epiphyses and diaphyses were glabrate, uniform, sinuous and non-destructive. The carpals were not completely formed. (C) Is a radiological image of the right hand of an 11-year-old girl with CRME in the equal-diameter period: the diameter of metaphysis and epiphysis are almost equal. Although it belongs to the normal development periods before complete closure of metaphysis-epiphysis (CCME), its imaging signs are similar to KBD-positive X-ray signs. Index finger, middle finger, ring finger and little finger show metaphyses serrated, wavy (green arrows). (D) Is a radiological image of the right hand of a 10-year-old girl with CRME in the ultra-diameter period: The diameter of epiphysis is longer than that of metaphysis. It occurs after the equal-diameter period normally and the features are similar to KBD-positive X-ray signs. Some metaphyseal waviness, serration and irregularly depressions are found in many fingers (white arrows).

Reference:
Song, Quan-Quan; Liu, Hui; Lian, Wei; Wang, Yue; Sun, Li-Yan; Gao, Mei; Liu, Yun-Qi; Deng, Hong-Xia; Deng, Qing; Liu, Ning; Yu, Jun
The characteristics of positive and confusing hand X-ray signs in diagnosing Kashin–Beck Disease in children in China
Scientific Reports 8, 3277 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-21675-5

Walker has chosen to be interviewed by a credulous dupe known for the readiness with which he accepts any old tosh told to him so long as it confirms his bias, or better still, confirms the bias of the credulous audience who donate money to have their biases confirmed in this way. Because he holds the same contempt for his target marks as a con-artist has for his, this is exactly the way Pastor Perry Stone of Perry Stone Ministries expects his target dupes to behave. You can almost hear him laughing all the way to the bank.

In 2020 it was announced that Stone had agreed to 'step aside' from his 'ministry' for an indefinite period because of his 'inappropriate actions' with female employees, although he wasn't required to 'step away' from his lucrative social media activities, such as interviewing blatant frauds like Nik Walker and helping him fleece his target marks.

Last April Stone, apparently unaware, in common with other parochial American fundamentalists, that there is a world outside the USA that is also suffering from the same pandemic (the clue in in the word 'pandemic'), revealed his theocratic ambitions and contempt for the US Constitution, when he announced that the God had told him the coronavirus was sent as 'a moment of reckoning' [for America]:

Because we have by law forced God out of our country and basically told him, ‘In public places, you’re not welcome.’ You’re not welcomed in our schools, so our schools are now shut down. No prayer in public school, no Bible reading in public school. Now, are you with me? They’re telling kids to stay home for who knows how long, so our schools are shut down.

He also told his dupes, gullible audience:

I know what I heard, I did not make that up. I audibly heard the phrase, a male voice speaking, and I believe it was the Holy Spirit.

And his guest, Nick Walker, did not make that up just like he didn't make up the miraculously cured 'withered and useless' hand, no doubt. Between 1999 and 2012 (the last time accounts were filed) Perry Stone Ministries had an income of $17 million.

Yet another sanctimonious evangelical con-artist who feels his piety allows him to self-license a few exemptions from the morals he expects others to live by.

When you show the world you know you need to lie for your faith, you show the world you know your faith is a lie that needs people to believe falsehoods.

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Lessons From Catalonia - Miraculous Lies

The Virgin of Montserrat (Mare de Déu de Montserrat)

The Virgin of Montserrat (Catalan: Mare de Déu de Montserrat), or the Black Madonna of Montserrat, is co-patron saint of Catalonia with St. George.

She is also an example of how legends are created out of whole cloth and then transmuted into sacred truths by the church and fed to the people to keep them in awe and in thrall to the church, its wondrous powers and its oneness with God.

Having just spent a few days in the beautiful city of Barcelona, in my humble opinion, one of the loveliest places in Europe, we decided to spend €35 each on a train ride to the sacred mountain of Montserrat for the pleasure of the ride up a steep mountain railway, the spectacle of the views and the interest of the geology - of which more later in another post. What we were least interested in was the monastery itself, which was fortunate because we arrived hungry and thirsty at about 3.45 pm with everything closing at 4 o'clock, with barely time for a snack and a drink at the cafe.

The story of how carved effigy came to be in the monastery atop Montserrat, north-west of Barcelona is interesting. According to legend, she was carved in Jerusalem by St Luke, who gave it to St. Peter to bring to Catalonia. In 718 she was moved to the site of an old Roman temple to Venus on Montserrat to be hidden from the invading 'Saracens' who were moving north from their stronghold in Andalucia up into south-west France.

Be Upstanding For Jesus

Pasto Paseka 'Mboro' Motsoeneng of the Incredible Happenings Ministry.

Katlehong, South Africa

Paseka 'Mboro' Motsoeneng of the Incredible Happenings Ministry.

Photo credit: Sandile Ndlovu

Pastor demands footage of him reviving parishioner's erection be shown on TV | Metro News

A South African pastor is proclaiming a miraculous cure for impotence and demanding it be shown on Soweto television.

Pastor Paseka ‘Prophet Mboro’ Motsoeneng, of the Incredible Happenings Ministry in Katlehong, South Africa, will already be familiar to readers of this blog for his amazing powers (and amazing wealth). Only last July, on God's instructions, he went into Hell and killed Satan according to his announcement on his Facebook page (that was mysteriously taken down soon after it appeared - which had nothing to do with a very large number of complaints, obviously).

We can be sure this is true because Prophet Mboro is a Christian and it is forbidden for Christians to bear false witness, i.e., lie!

St Francis' Bread - Such Big Claims; So Little Evidence.

Statue of St Francis in his home town of Assisi

Photo credit: Hulton Archive/Getty Images

On the Authenticity of a Relic: An Archaeometric Investigation of the Supposed Bread Sack of Saint Francesco of Assisi | Radiocarbon | Cambridge Core

To read the headlines, you might be tempted to believe a miracle has been prove true by scientists.

What's been proven, if anything, is just how little evidence is needed before the promoters of religious superstitions start to proclaim proof.

The mythical miracle this time is one I confess I had never heard of and about which the details, as with all the best of miracles, is sadly in very short supply. It is the 'miracle' of St Francis of Assisi's bread which, in 1224, so the story goes, a sack-full of which appeared on the doorstep of the Franciscan Friary of Folloni in southern Italy, so saving the brothers within from starvation, the friary being cut off by snow.

Mother Teresa's Second Miraculous Miracle.

Falsehoods & Fairy Tales: Whatever It Takes To Make A Saint Out Of Mother Teresa

As 'Honest' Pope Frankie prepares to elevate the sadistic nun, Anjezë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu (aka Mother Teresa) to the Catholic sainthood it is worth looking at the second 'miracle' that is being attributed to her and used as the pretext for this bizarre Medieval ceremony.

The details of the alleged 'miracle' have been kept under wraps for reasons which will become understandable and have only recently been made public. Even the identity of the alleged subject was kept secret until he came forward recently to claim the fame and fortune which will undoubtedly accrue to him in the superstitious parts of the world.

The Silly Miracle of Santiago de Compostela

The real miracle of miracles is that anyone ever believes them. By definition a miracle is something which allegedly happened but for which there can be no scientific explanation. The problem with that definition is that it is self-defeating. If there can be no scientific explanation there can be no scientific evidence for it.

An almost identical problem exists for very many Christian saints, all of whom are claimed to have performed miracles either before or after death. Most of them also contrived to die in miraculous ways, often in ways which provided a plentiful supply of body parts with which to consecrate future cathedrals and to channel the prayers of the faith to God, Jesus or Mary via the saint's Heavenly remains.

In many cases however, the miracle of saints is that people believe such unlikely tales in the first place, but this was never a problem for the Medieval Christian church because truth could be determined by fiat and what the church said had the sanction of God so became unquestionable truth. The legend behind Santiago (early Spanish form of the Latin Sanctus Iacobus (James)) and the pilgrim routes to his shrine at Santiago de Compostela in Galicia, Spain, simply beggars belief. There is not a single shred of evidence that any of it is true; not a single document, eyewitness testimony, inscription or written reference or even allusion to it in any contemporaneous record. The legend only appears to have emerged in about 800 CE.

Lesson From Toulouse - How Christians Lie To Us

Aerial view of the Basilica of Saint Sernin, Toulouse.

St Saturnin being dragged by a bull

source: Wikipedia

This is a blog post I intended to write last Autumn when we got back from Dordogne in France but it got put on the back burner for a while as other things intervened. It is the ludicrously silly tale of Saint Saturnin (or Sarin) of Toulouse, legendary first bishop of Toulouse in Southwest France.

We had some time to kill before our flight home from Toulouse, so spent it in the town, mostly browsing the wonderful vegetable market, but this church down a side street caught our eye so we went to investigate. The church of St Sarin is a wonderful building in mock Romanesque style, slightly reminiscent of Eastern Christian churches. It is a UNESCO World Heritage site and houses what are alleged to be St Saturnin's mortal remains. It is supposedly built on the site where his body was hidden after his curious method of execution. Saint Saturnin is known by several names depending on language and local dialect; Sernin in French, Sarnin in Occitan, Sadurní in Catalan, etc.

Confirmation Bias And The Stain on a Toilet Wall

The Prophet at prayer

Crowds flock to Mali's 'religious wall sign' - BBC News

It's official. The Prophet is a stain.

And all those blasphemers who have been drawing images of Muhammad have got it all wrong. We now know Muhammad is shaped like a white blob.

Crowds are flocking to a toilet in a compound in the Mali capital, Bamako, to see his image which appeared on an outside wall last weekend.

Riot police and the national guard have been deployed to keep the crowds under control. Visitors who queue throughout the night include several Malian government ministers. The image has been widely circulated on mobile phones and is drawing in visitors from neighbouring Senegal.

Psychosis, Miracles And Catholic Frauds

Psychological Medicine - Psychotic-like experiences in a community sample of 8000 children aged 9 to 11 years: an item response theory analysis - Cambridge Journals Online

It seems that hallucinations are far more common in children that was previously thought, and in fact are fairly frequent. In one 2011 study of nearly 8000 children, two-thirds were found to have had at least one psychotic-like experience (PLE) which was more than a simple childhood play fantasy.

Do we have here a simple, and above all natural, explanation for many of the supposed miracles, very often involving young girls, of visions of, in Catholic countries, the Virgin Mary?

Mother Teresa's Fake Miracle

On the subject of the Catholic Church's faked miracles, in the style of a phony televangelist or 'faith healer' fraudster, we have the example of the faked Mother Teresa 'miracle' which was used as evidence to support her accelerated beatification by the Vatican when poor old Pope John Paul II was in his dotage and had been reduced to reading prepared speeches in an almost inaudible voice.

Mother Teresa (real name, Anjezë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu) head and absolute ruler of the 'Missionaries of Charity' order had been carefully building up a reputation for caring for the poor sick and dying when

Pope Francis Faking It In Naples

Pope Francis showed his honesty and personal integrity by participating in the fake 'miracle' of appearing to turn the dried blood of a saint into liquid blood in front of a crowd in Naples.

The crowd were gathered at the cathedral to witness this conjuring trick, which is performed three time a year, and so fool the credulous masses into thinking he has magic powers and is somehow channelling the long-dead, legendary first bishop of Naples, Saint Januarius, or San Gennaro as he is known locally. Inhabitants believe he keeps Naples safe from the overlooking Vesuvius volcano.

Catholic Deception - Pope To Venerate The Fake of Turin

A typical ‘souvenir’ of an exposition with presiding clergy (1608), one of several made between 1578 and 1750.

The Trustees of the British Museum.

A typical ‘souvenir’ of an exposition with presiding clergy (1608), one of several made between 1578 and 1750.

The Trustees of the British Museum.

The Origins of the Shroud of Turin | History Today

News that Pope Francis is to make a pilgrimage to Turin Cathedral to venerate the Shroud of Turin, despite it now being regarded only by the most die-hard supporters as anything other than a fairly crude 14^th Century painting on linen made from flax which grew in the 14^th Century, shows that the 'reforming' Pope, whom many people thought was going to modernise the Catholic Church and introduce a modicum of honesty into its teachings and dealings with people, is still happy to follow his predecessors and mislead the credulous and gullible with forgeries and deliberate deceptions.

The Pope's announcement came only a few days after the publication in History Today of a slamming refutation of the Shroud's authenticity by a British historian. I've written before about this forgery here and here so it's pleasing to read this exposé by historian and writer, Charles Freeman, who, in this article destroys any remaining vestige of arguments for the shroud's authenticity and offers a possible explanation for its existence. An intent to deceive may well not have been the motive of the 'artist' who created it. That came later probably from the Savoy family who bought it and, of course, was adopted later by the Catholic Church in its constant search for the means to fool gullible people and keep them giving the clergy power, money and privileges.

A Lot of Cock in Portugal

You see it everywhere; in every tourist shop on ceramics and tea-towels; on tee-shirts and aprons; on pendants, hair-slides and key-fobs, and as stand-alone ornaments. You'd be amazed at the number of different ways the Portuguese have found to market the Cock of Barcelos (O Galo de Barcelos).

It has its origins in a Catholic 'miracle' - one of many that abound in this area of Europe from a time before the growth in science and education made miracles, miracle-workers and prophets obsolete in most of the civilised world. The story is normally set in the 17th century and usually involved a young man on a pilgrimage from Galicia in Spain to Santiago de Compostela, who happened to pass through Barcelos in North-Western Portugal, where he was accused of the theft of some silver from a rich man in the town, arrested, tried and condemned to be hanged.

On the day of his execution he pleaded with the hangman to be allowed to speak to the judge who

The Miracle of Miracles

Lourdes - A nice little earner.

Sorry theists but religions like Catholicism which rely heavily on claimed miracles are hoist by their own petard. Their over-dependence on miracles betrays their awareness of the lack of any substantive evidence.

With the Catholic Church, as with other superstitions, miracles are a way to keep simple, credulous people in awe of the supernatural and the mysterious which they need the Church and its priesthood to explain. Miraculously, they always play into the hands of the Church and its priesthood and almost always encourage the inward flow of money.

By definition, a miracle can never be proven, hence it can never be evidence for anything, for the simple fact that, to qualify as a miracle, there can be no natural explanation for the phenomenon, otherwise it's just an unusual event. The mathematician J. E. Littlewood calculated that the average person should experience a million-to-one event about once a month - in other words, the highly unusual is actually commonplace.

There can be no verifiable evidence for a miracle simply because, by definition, it wasn't natural. The only thing to go on is the word of someone else, and their unverifiable claim that they saw something which couldn't have a natural cause. As Elbert Hubbard said, "A miracle is an event described by those to whom it was told by people who did not see it."

No testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous, than the fact which it endeavours to establish.

David Hume

So, religions which rely on miracles and claim to have evidence for them are actually saying their evidence... er.... isn't.

A miracle which can be proved is not a miracle.
A miracle which cannot be proved is not evidence for anything.
Some claimed miracles are so patently absurd they can be dismissed as mass hallucination, Emperor's new clothes, or downright lies; claims that the sun did something strange for example.

It is inconceivable that a handful of villagers, or a couple of peasant girls saw the sun zigzagging across the sky when no one else on earth saw it, and yet the Catholic Church doesn't hesitate to promote these plainly absurd 'miracles' as real events. And of course, they attract eager visitors keen to see the site of this wondrous miracle, and to buy the tacky, mass-produced, crudely made plastic souvenirs to carry the magic home in.