Could ancient earthquake explain Shroud of Turin?

[edhopper]

47. By members of STURP?

That is hysterical

http://www.sillybeliefs.com/shroud.html#heading-0f

The STURP (Shroud of Turin Research Project) group of scientists examined the shroud in 1978. Unfortunately almost all of these scientists were deeply religious, many were not specialised in the field they investigated and they were actively trying to prove its authenticity. In their book 'Debunked!', physicists Georges Charpak and Henri Broch noted that STURP consisted of 40 scientists, made up of 39 devout believers and 1 agnostic. Knowing that the proportion of believers to agnostics is much different in scientific circles than it is in the general population, they calculated that the odds of selecting a group of 40 scientists at random and achieving this high ratio of believers is 7 chances in 1,000,000,000,000,000. In other words the makeup of this group is stacked and very biased towards authenticating the shroud, and therefore you must take their claims with an extremely large grain of salt. In fact before they even examined the shroud, STURP scientists went on record with statements such as:

"I am forced to conclude that the image was formed by a burst of radiant energy — light if you will. I think there is no question about that."
"What better way, if you're a deity, of regenerating faith in a sceptical age, than to leave evidence 2000 years ago that could be defined only by the technology available in that sceptical age."
"The one possible alternative is that the images were created by a burst of radiant light, such as Christ might have produced at the moment of resurrection."
"I believe it through the eyes of faith, and as a scientist I have seen evidence that it could be His shroud."

This shows that they had reached a conclusion before their tests even begun, hardly the view of objective scientists. Remember also that the authenticity of the shroud is vastly more important to Christians scientists than it is to secular scientists. So if secular scientists may have been prepared to cheat to discredit the shroud, as suggested by some shroud supporters, then it is equally reasonable to believe that Christian scientists are even more likely to cheat and falsify their results. We are not for a moment suggesting that the STURP group has been in any way dishonest, however all scientists must be continually alert that they don't allow their personal beliefs or desires to unconsciously bias their experimental results.

You are so desperate to accept this bit of chicanery that it borders on debating a creationist.