Calgary Skeptic’s Society Blog

The Shroud of Turin is one of the oldest hoaxes ever. It’s a fun skeptical topic, if not a very interesting one, since it’s pretty easily debunked. Basically, the Shroud of Turin is “a centuries old linen cloth that bears the image of a crucified man. A man that millions believe to be Jesus.” If you listen to the Skeptics Guide to the Universe podcast, you may remember Evan’s riddle about the shroud from episode #77

I have something that was said to have existed in the first century
That was first written about in the eighth century
That was actually produced in the 14th century
That was almost destroyed in the 16th century
And proven to be a hoax in the 20th century
What do I have?

Anyways, the reason I write about this topic that’s already been quite thoroughly debunked is that I was recently thinking about those paranormal or pseudoscientific topics that don’t seem, at first glance, to have a large detrimental effect on true believers. I’m sure most of you have encountered, when debating these issues with believers, the phrase “but who cares if I believe? It’s not like it costs money, or harms anyone, or threatens anyone’s safety.” This often comes up when talking about aliens and UFOs, ghosts, cryptozoology, and the Shroud of Turin, among other things. Since I’ve already written posts on three of these, I thought I’d cover the Shroud.

The shroud of Turin is a hoax. It’s one of the oldest hoaxes in the world, yes, but it is merely a prank. Dozens of “genuine” shrouds have been reported, and each and every one was proven as a hoax. Several were simply painted with acrylic paint, and some were made in the 1300s (using carbon dating, scientists determined the cloth was “too young to be Jesus’ burial cloth”). A few showed images that didn’t even resemble a man, or that didn’t even have blood on them (don’t ask me why they were thought to be the authentic shroud in the first place – blood is sort of the primary characteristic of this artifact.)

So the Shroud of Turin is a fake, much like the UFO videos and ghost photos of today – each and every one has an explanation that doesn’t include the paranormal, or Jesus. But who cares if people believe one of these is really and truly Jesus’ burial shroud? And for that matter, who cares if people believe those photos of orbs and dust specks are really depicting ghosts? Or that those cloud formations are alien spacecraft? What’s the harm?

The harm is that being out of touch with reality is not healthy. Believing things which have clearly and convincingly been proven false is faulty thinking, which leads to poor decisions and life choices. Sure, you may not currently be spending thousands on expensive equipment to detect ghosts, or to travel around the world looking for strange animals, or to attend conferences about the Shroud of Turin, but continuing to invest your time and efforts in false beliefs could certainly lead to this. In addition, likely you’re not silent about your beliefs - the more people you convince of these falsehoods, the more people you’re harming.

I’m currently reading “Stiff” by Mary Roach, a very interesting (if a little disturbing) book on cadavers and the many forms of research done on them. She includes a chapter on cadaver research for the purpose of religion, which primarily is just to determine what patterns blood would make on a cloth wrapped around a man being crucified. In other words, to prove or disprove the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin. Surprisingly (to me at least) there have been several scientists who have tested for the physiological effects on a body being crucified. One such man, Dr. Pierre Barbet, believed he was in possession of the authentic shroud, and attempted to prove it by comparing blood stains of crucified cadavers with the blood stains on his bit of linen. This was the 1930s, when medicine and surgery weren’t nearly as precise as they are now.

Basically, Dr. Barbet nailed cadavers to crosses in order to see the blood pattern on a piece of cloth behind the body, and then compare it to his shroud. When he ran out of cadavers, he used fresh amputated limbs from his own surgery, trying to see the scars in a hand that’s had a nail driven through it. He ended up with several arms over the course of a few months – it’s been speculated that even minor hand or arm injuries in his surgery in this period resulted in an amputation, just so he could have more arms to nail up. Dr. Barbet was obsessed – he wrote hundreds of pages on the process of being crucified, comparing arm angles and blood patterns to the bloody imprint on the shroud. Not surprisingly considering how religious the good doctor was, he came to the conclusion that the shroud was authentic. (Almost all of his findings have since been disproven - see Roach’s book or just google it.)

Barbet was mad. Reading passages of his book will convince anyone of that - he was clearly obsessed with proving the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin. From this obsession to his suspiciously steady supply of amputated arms, it’s obvious that Barbet had invested way too much, including his sanity, in proving this hoax true. This is a clear example of the harms of believing in such “harmless claims”.

Losing touch with reality is not healthy. Obsession with proving your claims right is not healthy. This leads to poor quality of life, which has a very detrimental effect on both the true believer and those around him. Even if the claim doesn’t seem harmful, with a closer look you can find evidence of the negative effects on a person’s life. This is why it is so important for science and skepticism to be promoted tirelessly.

For more information on the harm in believing in pseudoscience and the paranormal, see the What’s the Harm website.

This is my first post on the blog, and I hope to make a weekly appearance here, assuming my schedule can be massaged appropriately.  I hope to contribute mostly opinion-pieces; to delve into some fundamental issues within (and without) skepticism in a reasoned, philosophical way.  I’ll leave specific critiques, reviews, and anecdotes/recommendations to those who do it much better than I ever could–the other contributors, who have provided some excellent material so far.  And so, without further preamble, on to the real issue.

Religion is something that gets a lot of time in skeptical circles.  Skeptics spend a lot of time critiquing, criticizing, and sometimes even simply bashing religion in general, or specific religions and their practices.  The bookstores are full of recent atheist/freethinker writings on religion; most of us I’m sure are familiar with the work of Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris, and the rest.  We have a recent film by Bill Maher, reviewed on this very blog.  While skeptics don’t confine themselves to matters of religion, instead dealing with supernaturalism or a lack of critical thinking in all domains in which they arise, of late I believe there is a tendency to focus on religion in particular, especially in light of world events and the cultural buzz created by the “New Atheism” (as if it was ever old).

It would not surprise me if another source of this focus is that many skeptics became what they are in reaction to being brought up in a religious household, or in breaking away from a religious tradition in which they were formerly devout believers.  We often go with what we know, and in many cases, skeptics know religion well; indeed often very well.  And this is certainly an asset in any critique.

But I think this focus on religion leads us astray in many ways, for it amounts to focusing on removing the branches of a diseased tree rather than uprooting it entirely.  Religion, while important to critique in many respects, is only a branch on the tree in question; other branches are psuedoscience, the paranormal, psychic phenomenon, bigotry, racism, and closed-mindedness.

The tree in question is one plagued by a lack of critical thinking.  And this is the real root of the problem; this is what skepticism ought to be directed against-a lack of critical thinking in all areas of life, not simply the lack of critical thinking that can lead to a certain kind of adherence to religion.

At this point I should inform my readers that I’m not entirely convinced that all religion, in all its forms, is something we’d be better off without, or something that it is too irrational, or illogical, or otherwise to hold to.  The details of this view are academic and would take far too much space to spell out in detail.  However, there are easy-to-identify instances of religion that are not worth having around, that result from a lack of critical thinking and acceptance of dogma, and often result in violence, close-mindedness, or hubris.  And this is enough to justify a certain critique of religion and its dogma.

Now that this caveat is out of the way, I can return to my main point.  It is all to easy for us to get bogged down in criticizing and critiquing of religion; all too easy to blame it for so much of what, as skeptics, we seek to remedy in the world.  But this is a view that does not dig deep enough, does not see what lies beneath the surface.  The real problem is a lack of critical thinking and a lack of informed reflection in our society more generally.  This is a situation that must change, and it is to this end that we should be most dedicated; not simply in pointing out its lack, but in actively trying to change things for the better.  This means promulgating both the resources for and the value in thinking critically, as well as lobbying for educational reform.

We serve our interests best when our efforts are directed at the source of the problem, not its symptoms.  And while an examination of the symptoms will be instructive - for those willing to listen - in the way the disease arises, our critiques will cut no ice if our interlocutors do not understand the value of critical reasoning and informed thinking.

Our priority ought to be making people see this value.  Our efforts are futile otherwise.

Last night was my sister’s birthday, and as most skeptics know, the family get-together is prime territory for learning all about the “interesting” beliefs that various members of the family hold.  For me, this moment came when my sister opened up one of her presents - a salt-lamp.  The lamps are absolutely gorgeous, and the light they give off is beautiful.  I really like the lamp, but I really hate the claims it makes.  For those not familiar, the topic has been covered before.

This is not an isolated incident.  It seems every time I get together with relatives something that perks up my skeptical ears will come up.  Anything from medical claims to conspiracies to the un-skeptical report they saw on Breakfast Television about whatever the coolest new fad is.  I’m sure many of you have had similar experiences, so I wanted to write about what I feel is the best way to handle these situations.  As always, your mileage may vary, so don’t take this advice as gospel truth.

Firstly, before I decide what to say, I decide if I should say anything at all.  This is, after all, a family gathering; do you really want to start an argument?  Try to gauge just how much stock the person puts in this belief.  Have they put a lot of time and thought into a belief, or did they just see the report on TV and find it interesting?  Assuming no harm is caused, if someone has put a lot into this belief then I don’t think that their birthday party is the best time to point out that they might not be correct.  If however, they had just picked up a tidbit of information from the internet or the news and they found it interesting, in most cases, I think that it is safe to proceed and ask some skeptical questions.  I have a hard time letting go of anything that can cause actual harm, no matter how entrenched in someone’s belief system it is.  This has lead to a couple of awkward moments, so it’s up to you to decide how important it is to say something.  Tread lightly, convincing the true believer is difficult to impossible, and might not be something you want to do when they are your aunt, and you’ve both had a few glasses of wine.

So you’ve decided that either the claim is too egregious to let go by unchallenged, or you don’t anticipate a huge argument, how do you go about it?  There are several approaches, but it is always important never to tell someone they are wrong, or their belief is stupid.  This is not only to be polite, but because they may not be wrong (only misinformed) and their belief is not stupid (perhaps misguided).

• Mention that you’ve heard of this type of claim before, but that it never seems to get any traction. Ask them why they think that might be.  This works well with miracle cures and free energy claims.
• Bring up the alternative explanations for an unidentified phenomenon.  For example, if someone thinks that they are psychic because of dreams coming true, you can explain that given all the dreams and all the things that happen in a day, it’s actually more unlikely to not recognize something from a dream in your day to day life.
• Question the scientific sounding lingo. Negative ions?  What do you think that might mean?  How is that good for our bodies?  And so on.

If you manage to get a conversation going, and the person is interested in discussing it, great!  If all you get is sneers and no one seems interested in listening to you, you have to decide again if maybe everyone will be better off if you just let it go this time.

Now, you’ve made that first probe, and gotten a bite, great.  Let’s hope you’re prepared.  Here are some generalized tips for many popular claims.

• Make sure the person knows that you are only interested in evidence, and you don’t just want to shoot down their ideas.  Ask them why they think personal feelings are more trustworthy than what scientists or experts say.
• Explain the fallibility of memory, eyewitness accounts and anecdotes.  Explain blinded studies, the placebo effect, and why blinding is so important.
• Find common ground.  Find out what they DON’T believe in, and then find out why.  If they don’t believe in the alien abduction phenomenon, you argue with them as if you were an abduction proponent.  Chances are they will shoot down your claims and you can then draw the similarity for them between why they don’t believe that claim and why you don’t believe theirs.
• Know your logical fallacies.

In the end, don’t expect to change anyone’s mind.  If you plant a seed of doubt, or convey to them some of the principles of critical analysis then next time they come across a claim they might think twice about it, and you’ve done your job.

So what happened with my sister’s salt lamp?  There was some talk about the negative ions and interested oohing and ahhing over the literature that came with it and I stayed quiet.  I think everyone at the table knew how I felt about it. After a very heated discussion about homeopathy some time ago I decided to just keep quiet this time.

Besides, it was my sister’s birthday.