"what’s really wrong with the Shroud... The thing that simply cries out, 'Fake!' It looks exactly like what a medieval european forger would think Jesus looked like"
The person depicted in the Shroud is Jesus, whether the Shroud image was made by a forger trying to depict a crucified Jesus, or the Shroud image is of the actual crucified Jesus.
Do you believe the Shroud forgery is a painting?

It looks exactly like what a medieval european forger would think Jesus looked like.  An actual first century inhabitant of Palestine would look somewhat different.   

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Not, ** you do not have permission to see this link **!

Really, really, not ** you do not have permission to see this link **!!  

My favorite Jesus in art is ** you do not have permission to see this link **.

I'm also partial to the infamous semi-heretical ** you do not have permission to see this link **.

Donald R. Prothero, "Stephen Meyer's Fumbling Bumbling Amateur Cambrian Follies" _Skeptic_ 18(4): 50-53 (2013), on 50, 52
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However, paleontologists have since worked hard on the topic and learned a lot...
As a result, we now know that the "explosion" took place over an 80 m.y. time frame.
Paleontologists are gradually abandoning the misleading and outdated term "Cambrian explosion" for a more accurate one, "Cambrian slow fuse" or "Cambrian diversification."
...
For an account by real paleontologists, see the excellent recent book by Erwin and Valentine, 2013 [_The Cambrian Explosion: The Construction of Biodiversity_], which gives an accurate view...

On 51, 52, 53:
Meyer's distorted and false view of conflating the entire Early Cambrian (545-520 m.y. ago) as consisting of only the third stage of the Early Cambrian (Atdabanian, 520 m.y. ago)...
Second, this "god of the gaps" approach is guaranteed to fail, because scientists _have_ explained most of the events of the Early Cambrian and find nothing out of the ordinary that defies scientific explanation.
Only a few details remain to be worked out.
...
Even though Amazon.com persists in listing this book [Stephen Meyer's _Darwin's Doubt_] in their "Paleontology" subsection, I've seen a number of bookstores already which have it properly placed in their "Religion" section-- or even more appropriately, in "Fiction."

John 10 (Berean Standard)
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25 ... The works I do in My Father’s name testify on My behalf. ...
32 ... I have shown you many good works from the Father. ...
37 If I am not doing the works of My Father,
then do not believe Me.
38 But if I am doing them,
even though you do not believe Me,
believe the works themselves,
so that you may know and understand that
the Father is in Me,
and I am in the Father.”

John 20 (NIV)
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24 Now Thomas (also known as Didymus), one of the Twelve,
was not with the disciples when Jesus came.
25 So the other disciples told him,
“We have seen the Lord!”
But he said to them,
“Unless I see the nail marks in his hands
and put my finger where the nails were,
and put my hand into his side,
I will not believe.”
26 A week later his disciples were in the house again,
and Thomas was with them.
Though the doors were locked,
Jesus came and stood among them and said,
“Peace be with you!”

27 Then he said to Thomas,
“Put your finger here;
see my hands.
Reach out your hand and put it into my side.
Stop doubting and believe.”
28 Thomas said to him,
“My Lord and my God!”
29 Then Jesus told him,
“Because you have seen me,
you have believed;
blessed are those who have not seen
and yet have believed.”

John 12:32 (Berean Standard)
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And I, when I am lifted up from the earth,
will draw everyone to Myself.”

Gilbert Lavoie, _The Shroud of Jesus: And the Sign John Ingeniously Concealed_ (2023), 195pp., on 138

Here again Jesus gives us his third message regarding his hour of glory:
he will draw all people to himself.
Obviously, no one would be drawn to a dead, crucified Galilean if there were no Resurrection and Ascension to the Father.
...
In summary, God the Father, who glorified his Son (see John 8:54 and 17:1, 5), left the sign of the raised/lifted Jesus on his shroud that visually communicates these _three messages_ to the world:
1. Whoever believes in him may have eternal life.
2. You will realize that I am he [God].
3. I will draw all people to myself.

John saw and heard Jesus predict three times that he would be lifted up.
Each prediction was associated with a message that was part of the fulfillment of his hour of glory.
By the time John entered the tomb, Jesus had well prepared him for what he was about to see in the cave.
It was the sign that Jesus predicted in the temple-- the image of the body of his Lord, raised up in resurrection and ascension to the Father.
This sign of the lifted man of the shroud is the reflection of his hour of glory.

William Omanoff, _The Receipt: A personal journey into the mystery of the Shroud of Turin_ (2025)

Mike S. King, _The Divine Selfie_ (2025)

The whimper hypothesis has one major point in its favor.
There were animal trace fossils occurring well before the Cambrian boundary, and arthropods (Jenkins 1988) and perhaps even echinoderms (Gehling 1987) are known from Vendian strata.
One line of argument, however, acts as a fatal blow to the whimper hypothesis.
With no more than five known exceptions, all of the extant well-skeletonized animal phyla first appear as fossils in the Cambrian.
Also, many phyla that are now extinct first appeared in the Cambrian.
As many as 100 phyla may have existed during Cambrian, and only 5 percent or less of this number show any evidence of a Precambrian ancestry.
Thus, the genesis of most animal phyla must date back to the Cambrian and not before then.

The arguments above are largely based on the work of the paleontologist James W. Valentine.
In the late 1960s, Valentine realized that large numbers of phyla burst upon the scene during the Cambrian evolutionary radiation, and that virtually no new phyla appeared during the many radiations of animals that followed the Cambrian (Valentine 1969).
This effect also held true for other higher taxa of animals.

The biological taxonomic hierarchy consists of seven basic levels: kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, species.
The kingdom level contains the five-fold division of all life:
monerans, protists, fungi, animals, plants.
Along with kingdom, the phylum, class, and order levels are considered to be higher taxa;
the family, genus, and species levels are considered to be lower taxa.
Valentine (1969) noted that not only did the Cambrian contain most of the originations of animal phyla, but also it had a disproportionate share of class-level originations.
For example, snails, clams, cephalopods, monoplacophorans, and rostroconchs, representing five different classes within the mollusk phylum, _all_ first appear in the Early Cambrian.
...
The essential question is this:
How do you evolve from from, say, a worm to a brachiopod or flatworm to a clam in a geological second-- a mere one million years?
Erwin et al. (1987) note that there is not nearly enough geological time available for Cambrian phyla to appear by the gradual, slow accumulation of relatively minor evolutionary changes.
Whatever caused the Cambrian animal phyla to appear caused them to appear quickly.

======================
Douglas H. Erwin , James W. Valentine , J. John Sepkoski, Jr., "A Comparative Study of Diversification Events: The Early Paleozoic Versus the Mesozoic" _Evolution_ 41(6): 1177–1186 (1 Nov 1987)
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We compare two major long‐term diversifications of marine animal families that began during periods of low diversity but produced strikingly different numbers of phyla, classes, and orders.
The first is the early‐Paleozoic diversification (late Vendian–Ordovician; 182 MY duration) and the other the Mesozoic phase of the post‐Paleozoic diversification (183 MY duration).
The earlier diversification was associated with a great burst of morphological invention producing many phyla, classes, and orders and displaying high per taxon rates of family origination.
The later diversification lacked novel morphologies recognized as phyla and classes, produced fewer orders, and displayed lower per taxon rates of family appearances.
...
Evolutionary activity during the early Paleozoic certainly proceeded at a high tempo, producing new body plans at the levels of phylum, class, and order at rates unique in metazoan history.

BJH1960 said
How does he pull that off?
Is his claim that Sufism isn't rooted in the Quran? Of course, Sufis would disagree.
I'm not that familiar with the Quran. but I think it's safe to say that like the Bible it contains many worlds.
  

Well the guy definitely wants to present one image of Islam to his disciples. The Crusader mentality.  

---

As usual the most important news item of the day will get the least notice. 

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The depressing aspect about this item is that it continues the sequence of the results of the refinement of our scientific models being even more dire than what was expected.  Unfortunately the article is not nearly as clear about the issues as it should be.  If you don't know anything about the subject this article is not going to make it much clearer to you.  There are articles at the links in the body of the main article that are much better at explaining the point about the importance of the Gulf Stream current, or as the main article insists, the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (Amoc). 

Accurate scientific nomenclature is important but it helps to be able to lay it out clearly to the non-expert, a set most of us inhabit.  The circulating current in the Atlantic Ocean carries warm water northwards.  It cools and flows back southwards. Global warming interferes with the process which was already weakening based on older observations.  The circulation is fundamental to our earth's climate and we know that changes to it have resulted in profound climate changes in the past.  Unhappily the system seems less stable than we previously thought. 

Meanwhile back here in the Loony Bin...

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How will our descendants, those who will endure the consequences of our foolishness, ever comprehend the current level of mass delusion at work in the land?  Should we laugh or should we cry?   The problem is that it is almost impossible to get human beings to defer current pleasures in favor of long term consequences.  Today wasn't too bad, and tomorrow will be pretty much like today, so why worry?   Somebody will figure it out.  Besides, those scientists, what do they know?  

The problem is to get attention you are almost forced to express the outlook in apocalyptic terms.  But it won't be the end of the world (which is after all 5 billion years old)  but the world will be ugly for a thousand years.  It will be a world increasingly unfriendly to us and our prospects.  How can we comprehend that the qualities that caused our evolutionary success, our aggressiveness and our acquisitiveness, will be those very qualities that ultimately undermine us? 

What was it T S Eliot wrote?

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.    

I don't know what the answer is.  We're caught between denialists and folks who think that Jesus will swoop down and save us.  Silence seems like an act of cowardice but if you do speak out it's likely you'll be treated like a street-corner doomsday prophet and not get invited to any of the cool parties.   

Maybe a stable, sane civilization can only be built after a time of trouble.  But isn't it sad beyond belief to think that might be true?

The creation of humans who could not reproduce:

I believe that intelligence/ mind was responsible for the enormous quantity of new instructions present in the new animals that appeared during the Cambrian explosion.
In your view:
what caused numerous phyla to arise in a narrow window of time during the Cambrian, and how did the DNA-encoded instructions for all those new animal phyla originate?
via what mechanism(s) did the animals that arose during the Cambrian explosion originate? (natural selection + mutations?)

Kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, species.
The 'Cambrian explosion' aka 'Biology's big bang' was the rapid appearance on earth of most of the animal phyla the earth has ever seen.
That explosion is totally at odds with the neo-Darwinian conception of natural selection + mutations supposedly giving rise to bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger etc. changes.
If the neo-Darwinian conception was correct, first there'd be changes leading to a new 'species,' then a new genus, then a new family, then a new order, then a new class, then a new phylum.
The Cambrian explosion with its numerous new phyla is totally at odds with the neo-Darwinian belief.

Donald R. Prothero, _Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why It Matters_, 2nd ed. (2017), 427pp., on 178
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Page 168 —
Thus we have seen that the Cambrian explosion is a myth.
It is better described as the Cambrian slow fuse.
It takes from 600 to 520 million years ago before the typical Cambrian fauna of large shelly organisms (especially trilobites) finally develops.
Eighty million years is not explosive by any stretch of the imagination!
Not only is the explosion a slow fuse, but it follows a series of logical stages from simple and small to larger and complex and mineralized.

Page 169 — ...
In short, the fossil record shows a gradual buildup from single-celled prokaryotes and then eukaryotes to multicellular soft-bodied animals to animals with tiny shells, and finally by the middle Cambrian, the full range of large shelled invertebrates.
This gradual transformation by logical advances in body size and skeletonization bears no resemblance to an instantaneous Cambrian explosion that might be consistent with the Bible but instead clearly shows a series of evolutionary transformations.

Samuel A. Bowring et al., "Calibrating Rates of Early Cambrian Evolution" _Science_ (3 Sep 1993)
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An explosive episode of biological diversification occurred near the beginning of the Cambrian period.
Evolutionary rates in the Cambrian have been difficult to quantify accurately because of a lack of high-precision ages.
Currently, uranium-lead zircon geochronology is the most powerful method for dating rocks of Cambrian age.
Uranium-lead zircon data from lower Cambrian rocks located in northeast Siberia indicate that the Cambrian period began at ∼544 million years ago and that its oldest (Manykaian) stage lasted no less than 10 million years.
Other data indicate that the Tommotian and Atdabanian stages together lasted only 5 to 10 million years.
The resulting compression of Early Cambrian time accentuates the rapidity of both the faunal diversification and subsequent Cambrian turnover.

"When Life Exploded" (1995)
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Now, with information based on the lead content of zircons from Siberia, virtually everyone agrees that the Cambrian started almost exactly 543 million years ago and, even more startling, that all but one of the phyla in the fossil record appeared within the first 5 million to 10 million years.
“We now know how fast fast is,” grins Bowring.
“And what I like to ask my biologist friends is,
How fast can evolution get before they start feeling uncomfortable?”

Biology's 'Big Bang' Took A Mere Blink of the Eye
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======================
Response to Critics: Prothero, Part 2 - Discovery Science (July 16, 2014)
Stephen Meyer responds to criticisms of his _Darwin's Doubt: The Explosive Origin of Animal Life and the Case for Intelligent Design_ (2014)


Prothero's main substantive scientific critique of the book is his claim that I exaggerate the brevity of the Cambrian explosion.
Now, this is kind of odd because in the debate I had with Prothero in 2009, he made that same claim.
He claimed that the Cambridge explosion was an 80 million-year event.
And I responded to him at the time in the debate.
And in the book, I retell the interaction that we had and provide my refutation again of his claim that the Cambrian explosion is an 80 million-year event.
He doesn't interact with my refutation.
He simply restates the same claim that the Cambrian explosion is an 80 million-year event.

So for the third time, let me explain what's wrong with Prothero's claim.
Prothero claims that the Cambrian explosion took 80 million years.
And what he does to make that claim is that instead of focusing on the major pulse of morphological innovation in the Cambrian period that most paleontologists deem the explosion-- and most paleontologists in the technical literature do deem the explosion to be about a 10 million-year event-- what Prothero does is he includes other events within the designation of 'Cambrian explosion.'
So he goes back into the late pre-Cambrian and includes the Ediacara fauna and their first appearance as part of the Cambrian explosion.
Then he looks at the very base of the Cambrian at the very beginning of the Cambrian and includes something called the small shelly fauna and their origin as part of the Cambrian explosion.
Then he includes the events that that most paleontologists include as the main pulse of the Cambrian explosion as part of the Cambrian explosion between 530 and 520 million years ago.
And then he even includes events that that occur much after that, the diversification of trilobites.
And so he incorporates several separate paleontological events within the designation Cambrian explosion and gets an 80 million-year figure for the entire event.

Now Prothero is entirely free to do that-- to rename the Cambrian if he so chooses as this 80 million-year window that includes all these separate events.
But it doesn't eliminate the problem that is the focus of my book, which is what explains the major pulse of innovation in which the great majority of animal body plans first arise.
That event still remains unexplained.
And in fact, it's an even more acute problem than just defining it as a 10 million-year event as most experts do, because between 13 and 16 major phyla-- the largest division of animal classification representing new body plants-- ... between 13 and 16 new animal phyla arise in a narrow 5 to 6 million-year window of that 10 million-year window.
And so whether you want to include other events... under the designation 'Cambrian explosion' or not, that's just a semantic issue.
What has to be explained is an issue of biological engineering.
What caused all that new biological form to arise in such a narrow window of time, and where did the information come from to produce all those new forms of animal life?
Prothero does not address that question, let alone answer it.
And what he does instead is play semantic games by redefining the Cambrian as an 80 million-year event in in a vain attempt to portray the book as not up-to-date on paleontology.

Actually his designation of the event as an 80 million-year event is starkly at odds with the judgment of most major Cambrian experts who do define it just as I do in the book as a 10 million-year event.
There's an irony associated with the Donald Prothero review because he provides this comprehensive he thinks litany of complaints about the accuracy of _Darwin's Doubt_ and then he says for a really good book on the Cambrian explosion you shouldn't read _Darwin's Doubt_, you should read the new book on the Cambrian explosion by James Valentine and Doug Erwin, the real acknowledged experts in the field.

But what's ironic about his recommendation is that on most of the important matters of fact for which he takes me to task, Valentine and Erwin agree with me rather than Prothero.
For example, he claims the Cambrian explosion is an 80 million-year event.
I claim it's a 10 million-year event.
I drew on Douglas Erwin and James Valentine because they also say that it's a 10 million event and they are the acknowledged experts and I drew on their expertise.
He claims that I dishonestly dismiss the absence of fossils as the result of a real event.
He also claims that I failed to recognize that the absence of fossils in the pre-Cambrian strata is a byproduct of incomplete preservation of those earlier pre-Cambrian forms that later evolved to become the Cambrian forms.
But Valentine and Erwin agree with me-- or I agree with them-- that the artifact hypothesis is an inadequate explanation for the missing ancestral forms in the pre-Cambrian, and that the Cambrian explosion is a real event.
In fact, Valentine and Erwin very clearly say it's a real event and not a product of incomplete preservation or incomplete sampling of the fossil record.

Prothero also claims that the rates of evolutionary innovation during the Cambrian period were typical of the evolutionary process throughout the history of life, and faults me for not recognizing that.
But yet again, Valentine and Erwin say the rates were very atypical and completely anomalous-- in fact, so much so that they question whether or not we can apply uniformitarian thinking to the Cambrian period.
They characterize it as a non-uniformitarian evolutionary event.
James Valentine and Doug Erwin are not proponents of intelligent design as I am.
But on the key factual points at issue between Prothero and me, their book reinforces the claims that I make in _Darwin's Doubt_, and actually contradicts the claims that Prothero makes in his review.

Douglas Erwin and James Valentine, _The Cambrian Explosion: The Construction of Animal Biodiversity_ (2013)

======================
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**Most major animal phyla first appear in the fossil record during the Cambrian explosion (roughly 541–530 million years ago, early Cambrian Period), when nearly all modern body plans emerged in a geologically rapid diversification of complex multicellular life.** Prior to this, in the Ediacaran Period (635–538.8 Ma), only a few basal (non-bilaterian) phyla have clear or probable fossil evidence, mostly soft-bodied forms. Many Ediacaran organisms remain enigmatic and may not belong to any living phyla.

This pattern is well-documented in the paleontological record: the Ediacaran shows early experimentation with multicellularity, while the Cambrian marks the rise of biomineralized skeletons, complex burrowing, predation, and the recognizable phylum-level diversity we see today. Molecular clock estimates often push divergences earlier (into the Ediacaran or Cryogenian), but “first appeared” here refers to the earliest undisputed fossils assignable to each phylum.

Here is a summary of first fossil appearances for major extant animal phyla (focusing on those with robust records; there are ~36 total phyla, but many minor ones have poor preservation). Dates are approximate and based on the earliest widely accepted fossils:

### Basal (non-bilaterian) phyla — mostly Ediacaran origins
- **Porifera (sponges)**: Ediacaran Period (~600–550 Ma; possible chemical biomarkers or sponge-like fossils as early as ~665 Ma in some interpretations). Definitive spicules and body fossils appear around this time or in earliest Cambrian.
- **Cnidaria (jellyfish, corals, anemones)**: Ediacaran Period (~560 Ma). Crown-group examples like *Auroralumina* (a stem-medusozoan with polyp-like features) from ~557–562 Ma; some Ediacaran discs and fronds (e.g., possible sea pens) are also interpreted as cnidarians.
- **Ctenophora (comb jellies)**: Early Cambrian (~520 Ma); rare and debated earlier Ediacaran claims.

### Bilaterian phyla — overwhelmingly Cambrian origins
These represent the vast majority of animal diversity and body plans:
- **Arthropoda** (insects, crustaceans, trilobites, etc.): Early Cambrian (~540–530 Ma). Trilobites appear ~525–530 Ma and are among the most abundant early fossils.
- **Mollusca** (snails, clams, cephalopods, etc.): Early Cambrian (~525 Ma; small shelly fauna). *Kimberella* from late Ediacaran (~558 Ma) is sometimes considered a mollusc-like bilaterian, but consensus places definitive molluscs in the Cambrian.
- **Annelida** (segmented worms): Early Cambrian (undoubted fossils in the Tommotian/Atdabanian stages, ~530–520 Ma).
- **Brachiopoda** (lamp shells): Early Cambrian (~530 Ma).
- **Echinodermata** (starfish, sea urchins, crinoids, etc.): Early Cambrian (~515–520 Ma). Possible Ediacaran precursors (e.g., *Tribrachidium*) are debated.
- **Chordata** (vertebrates and relatives, including us): Early Cambrian (~525–530 Ma; Chengjiang biota fossils like *Myllokunmingia* and *Haikouichthys* are primitive fish-like forms).
- **Hemichordata** (acorn worms, pterobranchs): Early Cambrian (~525 Ma).
- **Onychophora** (velvet worms; sometimes grouped near arthropods): Early Cambrian (~525 Ma).
- **Priapulida** and other cycloneuralians (e.g., priapulid worms): Early Cambrian (~525 Ma).
- **Nematoda** (roundworms): Cambrian (~525 Ma), though soft-bodied and rare.

### Later-appearing phyla
- **Bryozoa** (moss animals): Late Cambrian to Early Ordovician (~485 Ma); likely had soft-bodied precursors earlier.

A few phyla (e.g., Placozoa, some microscopic ones) have essentially no fossil record due to their soft-bodied nature. Six or more modern phyla appear after the Cambrian, and many Cambrian taxa belong to extinct stem groups or phyla with no living representatives.

In short, while the roots of animal life extend into the Ediacaran (with sponges and cnidarians as the earliest clear phyla), the “big bang” of animal phyla diversity—the event that established the fundamental blueprints for nearly everything from worms to vertebrates—occurred in the early Cambrian over a span of about 10–20 million years. This is why the fossil record shifts dramatically at the Ediacaran-Cambrian boundary.

====
**The “six or more modern phyla [that] appear after the Cambrian”** refers primarily to a small number of living animal phyla whose earliest undisputed fossils are post-Cambrian (or entirely absent from the Cambrian record). The vast majority of the ~36 recognized animal phyla either appear in the Cambrian or Ediacaran or have no fossil record at all due to their tiny/soft-bodied nature.

- **Bryozoa** (moss animals): This is the only major phylum with mineralized hard parts that is consistently cited as having its first clear fossil record in the Early Ordovician (~485 Ma), though some recent finds push possible Cambrian (Stage 3) occurrences. It is frequently described as “the last animal phylum to appear in the fossil record” with adequate preservation.

- **Several soft-bodied phyla** (roughly 5–6 total when including the above): These lack hard parts and are tiny/fragile, so they are absent from Cambrian lagerstätten (even exceptional ones like Burgess Shale/Chengjiang). Their first fossils appear much later (often in Cretaceous or younger amber) or not at all. Examples include:
- **Platyhelminthes** (flatworms)
- **Rotifera** (rotifers)
- Microscopic or obscure groups such as **Gnathostomulida**, **Acanthocephala**, **Micrognathozoa**, and a few others among the ~19 soft-bodied phyla today (of which Cambrian sites capture ~14).

Some older references explicitly state “six animal phyla first appear in the fossil record after the Cambrian,” while noting another ~12 have no fossil record whatsoever. In short, these phyla evolved either during or before the Cambrian but only “appear” (or are detectable) later because of preservation biases.

**“Many Cambrian taxa belong to extinct stem groups or phyla with no living representatives”** is accurate. While most Cambrian animals fall into stem-groups of living phyla (e.g., weird early arthropods or echinoderms that share some but not all traits of modern members), a handful of entire phyla (or phylum-level clades) originated in the Cambrian, left fossils, and have **zero living descendants**. These are genuine extinct phyla:

- **Vetulicolia**: A phylum of bizarre, tadpole-like bilaterian marine animals known only from the Cambrian (~520–501 Ma). They had a segmented body with gill-like structures and are not assignable to any living phylum; sometimes debated as possible deuterostome relatives but universally regarded as extinct with no descendants.

- **Chancelloriida** (chancelloriids): Enigmatic Cambrian animals with a bag-like body covered in star-shaped sclerites. Recent phylogenetic work places them as an extinct phylum-level clade (or class) of basal epitheliozoans/stem-eumetazoans—completely outside any living phylum and with no modern equivalents.

- **Archaeocyatha** (archaeocyathids): Sponge-like reef-builders abundant in the Early Cambrian; they went extinct by the end of the period. Traditionally treated as an extinct class within Porifera (sponges), but sometimes ranked separately as a distinct phylum-level group with no surviving lineage.

- **Hyolitha** (hyoliths): Small shelled animals (often conical) extremely common in Cambrian deposits. Long considered their own phylum; they survived until the end-Permian extinction but have no living representatives. Modern studies place them within Lophophorata, but they represent an extinct major branch with a distinct body plan.

Other Cambrian “oddballs” (e.g., Opabinia, Wiwaxia, tommotiids, halkieriids, anabaritids) are usually interpreted as **stem-groups** within living phyla rather than full extinct phyla, but they illustrate the same pattern: early experimental body plans that did not survive.

In summary, the Cambrian explosion produced both the blueprints for nearly all modern animal phyla *and* a number of short-lived evolutionary experiments (a few true extinct phyla plus many stem-lineages) that vanished long ago—highlighting how the fossil record captures both winners and losers of early animal evolution.

I don't understand the Shroud anymore than the nails or the splinters from the cross. Apparently there's a need for something tangible.

My first awareness of the Shroud was the display at the 1984 World's Fair in New Orleans in the Vatican Pavilion.  That was an awesome event.  The Chinese participated for the first time. (I still have a small image of Guanyin, the goddess of mercy, I purchased there.)  The USA parked one of the Space Shuttles.

The Vatican Pavilion was lavish with art and exhibits.  ** you do not have permission to see this link **.  And an astounding solid gold papal throne from one of the more ostentatious popes.  

I had never heard of the Shroud of Turin before so the oversized reproduction of the image of a naked man identified as Jesus kinda drew my attention. 

After we left the Vatican Pavilion my Aunt Lucille dismissed the whole thing with a curt, "None of that is in the Bible"!  

What fascinates me is not the shroud but the need people have for the shroud.   For we walk by faith, not by sight.  Well, not exactly.  Faith is simply not enough.  People need something to hold on to.  To grasp. And when they can't find it they'll create it themselves.   

I sincerely hope that when at along last a dependable Time Machine is perfected, someone will go back and find the person who created the shroud and inform them what a smashing success it has been.  They deserve to know their life was not spent in vain.

The very one who stands before you.  When the last software reboot was accomplished it retained the use of my initials in the post comments and my first name everywhere else. 

The Bible does cry out for graphicalization (if that's even a word - spellcheck is most distressed).  I originally suggested Revelation as a standalone.   The key would be to find the right artist, with the necessary mixture of attention to detail and whimsy.  I have a comic book version of Hal Lindsey's Late Great Planet Earth Earth done in a 70s psychedelic style, full of then current slang.  Far out, man!   

If they had the budget they could have a different artist do each gospel. That would add to the contrast that often gets elided in such comparisons. 

I’m hoping to pick it up in the States, and if I do, I’ll let you know how he handles it.

Okay, good.  A good possibility could be "horizontally, side by side" (as as was suggested by a commenter of Prof. Ehrman's post concerning his writing the synoptic gospels segment; ** you do not have permission to see this link ** ) That seems like the only real way to go about it in an honest way, rather than to try to make the two versions harmonize. 

I would be interested to look at how Mr. Crumb handles the story of the capture and sale of Joseph into Egypt. I just finished a reading of Edward Greenstein’s ** you do not have permission to see this link ** which I enjoyed very much. This is an essay found in Literary Interpretations of Biblical Narrative, Volume II, Abington Press 1982.

I'm hoping to pick it up in the States, and if I do, I'll let you know how he handles it.

Thanks for the essay.  I'm looking forward to reading it.

I have my eye on ** you do not have permission to see this link ** by the same writer.

Both look good - the second one especially.  

The ** you do not have permission to see this link **specializes in what I love: poetry and wisdom literature, so she's certainly someone whose work I'm going to explore.

Yeah I forgot. In the comments I actually asked him about a version of Revelation. Of course now I’m thinking what a super cool graphic “novel” the Book of Enoch would make!

Oh. I didn't see this. oops. (well, now I have! 🙂 )