I'm very skeptical about the Turin Shroud for many reasons. First, as Corvus has mentioned, the arms are grotesquely elongated. A product of the crucifixion? Seems unlikely. How many hours would it take for a crucified man's arms to stretch like that and how many hours was Jesus on the cross according to most expert guesses? Besides, a Roman cross, apart from the "simplex" (the vertical beam) and the "patibulum" (the horizontal beam which the convicts had to carry themselves) frequently had a "sedecula" (a much smaller piece of wood designed to provide some support for the buttocks, and probably to prolong the agony). Of course we don't know if Jesus' cross had a sedecula or not, but if it had one, the arms would not have to support as much weight. Another thing is how much the face on the Shroud resembles the "Christ Pantocrator" images of traditional religious art. Check for yourself here:
http://thesilvericon.com/SilverIconCatPantocrator.sht
Yet another suspicious feature is the way the image is supposed to have been formed. If, as otseng wrote, Jesus emanated some kind of energy which burned the cloth, the image should look very different, especially the face. What we should see is a flattened face with the ears on a parallel plane with the face, sort of like the Death Mask of Agamemnon here:
http://www.sikyon.com/Mykinai/Art/art_eg01.html
That the paint did not penetrate the cloth very deep is only an indication that it was applied dry. If you apply paint that is thinly diluted in abundant medium, it will penetrate very well and sometimes show on the other side. However, if the paint is dry, it will stay on the surface. At least that's my experience as a college graduate in Fine Arts.
The most common bits of evidence against the authenticity of the Shroud are:
1. That that particular weave of cloth was not made in Palestine back then.
2. That the way the body is wrapped does not coincide with Jewish custom at the time or with the Gospel description (which mentions two separate cloths, one for the head and one for the body).
3. Carbon dating by three independent labs indicate the cloth was woven abround 1350 (it first surfaced in 1355).
4. The alleged blood stains are too red for such an old cloth, and were shown by Walter McCrane's lab to be pigment of the kind used by artists at the time.
5.The Bishop of Troyes knew who the artist was that painted the cloth and wrote a letter to Pope Clement VII denouncing the artifact as a money-making scheme.
It is certainly suspicious that the cloth was discovered precisely at the height of relic worship in the Middle Ages.
Of course the fact that replicas can be made using technology known at the time is not, by itself, enough to disprove the Shroud, but should make us a bit skeptical at least.
BTW, a lifesized replica made in 2000 is being shown at a church not far from my home, so I'll try and see if I can get the time to travel there and have a look.
The face cloth traditionally supposed to have covered Jesus' head is kept in the cathedral of Oviedo (Spain)--my old hometown! Last Friday (a week ago) the Archbishop held it up for everyone to see during the benediction at Mass. Unfortunately I wasn't there (it's one of the few occasions when it is shown to the general public) but even if I had, you have to be very close to see anything, and there is no image on the "sudarium" anyway, just some blood stains. Still, "sindonologists" claim that the blood stains on the Oviedo cloth coincide with those on the Turin cloth. So if both cloths covered the same face, why isn't there an image in the Oviedo cloth? There's a picture of the cloth in this webpage:
http://www.shroud.com/guscin.htm
To sum up, I think the evidence tips the scales in favor of the theory that the Shroud is a forgery and not a PPO (permanent paranormal object).
