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Battle between Science and Religion and Connection To the Shroud of Turin

by
Tianen Liu

In one scene of a play called "Inherit the Wind" (Lawrence), which was based on the Scopes trial that gave permission for evolution to be taught in schools, a man balanced a Bible in one hand and the book Origin of Species in the other. After pondering about each book, he shrugged and clapped them together. Some people did shrug and put together the theories of evolution and creation. If one thought carefully, however, he would discover that the two books conflict with each other. The Origin of Species represents evolution, a theory that supports the idea of a biological soup from which sprouted living creatures. The Bible represents religion, which suggests a God who created all the species. When science and religion could not even agree on the basic principle of life-life's origin, religion readily became scientifically doubtable. Recently, however, the examination of one artifact-the Shroud of Turin-questions the concept that science and religion conflict with each other.

Science and religion, two extremely important establishments, have been at a disharmony. It is important to know how this occurred and if there is anything that can make a good attempt at peace.

Science and religion have not always been in conflict with each other. In fact, many scientists who had founded modern science, tried to demonstrate that "humans lived in an orderly universe. They [scientists] believed such a demonstration would be powerful evidence that the universe was created by an orderly God who could be known" (Helweg 85). Scientists who believed this included Nicolaus Copernicus, Francis Bacon, Blaise Pascal, and many more. Johannes Kepler wanted to be an evangelist. Isaac Newton thought his theological writings to be more important than his scientific ones. Even Galileo who was thought to have gone against the church, had theologians who argued in support of him that the Bible says nothing about the earth being in the center of the universe (Helweg 85). Thus, science and religion had gone hand in hand. Even when Deism later came about, science and religion still agreed on the most fundamental point-that God created life.

But this concept changed significantly. In 1925, the famous trial Scopes v. United States introduced evolution as a possible origin of life theory to the education system. As more members of the scientific community sided with evolution, creation science lost its ground in public education. Creation science lost so much ground that when creationists tried to bring back it to the classroom so that both theories could be taught, the proposal was rejected. In Edwards v. Aguillard, the judges knocked down Louisiana legislators' Balanced Treatment Act because they believed that creation science may have some religious motives behind it and hence might make the curriculum biased. Teaching about Evolution and the Nature of Science states: "Indeed, U.S. courts have ruled that ideas of creation science are religious views and cannot be taught when evolution is taught" (National Academy of Sciences 55). The scientific community has taken on a new definition of science that does not include a creator. Any mention of a creator became unscientific. The court's rulings marked the official separation between religion and science. Richard Dawkins, a famous evolutionist, wrote, "Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist" (Helweg 84), thus signifying that science, the "intellectual" part, does not need religion. Religion authority Dr. Huston Smith agrees that "more cases of loss of religious faith are to be traced to the theory of evolution" (Ankerberg 35).

However, is it fair to say that religion belongs in one realm and science in another? Creation science mentions one belief that can be deemed religious, that a God created all the living species. In fact, the creation science that the Louisiana legislators supported prohibited the study of Genesis and any religious book. Creationism is actually a valid curriculum of science. Just as evolutionary science has the hypothesis of evolution and evidence to prove the hypothesis so creation science has the hypothesis of a creator and evidence to prove this hypothesis. Furthermore, just because creation science may support the idea of religion does not mean that it is overly biased. In fact, as an article in the 1999 Journal of Religion and Psychical Research pointed out, "No one, whether scientist or theologian, is totally objective; everyone has preconceptions and biases with which to contend" (Marino). Because evolutionary scientists and creation scientists are all human, not machine, some may prefer a religion and others, like evolutionary scientists may prefer none. It is simply not true that because of some supposed religious viewpoints, creationist scientists should not teach their curriculum.

Regardless of popular opinion, science does not have to come into conflict with religion. The shroud of Turin introduces the idea that science needs religion and religion needs science. The shroud is a burial cloth that is 14 feet long by 4 feet wide. It bears the image of a man, showing his front and back sides. There are nail wounds in the hands and feet of the man on the shroud and scourge marks on his body. Wounds caused by pointy objects appear on the head and another wound can be found on the side. In 1978, an American team of scientists formed the Shroud of Turin Research Project (STURP) and joined an international team to study the shroud. Russ Breault, who had studied the shroud of Turin since 1978, reveals that many of the STURP scientists thought the shroud was manmade and expected to pack up their bags and leave in half an hour. However scientists found the shroud not so easy to disprove. In fact they studied it so much that the shroud became the most studied artifact in the world (Marino).

The Shroud of Turin, from a scientific perspective, is mysteriously unique. Scientists confirm that the image is like a negative with its lights and darks in reverse (Piczek). Furthermore, the man on the shroud does not appear lifelike when one looks at the shroud with his naked eye. It only becomes lifelike when one takes a picture and look at the image on a film negative (Lisa Parks). Scientific instruments such as the VP-8 analyzer reveals that the image on the shroud, although flat, is actually "3-dimensional". A member of the STURP team, Barrie Schwortz, explains that scientists can see from the image of the man on the shroud the distance the cloth was from the body since it is believed that the shroud once covered a body that resembled the image on it. A third discovery is that the pixels that make up the image are one tenth the width of a human hair, too small for it to be created by a paint brush. If the image were made by man, he would have to use an atomic laser to create it (Uncovering the Truth about Jesus). The shroud is believed to be at least 700 to 800 years old. No man could have had an atomic laser, such a good perception of negativity, or the idea of 3-D encoding. Scientists admit that the shroud is a mystery that cannot be fully scientifically explained (Schwortz). Scientists, in truth, cannot even reproduce the shroud of Turin.

While science can tell religion about the physical and chemical properties of a religious relic, religion can explain to science to which the shroud may belong. One religion, Christianity, tells about a Man named Jesus who was brought before Pilate because Jewish authorities believed that He was blaspheming. Pilate handed Him over to be scourged (Mark 15:15) and the Roman cohort twisted a crown of thorns, placed it on Him, and "kept beating His head with a reed" (Mark 15:17,19). Then, the soldiers crucified Him. After Jesus died, a soldier, to make sure that He was dead, thrust a spear into His side (John 19:33). The wounds on the Man of the shroud fit perfectly with those that Jesus bore. The Christian religion, therefore, informs science who the Man of the shroud could possibly be. Furthermore, religion tells science the possible origin of the shroud of Turin. After Jesus resurrected, the Bible recounts, "And so Simon Peter also came, following him, and entered the tomb; and he saw the linen wrappings lying there, and the face-cloth which had been on His head, not lying with the linen wrappings, but rolled up in a place by itself" (John 20: 7). The "face-cloth", which the Bible mentions, could very well be the shroud of Turin. Religion teaches scientists important things about the artifact.

Science needs religion so much that science is less interesting without it. In 1988, a carbon-14 test dated the shroud to the middle ages. Science, which usually sides with the skeptics (Travis 346), had the chance to claim that a religious relic was a fake and quickly took up this opportunity. Some scientists quickly published the new findings in magazines such as Science without having them peer reviewed first (Breault). Thus, the public got the word that the shroud was a fake, believing again that science and religion can never be in harmony. When shroud scientist Eric Jumper gave a speech in which he claimed that he believed in the C-14 date and that "the show is over", everyone in the audience was sad (D'Muhala). Before the C-14 dating, many scientists gladly worked with the shroud, relishing the mystery and the hint of divine creation surrounding it. When the shroud was sensationally declared to be a fake, as in the Eric Jumper speech, many scientists felt sad because of the loss of this religious aspect. Science, indeed, needs religion so that it can be more interesting.

Despite the C-14 dating, the mystery of the shroud continues. When all the sensationalism of 1988 died off, scientists pointed out some things that could be wrong with the C-14 dating. Russian scientist Dmitri Kouznetsov experimentally shows that the fire in 1532 may have influenced the amount of carbon in the shroud, hence muddling the date (Schiatti 34). Also, Travis Mattingly and Garza-Valdes, after years of research, revealed that a bioplastic coating could have been involved in the dating. Microbes on the cloth that formed over ages and the shroud itself together shaped the date revealed by C-14 (Travis 346). The C-14 date, therefore, is not necessarily reliable. Professor Avinoam Danin, a botanist from Hebrew university in Jerusalem, studied pollen grains on the shroud and identifies these to match those found in Israel (Sheler). The shroud, geographically reliable and with many other evidences pointing to its authenticity, should not be dismissed simply because of C-14 dating.

The shroud of Turin questions the concept that science and religion are at a disharmony, which was brought about when science and religion disagreed on the most fundamental question-the origin of life. The shroud, which the STURP team declared to be "not the product of an artist" (Schwortz), played an important role in demonstrating that religion and science can work together.

Works Cited – Bibliography