>Fr Pullicino, [...] based his conclusions on earlier finding of forensic and medical experts who investigated the Shroud of Turin.

Well, the Shroud of Turin is fake, so the conclusion is probably wrong.

Further down they do mention this:

More recent studies – conducted in 2012 and 2015 – argue instead that the science proves that the linen sheet dates precisely from the time of Jesus.

That's all I'm sayin'

So most art forgeries use canvases from the period of the original.

Also: "The French theologian Juan Calvino pointed out in the 16th century, in the midst of a boom in the traffic of relics where the pieces of the so-called “vera cruz” distributed by churches and monasteries abounded, that “if we wanted to collect everything that has been found (from the cross), there would be enough to carry a great ship. ”

https://digismak.com/what-happened-to-the-cross-on-which-jes...

>Well, it's a fake, so the conclusion is probably wrong.

Shhh... we all know radiocarbon dating is pseudoscience.

Q: Who was Jesus?

A: He was the son of God! He could walk on water, heal any physical ailment with the mere touch of a hand, and freely clone matter in total defiance of the physical laws of conservation.

Q: Amazing! What happened to him?

A: A shoulder injury led to large tension hemothorax which resulted in fatal circulatory collapse.

Q: Oh, ok...

Honestly yes that’s the point. The immortal becoming mortal to suffer for the sins of others. Not saying whether that’s all true or not just that … yes that’s the whole point.

The whole point / explaining away the facts / gaslighting / trolling.

I guess we’ll just never know the motivation of the storytellers.

This kind of condescension towards religion is so close-minded, and it's incredibly tiring. I think you'd be surprised just how much the faithful appreciate and embrace science, and how much philosophical thinking about reality and existence we actually do. Adult religiousness is not the same as the cartoon version that children are introduced to, that so many atheists use to attack. The lazy, unintellectual thing to do is to base all your understanding of reality only on what science can describe, and to never explore beyond what can be proven as a "fact." Your statement about explaining away facts paints the faithful as simple-minded rubes, which is a cheap shot and is absent any understanding of how the religious actually view the world.

> This kind of condescension towards religion is so close-minded, and it's incredibly tiring.

I live in the US, God Bless America, where religion is shoved in your face over and over again from childhood to adulthood (it’s incredibly tiring).

I’m intimately aware of the philosophies and mental capabilities of “the faithful”. Religion has earned every ounce of condescension that it receives.

> The lazy, unintellectual thing to do is to base all your understanding of reality only on what science can describe, and to never explore beyond what can be proven as a "fact."

Science is exploration. Religion is not.

And yet, you shut down the possibility of religion without any degree of exploration.

I don't need you to be religious. I understand annoyance with the fact that the culture you're in is pushing something you don't agree with (I experience that as well on other topics). What I take issue with is the attitude that religion deserves condescension and vitriol, simply because you don't subscribe to it, or because you find it annoying. I see no recognition that faith and logic aren't mutually exclusive.

Don't have religion - that's fine. But don't pretend to understand (and then trivialize) any religious tenet, if you're unwilling to fairly explore it.

> Science is exploration. Religion is not.

You're conflating religiousness with dogma. Dogma, by definition, is belief without exploration. Religion, however, invites endless exploration.

> And yet, you shut down the possibility of religion without any degree of exploration.

You are both a reader and a writer of fiction!

Of all the things care to know about Jesus, this isn't it. Pretty sure the whole son-of-god aspect, the historicity of his life, the origin of his cult, many other things are more interesting than the potential exact cause of death of someone crucified by the Romans...

I'm still gonna need some reasonable indication it's not just a character in a fictional story before I'm willing to care about anything else.

Based on what we know of the history of the very early church, it wouldn't have been easy for them to coordinate around making changes to the story - a centralized authority didn't exist until hundreds of years later. The total fabrication theory doesn't have a clear starting point for when everyone got together and decided to make up a character. That in my mind lends some credence to the idea that there was an individual that they could gather around.

If you look at how cults or religions got started in recent history, we never see a bunch of people coordinate in that kind of a way, where a lot of people disparately decide to invent a nonexistent leader and go around telling everyone that they recently died.

Could the central authority have later fabricated a history of the early church that made it look like there was a long period where nobody could have coordinated big changes? Maybe, but that is a standard that no set of historical documents could pass. (It's like suggesting that the Byzantines fabricated every single classical document including the tree-rings of ancient historians arguing with each other.)

There are also letters between Roman governors complaining about Jesus and his followers. Regardless of what other notions one discounts, the fact that Jesus was an actual person alive at the time should not be one of them.

Yes. Otherwise this might as well be an article speculating on what caused the extinction of the unicorn.

Yes that's one of my points (the historicity of his life).

As a Catholic, I’d love to read more about the science of Christianity.

Alas, I often find people who research this area start with a conclusion and cherry pick arguments to fit. Some perhaps don’t; but they are a minority and thus require digging through a lot of pseudoscientific material.

Jesus and the Shroud of Turin Jesus Documentary Channel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHfvKUG-Eew

A Doctor at Calvary: The Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ As Described by a Surgeon https://www.amazon.com/Doctor-Calvary-Passion-Described-Surg...

The Agony of Jesus in the Garden https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0eEegbDPGw

I find it to be the axioms people start with are wrong typically. At some point your arguments must be grounded in an objective reality -- otherwise any conclusion holds no value.

I will say I think it's awesome the Catholic church has their own astronomer. So at least their observations are grounded in a shared reality.

Political chicanery and despotism had their part I suspect. SO sure the proximal cause might be narrowed down, but it hardly seems critical to know exactly how somebody was tortured to death.

> Political chicanery and despotism had their part I suspect.

If you read the textbook that has 4 different accounts of what happened, politics is heavily featured in each one.