Thanks for downloading this file (XP ONLY)

I- Installation Notes
II- About the Holy Shroud
III- About the Misleading carbon dating of 1988

I- INSTALLATION:
For advanced users only:
If you have a program that you downloaded from the web, to constantly change your many logon screens, run the xp setup, choose no when asked if you want to add to registry, and go to c:\windows\resources\logonui\holy shroud (install directory) and copy the logonui.exe to a directory under your logons changer program (create a subdirectory called holy shroud).(also copy the preview file there)

note: you can also use the pictures found in "c:\windows\resources\logonui\holy shroud\pictures for Logon icons\" to a folder of your choice so you can use them also in your logon screen.
to know more, read the file in 
c:\windows\resources\logonui\holy shroud\pictures for Logon icons\add pictures icons.txt

God bless you :)

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http://christians.messages.to
George

II- ABOUT THE SHROUD

The SHROUD. Is a word translated from the Greek word "Sindone" that means "linen cloth". According to Jewish tradition the body of a dead person was wrapped in this sheet and then placed in the sepulcher.
Today, when we talk of the "Holy Shroud" we mean the linen sheet that has been kept for centuries in the Chapel of the Shroud in Torino (Italy) and that shows the imprint of a human face and body, that is believed to be Jesus

Computer processing has shown that the image has three-dimensional properties, something which neither paintings nor standard photographs possess. On it, is 'atomicaly' printed (a technology that doesn't exist) the complete imprint of a corpse of a man who was beaten and crucified, whose wounds on the shroud are the same wounds described as pertaining to Jesus. (Same knee & face wounds descriptions, and side piercing, crown of thorns for proclaiming to be a king, and so forth..., all as described in the new testament.)

Even plants leave important traces. On the Shroud we find signs of wounds made by thorns, traces of aloe, myrrh and other oils used to preserve bodies. The cloth contains also many kinds of pollens, typical of the Palestinian region. (Jerusalem)

Tests on traces of blood from the Shroud have revealed the presence of human blood from blood group AB.
We find coincidences between the image on the Shroud and what it is said in the Gospels at least in 6 points. The verses are: John 19:1-3; Mark 15:9; John 19:17; Matthew 27:50; John 19:33-34; Matthew 27:59-60.

III- The Misleading carbon dating of 1988: 

The weekly journal "Nature,"in which first appeared in February 1989, a report that concluded the Shroud is of medieval origin and dated the cloth to around 1325 A.D. It has had more impact on Shroud research than any other paper ever written on the subject. When first released, it was given considerable publicity and much of the world accepted its conclusions, virtually bringing all other Shroud research to a halt. In the last few years however, new evidence has suggested the possibility that a contaminant, in the form of a bioplastic coating, might have caused a skewing of the resultant date. Others have criticized the protocol followed by the laboratories, which was changed at the last minute from the one recommended by a panel of experts. Critically absent, according to several researchers, was any chemical analysis of the samples prior to testing. This has led a number of scientists to challenge the conclusions of the paper, which claims a "95% certainty" for the results. They point out that in biochemistry, total chemical analysis of a biological product is the first thing done to assure the reader that you have what you think you have. Anything less than that must be regarded as a preliminary characterization and should be so stated. They also point out that "Nature" is not a peer-reviewed journal. (Barrie M. Schwortz)  

Also A  re-analysis of the data used to derive this range of dates suggests that the statistical tests performed earlier assumed 14C  homogeneity in the samples and as a result may have lead to a misleading range of dates.".(Bryan J. Walsh)

"First, when on April 21 1988 Professors Riggi and Gonella selected from where the radiocarbon dating sample was to be cut, they could hardly have chosen a more ill-advised location. You have only to look at the numerous depictions of Shroud expositions over the centuries to see that the particular corner that they selected, and its opposite number, were the very points by which the Shroud was invariably held up before the faithful by umpteen generations of clergy. Because this corner had more handling than any other part, it was therefore the area that would have received the greatest amount of microbiological contamination from those hands. Gonella and Riggi's choice thereby broke one of the most elementary rules for radiocarbon dating samples - if at all possible avoid any area carrying a high microbiological contamination risk.

Second, when the laboratory personnel who collected their Shroud samples from Turin returned with these to their laboratories, we know that all three took photos of the portion they had received. But Oxford photographed theirs only from the cloth's 'face' side, Zurich only from the underside, and Arizona, who had received their sample in two bits anyway, photographed only one of the portions. So none of them properly documented their entire sample (a sample they were irrevocably about to destroy), from both sides. Nor did they remember to include a measure in the photo, despite this being standard in any archaeological photography. 

Such omissions inevitably gave conspiracy theorists such as Brother Bruno Bonnet-Eymard and the Holger Kersten/Elmar Gruber duo all the ammunition they needed to cry foul. 

Compounding the laboratories' lapses, they conducted no chemical analysis of what exactly it was they dating, despite (again) their knowing destruction of all the evidence. As very recently pointed out to me by the American microbiologist Professor Steven Mattingly of the University of Texas: 'Lack of a chemical analysis of the Shroud linen violated the first basic principle in biochemistry - account for the chemical components on a dry weight basis. A total glucose analysis of the linen would have spared us this controversy.'

Which leads me now to that very controversy to which Professor Mattingly is referring - pertaining to the one serious and totally scientific argument that has yet to be addressed for how the Shroud's date may have been skewed, together the ticklish complications that arise from it. For as we now know, when Giovanni Riggi cut off the carbon dating sample back in 1988, not all of it was apportioned to the laboratories. Riggi kept part back, including some trimmings which he kept in his own personal safe. In 1993 he allowed snippets from these to be examined and taken away by physician and microbiology enthusiast Dr. Garza-Valdes of San Antonio, as a result of which at the Shroud conference in Rome that very same year Dr. Garza-Valdes began claiming his discovery that the Shroud's surface has a bioplastic coating made up of a transparent layer of microbiological contaminants accumulated to quite sufficient thickness to have caused a 1300 year error in the carbon dating.

Now since Dr. Garza-Valdes is himself present at this Congresso, it is not my intention either to try to explain or to defend these findings. What I can say, however, is that I have been very greatly encouraged by Professor Harry Gove, the co-inventor of the AMS method used to radiocarbon date the Shroud, who has treated Dr. Garza-Valdes's arguments with considerable seriousness. Indeed, Professor Gove has collaborated with Garza, Professor Mattingly and the Egyptologist Dr. Rosalie David in a highly important experiment with an ancient Egyptian ibis mummy and its linen wrappings. This has shown that a similar coating on the ibis mummy's linen wrappings, one significantly thinner than that on the Shroud, was sufficient to have caused a 550 radiocarbon dating discrepancy. By extrapolation, the thicker coating said to be on the Shroud, thicker because of all the aforementioned extra handling the sample area received, could very easily have skewed the date by 1300 years.

As Professor Mattingly has explained, there is a method - one broadly involving reduction of the flax cellulose to glucose - by which the bioplastic coating could be properly eliminated prior to radiocarbon dating. If this were done, obviously the promise is for the Shroud's true date to be reached, rather than one falsified by the partly still living material of the coating. However, first what is needed is for this to be tested on a representative set of samples of ancient Egyptian linens that bear a similar bioplastic coating. Then, once the procedure has been thoroughly perfected, and demonstrated to correct the current surprisingly common radiocarbon date discrepancies between mummies and their wrappings (and obviously this should be accompanied by proper scientific publication), the way should be open for a fresh radiocarbon dating of the Shroud that may furnish a significantly different date to that arrived at in 1988."(Ian Wilson)

Elementary textbooks of archaeology and geology as well as specialist papers universally
warn against too great a reliance on C-14. Here are some statements of the C-14
community:

"Removal of contaminants from pores, spaces and fissures is almost impossible."
(Stuckenrath, Archaeology 18.1965, 279).

Excavated samples are "liable to absorb humic matter from the solutions that pass
through them (causing) contamination by carbon compounds of an age younger than its
own ... There is also possibility of exchange of carbon isotopes under such conditions. ...
(That) other pitfalls are involved in this method is obvious enough." (Zeuner, Dating the
Past, 1970, 341-6).

"Over the years, we have learned that radiocarbon dating is not quite the alchemist's stone
we once hoped it might be." (Wormington, Early Man in the New World, 1983, 191).

"No historian would ... point to a radiocarbon date (or even a whole series of C-14 dates)
and assert that this type of data ... provides ultimate proof of the reliability of a certain
point of contention." (Barnard, "Radiocarbon Dates and their Significance in the Chinese
Archaeological Scene" Archaeology 1980, 34).

Batten et al (Radiocarbon 28.2A, 1986, 571-7), quoting Oxford University List #3: "At
least one in five dates are (sic) contrary to expectation." Oxford also reported that a major
source of error in their dating procedure was in ... their methods of pretreatment of
samples, i.e., in removing contamination. [Although Oxford had had little experience in
dating cloth, Oxford "dated" the Shroud.]

It is known that Shroud contamination includes oil, wax, tears, incense, and the smoke
from a fire in 1532, when an abundance of carbon of that date must have thoroughly
saturated the Shroud. One need not accept the suggestion that the Shroud's carbon nuclei
would be altered by such an explosion of steam [but see Raaen, below], but this event in
the Shroud's "thermal history" renders it unique in all the history of C-14 dating. The
Shroud is thus an extremely unusual instance in which much later substances have been
in contact with the sample at elevated temperatures; in this and in being handled for 600
years it is immensely different from objects retrieved from the ground of an
archaeological dig which have been untouched for centuries.

Official Shroud Site (contains a picture and movie gallery): www.sindone.org

Site for extensive technical research: www.shroud.com