The Sci Fi Catholic Yak Module
I find James Marrow on the one hand even-handed but one the other hand also biased. From where did he get the idea that the tests on the Shroud of Turin "came of nothing"? I read on a blog post (forget where), that stated that the radio carbon dating of the cloth of the Shroud was inconclusive at best, and that investigations are still ongoing.
I appreciate Marrow for his honesty and his props to his fellow Christian sci-fi authors. It seems strange to think that John C. Wright probably would have mirrored Marrow's sentiments only three year's ago.
I haven't read Marrow's "Godhead Trilogy" yet, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jam...ki/
James_Morrow but what from what I hear, he is one of the rare atheists to make fun of their own worldview; I don't think even Terry Pratchett does that so much.
Delightful reading...thank you for sharing.
I am almighty sick and tired of sans-culotte scientism accusing the faithful of close-minded and simple-minded views on truth, the nature of things, and the mystery of sin. We're not the ones who can't tell the difference between purpose and function, or between a person (human or dragon or otherwise) and a robot. We're not the ones whose worldview is negative, who turn blessing into curse by cynical irony. And we're not the ones who deny that humanity can be humane.
To paraphrase Tertullian, if "science as a worldview" were true, then I could expect them to produce even one small vegetable as proof of their creativity!
Or in the idiom of Elijah, whine louder! Maybe your god-computer is in power-saver mode.
Meantime, I'll go pray for your sorry souls, which is more charity than you've ever shown me, you blind worshippers of idols made by human hands. Pfahg!!!
Pfahg? I think our dear Archdeacon Smiter is secretly a Cthulhu cultist.
One thing that strikes me about preachy atheist sf is that it often fails of its aims. "The Cold Equations" is a failure, not only because of its ludicrous premise (would they really never plan for unexpected contingencies?), but because anyone, religious or atheist, could tell you the outcome of the story based on the setup. It isn't a story of the nonexistence of God, but a simple story of cause and effect.
Then there's "The Morphology of the Kirkham Wreck." To avoid using God as an explanation for the mathematically improbably close-calls, it proposes that a man temporarily, because of great stress, became a time-and-space transcending godlike being. As if that explanation should be more satisfactory to an atheist!
Shh! Don't let Arthur C. Clarke's ghost hear you complain about quasi-religious explanations.
I remember a book I read three years ago called "Light of Other Days" , which Clarke co-wrote with Steven Baxter
It talks about "quantum windows", basically artificial holes in space-time which allows humanity virtual omniscience; the "windows act like an "omni-camera" which can be placed anywhere for an unlimited duration. It basically asks a philosophical question of how society could change if we could see anything, anywhere at anytime, except the future (cause it hasn't occured yet, obviously! 
One chapter deals with the "true Jesus" of history; Clarke portrays him as an ordinary hellenistic Jew whose life was exaggeratted and taken out of context. The chapter ends with the protagonist seeing Jesus' death through his (Jesus') own eyes (a service where you can experience life as a historical figure in a virtual reality sim. Needless to say, there was no actual resurrection in Clarke's alternate history.
Of course, Science cannot prove or disprove the supernatural. All it examine is the natural world. This is the limitation of Science.
Same as it is the limitation of Euclidian Geometry the impossibility to prove the Fundamental Postulate, the one that says that in a plane only one parallel to a line can be drawn through a point outside it. That is, Euclidian Geometry cannot prove that it is itself true.
We would all be a lot better off if we accepted this limitation with the same grace as mathematicians accept that they cannot prove which geometry is the correct one. This is the beginning of humility.
From what I've read the Carbon-14 dating on the Shroud was flawed due to the fact that some of the threads sampled were actually threads used to repair the Shroud over the years... awhile back I read an article that used DNA testing that dated the flax threads back to the Middle Ages--however that could also be the repair threads.
The big problem with the scientific inquiry of the Shroud is that folks are either out to prove that it is real or that is is fake, and not what it actually IS. Deej may run into this in his archaeology work. The proper way to analyze the Shroud is to put it in front of scientists, saying "We have this fabric--tell us about it." Then scientists can use whatever tests are necessary to determine what it actually IS with a limited amout of bias.
In truth--we'll probably NEVER know exactly WHAT it is. We DO know that it is fabric with some markings on it. The REAL question should be--what happens to my faith if the Shroud is INDEED a fake?? Will I feel deceived?? Will I leave the Church??If people are basing their faith on the POSSIBILITY that it is the Shroud of Jesus, then their faith is not true. Their faith should not be based on physical things of this world. Same way with priests. They are human like the rest of us. A priest makes a mistake and entire churches crumble. Not good.
The whole fuss about the Shroud escapes me. We've already been assured that those who don't believe the prophets won't believe even if one should rise from the dead.
"Pfahg? I think our dear Archdeacon Smiter is secretly a Cthulhu cultist."
Actually, my only chthonic sympathies are a predeliction for sunflowers taller than me, and the inevitability of spilling dinner down my tie. (Or stole, as the case may be.)
I say that, of course, in a vain effort to continue to hide my true identity: Apostle of the Troglodytes.
Yup, that's me, stupor sub-mundi.
The big problem with the scientific inquiry of the Shroud is that folks are either out to prove that it is real or that is is fake, and not what it actually IS. Deej may run into this in his archaeology work.
No, I certainly haven't encountered the Shroud of Turin in my archaeological work, but I'll keep looking.
As for the Shroud, I'm quite convinced its fake, though what I've read on the subjec is quite confusing and probably impossible to unravel except for an actual expert who's studied it. One says there's blood on the shroud and another says it's paint. I don't know what leads to these disagreements.
Why do I think it's fake? Because it suddenly appears in France in the 14th century, that's why.
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