Responding to Lundahl (2022a-g): No Evidence for Demons Assisting David Copperfield’s Stage Shows, Nuclear Wars before Noah’s Flood, the Talking Snake of Genesis 3, God Helping Alexander the Great, and Other Claims

Kevin R. Henke

May 15, 2022; Footnote added in Section 5.3 on November 25, 2022

CORRECTION (September 15, 2022): When I wrote this essay (Henke 2022b), I misread a paragraph in Lundahl (2022d). I mistakenly thought that Mr. Lundahl had written some [citation needed] statements and other footnotes in Lundahl (2022d). It turns out that this section was not written by Mr. Lundahl. He had cut and pasted it from an unlinked Wikipedia site called “Parallel Lives”. Anyway, the related corrections in this essay are in purple. For further details, see Henke (2022s).

As discussed below in Section 6.7, the problem of Mr. Lundahl’s poor scholarship arises again in Lundahl (2022g) when he mentions a marble statue from the 1^st century and someone notes that a reference will be provided later. I don’t know if this another case of him cutting and pasting from Wikipedia or if he was the one promising to provide a “reference later.”

Abstract

Mr. Hans Georg Lundahl wrote seven responses (Lundahl 2022a-g) to my March 1, 2022 essay on Alexander the Great and the Talking Snake of Genesis 3 (Henke 2022a). My essay dealt with the importance of archeology in determining some aspects of Alexander the Great’s life and the total lack of evidence for the existence of the Talking Snake of Genesis 3.

The seven Lundahl essays have severe problems with both what they say and how they say it. Granted, English is not Mr. Lundahl’s first language and certainly his general communication skills in English are far superior to mine in German and Spanish. However, his technical writing is often vague and confusing. Lundahl (2022a-g) also desperately needed spell checking and proper referencing. The references are incomplete to non-existent. None of the seven essays contains a minimally suitable bibliography. For the reasons explained in the text, Mr. Lundahl should have combined his seven essays into one well-organized, well-referenced, spell-checked and well-thought-out essay.

Lundahl (2022a) cites C.S. Lewis (1960) and tries to argue that miracles would “add” to the laws of nature and not violate them. Although there’s no reason to believe that any of the miracle stories in the gospels or the book of Acts actually happened, I cite Christ producing wine (John 2) and the multiplication of the fish and loaves in Mark 6 and 8 as examples of potential miracles that would have unavoidably violated the laws of chemistry and physics.

As I have repeatedly indicated in this essay and elsewhere, I do not say that miracles are impossible. I’m willing to admit that miracles could occur and that they would violate the laws of chemistry and physics by definition. However, Mr. Lundahl and other advocates of the supernatural have the burden of evidence to demonstrate that miracles occur and that claims of miracles are not simply misinterpretations or lies from people’s fertile imaginations. Mr. Lundahl, C.S. Lewis (1960), and other advocates of the supernatural have yet to produce any evidence for the existence of miracles under the required strictly controlled and verifiable conditions.

In his seven essays, Mr. Lundahl often makes outrageous, bizarre and absolutely baseless claims, such as suggesting that demons help stage illusionist (magician) David Copperfield do his tricks (Lundahl 2022a) and that nuclear wars occurred before Noah’s Flood (Lundahl 2022f). These claims are utterly absurd, superstitious, and irrational speculations without a shred of evidence. Such statements do nothing to make his seven essays look reasonable. I know that Mr. Lundahl can do far better than this.

Without providing suitable evidence, Lundahl (2022a-g) also frequently quotes the Bible to support statements in the Bible. This is circular reasoning at its worst. How can Mr. Lundahl justify claiming that Moses wrote Genesis when he doesn’t have any external confirmational evidence that Moses ever existed and that the events in Genesis 3 ever happened?

Lundahl (2022d) and elsewhere in his essays believes that if the earliest known audience of the Talking Snake and similar Bible stories thought that the stories were history, then they must be historically true. Mr. Lundahl has no rational basis for this belief considering that people frequently make up stories through lies or misinterpretations, and large numbers of people can often believe them. It just takes an imaginative individual with a pen, a writing surface and access to a large and gullible audience to explain Genesis 3, the Book of Mormon and L. Ron Hubbard’s writings. Of course, currently, the earliest known audience for Genesis was the Qumran community that wrote the Dead Sea scrolls. They lived about a thousand years after Moses supposedly wrote Genesis and roughly 4,000 years after the supposed event with the Talking Snake in the Garden of Eden. Considering the vast separation in time, why should anyone trust the Qumran community’s judgement on what is history and what is not?

Archeology is very important in confirming some of the claims that ancient historians, such as Arrian and Rufus, made about Alexander the Great. Unless a claim in an ancient history is confirmed with independent external evidence, which usually requires archeology, there’s no reason to accept a story as reliable history. There’s a big difference between believing in a historical claim in an ancient document and having the knowledge to demonstrate that the belief is actually true. To really understand ancient history, both written manuscripts and archeological evidence related to the historical event are required.

Henke (2022a) made a modest proposal that simply stated that Alexander the Great was a powerful and wealthy human king that lived in the 4^th century BC and that he ruled over a broad region in and surrounding the Middle East. That is, he was not a mythical figure. Using only archeological data, I successfully demonstrated my modest proposal in Henke (2022a). More detailed information on exactly where Alexander the Great was born and other details of his life would require additional archeological evidence and cautious use of ancient histories that discuss his life. Instead of recognizing the value and necessity of archeology in confirming claims in ancient histories, Lundahl (2022e) improperly criticizes the proposal for not answering questions about Alexander the Great’s Greek origin and other issues, which were never part of the proposal.

Once an ancient historian has been demonstrated to be reliable on some issues as confirmed by archeology or other independent evidence, then other statements in the histories may be tentatively taken more seriously. Ancient documents and archeology, when they work together, and not by themselves, provide the best understanding of what actually happened in ancient history. Together they can possibly identify who did what, when and where the event occurred, and perhaps why and how it occurred.

Unlike Alexander the Great, there is no independent confirmation that the Talking Snake story in Genesis 3 ever occurred. Genesis 3 is probably a myth as argued by Hypotheses #3 and #4 in Henke (2022a). Lundahl (2022c) speculates that Moses wrote Genesis 3 based on lost written records passed down from Adam. This is Hypothesis #1 in Henke (2022a). The alternative conservative Christian and Orthodox Jewish Hypothesis #2 says that Moses learned about Genesis 3 directly from a vision from God. Lundahl (2022c) failed to demonstrate that Hypothesis #1 was a rational option when compared with Hypotheses #3 and #4. He could not even demonstrate that his Hypothesis #1 was any better than Hypothesis #2.

1.0 Introduction

1.1. Background

The following seven essays from Mr. Hans Georg Lundahl (Lundahl 2022a-g) are his March 15, 2022, responses to my initial essay of March 1, 2022, which is Henke (2022a), as well as statements made in our earlier exchange of emails starting on February 13, 2022:

· Several Types of "Supernatural" Featured in Stories Believed to be True (Lundahl 2022a), link to Mr. Lundahl’s website, here.

· On Verifying the Supernatural (Lundahl 2022b), link to Mr. Lundahl’s website, here.

· Four Hypotheses of Kevin R. Henke for Historicity of Genesis 3 (Lundahl 2022c), link to Mr. Lundahl’s website, here

· The Real Reason Why we Can and Could All the Time Say we Know Alexander's Carreer (Lundahl 2022d, spell check needed!), link to Mr. Lundahl’s website, here

· Real Confirmation: Too Late and Too Little Outside Greco-Roman Sphere (Lundahl 2022e), link to Mr. Lundahl’s website, here

· Two Arguments for Alexander that Atheists (and Likeminded) Should Not Use - Or Three (Lundahl 2022f), link to Mr. Lundahl’s website, here

· Undecisives (Lundahl 2022g, spell check needed!), link to Mr. Lundahl’s website, here

Note: The first of the above links on these seven essays are to my website. My website has the original essays as posted by Mr. Lundahl on March 15, 2022. Links for these seven essays are also provided to Mr. Lundahl’s website. Unless Mr. Lundahl altered or updated these essays at his website without telling me, the two sets of essays should be the same. Whether I’m informed or not, I do not want anyone going back and deleting or adding material to our old essays. This would utterly disrupt our conversation and create an even greater mess for our readers to unravel. This is why I have posted his original essays on my website, so that when I quote them, my readers can confirm what Mr. Lundahl originally said, note the context and verify the accuracy of my quotations. If Mr. Lundahl wants to correct any statements in his previous essays, he needs to add errata in his upcoming essays.

This May 15, 2022 essay is a response to Lundahl (2022a-g). In this essay, I have combined all of my responses to Lundahl (2022a-g) and have selectively quoted from Lundahl (2022a-g). My quotations from Lindahl (2022a-g) and his references are in red with indentations and quotation marks. Quotations from McDaniel (2019) and my other references are in green with indentations and quotation marks.

1.2. Lundahl (2022a-g) are Poorly Written

Lundahl (2022a-g) have severe problems with not only what they say, but how they say it. Granted, English is not Mr. Lundahl’s first language. In emails, his English communication skills are very good and certainly better than my German or Spanish. However, Mr. Lundahl’s command of the English language is simply not good enough for technical discussions. I was often frustrated in trying to understand the meaning of many of his statements in Lundahl (2022a-g) because they are often rambling, vague and poorly worded. I also found it frustrating when sometimes he discusses the same topic among two or more of the seven essays. This is one reason why he should have replied to Henke (2022a) with just one well-organized response, and not seven separate essays.

Unfortunately, Lundahl (2022a-g) also frequently contains a lot of inexcusable misspellings and poor or non-existent referencing. Now, I don’t expect any author’s grammar and spelling to be perfect, but Mr. Lundahl should have at least done a spell check. Obviously, spell checks were needed on the very titles of Lundahl (2022d) and Lundahl (2022g). In particular, the title of Lundahl (2022g) is “Undecisives”, which is not a word in the English language. Lundahl (2022g) probably meant indecisive, which according to Merriam-Webster Dictionary online means inconclusive, prone to indecision, irresolute, or indefinite. Furthermore, it does not help the reader when Mr. Lundahl does not define his abbreviations (e.g., COTUS in Lundahl 2022f).

Now, I could have separately responded to each of Lundahl (2022a-g), but then in the next round he may have responded to each of my seven with seven more creating a total of 49. If I then respond to the 49 separately, he might respond to each one of the 49 with seven more giving a total of 343. Now, you can see where this could be going as the rounds of responses between us continue. By the end of the year, our readers might have hundreds or thousands of essays to wade through if Mr. Lundahl doesn’t limit each of his responses to one essay per round like I plan on doing. No one would want to deal with such an enormous mess.

Thus, instead of allowing the number of responses to explode, I have condensed my comments on Lundahl (2022a-g) into this one response. In each round of our future discussions, I expect Mr. Lundahl to combine his responses into one well-organized, well-referenced, spell-checked and well-written essay, and not two, three, seven or more separate essays. As far as I’m concerned, he may liberally quote from my essays when needed, but I ask that he not simply copy them and do a line-by-line commentary as he often does in his emails to me and in Lundahl (2022a-g). This creates a messy and unreadable format for our readers. In all of our responses, we must think of our readers’ needs. Now, if Mr. Lundahl cannot or will not write one coherent and well-organized essay to this response, he should not bother to post them because I won’t bother to wade through them, organize them and respond again.

1.3. Mr. Lundahl’s Improper Use and Non-Use of References

None of Lundahl (2022a-g) has a decent bibliography. He also often makes statements without providing specifics or citing references with the specifics. When he does cite individuals, his references and footnotes are often incomplete, disorganized and ambiguous. For example, when Lundahl (2022a) claims that angels can explain the talking donkey of Numbers 22:22-35, he quotes a Bishop Challoner. No reference is given for this citation. We don’t know who Bishop Challoner is, the context of his statement and whether or not it was in a peer-reviewed journal or part of a joke in a sermon.

In Lundahl (2022d), he cut and pasted a section from a Wikipedia webarticle called “Parallel Lives”, which included several [citation needed] markers in the paragraphs placed several [citation needed] markers in his paragraphs along with the footnote numbers [5], [6] and [7], as shown in his following paragraphs:

“The chief manuscripts of the Lives date from the 10th and 11th centuries, and the first printed edition appeared in Rome in 1470.[6] Thomas North's 1579 English translation was an important source-material for Shakespeare. Jacob Tonson printed several editions of the Lives in English in the late 17th century, beginning with a five-volume set printed in 1688, with subsequent editions printed in 1693, 1702, 1716, and 1727.[citation needed] The most generally accepted text is that of the minor edition of Carl Sintenis in the Bibliotheca Teubneriana (five volumes, Leipzig 1852–1855; reissued without much change in 1873–1875).[citation needed] There are annotated editions by I. C. Held, E. H. G. Leopold, Otto Siefert and Friedrich Blass and Carl Sintenis, all in German; and by Holden, in English.[5]

Two of the lives, those of Epaminondas and Scipio Africanus or Scipio Aemilianus, are lost,[7] and many of the remaining lives are truncated, contain obvious lacunae and/or have been tampered with by later writers.[citation needed]” [my emphasis]

Obviously, Mr. Lundahl should not be cutting and pasting from poorly referenced Wikipedia sites. That’s sloppy and irresponsible. He should be mainly using peer-reviewed journal articles and books. Well-written and referenced websites may be fine, but clearly Mr. Lundahl should have higher standards and know better than to use unfinished and poorly referenced Wikipedia articles. later planned to add citations to support his claims. However, because he did not carefully proofread his own work before sending it to me, the citations were never added. This is totally unacceptable and frustrating. Furthermore, rather than the [5], [6] and [7] being numbers for references in a bibliography at the end of Lundahl (2022d), the PPS section at the end of Lundahl (2022d) lists these numbers as verses from 1 Maccabees 1:1-8 in the Roman Catholic Bible, which have absolutely nothing to do with the discussions in the above quoted text from Lundahl (2022d).

Lundahl (2022a) also cites Kent Hovind to defend the existence of fire-breathing dragons. Again, no reference is given. Lundahl (2022a) further improperly references chapter 8 of C.S. Lewis’ book Miracles (Lewis, 1960), which is entitled “Miracles and the Laws of Nature”, and then makes a reference to a William Collins. So, who is William Collins and how is he related to C.S. Lewis’ book? It turns out that William Collins was the publisher of the edition of Miracles that Lundahl (2022a) used.

The needless confusion and frustration about the exact sources that Lundahl (2022a; 2022d; etc.) quotes or otherwise references would have been cleared up if he had bothered to carefully proofread his own work and create suitably organized bibliographies at the end of each of his essays. As most geologists, I prefer the Chicago or a similar format for referencing; that is, author and date are placed in the text. Other details, such as title, publisher, journal, volume, editors, etc., are listed separately in the bibliography.

2.0. The Supernatural and Where’s the Evidence that It Even Exists?

2.1 Introduction

Mr. Lundahl wrote two separate March 15, 2022 essays on the supernatural, which are Lundahl (2022a) and Lundahl (2022b). My response to both of them is mostly in Sections 2.0 to 4.0 with some additional comments in Section 5.0 on the Talking Snake story of Genesis 3.

2.2 Defining the Supernatural and C.S. Lewis’ Pool Game

In Henke (2022a), I gave my definition of a supernatural act or miracle:

“I define a supernatural act or “magic” as a feat that violates the laws of chemistry and/or physics. Such a supernatural feat could also be called a miracle. For our everyday macroscopic world, the laws of physics would include Newtonian physics for the most part rather than Einsteinian Relativity. The laws of Chemistry are based on atomic theory. Obviously, as our knowledge of chemistry and physics grows, my views of what is supernatural, artificial and natural might change. However, even with the advent of Einsteinian physics, Newton’s laws still widely apply in our Universe.”

Lundahl (2022a) does not like this definition. Instead of citing a definition from a physicist or another scientist, Mr. Lundahl claims that the opinion of non-scientist C.S. Lewis “answers” what a miracle is. Lundahl (2022a) references C.S. Lewis’ book Miracles (Lewis 1960). Based on information in Lewis (1960), Lundahl (2022a) claims that:

“A miracle is not a break away from natural physics, chemistry, or biology, but an addition to them.”

As discussed below in Section 2.4, this claim is nonsense. Miracles or the supernatural don’t “add” to physics, chemistry or biology any more than Putin “adds” to civilization. Miracles as described and promoted in the Bible and other stories violate the laws of physics, chemistry and/or biology.

Now, C.S. Lewis was a prominent Christian writer and apologist of the mid-20^th century. Lewis originally wrote Miracles in 1947 and then updated it in 1960. He died in 1963. My copy of Miracles is the 1960 update (Lewis 1960) and was published in 1974 by HarperOne – HarperCollinsPublishers. As far as I can tell, the copy used by Lundahl (2022a) is the same as mine, including the pagination. Only the publisher may be different and his copy was printed in 2012. Nevertheless, C.S. Lewis (1960, p. 20) even admits that he does not have a “scientific education”, and we can see his lack of expertise in science in the poor and vague summary of the properties of subatomic particles in Lewis (1960, pp. 18-19) and his inability to use them to justify the existence of the supernatural. Although Lewis (1960, p. 92) incorrectly claims that miracles don’t violate natural law, at least Lewis (1960, p. 72) admits that by definition a miracle is an exception to the norm.

Lundahl (2022a) also gives the following summary of chapter 8 of C.S. Lewis’ Miracles (1960), which is entitled “Miracles and the Laws of Nature” (pp. 87-98):

“A physicist - this is probably from chapter 8, "Miracles and the Laws of Nature" starting on p. 87 in the 2012 edition by William Collins, arguably reproducing C. S. Lewis' second, reworked, original edition - a physicist on a steamer is watching the pool balls roll on a table of pool. He can calculate the rolling period of the steamer to perfection (or simply detect it by a watch with split seconds), he can see the movements already ongoing, he can calculate how this will go on, very easily after some time - but he can't calculate whether someone will take up a queue and hit a ball with it. If someone does, the physicist's calculations have been broken, but the laws of movement haven't.” [my emphasis]

So, who is William Collins? Did he edit or write a commentary on C.S. Lewis’ Miracles? Is he a physicist? No, it turns out that William Collins is the publisher of Mr. Lundahl’s copy of Miracles by C.S. Lewis. The ambiguity of this paragraph would have been greatly reduced if Mr. Lundahl had listed everything in an organized bibliography.

The pool (billiards) analogy from chapter 8 of Lewis (1960) and summarized by Lundahl (2022a) is totally ineffective in defending the existence of the supernatural. It only illustrates that a physicist would have difficulty making predictions about a pool game if a human (not a supernatural being) unexpectedly decided to hit one of the balls in the middle of the game. Although the conditions of the pool game might change, notice that Mr. Lundahl admits that no “laws of movement” were violated in this account. That’s because humans, and not God, demons, angels, or other supernatural agents, were playing in this game. When humans play pool, we’re stuck obeying the laws of physics. Now, if God exists, he, by definition, is not necessarily forced to obey natural laws. He supposedly created natural laws and if he can create natural laws, then supposedly he can make exceptions or undo them. God could play pool by either using his supernatural powers or he might simply restrict himself to using only natural laws. If he exists, he could do anything he wanted to. God could remove the effects of gravity from a pool ball and cause it to pass through the ceiling or allow the atoms of the ball to pass through the table, but humans can’t do these things.

2.3. Jesus Walking on Water

In Henke (2022a), I made the following additional comment about the supernatural:

“I would define a supernatural being as an individual or thing that is capable of performing supernatural acts or has bodily structures that are inconsistent with biology.”

In response, Lundahl (2022a) gives the following rambling reply:

“God and angelic beings can do things with bodies that physics doesn't provide their ability for. Like the example of God turning the N/m away from downward vectoriality and like demons keeping the body of David Copperfield above the water, like an adult holding a doll, just the "adult" isn't using hands but will and has no body and isn't visible. Btw, both good angels and demons can readily consider us "immature" - they were created over 7200 years ago and made their mature decision for eternity right after creation, we were each created less than 130 years ago (I presume) and as long as we live, we have time to change, and some do so in the last moment, for better or for worse.”

Notice the first sentence in this quotation from Lundahl (2022a):

“God and angelic beings can do things with bodies that physics doesn't provide their ability for.”

How is this not an admission by Lundahl (2022a) that God and angels use magic and aren’t restricted to the laws of physics? If physics cannot explain how God and angels can do things with physical objects, then those actions are outside of and inconsistent with the laws of physics. This is not “adding” to the laws of physics as Lundahl (2022a) claims, but nullifying the ability of the laws of physics to explain the actions of these supernatural beings.

In the above quotation and earlier statements, Lundahl (2022a) is describing “God turning the N/m away from downward vectoriality” to explain how Jesus walked on water without violating the laws of physics (Matthew 14:22-34; Mark 6:45-53; John 6:16-21). While the gospels usually describe Jesus as walking around and engaging in other activities that were consistent with the laws of gravity, the walking on water story is clearly meant to be taken as extraordinary or supernatural. From the perspective of the gospel stories, with Jesus around, supposedly no one could trust that the laws of chemistry and physics and their effects on biological organisms would remain reliable in the next minute, tomorrow or the following day. According to the gospel stories, blindness, deafness, and lameness could be supernaturally healed by Jesus. In these stories, natural law doesn’t apply when these miracles occur. Miracles counteract and replace the natural consequences, they don’t “add” to them.

Although there’s not a shred of evidence that Jesus ever walked on water, Lundahl (2022a) just assumes that it’s history and then makes up an excuse to fit his biased worldview by speculating on how God could have set up a force to counteract gravity supposedly without contradicting the law of gravity. This is a blatant example of circular reasoning where groundless speculation is used to explain groundless stories from the gospels. This is like trying to argue that the Yellow Brick Road of The Wizard of Oz must have existed. Otherwise, how could Dorothy have gotten to the Emerald City? So, how does Mr. Lundahl know that God used “N/m” forces to allow Jesus to walk on water rather than just locally shutting off gravity and the laws of physics? Also, where’s the evidence of invisible support from demons for Mr. Copperfield’s tricks or that demons even exist? Mr. Lundahl just might as well forget about references to newtons and meters and just claim that invisible angels held up Jesus’ feet from going underwater. If Lundahl (2022a) really wants to suggest that demons help Mr. Copperfield do his tricks, why not forget about the newtons and the meters, and just claim that angels kept Jesus’ head above water? Invoking angels isn’t any worse than the shear speculation and desperation that he offers about invisible “N/m” forces counteracting gravity. Certainly, the human imagination is fertile enough to make up any far-fetched excuse to explain any far-fetched claim in the Bible. However, the ability of Mr. Lundahl to actually obtain any evidence to support these far-fetched ideas is an entirely separate issue.

Later in Lundahl (2022a), he returns to the issue of levitation and again invokes groundless magic to explain the supposed process:

“As explained: levitation does not go against the law of gravity, it either excepts certain matter in and around human bodies from it (in case of God's miracles at walking on water and Ascension) or simply adds an invisible support (cfr the demonic version of how Copperfield does a trick).”

How are “excepts certain matter in and around human bodies” not a violation of the laws of physics? This claim sounds like God temporarily made the mass in human bodies weightless by locally removing the effects of the gravitational constant. How would this not be a violation of the laws of physics? But, before Mr. Lundahl starts throwing out imaginative physics explanations for how Jesus walked on water or ascended, he actually needs to provide evidence that Jesus even walked on water or ascended.

Lundahl (2022a) then accuses me of having a wrong view on what the supernatural is. While I’m not the one trying to inject imaginary forces into these Bible stories, he’s selectively and unjustifiably making up groundless supernatural interpretations about groundless stories in an attempt to avoid violating the laws of physics. He is engaging in fallacious circular reasoning. Mr. Lundahl clearly does not understand the difference between the natural and the supernatural. Most of all, he needs to provide evidence of supernatural beings before believing what they are supposedly capable of doing.

2.4. Jesus’ Multiplying the Loaves and Fish and Creating Wine Would Definitely Violate Natural Law

Although there’s no reason to believe that any of the miracle stories in the gospels or the book of Acts actually happened, there are a number of stories in the gospels that better illustrate how Jesus’ supposed miracles would have violated the laws of chemistry, physics and biology than Jesus walking on water or C.S. Lewis’ pool game (Lewis 1960, chapter 8). Mark 6:30-44 and Mark 8:1-10 claim that Jesus was miraculously able to feed thousands of people from a small number of fish and loaves of bread. Although the stories don’t try to explain how these “miracles” happened, the reader is probably expected to assume that Jesus was able to magically multiply the available fish and bread through ex nihilo (something out of nothing) miracles. These miracles would have clearly violated the laws of chemistry, biology and physics. So, where did the extra fish and bread come from if these stories did not involve violating the laws of chemistry, biology, and physics with ex nihilo magic? Did invisible angels catch some more fish and bake extra bread? Well, the verses clearly indicate that there was no time for that. The people were hungry and they ate right away. Did the angels use miracles to catch the fish and speed up the baking of the bread? There’s no indication in the stories that that happened either. Besides, speeding up the chemical reactions in the baking of the bread would require violating the laws of chemistry and physics. Bread can only bake so quickly under the laws of chemistry and physics without incomplete baking or burning it to carbon. The stories also do not indicate that Jesus called down extra bread or fish from Heaven like manna. No, the story indicates that Jesus blessed and distributed the fish and bread that were already there and that the available fish and bread miraculously multiplied in violation of natural law to feed thousands. Clearly, the stories in Mark 6 and 8 are expected to be magical and that natural law even as the ancient Israelites understood it didn’t apply in these “fishy” stories.

Similarly, Jesus instantly changing water into wine (John 2:1-10) would also have violated the laws of chemistry and biology. Natural chemical reactions and fermentation cannot instantaneously occur without magic. It takes time, yeast and chemicals to naturally change water into wine. Magic would also be needed to get rid of the excess heat from speeding up the fermentation process. Otherwise, the wine might boil dry. These miracles stories indicate that natural laws were violated and not “added to.”

Lewis (1960, p. 94) also stresses that once a miracle occurs, nature accommodates it. That is, once conception occurs in a virgin, the baby grows naturally in the womb, she/he is naturally born in nine months and then grows up naturally. Lewis (1960, p. 95) also mentions that miraculous bread would be naturally digested. However, he misses the point of how the initial formation of a baby, the bread or wine violated natural law. Certainly, no proponent of the supernatural would say that a miracle has to remain permanently supernatural and can’t eventually slip into the realm of natural law. For example, people that believe that Lazarus rose from the dead (John 11:1-44) probably think that he lived a rather normal non-supernatural life after that and eventually died again.

Lundahl (2022a) further claims:

“God is richer than the riches He put down in the regular processes of nature when creating.”

Here, Mr. Lundahl assumes that God exists without giving any justification. How does Mr. Lundahl know that God exists and if he created anything? Where’s his evidence? Lundahl (2022a) fails to openly reveal and justify his assumptions. He simply jumps to a conclusion in this statement and expects his readers to accept whatever he says about God.

2.5. Mr. Lundahl Suggests Demons Assist Magicians with Stage Tricks

Lundahl (2022a) initially states that he does not want to get into a debate about whether or not demons help stage illusionists (magicians) walk on water and perform their other illusions. Yet, as shown in the two quotations from Lundahl (2022a) in Section 2.3, Lundahl (2022a) injects the absolutely bizarre and unnecessary suggestion that demons are helping David Copperfield or other stage magicians. I will not allow him to make such blanket and superstitious suggestions without him justifying his speculations. I define superstition as the irrational invoking of demons, angels, God, luck, leprechauns, or other supernatural forces or beings without a shred of evidence to superficially explain away unusual events. This is exactly what Mr. Lundahl does throughout Lundahl (2022a) and his other essays. If he can’t or doesn’t want to provide any evidence about the existence of demons and what they can supposedly do, he should leave his groundless speculation about demonic activity completely out of his essays. They don’t help his arguments at all. Also, if he brings up a topic, he needs to be able to support it with good references or evidence, and not just throw out groundless claim after groundless claim. Groundless claims add up to nothing.

In my February 15, 2022, 8:03 pm US Eastern email to Mr. Lundahl, I said that James Randi, magician and skeptic, used to complain that many people in his audiences thought that his entertaining magic shows involved real supernatural powers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Randi . Well, when Mr. Lundahl suggests that David Copperfield and others might have help from demons in doing their tricks, he has joined the same lot of superstitious people that used to be in Mr. Randi’s audiences. With such widespread superstition and gullibility, it’s not surprising that conartists could use magic tricks to start religions and possibly deceive millions for generations to come.

Lundahl (2022a) also speculates that demons can give the false impression of violating the laws of physics. Once more, Mr. Lundahl presents no evidence for the existence of demons or what they supposedly can or cannot do. He simply expects his readers to accept whatever he says about demons just because he, the Bible or the Church says so. Before Mr. Lundahl can make any claim, he has the burden of evidence to demonstrate that the claim is true. Otherwise, it’s just his imagination.

2.6 A Nonsensical Time Line in Lundahl (2022a)

Getting back to this vague quotation from Lundahl (2022a):

“God and angelic beings can do things with bodies that physics doesn't provide their ability for. Like the example of God turning the N/m away from downward vectoriality and like demons keeping the body of David Copperfield above the water, like an adult holding a doll, just the "adult" isn't using hands but will and has no body and isn't visible. Btw, both good angels and demons can readily consider us "immature" - they were created over 7200 years ago and made their mature decision for eternity right after creation, we were each created less than 130 years ago (I presume) and as long as we live, we have time to change, and some do so in the last moment, for better or for worse.” [my emphasis]

Here, Mr. Lundahl speculates on a timeline about demons and angels, and the origin of humanity (130 years ago???) that does not make any sense or have a shred of evidence. This is just another example of him putting baseless dates on imaginary events. This type of groundless and often superstitious speculation has no place whatsoever in rational arguments that must be based on evidence.

2.7. Nature, Morality and Reason

Lundahl (2022a) also makes the following statement to me about nature and our consciousness:

“Other takeaway in CSL's [C.S. Lewis’] Miracles, you carry around yourself two very clear indications that nature is not all there is - neither reason nor morality can be reduced to matter and energy affected by each other in accordance with laws of physics and chemistry. The ‘hard problem of consciousness’ - to take it from a somewhat different angle - remains hard. We don't just need an intelligent designer who arranged our brains for optimal consciousness, we need (for purposes we take for granted, like refuting or like blaming) something other than just brain arrangements in our consciousness.”

I fully admit that I’m no expert on consciousness. Contrary to what Lundahl (2022a) and Lewis (1960, his chapter 3, etc.) indicate in this quotation, our thoughts are electrical and our brains are matter. Lewis (1960, chapter 3, etc.) questioned the ability of humans to rationally understand our surroundings through naturalism and he argued that we should seriously consider that miracles occur. However, Lewis (1960) had the burden of evidence to demonstrate his claims for miracles and he failed to do so. Now, investigators are still looking for miracles at revival meetings, among psychics, at supposedly haunted houses, and elsewhere, and not finding any evidence for them.

Who we are, including our reason and moral values, arise from interactions between our brains and our surroundings. We observe, test and confirm with the help of others our conclusions about events in nature. Our brains, thoughts and surroundings are all ultimately controlled by the laws of chemistry and physics. That is, we can imagine what it would be like to be able to magically levitate objects only using our thoughts, but the laws of chemistry and physics don’t actually allow us to do it. Nevertheless, there is a danger that when we recognize that our brains are nothing but matter and energy that we might be tempted to trivialize this electrical activity and think that it has no serious consequences. That is, considering how much damage the electrical activity in Putin’s brain is doing to millions of people in the Ukraine, we cannot underestimate the power of a single human brain to manipulate other humans and weapons in his/her environment. This is why millions of people hope that Putin’s brain soon ceases to function and that more rational and empathetic brains will replace him.

Our morals and reasoning abilities arise in response to our surroundings, including how we interact with other humans. By getting confirmation from our fellow humans and doing experimental testing, we can make reliable discoveries about our environment. We can send spacecraft to Moon, understand why severe earthquakes occur in certain areas and not others, and we understand what causes influenza, etc. The supernatural is not needed to explain these discoveries. Because of the power of the human brain and our ability to adequately understand what’s going on in our surroundings, we can have a huge impact on our surroundings. Unfortunately, humans can also do extensive damage to our environment.

No gods, angels, demons or a Bible are also needed to figure out how people should try to function in our environments. We should develop rules (morality) through reason and not Biblical dogma so that we can live peacefully with each other and our environment. No sane person wants to live in poverty, misery and violence. Ukrainian soldiers are the only sane individuals wanting to move to eastern Ukraine.

We should also recognize that not all brains function well. Mental illness and deficiency are real. As rational research shows, chemicals, traumatic experiences and genetics can certainly cause mental illness. Demons aren’t required.

2.8. A Talking Donkey

Lundahl (2022a) further cites the story of the talking donkey in Numbers 22:22-41. As with his other references to the Bible, he cites this story without providing a shred of evidence that it actually happened. He simply wants his readers to irrationally accept the story as history. We certainly know that donkeys and snakes don’t talk. That’s the big problem with these stories. There’s no rational reason to believe them. It’s far more probable that someone just made up these stories. Because others liked and believed them, they got into the Bible.

Without giving a proper reference, Lundahl (2022a) refers to a Bishop Challoner and states that angels are capable of making a donkey talk without violating natural law. Once more, Mr. Lundahl commits the fallacy of circular reasoning. Without having a shred of evidence, he invokes a groundless story about an angel to explain another groundless story about a talking donkey. He has done absolutely nothing to rationally convince us that any of these stories ever happened. He just expects us to accept that this account in Numbers was history because it’s in the Bible.

2.9. Classification of Greek Myths in Lundahl (2022a)

When discussing the Cyclops, Lundahl (2022a) indicates that he prefers to divide Greek mythology into “divine myths” and “heroic legend.” He further states that the former is generally not believed by Christians, but the latter is generally accepted unless there are specific reasons against it. However, I would argue that unless either mythical group has good external evidence, there is no good reason to believe any Greek mythology, no matter how they may be classified or subdivided into different categories.

In an absolutely rambling and incoherent paragraph on the “cynosecphaloi”, dogs and St. Christopher, Lundahl (2022a) uses a racist term. Although he tried to defend his use of this insulting term in a footnote and he states that he did not mean for it to be an insult, there’s absolutely no justification for using it.

2.10. Fire-breathing Dragons – Kent Hovind is not a Reliable Source for Anything

In a vain attempt to justify that dragons could have actually breathed fire, Lundahl (2022a) scrapes the bottom of the barrel and cites Kent Hovind to support his argument:

“I think Kent Hovind gave a good reply when referring to the bombardier beetle. Yes, Leviathan is described as fire-breathing, so he dealt with it on a seminar on Job (morally not as great as Moralia in Job by St. Gregory), and the explosions coming out from the bombardier beetle would kill it - if they happened inside the head of it. Two liquids are emitted separately and join when coming outside the organism, and then explode. Same would be the case with things catching fire when coming out of a dragon's (or leviathan's) nostrils. Hovind mentioned more than one dino that had cavities above the nose, and these could have held liquids meant for such combustion.”

Once more, Mr. Lundahl provides no reference for Hovind’s statements. Nevertheless, I know a lot about Hovind and I’ve even spoken with him over the phone. Hovind is totally incompetent on science and doesn’t know anything about paleontology. I’ve even read Hovind’s diploma mill “doctoral dissertation.” It’s absolutely dreadful and incompetent. See Senter (2019) for a detailed rebuttal of Hovind’s and other young Earth creationist nonsense on fire-breathing dinosaurs.

2.11. Magic Fruit Trees

In yet another example of the circular reasoning fallacy, Lundahl (2022a) uses a groundless act of speculation about God levitating Jesus on water to justify another groundless claim that magic fruit trees existed in the Garden of Eden:

“If God can make the mass in kg have no N/m down to gravity of earth, He can endow biology with such clearly more than biological qualities as well. Again, it is not the chemistry of the fruits that will have these effects.”

Before Mr. Lundahl can argue about what God actually did, he needs to first demonstrate that God exists and after that he needs to demonstrate that God was willing to cause Jesus to walk on water, produce magic fruit trees or do anything supernatural.

2.12. Transubstantiation “Miracles”

Lundahl (2022a) briefly raises the transubstantiation issue with the following ambiguous and poorly written statement:

“Transsubstantiation [sic, spelling] miracles don't defy chemistry, since a tacit assumption in all natural chemical process is, God is not changing things directly - but sometimes He is.”

Well, when does God change chemical processes directly and when doesn’t he, and how does Mr. Lundahl tell the difference? If Lundahl (2022a) wants to actually demonstrate that any transubstantiation miracles occur, he needs to get the Roman Catholic Church to submit the consecrated bread and wine for a thorough analysis. Of course, the Roman Catholic Church will never do that. So, Mr. Lundahl’s claim that transubstantiation miracles don’t defy chemistry is probably only true because nothing miraculous actually happens.

2.13. Alchemy

Alchemy is the claim that humans have the ability to transform lead or other common metals into gold or other precious metals. Rather than recognizing that these claims are baseless, Lundahl (2022a) takes them seriously and suggests that they were possibly caused by demonic activity. In a rambling and often vague section in Lundahl (2022a), Mr. Lundahl claims that Theophrastus Paracelsus (1493-1541) of Vienna may have changed a copper coin into gold:

“Lead and gold are badly chosen, but Paracelsus seems - seemed - to have turned a copper penny to a gold coin in Vienna. Not sure whether it was real gold or a demonic sham (he had, they said, a contract with the devil, which he managed to wheedle himself out of without losing the benefits). I don't count him as a prophet of God. It could be a parodic twist to his real reputation too. I do believe he helped out a host - or the tale could be a parody of real legends to discredit them, if it was produced in the Enlightenment:

Die Sage, dass der berühmte Arzt Theophrastus Paracelsus (1493-1541) hier 1538 geweilt und eine schlechte Münze in ein Goldstück verwandelt habe, taucht erst im 18. Jahrhundert auf und wird in der Wiener Publizistik seit 1837 auf das Haus bezogen (Inschrift).

https://www.geschichtewiki.wien.gv.at/K%C3%BCssdenpfennig

Translating: the legend that the well known physician Theophrastus Paracelsus (1493-1541) should have rested here and and turned a bad coin into a piece of gold only appears in the 18th C. and is in the Viennese journalism taken to refer to this hous - Küßdenpfennig - since an inscription in 1837.”

Lundahl (2022a) even suggests that Paracelsus might have had a contract with the devil. Once more, Mr. Lundahl considers groundless claims of demonic activity to explain what was likely a sleight-of-hand trick, if the story about the copper coin ever happened at all. It could be nothing more than a false rumor. Even Mr. Lundahl’s English translation of his German reference at https://www.geschichtewiki.wien.gv.at/K%C3%BCssdenpfennig indicates that the story only appeared in the 18^th century. So, why would Lundahl (2022a) even need to consider the possibility of demonic activity when this entire story can be explained away as a legend or a simple trick? This is another example of superstition. He suggests the presence of demonic activity when such activity is not needed and has no evidential support. Lundahl (2022a) finishes this section by mentioning that Joseph Smith was a Freemason, which I am fully aware of.

Now, the title of Lundahl (2022a) is “Several Types of ‘Supernatural’ Featured in Stories Believed to be True.” However, when his essay is carefully studied there’s absolutely no reason to believe any of the stories that he thinks are true. These stories range from just quoting the Bible to absurd suggestions that demons might assist David Copperfield in his stage shows.

3.0 Verifying History and the Supernatural

3.1. Written “Histories” by Themselves Usually Aren’t Good Enough to Establish Reliable History

In Lundahl (2022d), Lundahl (2022f), Lundahl (2022b), and in several of his emails, Mr. Lundahl makes a totally unwarranted assumption that if the earliest known audience believed that Genesis 3 or another claim in an ancient text was historically true, then the claims must be true. Of course, this assumption is nonsense for the following reasons:

1. People lie and make up stories.

2. People misinterpret natural events and sometimes credit them to supernatural forces (e.g., volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, severe storms, draught).

3. The history of Mormonism, Scientology, etc. demonstrate that lies can become accepted by thousands or even millions of gullible people in a short amount of time, perhaps in no more than decades or a century.

4. Even if ancient historians (such as the five ancient biographers of Alexander the Great, Section 6.0) were sincere and honest, they still may have included inaccurate information, false rumors and misinterpretations in their works.

5. We don’t know who wrote Genesis 3 and when it was written.

6. The Dead Sea scrolls have the oldest known fragments of Genesis. This was about 1,000 years after Moses supposedly wrote the book. So, how could the writers of the Dead Sea scrolls have reliably known anything about events that occurred perhaps a thousand or more years earlier? How does Mr. Lundahl know that Genesis 3 is not a fabrication that may have been additionally altered or rewritten long before the Dead Sea scrolls? Why should anyone trust the claims in Genesis? Lundahl (2022c) assumes that God would have protected Genesis from corruption, but this assumption is totally without merit.

7. The biology of snakes is incompatible with them talking and there’s no evidence of either a supernatural or biological Talking Snake ever existing.

8. As further discussed in Section 5.0 and Henke (2022a), Hypotheses #3 and #4 on the origin of the Genesis 3 Talking Snake are rational, but Hypotheses #1 and #2 are not.

9. Mr. Lundahl has the burden of evidence to demonstrate that the claims in Genesis 3 and elsewhere in the Bible are factual.

Mr. Lundahl fails to realize that ancient histories by themselves cannot be trusted, especially if they were written centuries or millennia after the supposed event that they are describing or if the documents are copies of copies of copies of copies... and not the originals Even if an ancient history happens to be an original copy describing an event that occurred at the time that the document was written, unless a claim in an ancient history is confirmed with independent external evidence, either in another manuscript or from archeology, there’s no reason to accept it as reliable history. There’s a big difference between an historical claim and a reliable historical claim.

Except in the case of a global event, such as a comet being recorded in ancient China and Europe in the same year, there is usually no way for modern scholars to verify that two ancient manuscripts actually contain independent testimonies of an event and that the account is reliable. In most cases, archeological data are needed to confirm the reliability of a claim in a written account. No matter how plausible an ancient claim might sound, it could be a false rumor or an outright fabrication.

Once an ancient historian has been demonstrated to be reliable on some issues as confirmed by archeology or other independent documentation, then their other statements may be tentatively taken more seriously. Ancient documents and archeology when they work together, and not by themselves, can provide the best understanding of what actually happened. They can possibly identify who did what, when and where the event occurred, and perhaps why and how it occurred.

3.2. My Ranking System for Historical Events

As mentioned in Henke (2022a), I proposed a ranking system for both human and natural historical events:

“I recognize that past events really can’t be proven. Proof is more in the realm of mathematics rather than history or science. Nevertheless, I tend to rank claims about historical events as: 1) highly probable or beyond a reasonable doubt, 2) probable, 3) plausible, 4) unlikely or 5) highly unlikely (probably false or myth).

Now, if the existence of an historical claim or individual has not been verified, then I would tend to be skeptical of the claim or whether the individual actually existed. I would tend to tentatively classify these unverified claims and individuals as plausible, unlikely or highly unlikely. In these situations, I would tend to ask myself: “Which is more probable that the event actually occurred or that the individual actually existed or that someone just made it all up?”

In his second essay, Lundahl (2022b) complains that when I rank a supernatural event as “highly unlikely”, I’m taking my worldview “as a test of historic facthood.” Actually, I’m ranking supernatural events as highly unlikely because I see absolutely no evidence of the supernatural. I think that it’s far more probable that someone just made up the supernatural story and that enough gullible people believed it, so that it was recorded for future generations. Recently, I saw TV “prophets” frequently making demonstrably false prophecies about covid disappearing in March 2020 and false claims of miraculous healings and other miracles. In recent history, Joseph Smith Jr. made numerous well-documented false prophecies. Ancient people also made up numerous far-fetched stories about gods and goddesses that few people now believe and no one should believe. I have seen no evidence that magic existed in the past any more than it does in the present. I don’t see any evidence to believe any of these present and past miraculous stories, including Genesis 3. So, Mr. Lundahl, I challenge you to refute my worldview by giving me the evidence of the Talking Snake that I’ve been asking for. In contrast, we have plenty of artifacts and videos of WWII and even a few WWII veterans are still alive. My dad experienced that war. WWII deserves a high ranking based on the evidence, the Talking Snake does not. Theology and political and personal desires have no role in judging the validity of history.

Judging the veracity of historical events usually involves shades of gray, and not black and white absolutes. Because of this, I will further quantify my ranking scale by assigning values of 0 to 100 as my assessments of the probabilities of historical events, where 100 indicates absolute historical fact and 0 is absolutely a myth – a lie, an impossibility. WWII would get a ranking of 99+, but still below 100, and the Talking Snake is below 1, but still above 0.

3.3. Verifying History and the Supernatural

Lundahl (2022a) claims that “Genesis 3 is a piece of history.” Yet, in none of these seven essays (Lundahl 2022a-g) does he ever present any evidence for this claim. Lundahl (2022a) also claims that “history is verified historically” and not scientifically:

“History is verified historically, not scientifically, at its most basic, since science cannot verify whether only scientifically verifiable phenomena exist or occur.”

This statement is merely vague tautology. Archeology and forensic science are legitimate sciences, along with paleontology and other geologic sciences that investigate the remaining evidence of past events. Historical sciences that investigate human endeavors may not be able to determine the why, the how or other details about what happened, but in some circumstances, as discussed in Section 6.0 and Henke (2022a), they can definitely identify the who, what, when and/or where.

Rather than recognizing the virgin birth of Romulus as nothing more than a made-up story, Lundahl (2022a) again suggests that it might have happened and that a demon could have been responsible. Lundahl (2022a) again shows his inability to separate out real history from likely mythology that involves angels, demons and other supernatural beings. This is part of a superstitious mindset that sees demons almost everywhere instead of recognizing that fertile human imaginations are more than capable of making up stories and that these stories can become popular with gullible audiences.

According to his second essay, Lundahl (2022b), there are two ways to verify the existence of the supernatural; namely, metaphysics and history. He is definitely wrong to claim that history is capable of verifying the supernatural. C.S. Lewis (1960, p. 2), a source used by Lundahl (2022a), even agrees with me that “history can never convince us that a miracle occurred.” We can never rule out the strong possibility that “witnesses” to a past “supernatural event” outright lied and made-up a story, or misinterpreted what they saw. These are the bases of Hypotheses #3 and #4 for the Talking Snake, which Lundahl (2022c) utterly fails to adequately address as discussed in Section 5.0 of this essay.

Lewis (1960, p. 87) is also correct when he states that the “progress of science” has not eliminated the possibility of miracles and that science has not demonstrated that miracles are impossible. However, again, Lewis (1960, pp. 17-85) fails to demonstrate that human reasoning or another other process involves the supernatural. He also failed to realize that the burden of evidence for miracles are on those that argue for miracles. Despite his often vague rambling, Lewis (1960) presents no evidence of miracles.

The only way to demonstrate the existence of the supernatural is to have it demonstrated under strictly controlled conditions with multiple investigators from diverse backgrounds. These investigations would certainly involve logic and mathematics, but not any unnecessary pedantic and flawed metaphysical arguments.

As an example, someone might claim that he witnessed a “prophet” raising a cat from the dead. Obviously, this claim could be a lie or a misinterpretation. So, how could anyone confirm that this prophet has the ability to raise animals from the dead? The only reliable way is to test the prophet under strictly controlled conditions. First, you collect a DNA sample from a cat that has just died. Get three veterinarians to independently confirm that the cat is indeed dead. Next, place the cat in a well-secured storage area where it can rot for a week. Then under strictly controlled conditions involving videos, get the prophet to raise the cat from the dead. If the cat comes back to life, immediately collect another DNA sample to confirm that it’s the same cat.

Let’s say that someone was actually able on their own without technological assistance to resurrect a cat from the dead. Perhaps, he lays his hands on dead animals, prays, and in all cases the animals come back to life. Now, some superskeptics might simply argue that the individual has discovered a new, but totally natural, way of resurrecting the dead and that the supernatural remains undemonstrated. For example, someone might argue that aliens from space could have hidden advanced technologies or natural powers that would allow them to resurrect dead animals even after a week. The process would look supernatural to our primitive minds even though natural law was not violated. It is said that advanced technologies appear as “magic” to less technical societies. If this is a genuine concern, have the “prophet” do a bigger task, such as producing a complete solar system from nothing within a light year of Earth. The prophet could be given six days to do it. Now, someone might groundlessly speculate that in a million years people might develop the technology to raise the dead or create solar systems from nothing – ex nihilo creation. Maybe, but if humans every gain the ability through either technology, now unknown natural powers or magic to raise the dead or create entire solar systems from nothing; that is, utterly control space and time, then they might meet the definitions of a god and they might deserve the right to be called gods. However, that doesn’t mean that they deserve worship as gods. Their moral character still may be quite human and flawed. Nevertheless, I’m skeptical that humans will ever be able to do ex nihilo creation and resurrect the decayed dead.

Now, I fully understand that a god, prophet, psychic, ghost, demon, or angel probably would never agree to submit to testing, but this is the only way to verify the supernatural. So, believers in the supernatural are in the unfortunate position of not being able to demonstrate that their claims are real. Too bad for them. Nevertheless, skeptics have no rational reason to lower their standards so that believers’ likely nonsense could be labeled as reality. Advocates of the supernatural have to find some way to meet strict scientific standards and demonstrate their claims.

Concerning my high standards for verifying the existence of a supernatural event or being, Lundahl (2022a) replies:

“Will you ‘lower it’ confronted with the fact that your ‘standard’ is not consistent with how we have historical knowledge?”

Of course not. Others might be willing to lower their standards for studying the past so that Mr. Lundahl can label likely fairy tales as “history”, but I won’t and neither should anyone else that studies past events. I will not lower my standards at all to comply with what he views as being “consistent” with historical knowledge, when he readily mixes angels, demons and other groundless claims with reality to explain both the past and present. Lundahl (2022a-g) is engaging in mythmaking and speculation, and not appropriate historical investigations. I am consistent in my very conservative interpretations of both human and geological history, and I see no evidence whatsoever to inject the supernatural into either of them.

Any literate individual can write and make up anything. This is exactly why Mormon apologists are so desperate to verify the Book of Mormon with archeology. They know very well that Joseph Smith Jr. or others could have made up the Book of Mormon. They recognize that they need external evidence to confirm that the Book of Mormon is history. Well, the same problem exists for Genesis and Exodus. It could have been made up by a “prophet” as I discuss in Section 5.0.

3.4. The Lundahl (2022b) Test for Evaluating a Past Supernatural Event is Inadequate

Next, Lundahl (2022b) apparently tries to demonstrate the existence of the supernatural through metaphysics. He then asks the following test questions:

“There are tests that can be done without first asking ‘is it supernatural’, such as:

· do we have one version, agreeing with itself?

· do we have several versions, agreeing with each other?

· do we have several versions, disagreeing?

· did the earliest known audience believe it was fiction or history?

· is there specific evidence for fraud, any specific person who was in a position to perpetrate it?

And this test obviously involves strictly keeping apart ‘fraud’ from ‘fiction’. As far as we two are concerned, Joseph Smith is fraud, Superman is fiction.

We also cannot state that the earliest known audience for Joseph Smith believed his ‘translations from the golden plates’ were history, unless we restrict it to the very short time when only his already adepts knew of it. Some in his lifetime did rather see Book of Mormon, not as fiction, but as fraud.

Will you do these tests, or won't you?” [his emphasis]

As a side note, it’s obviously that Joseph Smith Jr. got a cult following pretty quickly. His following started out as a small group that believed Smith when he said that he was a prophet and that the Book of Mormon was history. Today, that group has grown into millions of Mormons across the globe that still believe Smith and that the Book of Mormon is authentic history. Now, there have always been critics of Joseph Smith going back to at least Howe (1834), but let’s imagine what might happen if 2,000 years from now Mormonism becomes the dominant world religion, all records critical of Smith are lost or destroyed as heresy, including Howe (1834), and only Mormon apologists dominate the claims about the founding of Mormonism in the 19^th century history. Or think of Islam. The religion started out as a small group of followers of Mohammad. Now, there are about one billion Muslims. Secularists would argue that Islam is an example of a false prophet and military leader deceiving a small group of people that naturally grew into a major religion in only 1,400 years.

In this Section, I will certainly do the test mentioned in Lundahl (2022b) by applying it to the Talking Snake story in Genesis 3. However, I will also demonstrate that his test is terribly flawed and is unable to distinguish between hoaxes/fiction and reality for historical events. Under the Method of the Multiple Working Hypotheses (Reinfort 2019; Strahler 1999, pp. 19-20), I can accept either Hypothesis #3 or #4 for the origin of the Talking Snake story (see Section 5.0). So, I’ll apply the above test questions to the Talking Snake of Genesis 3 as promoted by either of these hypotheses.

3.4.1. Do We Have One Version, Agreeing with Itself?

For Genesis 3 or any account of a past event, this question is largely irrelevant. Careful fiction writers can craft a story that is completely consistent with itself, especially if it’s as short as Genesis 3. One testimony is not enough. Independent confirmation of all stories is needed! On the other hand, an eyewitness to an actual car accident may appear to contradict herself/himself because of inadequate oral or writing skills, misdefining terms, or not paying careful enough attention to details in her/his descriptions.

3.4.2. Do We Have Several Versions Agreeing with Each Other?

In Lundahl (2022e), Mr. Lundahl claims that Zoroastrianism also has a story about people falling into sin and that some scholars think that this story was the inspiration for Genesis 3. Well, maybe. We simply do not know if Genesis 3 borrowed some ideas from Zoroastrianism, if Zoroastrianism borrowed them from Genesis 3 or if they both got their ideas from an older myth.

Lundahl (2022e) also mentions that the Gilgamesh myth describes a snake that stole from Gilgamesh an herb that granted eternal life. Nevertheless, without giving any evidence, Lundahl (2022e) simply wants to believe that the Gilgamesh and Zoroastrian accounts borrowed from Genesis 3. In reality, at least the Gilgamesh myth is probably older than Genesis 3 (Smith 2015). Furthermore, Smith (2015) provides an explanation for why the writers of Genesis 3 would have borrowed from the once popular ideas of Mesopotamian Ophiomancy. Nevertheless, both the Genesis 3 and Gilgamesh myths could be based on an even older myth – we don’t know.

Lundahl (2022e) also mentions the “Cohanim”, which refers to Jewish priests, and he wonders why they would have used the Zoroastrian or Gilgamesh stories to create Genesis 3. As Smith (2015) discusses, ancient cultures often borrowed their beliefs from surrounding cultures and modified them for their own purposes. Mr. Lundahl and others can read this article and draw their own conclusions. Despite the subjective, totally unjustified and biased favoritism for Genesis 3 in Lundahl (2022e), there’s simply no evidence that a Talking Snake, Gilgamesh, Adam, or an herb-stealing snake ever existed. The claims in Genesis 3 are no better than similar groundless stories in Zoroastrianism or the Gilgamesh Epics.

The only version of the Talking Snake story in the Bible is in Genesis 3. Even if we had multiple accounts in the Bible, such as the miraculous multiplying of the fish and loaves stories in the gospels, that does not mean that they are independent and reliable. To conclude that several versions agreeing with each other are actually reliable, they must be independent accounts of the same event. That is, they must be independently recorded by multiple eyewitnesses that did not collude and share information with each other. Multiple versions may simply borrow and rework one earlier, but totally fictional, account. Demonstrating that several versions of the same story are truly independent is a difficult task. This is why, we can’t trust claims of miracles in history and we first have to demonstrate the existence of the supernatural under strictly controlled present-day conditions (Section 3.3). Any conartist or false prophet can make up a story, write it down, and eventually a lot of people will take it as fact. Inventers of stories also often borrow from earlier invented stories. For example, Joseph Smith extensively borrowed from the Bible to write the Book of Mormon.

3.4.3. Do We Have Several Versions Disagreeing?

We only have one version of this story in the Bible. As mentioned above, Lundahl (2022e) notes that the Gilgamesh Epic and Zoroastrianism also have stories that resemble Genesis 3, including people falling into sin, a tricky snake and magical plants that give eternal life. However, how these stories are possibly related to each other and which are more original are unknown. Certainly, there’s no evidence in any of these stories to think that they are anything but works of fiction.

3.4.4. Did the Earliest Known Audience Believe it was Fiction or History?

As illustrated by Hypotheses #3 and #4, this is a totally irrelevant question. A small number of influential people can believe that contemporary hoaxes or works of fiction are real and pass their beliefs onto future generations. The deception then spreads over time. Millions of people are still doing this within Mormonism and Scientology. Over time, any evidence of deception or misinterpretation would disappear, especially if those who write “history” don’t want their favorite religions to be disparaged as frauds and hoaxes. It should be obvious that lies always start with a relatively small group of people believing it, but over decades or centuries it can widely spread and become part of a religion that becomes popular. This process as described by Hypotheses #3 and #4 is far more rational and probable than actually believing that a Talk Snake once existed. All urban myths also start out as lies or misinterpretations within a small group, but over time, either through propaganda, religion or popular culture, they become widely believed as true. Also, it doesn’t help if the “earliest known audience” for Genesis 3 tended to be superstitious and lived thousands of years after the supposed event.

3.4.5. Is There Specific Evidence for Fraud, Any Specific Person Who Was in a Position to Perpetrate it?

For Genesis 3, this is another entirely irrelevant and inappropriate test question. Unless someone confesses, the evidence of a hoax and the identification of the perpetrator often disappear within only a few decades. Nevertheless, the story of a Talking Snake is so ridiculous based on biology alone that no rational person should accept it just because the likely perpetrator is long dead and cannot be identified. Again, if Mr. Lundahl wants to promote Genesis 3 as history, he has the burden of evidence to convince people that we should believe this unbelievable story.

The question “Is There Specific Evidence for Fraud, Any Specific Person Who Was in a Position to Perpetrate it?” also raises another issue where Mr. Lundahl and I disagree. As long as an account appears to pass his test questions, Mr. Lundahl would probably tend to accept a story as authentic unless specific evidence that it’s a fraud comes forward or until a specific and potential perpetrator can be identified. I take a better and more careful approach, where I’m skeptical of a story until external evidence comes forward to confirm and demonstrate that it can be trusted. In other words, I’m skeptical of an account until demonstrated reliable rather than trusting it until it’s demonstrated unreliable. Whether its human or geological history, the first response to any new discovery or claim should be skepticism and not a taken-at-face-value acceptance until demonstrated otherwise. Now, I learn to work with uncertainties and place them as plausible or 50%, at most, on my scale for ranking historical events (Section 3.2).

Then there is Dr. Morton Smith’s controversial account of Secret Mark (Smith 2005; Smith 2014; also: Ehrman 2003, pp. 67-89; Jeffery 2007; Hedrick 2003). Unfortunately, Smith is now dead and we still don’t know if the account of Secret Mark is a hoax or authentic. It could be either. Although Dr. Smith might have been in “a position to perpetrate” such a fraud, as Lundahl (2022b) asks, we don’t know if he could have done it or why he would have done it. Thus, for Secret Mark, the careful and more wise approach is not to trust the account and not to rely on it, at least not until it is somehow confirmed as authentic. Maybe someday an authentic 1^st century AD copy of Secret Mark will be found- who knows? In contrast, if there is no specific evidence for fraud or if Dr. Morton Smith really wasn’t in a position to perpetrate a fraud, then some researchers using the hasty approach in Lundahl (2022b) might accept Secret Mark as authentic, rely on it, and cite it in papers. They would then have to hope that the book isn’t eventually exposed as a hoax that would damage one’s reputation and destroy years of research.

Under Hypotheses #3 or #4, I recognize that people are often gullible and tend to believe stories, especially if the stories agree with their worldview or, from Mr. Lundahl’s point of view, there’s no evidence of a fraud perpetrator and everything appears consistent in the account. However, Mr. Lundahl’s permissive approach does no good if the perpetrator is long dead and his exact motives can never be known, as with Dr. Morton Smith. As demonstrated by Hypotheses #3 and #4, fraudulent stories and misinterpretations are common in our society and always have been. These problems with hoaxes and misinterpretations range from office and small-town gossip to regional urban legends to global religions. The evidence on the origin of Genesis 3 is long gone, but currently there’s no evidence to trust it.

The most common reasons for why “prophets” invent false stories are for power and/or money. I think Kat Kerr invents stories to get attention and contributions. Joseph Smith Jr. used Mormonism to gain wealth and power, including the power to fornicate with whomever he wanted. No doubt, the ancient Israelite priests found the Pentateuch useful in gaining a lot of power and tithes and offerings that would otherwise have gone to the temples of Baal and other competing religions. The ancient Israelite priests were especially able to gain wealth and power when they had the support of Hezekiah and other powerful kings backing up their religion with force. As I explained in Henke (2022a), unlike the Talking Snake, we have external evidence that King Hezekiah actually existed.

3.5. Everyone Must Distinguish Fantasy from Reality

Lundahl (2022b) utterly fails to verify that the supernatural even exists. I have shown that his test with its questions has numerous weaknesses and fails to demonstrate that Hypothesis #1 for the Talking Snake of Genesis 3 is a more reasonable conclusion than either Hypotheses #3 or #4 (also see Section 5.0).

In Henke (2022a), I stated that I would accept the existence of the supernatural if I was shown good evidence. Lundahl (2022a), who doesn’t even know me, then makes the following claim against me:

“Well, the problem is, if you need to see a certain phenomenon with your own eyes, you probably are in reality denying it. I can accept people have been shot in Ukraine, recently, and I have never seen a man shot to death with my own eyes.”

How does he know that I would probably deny something if I saw it with my own eyes when he only knows me from emails and other electronic correspondence? Depending on what the claim is, my witnessing it may be good enough for me. Nevertheless, doesn’t Mr. Lundahl know that suitable evidence is usually far more than seeing something with your own eyes, but often involves analytical chemistry and confirmation by other scientists using differing methods? I’ve never seen an atom with my naked eye, but we have numerous analytical methods to know that they’re there. We can even map their positions within crystal structures. Also, what do countless videos and photographs of Russian imperialist aggression in Ukraine have to do with the claims of the supernatural? How can reality be compared with groundless fantasy? The evidence of the suffering in Ukraine is overwhelming, but where is the evidence that anything supernatural has ever happened? Once more, Mr. Lundahl fails to distinguish between reality and groundless stories involving the supernatural.

In Henke (2022a), I mention that if some secularists actually had evidence of the supernatural, they would “move the goal posts” and just include these events into their naturalistic worldview:

“Unlike other secularists, I’m unlikely to move the goal posts to redefine a truly verified miracle, if it ever occurs, as part of a new still totally naturalistic worldview.”

These secularists are essentially saying that if gods, angels and demons exist and use supernatural powers, they should then be classified as part of nature. I don’t accept this view. If these supernatural beings actually exist, they are by definition not limited by natural law.

In response to this, Lundahl (2022a) makes some ambiguous reference to Enoch and Elijah showing up in the modern world:

“If Enoch and Elijah turn up in our time, take it up with them. I'm here to argue historic facts, how likely they are in a world view where miracles and the supernatural are in principle possible, not to prove miracles natural events.”

Besides mentioning a couple more characters from the Bible without giving any evidence that they ever existed, Lundahl (2022a) further claims that he is not trying to prove that miracles are natural events, but that they are possible in principle. I’m not asking Mr. Lundahl to “prove” anything like one would in mathematics, but to demonstrate with good evidence that the supernatural is just as real as the natural world. It’s now obvious that he can’t do that and he needs to admit it. It's not good enough to say that “miracles and the supernatural are in principle possible” when there is no evidence at all for them. Again, people’s imaginations are quite capable of inventing a lot of stories, it’s an entirely different issue to demonstrate that the stories actually happened.

Throughout Lundahl (2022a) and Lundahl (2022b), Mr. Lundahl improperly invokes God-of-the-gaps fallacies, expounds baseless and superstitious beliefs about demons, and invokes circular reasoning by using groundless claims in the Bible as “evidence” of other groundless claims. His totally unsubstantiated arguments continue in Section 5.0 on the Talking Snake of Genesis 3. Unlike Alexander the Great, we don’t have any level of confidence in the existence of the magical Talking Snake and fruit trees in Genesis 3.

4.0 Like Most People, My Agnosticism is Limited

Although Mr. Lundahl clearly didn’t understand my agnostic views when he wrote Lundahl (2022a), he begins to figure it out in Lundahl (2022b) when he concludes that I’m only agnostic when it comes to deciding between atheism and Deism:

“It would seem, despite your claim to Agnosticism, that you are only agnostic between the Atheist and the Deist alternative, but very much not agnostic, rather claiming basically to know, that only such alternatives that agree in excluding the supernatural should be considered.”

Just because I’m agnostic about the existence of a Deistic God(s) that does not mean that I’m agnostic about the existence of other magical beings, such as angels, leprechauns, demons, ghosts, a Talking Snake or fairies. I also see no current evidence of miracles. People are usually skeptical or agnostic about some claims, but that does not mean that they are skeptical about all claims. I think that there might be a Designer God or gods. I don’t know. I’m agnostic about that. However, I see absolutely no evidence to think that angels, leprechauns, demons, ghosts, a Talking Snake or fairies are real. I won’t remain silent if Mr. Lundahl or anyone else argues for the existence of any of these beings or miracles unless they can produce some evidence. The burden of evidence is on them to demonstrate that these beings or miracles actually exist and are not the products of people’s fertile imaginations. I don’t have to travel around the world to demonstrate their claims for them. Believers in the supernatural have to demonstrate their own claims. Also, unlike the pretentious miracle-deniers portrayed in Lewis (1960, chapter 3), I will not dogmatically proclaim that “nature is all there is.” If I’m shown evidence for the existence of supernatural beings or miracles, I will gladly change my mind and abandon my skepticism of their existence. Until evidence of angels, leprechauns, demons, ghosts, a Talking Snake, fairies or miracles are produced, there’s not any good reason to be believe that any of these claims are real. It’s far more reasonable to conclude that these claims are just made-up stories, as I state with the Talking Snake in Genesis 3 (Section 5.0; also Henke 2022a).

In Henke (2022a), I also commented on cryptozoic creatures that are apparently not supernatural, such as Bigfoot and Nessie:

“In addition, there are claims of natural and not necessarily supernatural creatures where the evidence of their existence is either inadequate or nonexistent, such as Bigfoot, Nessie or the Cyclops.”

In response, Lundahl (2022a) asks me:

“How much of the stories can you go through and consider the ‘evidence as non-existent’? I'm talking of Bigfoot and Nessie, now.”

But, I already answered this question in the same paragraph of Henke (2022a)! Here’s the full context of what I said:

“In addition, there are claims of natural and not necessarily supernatural creatures where the evidence of their existence is either inadequate or nonexistent, such as Bigfoot, Nessie or the Cyclops. Claims for their existence are either based on personal testimony or ancient written records, which, so far, have been untrustworthy. Although their existence is naturally possible, we currently have no physical evidence of their existence. The presentation of a living example or a dead body that can be examined for authenticity, such as a Bigfoot, would be enough to demonstrate that they exist.” [my emphasis]

So, I want good evidence of a living or an autopsy of a body of Bigfoot or Nessie. Endless stories and supposed eyewitness accounts aren’t good enough.

5.0 The Talking Snake of Genesis 3

5.1. Introduction

Lundahl (2022c) and Lundahl (2022d), and to a lesser extent Lundahl (2022a) and Lundahl (2022b), respond to my comments on the Talking Snake of Genesis 3 in Henke (2022a). In Henke (2022a), I state:

“So, from what we know about the intelligence and the inability of snakes and other reptiles to speak, if a snake starts having a conversation with me and other witnesses, I would have to change my skeptical views of Genesis 3.”

Rather than actually providing evidence for a talking snake, Lundahl (2022a) injects some appreciated humor:

“Not the point. My advice - if a snake does so, don't answer, but get away. Eve's conversation was not exactly lucky for any of us.”

Lundahl (2022b) then comments more seriously on my desire to have witnesses interview a Talking Snake:

“It is not here claimed that serpents generally speak, or even that there is a specific type of serpent that does so. Also, the test would, if successful, make you reconsider historicity of Genesis 3 only at stating talking snakes are not supernatural.”

In this case, this statement might be true. Scientists might eventually find some natural snakes that can talk and are intelligent. That is, a snake that can have a conversation and not simply mimic voices like a parrot. Scientists would then have to determine how the snake talked. If the snake had no voice box and no speech capabilities in the brain, then we would have to seriously consider the possibility that the snake has some unknown, and possibly, supernatural powers. This would require more testing. Nevertheless, Mr. Lundahl needs to provide some actual evidence that there’s a snake somewhere that is smart and capable enough to carry on a conversation. Just speculating that a talking snake is somehow naturally possible to promote Genesis 3 isn’t good enough. Anyone can imagine any wild idea and then somehow claim that it’s “possible.”

5.2 The Four Hypotheses on the Origin of the Talking Snake Story in Genesis 3

In Henke (2022a), I proposed four hypotheses to explain Genesis 3 with its Talking Snake story:

1. The Talking Snake existed and the account in Genesis 3 was accurately passed down by Adam to Moses. Moses then wrote it down in Genesis. There would have been no human eyewitnesses for most of the events in Genesis 1-2:14. If Genesis 1-2:14 is history, God would have to have given the information in these verses as visions.

2. Moses saw Genesis 1-3 and perhaps most or even all of everything else in Genesis through visions given by God. There didn’t need to be a continuous human transmission of information from Adam to Moses. Visions from God would not be open to errors unlike written or oral transmissions from Adam to Moses.

3. The Talking Snake of Genesis 3 was part of a made-up campfire story, a parable or based on a pagan myth that eventually was taken as fact by the ancient Israelites, like how President Reagan and his fans mistook fictional stories from World War 2 as real. William Tell (https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/in-search-of-william-tell-2198511/ ) and a number of Roman Catholic saints (https://listverse.com/2014/05/17/10-beloved-saints-with-fictitious-biographies/ ) are probably also myths. Of course, in the United States, pro-abortionists regularly use fictional TV shows to convince Americans that abortion is a good thing. Even though they are fiction, many people believe the propaganda. Right now, a lot of Russians are believing the fictional propaganda their government is inventing about Ukraine. People also often pick and choose parts of fictional stories that they want to believe and ignore the rest, such as individuals believing in the existence of “The Force” from the Star Wars movies, while recognizing that the rest of the movies are fiction. A lot of people are gullible and believe fictions are real.

4. “Prophets” or others claimed to have visions from God about events that supposedly happened thousands of years earlier. These visions were delusions or outright lies, but a lot of people came to believe them. Joseph Smith also did this and Kat Kerr continues with this nonsense in the US.

This is a serious issue for conservative Christianity. If the Talking Snake story is fiction, then how did Adam and Eve fall into sin? Did Adam and Eve even exist? If there was no Fall, then why did Jesus need to die for an Atonement for sin? If Genesis 3 never happened, what keeps the entire foundation of conservative Christianity from collapsing? Thus, any conservative Christian must find some way of demonstrating with either Hypothesis #1 or #2 that Genesis 3 is history and that Hypotheses #3 and #4 that promote Genesis 3 as probable myth must be false.

As indicated in Lundahl (2022c), Mr. Lundahl accepts Hypothesis #1. In Lundahl (2022d), he argues that “historical events” in Genesis 3 could have been successfully passed down from Adam through Moses using Hypothesis #1 by comparing the number of generations between Adam and Moses with the number of generations between the battle of Granicus (May 334 BC) and when it was recorded and the fall of Troy (1179-1185 BC) and when it was recorded centuries later. Besides containing individuals that are unidentified and solely hypothetical, his Granicus and Troy chains also mention Nestor, Diodoros Sikeliotes, Arrian and Homer. For his hypothetical 20-year-olds, Lundahl (2022d) simply assumes that they would accurately remember the details of the events many years later. Unfortunately, Lundahl (2022d) fails to realize that the memories of his hypothetical 20-year-olds would tend to considerably fade and distort long before they turn 80. Human memories are not that good and, in reality, details are often lost or even completely fictionalized over time. A good example of memory loss and alteration are seen with the eyewitnesses of the Challenger and the September 11^th disasters. See Neisser and Harsch (1992) and Greenberg (2004). Tepper (2014) also gives a layperson’s summary of the Challenger study at: https://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2014/0128/Where-were-you-when-the-Challenger-exploded-Why-your-memory-might-be-wrong Years later, people are often shocked by what they wrote or said in videos immediately after the events. They are no longer remembering the events correctly. People also lie and boast about seeing events that they really did not. As I have seen with some of my relatives, senile individuals in their 80s may actually come to believe some of the stories that they obviously made up.

Lundahl (2022d) then states:

“The Battle of the Granicus in May 334 BC / Troy Conquered 1180 BC (between 1179 and 1185) - someone was 20 and could recall it well.

60 years passes, he is 80 and dies, but before that, someone who is then twenty has been formed by him : 274 / 1120.

60 more years, handed on to third minimally overlapping tradition bearer : 214 / 1060.

Fourth needs to take over as Nestor - within the minimal overlapping generations, not overall - in : 150 / 1000.

Fifth : 90 (had Diodoros Sikeliotes as younger contemporary) / 940.

Sixth : 30 / 880.

Seventh : 40 AD / 820.

Eighth : 100 AD (we are talking Arrian) / 760 (we are talking Homer).

In Masoretic chronology, Moses would be eighth from Adam, as Haydock said, and in LXX (without the second Cainan) Abraham would be sixth from Adam, Moses 12th.

In each of the three cases, we believe the eighth generation account to be reliable because:

· it was in its time believed to be history (or it wouldn't have acquired that status later)

· there is no reason specifically to believe someone specific actually frauded about it being history, no potential Joseph Smith in sight.

If it is adequate in two of the cases, there is no real reason why it wouldn't be so on the third case too. Except obviously, Henke has, contrary to his announced agnosticism, a pre-set agenda excluding talking snakes and such. But that agenda is - however respectable it may be in academia - no actual reason to exclude the history of Moses from historicity.”

Once more, Mr. Lundahl uses fallacious circular reasoning by invoking groundless claims for the existence of two biblical characters (i.e., Moses and Adam) to justify the existence of another groundless biblical character (i.e., the Talking Snake of Genesis 3). Before Lundahl (2022d) can even make these proclamations, he needs to thoroughly answer the following questions, which he has, so far, utterly failed to do:

· How can Mr. Lundahl demonstrate that any of his three eighth generational examples were passed down uncorrupted and without any mythology?

· Where is the evidence that Moses and Adam even lived?

· Where is the contemporary evidence that this individual named Moses had anything to do with the origin Genesis 3?

· Why should we believe the genealogies in Genesis at all when Lundahl (2022d) admits that there are inconsistencies between the Septuagint (LXX) and the Masoretic texts? Although Lundahl (2022d) believes that Moses was the 8^th from Adam, there’s absolutely no evidence or reason to trust this claim (Price 2017, pp. 59-92).

· Why should we believe the genealogies in Genesis, when someone can easily make up genealogies and effectively pass them off to millions of gullible people (e.g., Ether 1:6-32 in the Book of Mormon)? As seen in the Book of Mormon, any liar can claim to be an “eyewitness” to any event.

· Millions of people believe in the Book of Mormon, astrology and other nonsense. So, certainly, with time nonsense may commonly attain a false status of science or history in the minds of millions of gullible and ignorant people. Just because stories became popular and were viewed as history by ancient people, why should we believe their opinions on history? Everything from office gossip to the Book of Mormon to countless urban legends refute Mr. Lundahl’s claim that an account must be history or otherwise “it wouldn't have acquired that status later”. Large numbers of people believe lies all the time and if lies are repeated enough over time and passed onto children as fact, people come to believe that they’re true. Why should we take the views of an ancient and often superstitious people as authoritative on anything?

· How does Mr. Lundahl know that “there is no reason specifically to believe someone specific actually frauded about it being history, no potential Joseph Smith in sight” when whoever wrote Genesis 3 disappeared from history thousands of years ago? How can Mr. Lundahl confidently proclaim that Moses and not a conartist or deluded priest wrote Genesis 3 when conartists and deluded people have always been common and he doesn’t have a shred of evidence that Moses even existed? Because conartists frequently promote lies and millions of gullible people often believe them (e.g., Joseph Smith Jr. and Putin) and because Mr. Lundahl is making a specific claim that a Talking Snake existed and defied everything we know about reptile physiology, Mr. Lundahl has the burden of evidence, and not me, to demonstrate that Genesis 3 is history and that a Talking Snake actually existed. The following two excuses in Lundahl (2022d) are groundless assumptions and not evidence:

In each of the three cases, we believe the eighth generation account to be reliable because:

o it was in its time believed to be history (or it wouldn't have acquired that status later)

o there is no reason specifically to believe someone specific actually frauded about it being history, no potential Joseph Smith in sight.

· The earliest known audience that accepted Genesis 3 wrote the Dead Sea scrolls and lived thousands of years after the supposed event in the Garden of Eden. How did they reliably know the origin of Genesis 3 any more than we do? How does Mr. Lundahl know that Genesis 3 is history? Was he there? So, where is the evidence? Why should we believe Mr. Lundahl and Hypothesis #1?

· Lundahl (2022d) needed to give a decent reference for Haydock and why we should even believe Haydock’s opinions of Genesis.

· The analogy with Monty Hall in the PS of Lundahl (2022d) is totally irrelevant. There is no rational reason to believe Genesis 3.

· In the PPS of Lundahl (2022d), he cites statements about Alexander the Great in 1 Maccabees 1:1-8 in the Roman Catholic Bible. Any claims about Alexander the Great in 1 Maccabees 1:1-8, just like any other ancient literature, still need to be verified with external evidence.

As I discuss in Section 4.0, Lundahl (2022d) has no reason to assume that just because I’m an agnostic about the existence of God, that I need to be an agnostic about the Talking Snake, Leprechauns, psychics, astrology, Bigfoot and other claims that millions of people accept as fact. I’m asking questions about the origin of Genesis 3 and looking for answers. Mr. Lundahl thinks that he has reliable answers, but the total lack of acceptable evidence in his essays demonstrates that he does not. Apparently, these are the best arguments that he has for Genesis 3 and he is actually totally empty handed. Until I see good evidence for a Talking Snake, reptile physiology, the capacity of humans to lie and millions of other humans to gullibly accept the lies tell me not to believe a groundless story in Genesis 3. I will only accept either Hypothesis #3 or #4.

In a situation similar to Hypothesis #1, modern Church leaders frequently assert that their doctrines and the New Testament scriptures were passed down directly from the apostles to the Church Fathers. For example, they will state that John the Elder supposedly passed on his teachings to Polycarp, who taught Irenaeus (Molina 2016, p. 31). I should also point out that the Church Fathers did not have a monopoly on claiming that their doctrines came down directly from the apostles and Jesus. Like the Church Fathers, the leaders among the 2^nd century AD Gnostics and other Christian heresies claimed apostolic pedigrees. The followers of the Gnostic Basilides stated that he obtained his teachings from Glaucias, who was a disciple of Peter (Molina 2016, p. 31). The Gnostic Valentinus was a student of Theudas, who was a disciple of Paul (Molina 2016, p. 31). Why should we accept any of these claims of apostolic pedigrees?

Lundahl (2022c) primarily deals with his evaluation of the four hypotheses. Again, he believes that Hypothesis #1 is the correct one of the four. Because no one has any evidence whatsoever that snakes can talk or that magic fruit can immediately cause individuals’ mental capacities to open up (Section 2.11), I view Hypotheses #1 and #2 as highly unlikely. Furthermore, we know from Mormonism and other countless examples that conartists, deluded “prophets” and others frequently make up or misinterpret fictional stories as history. Too often, large numbers of people end up believing that these stories are real. So, Hypotheses #3 and #4 are highly probable.

5.3. Poor Vision: Lundahl’s (2022c) Unsuccessful Attempt to Promote Hypothesis #1 Over Hypothesis #2

Hypothesis #2 in Henke (2022a) again states:

“Moses saw Genesis 1-3 and perhaps most or even all of everything else in Genesis through visions given by God. There didn’t need to be a continuous human transmission of information from Adam to Moses. Visions from God would not be open to errors unlike written or oral transmissions from Adam to Moses.”

The visions from God would not necessarily be just visual. Advocates of Hypothesis #2 would argue that any vision could have had an audible component.

Hypothesis #2 is a potential explanation that some conservative Christians and Orthodox Jews might embrace instead of Hypothesis #1. Lundahl (2022c) does not like Hypothesis #2. Obviously, any extensive visions of Genesis in Hypothesis #2 sound too much like the lying visions given by Joseph Smith Jr. or the delusions of “prophets” like Kat Kerr, and Mr. Lundahl does not want Genesis to be based on false claims of visions like the Book of Mormon or the Candy Land in Heaven promoted by Kat Kerr (Knox 2021). Lundahl (2022c) even admits this when he denigrates Hypothesis #2 as a “parody” and “ideally suited for those not believing it.” In other words, he admits that Hypothesis #2 allows supporters of Hypotheses #3 and #4 to argue that Genesis is based on false claims of visions just like the Book of Mormon.

When refuting Hypothesis #2, Lundahl (2022c) assumes that Moses wrote Genesis as required by Hypothesis #1. Normally, quoting the Bible to defend the Bible would be blatant and fallacious circular reasoning. How can Mr. Lundahl demonstrate that a Talking Snake existed in Genesis 3 by invoking another unsubstantiated character; namely Moses? He’s attempting to use one unsupported story to justify another. However, because any supporter of Hypothesis #2 would agree with him that Moses wrote Genesis, Lundahl (2022c) can get away with using this fallacy to attack Hypothesis #2.

Although he does not like the idea that Genesis is based on visions, Lundahl (2022c) admits that under Hypothesis #1, God must have given Moses visions for him to write down Genesis 1:1-2:4 because people supposedly hadn’t been created yet. So, Lundahl (2022c) is forced to admit that Moses received visions from God in order to write at least Genesis 1:1-2:4. But why stop with the magic visions at Genesis 2:4? If God gave Genesis 1:1-2:4 as a vision to Moses, why would a conservative Christian or an Orthodox Jew that supports Hypothesis #2 want to stop there? Why isn’t Hypothesis #2 a valid possibility for conservative Christians or Orthodox Jews? Clearly, Lundahl (2022c) wants at least some human transmission of data involved in the origin of Genesis even though he does not have a shred of historical evidence to support such a claim. So, how does anyone that believes in Hypothesis #1, like Mr. Lundahl, objectively decide which verses in Genesis came from visions given to Moses by God and which were handed down by Adam to Moses?

As a side note, Lundahl (2022c) makes a special comment about Genesis 1:28 in the following poorly worded statement:

“The blessing in Genesis 1:28 would have been there, but was omitted since given in God's vision to Moses.”

So, where is “there”? Apparently, Lundahl (2022c) is claiming that Genesis 1:28 would have been “there” (in chapter 2 of Genesis), except that he thinks that it was part of God’s vision to Moses in chapter 1. In other words, Genesis 1:1-2:4 supposedly came from visions from God, whereas everything else after that supposedly came from records starting with Adam. However, does Lundahl (2022c) have any objective evidence for this arbitrary division of Genesis? Of course, he doesn’t.

In contrast to this magical mess, if Genesis 3 is nothing more than a lie, then Hypotheses #3 and #4 totally avoid the problem of whether Adam wrote down Genesis 3 or if Moses saw it in a vision. There is no need to speculate about how Adam’s records got passed down to Moses. There is no need to invoke any magic to explain the origins of Genesis 1-3 and the following chapters. There is no need to defend the existence of a magical Talking Snake or fruit trees. Some individuals simply made up the stories about events that supposedly happened centuries to thousands of years before they lived. All that was needed for this to happen is an imaginative person with ink and a writing surface, and a gullible and superstitious audience, all of which have always been in abundant supply.

Lundahl (2022c) correctly recognizes that whenever information is transferred, errors occur. All four hypotheses would have trouble with transmission errors as scribes copy copies of copies of copies … over the centuries or millennia. However, advocates of Hypothesis #2, could argue that the number of errors would be minimized if Moses got Genesis 3 from inerrant visions rather than relying on human transmissions from Adam. Nevertheless, under Hypotheses #3 and #4, Genesis 3 started out as a lie and transmission errors on lies can’t degrade their reliability when they didn’t have any reliability to begin with.

So, how does Mr. Lundahl know that any information that might have been passed down from Adam to Moses was not miscopied or corrupted with false information? To “solve” this problem, he simply assumes the old and groundless “God did it!” excuse and claims in Lundahl (2022c) that God would have protected any transmission from errors as part of the way that he inspired Moses. Invoking “God did it!” magic is a flippant excuse that claims to solve every problem, when in fact, it doesn’t deal with evidence and utterly fails to genuinely solve any problem. Of course, this baseless excuse might be acceptable to conservative Christians and Orthodox Jews, but it would not be acceptable to secular individuals that favor Hypotheses #3 and/or #4. Yet, even for a supporter of Hypothesis #2, this approach does not deal with the overriding critical questions: Just because God could have preserved the integrity of any information passed down from Adam to Moses, how does this demonstrate that this transmission ever occurred? Again, how does a supporter of Hypothesis #1 objectively decide which verses after Genesis 2:4 came from Adam and other human authors, and which came directly to Moses in visions from God?

In an unsuccessful attempt to refute Hypothesis #2, Lundahl (2022c) again uses circular reasoning and quotes a number of genealogy verses from Exodus 6 and Genesis. Setting aside the improbable ages in these baseless genealogies, he simply claims without a shred of evidence that the possibility that God partially restored Moses’ family history through visions is “not credible.” His exact poorly worded statements from Lundahl (2022c) are:

“So, Moses had no natural track of his great-grandfather and grand-father, but he had his family history restored to him by visions of God ... not credible. It is equally not credible that he knew of the march through the Red Sea by a vision of God, rather than by his own eyes and those of thousands of Israelites - if it had been in a vision given him, why would the other Israelites have believed what they did not know themselves?”

However, a defender of Hypothesis #2 would find his response totally inadequate and might ask:

· Without divine inspiration from God to identify his relatives and restore his genealogy, how did Moses know who his siblings, parents, grandparents and great grandparents were when he was adopted as an infant by Pharoah’s daughter? * How did Moses reliably know that Aaron was his brother unless God restored his genealogy and let Moses know who is ancestors and relatives were?

· Visions could have an audible component that would allow God to transmit genealogies to Moses. Certainly, God was capable of talking to Moses at any time and giving him any information. So, why would God be incapable of giving Moses his genealogy just like he gave him the Law of Moses and any other textural “the LORD saith…” information? Why do biblical genealogies have to be historical accounts passed down by humans from generation to generation?

· How do the verses dealing with the genealogy from Jacob to Moses that Lundahl (2022c) cites from Exodus 6 and Genesis 46 and 29:34 demonstrate that Genesis 3 came from historical records and not a vision?

· Where’s the evidence that these Adam to Moses genealogical records ever existed and that Moses used them? Are there copies of these Adam to Moses genealogy records in the libraries of Heaven along with Moroni’s Golden Plates and the JEPD documents?

· Defenders of Hypothesis #2 would not argue that the Exodus from Egypt and other events personally witnessed by Moses were visions. If Moses was there, he would have had the eyewitness testimony to write about them under God’s inspiration. During his lifetime, under inspiration from God, Moses could have selected and recorded the eyewitness testimonies of other reliable adults. However, how do defenders of Hypothesis #1 objectively decide which verses in Genesis, which were before Moses and his colleagues were even born, came from human records and which came from visions?

*It turns out that Moses’ sister supposedly saw Pharoah’s daughter take Moses (Exodus 2:4). If this event ever happened, it could explain how Moses knew that Aaron was his brother. - added November 25, 2022

Besides the unlikely ages mentioned in Exodus 6, secularists would argue that groundless genealogies are also present in the Book of Mormon (e.g., again Ether 1:6-32). Anyone can claim that they receive messages from God and then make up genealogies to “prove” it. If Lundahl (2022c) and any other supporters of Hypotheses #1 or #2 want to cite genealogies from the Bible, they first have to demonstrate with external and contemporary evidence that these genealogies are authentic and not works of fiction like the ones in the Book of Mormon.

Lundahl (2022c) has utterly failed to demonstrate that Hypothesis #2 is inferior and less likely than Hypothesis #1. Although both Hypotheses #1 and #2 rely on groundless magic and are highly improbable, at least advocates of Hypothesis #2 could do a fairly good job of objectively separating verses in the Pentateuch that supposedly came from visions from those that came from the supposed first-hand testimonies of inspired human witnesses. Whatever Moses experienced as an adult, such as the crossing of the Red Sea, or anything he heard from other reliable adults with God’s approval would be eyewitness accounts from him in the Pentateuch. Under Hypothesis #2, everything before Moses was born; that is, Genesis, would have been transmitted by visions from God without the need of any unsubstantiated claims of written records going back to Adam.

Lundahl (2022b) raises additional objections to Hypothesis #2. He complains that advocates of Hypothesis #2 are going against a tradition that Moses had a vision of the six days of Creation and that they tend to be Old-Earth creationists:

“One more: proponents of #2 for Genesis 3 go against tradition, as the tradition says that Moses had a vision of the Six Days, and they are also likely to be Old Earthers, trying to motivate why an event purportedly 2500 - 3000 years before Moses could in fact have been known if Adam was rather 250 000 BP.”

However, whose tradition is this? Where did it come from? How do we know that this tradition is reliable? Why should the favored prejudices (traditions) of past generations be necessarily trusted? Even if Moses had a vision of the six days of Creation, how does that rule out Moses having additional visions that included Genesis 3? Also, why do advocates of Hypothesis #2 necessarily have to believe in Old-Earth creationism? Couldn’t advocates of Hypothesis #2 argue that God could have given Moses visions of any event in the past at any time? The arguments in Lundahl (2022b) and Lundahl (2022c) are worthless and would not convince any advocate of Hypothesis #2. Furthermore, advocates of Hypotheses #3 and/or #4 would identify any “traditions” about Moses seeing visions as probably nothing more than groundless made-up stories that became widely circulated and popular over the centuries.

5.4. Mr. Lundahl’s Evaluation of Hypothesis #3

5.4.1. Introduction

Hypothesis #3, as listed in Henke (2022a), is a secular explanation for the origin of the Talking Snake in Genesis 3:

“The Talking Snake of Genesis 3 was part of a made-up campfire story, a parable or based on a pagan myth that eventually was taken as fact by the ancient Israelites, like how President Reagan and his fans mistook fictional stories from World War 2 as real. William Tell (https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/in-search-of-william-tell-2198511/ ) and a number of Roman Catholic saints (https://listverse.com/2014/05/17/10-beloved-saints-with-fictitious-biographies/ ) are probably also myths. Of course, in the United States, pro-abortionists regularly use fictional TV shows to convince Americans that abortion is a good thing. Even though they are fiction, many people believe the propaganda. Right now, a lot of Russians are believing the fictional propaganda their government is inventing about Ukraine. People also often pick and choose parts of fictional stories that they want to believe and ignore the rest, such as individuals believing in the existence of “The Force” from the Star Wars movies, while recognizing that the rest of the movies are fiction. A lot of people are gullible and believe fictions are real.”

As an initial response, Lundahl (2022c) makes the following non-sensical reply:

“I am very sorry, but the problem is ... you believe in an unnatural propensity of believing, not that a fiction is true, but that a fiction is your own memory.”

Again, I fully understand that English is not Mr. Lundahl’s first language. However, he often fails to effectively communicate his thoughts. He’s not a technical writer. He also fails to recognize that any attempts at sarcasm doesn’t work in his writing. He just needs to concisely and clearly state what he actually believes.

Nevertheless, I’ll attempt to decipher his coded message. He seems to be saying that I’m making a mistake in thinking that works of fiction could eventually be misinterpreted as history. What Mr. Lundahl fails to realize is that people are often gullible or frequently confuse fiction with reality. This is why propagandists use entertaining fiction to get their message across. The producers of The Handmaid’s Tale know that the book and movie are fiction. Most of the readers of the book and watchers of the movie intellectually know that they are fiction. So, why do advocates of abortion often dress up in Handmaid’s Tale outfits at their rallies? Because they believe that this fictional novel has real propaganda value. They know that there are individuals in their audience that actually believe that The Handmaid’s Tale will become reality if the pro-life movement wins in the social and legal realm. This is basic propaganda going back to Goebbels. Repeat lies enough times in fictional films and the gullible masses will eventually believe that the lies are real. Fiction can be used to convince the gullible masses that something is at least partially real or is a real threat, and propagandists know it.

As a side note, Lundahl (2022c), who knows nothing about my political views, questions the sincerity of my views on pro-abortion TV shows. Rather than simply asking me about my views on abortion, he jumps to wrong conclusions, questions my sincerity, and makes a totally bad assumption by claiming that I would dismiss pro-life programs as fiction even if they are not.

Lundahl (2022c) can label lies as either fiction or fraud. It really doesn’t matter which term he uses because either way gullible people can be deceived. Advocates of Hypotheses #3 and #4 could then argue that gullible people have been deceived for thousands of years by the fiction/fraud of Genesis 3.

The idea that Genesis 3 started out as fiction and was later taken as history is totally plausible. In Henke (2022a) and earlier emails, I gave several examples of how individuals and groups have taken works of fiction and come to believe that they were history. Individuals that have become victims of vicious gossip because someone misinterpreted one of their jokes understand how people can misinterpret fiction as reality. In the US, many innocent people, especially African-American men, have been falsely imprisoned because an accuser lied under oath or misidentified the defendant. The jury and the court of public opinion often believe the lies of the accuser and racism may be involved in the injustice. For example, see Montana Innocence Project. Only years later, does the truth come out. Even then, many will continue to believe the original lies or misinterpretations of the accuser. Mr. Lundahl stubbornly refuses to see how this has and can easily happen.

5.4.2. William Tell and Catholic Saints: Examples of Fiction Later Taken as Reality

In my discussions of Hypothesis #3 in Henke (2022a), I mentioned that stories about William Tell and some Roman Catholic Saints are additional examples of works of fiction that are now widely misinterpreted as historical fact. I linked to the following webarticles:

In Search of William Tell (Robert Wernick, Smithsonian Magazine)

Listverse: 10 Beloved Saints the Church Just Made Up by Larry Jimenez and fact checked by Jamie Frater.

Lundahl (2022c) complains about the reliability of my references (Smithsonian Magazine and Listverse). He also states that he may give a separate response on these topics later.

Granted, my preliminary links on William Tell and some of the Roman Catholic saints were not articles from peer-reviewed journals. They simply provided some background information on how these individuals were probably not historical. Nevertheless, Mr. Lundahl could consult Jean-François Bergier’s Guillaume Tell (1988), which is mentioned in the Smithsonian Magazine article, if he did not like the summary in the article. The Listverse article on the Catholic saints also contains links with additional information and documentation. Nevertheless, here’s a journal article that discusses more about the origin of William Tell:

Hughes, S.C. 2012. “The Limits of Cultural Nationalism: Italian Switzerland from a Risorgimento Perspective”, Nations and Nationalism, v. 18, n. 1, pp. 57-77.

5.4.3. President Reagan Takes Fiction and Passes It on as History

In an earlier email dated February 16, 2022, 7:36 pm Eastern US, I mentioned that former US President Ronald Reagan cited a fictional account from World War II in a speech and portrayed it as a historical event. The account is cited here:

. . . Reagan's Whoppers - The Washington Post by Richard Cohen.

This is yet another example where fiction is misinterpreted as fact and then enters the public forum where it could spread as “history.”

Rather than dealing seriously with the problem of people misinterpreting fiction as fact, Lundahl (2022c) gives the following flippant, sarcastic and totally irrelevant response:

“The World War II itself was perhaps a fictional story too? No? In that case, the reaction of Reagan would have promoted fiction into a minor detail of an overall historic context.”

No serious individual believes that because an individual World War II story is fiction that the entire war is fiction. This the fallacy of composition (Copi and Cohen 1994, pp. 148-149, 694). But, as discussed below, Lundahl (2022c) totally fails to realize that even a “minor detail” can become very significant if it falls into the wrong hands.

Later, Lundahl (2022c) states:

“The question at hand was, do people - as in communities - take things they know to be fictions for real historic memories? Normally not. The yes for Reagan's WW-II story is highly hedged, both as to who came to believe a thing, and as to outstanding significance of the thing believed. But the "yes" for Star Wars is on your own admission in fact a ‘no’.”

Lundahl (2022c) states the obvious and totally misses the point of Hypothesis #3 when he claims that if an audience knows that a story is fiction, they’re not going to wholly accept it as fact. Besides failing to recognize that “minor” office jokes or brief pieces of fake news on a cable channel can expand into something far worse, Lundahl (2022c) also ignores the time element, where fiction can be transformed into widely accepted “fact” over decades or even centuries, especially once the sources and context of the stories largely disappear from the public forum. This is how urban myths can develop. Although a minor joke in a business office can be misinterpreted as reality and spread as malicious gossip in a matter of hours, the misinterpretation of a fictional story into being taken as historical fact might take a few decades or even centuries. In the case of the Reagan account, the story appeared during WWII in the movie A Wing and a Prayer and also in the periodical Reader’s Digest. Now, Reader’s Digest publishes both fiction and non-fiction articles, so it’s certainly possible that Mr. Reagan or one of his speech writers mistook the story as non-fiction. We don’t exactly know how it happened, but after about 40 years, a minor fictional story was taken as fact and became an important part of a Presidential speech. It could have been due to Mr. Reagan having a faulty memory after 40 some years or bad research from his team of speech writers. Once something is presented as fact in any Presidential speech, it can spread and be uncritically accepted by a gullible public. If it wasn’t for the Internet and the Richard Cohen article in the Washington Post, who knows how this disinformation could have spread in the future as an urban legend. Similarly, according to Hypothesis #3, some gullible people eventually took a campfire story or a fable about a Talking Snake, believed that it was real, put it into Genesis along with other fables and claimed that the mythical great prophet Moses wrote them. Interestingly, Josephus tells us that all of the animals in the Garden of Eden spoke (Jewish Antiquities book 1:4; https://penelope.uchicago.edu/josephus/ant-1.html ). We don’t know if this was nothing more than speculation on Josephus’ part or if he had access to numerous now lost Jewish stories about talking animals in the Garden of Eden and not just Genesis 3.

The fact that people are gullible and that the story of a Talking Snake by itself is outrageously improbable automatically tell us that Hypotheses #3 and #4 are reasonable and likely, while Hypotheses #1 and #2 are not. No amount of pleading by Mr. Lundahl elevates the probability of Hypothesis #1 above #3 or #4. There’s simply no evidence that a Talking Snake actually existed. However, people lying or misinterpreting situations, and large numbers of people believing them, happen all the time.

Now, I perfectly understand that Mr. Lundahl has no ability to produce a Talking Snake, magic fruit, or other valid evidence that would allow other witnesses and me to change our minds. That’s too bad for him. Because to make Genesis 3 reasonable that’s exactly what he or others need to do. Otherwise, Occam’s Razor tells us that Genesis 3 is no more probable than Pandora’s Box.

5.4.4. Effects of Propaganda

When discussing the effects of propaganda, Lundahl (2022c) makes another non-sensical statement:

“But here you [Dr. Henke] are also confusing ‘message’ with ‘fact’ - a fictitious fact being taken as real is different from the message being taken as valid.”

First of all, there is no such thing as a “fictitious fact.” That is a contradiction in terms. Certainly, fictional statements are often misinterpreted or mistaken as factual. However, by definition, fictional statements are not factual. For lying propagandists, whether their message happens to be factual or not, is irrelevant. Their goal is to get as much of the public as possible to believe the message. Thus, the Russian propagandists may actually have some factual information among their lies about Ukraine. However, they don’t want the Russian public to critically think and try to separate out the lies from the truth. They just want their viewers to accept whatever they say as “fact.” Conservative Christians do the exact same thing with the Bible. They don’t want their flock to critically think and separate out the facts from the fiction in the Bible. They just want their congregations to accept whatever is in the book.

Now, I agree with Lundahl (2022c) that we must take the worldviews of the writers and producers of fiction seriously, whether it’s Star Wars or The Handmaiden’s Tale. Although people generally will not believe that Luke Skywalker or Tatooine exist, there are those that accept the worldview promoted by Star Wars and think that the Force is real. That’s the point I was trying to make in Henke (2022a) and my earlier emails. People often look for morals, lessons learned and elements of truth in even fictional stories. They pick out the ideas that they like from fictional stories. However, if the fictional stories happened to be more propaganda than entertainment, the results can be quite disastrous.

Lundahl (2022c) is failing to recognize that whenever wars, natural disasters or another intensive event occurs, people will misinterpret works of fiction about the events or make up stories (such as false acts of heroism) and mix them into the real historical accounts of the events. Ancient and even modern people also readily make up stories to explain things that they don’t understand, such as thunder, lightning, the origin of the Earth and human suffering, or how David Copperfield does his tricks. Clearly, Mr. Lundahl does not see how an ancient campfire story or other work of fiction about a Talking Snake and magic fruit trees could eventually end up in the Bible and be taken as serious history by millions of Orthodox Jews and conservative Christians. The idea that over time people can misinterpret a work of fiction as historical reality should be obvious. Nevertheless, after I gave several examples, Mr. Lundahl stubbornly refuses to recognize the obvious. Whether office gossip, Presidential speeches or William Tell, there will always be people that misinterpret works of fiction as fact. The transformation from an entertaining story to “historical fact” or urban myth may take 40 years or centuries, but it can and does happen. It’s also obvious that whatever additional examples that I may give, Mr. Lundahl will invent an excuse to not accept them and fail to accept the fact that there are situations where a lot of people can be deceived into thinking that at least parts of fictional stories are real. Instead of recognizing the obvious reality of Hypothesis #3, Lundahl (2022c) wants to embrace the far more ridiculous and groundless Hypothesis #1. Even if he will not face the facts that Hypothesis #3 is very possible, he still needs to deal with Hypothesis #4.

5.5. Mr. Lundahl’s Evaluation of Hypothesis #4

Contrary to the dismissive attitudes in Lundahl (2022c), the lies and delusions of Joseph Smith Jr. and television “prophets” are very relevant to the Talking Snake story of Genesis 3 as explained by Hypothesis #4. Hypothesis #4 states that just like Joseph Smith Jr. and modern TV false prophets, a powerful ancient Israelite “prophet” or group of “prophets” made-up Genesis 3 and passed it off as being inspired history from God. Religious people too often lie to get power over others. If the influential “prophet” had the support of his leaders in the government and the priesthood, Genesis 3 would be widely distributed as the word of God. Although Genesis lists no author, it would eventually be attributed to the mythical hero Moses.

Contrary to Lundahl (2022c), Joseph Smith Jr. and Kat Kerr don’t have to be “historians” to start spreading lies that become popular over time. We can also add the science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard to the list of liars that have created a religion with millions of now deceived followers. Granted, Kat Kerr mostly makes up false prophecies about present and future events, but her lies and the lies of other TV “prophets” may live on long after their deaths. Nevertheless, Joseph Smith Jr. and L. Ron Hubbard invented false histories. Joseph Smith made up stories about a person named Moroni that supposedly lived in the 5^th century AD, L. Ron Hubbard made up a story about Xenu and volcanoes from 75 million years ago and Hypothesis #4 states that some individual in ancient Israel made up a story about a Talking Snake in a garden that lived thousands of years earlier. Lundahl (2022c) is failing to realize that if clever liars have access to a forum of gullible people, their lies can widely spread over time and become part of a religion.

Lundahl (2022c) refers to an “information bottleneck” in Mormonism. Once more, he uses phrases and terms without any references or clearly explaining what he means. I can only guess what he’s trying to say. He seems to be saying that there’s a supposed gap over time between when Moroni supposedly died in the 5^th century AD and Joseph Smith Jr. supposedly found his plates and published the Book of Mormon in the 19^th century. Well, according to Hypothesis #4, there’s also a fictional time gap of thousands of years between when an ancient Israelite made-up Genesis 3 and when Genesis 3 supposedly happened.

Once more Lundahl (2022c) uses the circular reasoning fallacy by citing Moses as if it’s been demonstrated that he actually existed and that Genesis is history. As discussed in Finkelstein and Silberman (2001) and other archeological references, there’s no evidence to support the claims in the Pentateuch that Moses existed or that the Exodus ever occurred. Lundahl (2022c) claims that there was no pretense that Moses “was perceived as an information bottleneck for Genesis histories … in his own time.” How can Mr. Lundahl talk about Genesis being “histories” and Moses being in his own time, when we have absolutely no evidence outside of the far-fetched claims in the Bible that Moses and Genesis 3 ever existed in time?

Lundahl (2022c) then proceeds to discuss the Babylonian captivity and the origin of some of the Samaritans, which is just another diversion that does nothing to falsify Hypothesis #4 and demonstrate that the Talk Snake existed. Hypothesis #4 does not require that Genesis 3 was written after the return from the Babylonian Exile. Genesis 3 could be far older than the Babylonian Exile, but that does nothing to demonstrate that it’s true. If Genesis 3 were in the Koran or any other book but the Bible, I doubt that he would be defending its historicity.

Lundahl (2022c) further suggests that a demon possibly made up Mormonism. This is nothing more than another unnecessary and superstitious “The devil did it!” excuse that he also needlessly invoked in Lundahl (2022a) and Lundahl (2022b). We don’t have to invoke demons to explain the origin of Mormonism – all it took was a conartist with a printing press and access to a forum of gullible people.

5.6. Summary of Section 5.0

Mr. Lundahl’s responses in Lundahl (2022c) to the four hypothesis of the Talking Snake is lame. He has the burden of evidence to demonstrate that such a ridiculous story ever occurred. He has not given us a shred of evidence whatsoever to demonstrate the existence of the Talking Snake of Genesis 3 and falsify the highly probable Hypotheses #3 and #4. He can’t even demonstrate that his highly improbable Hypothesis #1 is better than another highly improbable Hypothesis #2. Lundahl (2022c) fails to realize that it’s far more probable that Genesis 3 is just a made-up or misinterpreted work of fiction as claimed by Hypotheses #3 and #4, then a Talking Snake and magic fruit trees actually existed as claimed by Hypotheses #1 and #2. Mr. Lundahl in Lundahl (2022c), as well as in Lundahl (2022a) and Lundahl (2022b), also fails to recognize that any claim in the Bible or another document must be supported by external evidence from archeology or contemporary documents if it is to be accepted. Circular reasoning is not acceptable.

From my perspective, the origin of Genesis 3 is essential to the validity of Christianity, whereas our discussions on Alexander the Great in Henke (2022a) and most other topics have been more trivial and academic. Unless there is actual external evidence that the Talking Snake story is real history, then there’s no reason to believe that humanity fell into sin and that Jesus needed to atone for that sin. So, when will Mr. Lundahl finally give valid external evidence that Hypothesis #1 must be true and that Hypotheses #2-4 cannot be? If he can’t, he should just be honest and admit that he simply believes in the Talking Snake and Genesis 3 story because he wants to.

6.0 Alexander the Great in History

6.1. Introduction

In my earlier emails, Henke (2022a) and this essay, I argue that the history of Alexander the Great is far more reliable than Genesis 3, that contemporary archeology is needed to confirm the validity of ancient written histories, and that ancient historical accounts and contemporary archeology must work together to cautiously provide reliable history. In Section 6.0, I further discuss the archeological and historical evidence for Alexander the Great.

Henke (2022a) cites McDaniel (2019) as an authority on Alexander the Great, and Lundahl (2022a, d-g) also comments on this article. Although the article is very good, as discussed in Henke (2022a), McDaniel (2019) does contain some errors and some of her arguments are inadequate. As quoted by Lundahl (2022d), McDaniel (2019) makes the following statement about Alexander the Great’s existence:

“Before I go on to discuss the archaeological evidence for Alexander the Great’s existence, I wish to emphasize that, even if we had no archaeological evidence whatsoever, based on the surviving literary evidence alone, we would already have overwhelming evidence for Alexander the Great’s existence.”

McDaniel (2019) then mentions the authors of five ancient histories that were written centuries after Alexander the Great that discuss his life:

· Diodoros Sikeliotes,

· Quintus Curtius Rufus,

· Arrianos of Nikomedia (Arrian),

· Ploutarchos of Chaironeia and

· Iustinus based on the earlier work of Gnaeus Pompeius Trogus.

Now, I disagree with the above quotation from McDaniel (2019). Hypothetically, it’s possible that five different historians used a work of fiction about Alexander the Great, made up other additional stories about him and then passed them off as “histories.” Again, we’ve seen this type of malfeasance before in the Mormon Church and among the 2^nd century Gnostics claiming to have gotten their doctrines from the apostles and inventing stories about Jesus and the apostles. Nevertheless, as discussed in Henke (2022a), if archeological discoveries begin to confirm what is in the texts, then we can have greater confidence that at least some of the accounts are historical and not fiction. No one should blindly believe what any group of ancient documents claim about an even older event.

Here are some additional statements from Henke (2022a) that Lundahl (2022d) quotes:

“If it could be shown that these historians were independent of each other and if they had reliable sources, then we would have reason to place greater confidence in their claims even without any external evidence.

... Furthermore, if one author writes a positive biography on a leader and another writes a negative one, we might have more confidence if they both agree that the leader was involved in a battle at particular time and location.

... At the same time, we have to be initially skeptical about written documents. As you know, any literate individual can write anything. Just because something is written down does not mean that it happened. As I’ve stated before, the history of the Mormon Church teaches us that it’s very possible for large numbers of people to believe in fabrications in a short period of time.” [emphasis in Lundahl 2022d]

Lundahl (2022d) compliments the ability of McDaniel (2019) to do history and then states that I don’t know how to do it. However, the history of Mormonism, Scientology, and the numerous other examples that I cite in Henke (2022a) and my emails to Mr. Lundahl demonstrate that Mr. Lundahl doesn’t understand history and the importance of being skeptical of the claims in ancient documents. Just because something has been written down and gullibly believed for centuries, doesn’t mean that it’s true. Because Mr. Lundahl does not understand history, he far underestimates the ability of authors to make up stories, large audiences of gullible individuals to immediately embrace those stories and then pass those lies onto many more gullible descendants.

Lundahl (2022d) also clearly believes that McDaniel’s trust in the five ancient histories of Alexander the Great somehow supports the claims in Homer, Livy and the early chapters in Genesis. This is a total non-sequitur. Just because McDaniel (2019) has a favorable opinion of the archeology and documentation for Alexander the Great that does not mean that she would or should have a similar favorable opinion about the groundless stories in Genesis 3.

In Henke (2022a), I used archeological evidence to successfully demonstrate that Alexander the Great was:

1. a human being that lived in the 4^th century BC and not a mythical or fictional being.

2. he was a military leader that had an extraordinary political effect over a wide region of at least the Middle East.

In Lundahl (2022b), he seems to agree with these two statements. However, he misunderstands on how to carefully and appropriately handle the ancient Roman histories. He also goes well beyond what is reasonable by adding a seriously flawed third conclusion about Alexander the Great:

“3. five historians from 300 years after his time are adequate for knowing this. The rest of the material presented, if it is considered without these historians, isn't.”

By itself, the archeological evidence that I examined in Henke (2022a) demonstrates that my very modest points #1 and #2 are true by identifying Alexander as a powerful king that had influence over a wide region that ranged from Egypt and Greece to central Asia. The coins, paleographic analyses of the administrative documents from Bactria and other data indicate that he lived in the 4^th century BC (Henke 2022a). Alexander certainly earned the later description “the Great.”

The ancient Roman histories are certainly important in complementing the archeological evidence and cautiously providing additional details about Alexander the Great’s life and reign that archeology and other sciences cannot reveal. However, by themselves, the five histories listed in McDaniel (2019) and endorsed as reliable by Mr. Lundahl are not good enough to provide an acceptable history of Alexander the Great. Also, just because some of the claims in these histories have been confirmed with archeology that does not mean that everything in these histories should be trusted – that’s the fallacy of composition (Copi and Cohen 1994, pp. 148-149, 694). Henke (2022a) further summarizes these key points:

“The ancient histories on Alexander the Great by Arrian, Plutarch, and others are extremely valuable. However, these histories cannot be taken at face value. Marciak et al. (2020a) and other researchers demonstrate that these histories are not infallible and that archeological and other scientific evidence is often required to supplement, correct and clarify their claims. The scientific data confirms that Alexander the Great had great influence over a wide region, including Greece, Central Asia and Egypt. The enormous number of coins minted in his name further demonstrate his wealth and economic power. The evidence overwhelming confirms my hypothesis on the existence of Alexander the Great and refutes any archskeptics that might say that he did not exist.”

I understand that Mr. Lundahl would like to take a lot more claims in these Roman histories and the Bible as “historical fact.” However, this is a careless approach that is not justified by the evidence. Depending on how reasonable the claims are, it’s better to simply label historical claims that have not been verified by archeology or other sciences as “plausible” at best (Section 3.2), and to fully admit that these claims are unverified and not worthy of complete trust.

Lundahl (2022d) then discusses how we can know whether or not the five ancient historians were misled about Alexander the Great:

“How do we know they weren't misled? Because, unlike early Mormons on the details of Moroni's life, they already knew the history of Alexander. Presumably there were written sources prior to the ones we have, when it comes to Iustinus in the 2nd C. AD, he is giving us an abridgement (that is what epitome means) of an earlier and longer work by Trogus, who was from 1st C. BC. Similarily, if Trogus (lost except for epitome), and Diodorus were all 1st C. AD - which is as far as we get, we may presume they had access to even earlier writing that is now lost.”

Lundahl (2022d) then continues:

“So, how did people back in the 1st C. BC know Alexander had actually lived and started the Hellenistic era?

On Henke's view, arguably they didn't.”

These are good questions. How do we know that the five historians really knew the history of Alexander the Great, when they lived centuries after him? The 2^nd century AD Gnostics only lived about a century after Jesus, does Mr. Lundahl think that they accurately summarized the history and teachings of Jesus? What if the sources about Alexander the Great that Iustinus used were wrong? How can we “presume” that the sources used by these historians were reliable when they’re lost? This is why their work must be confirmed with external evidence. By themselves, we have no reason to trust what these five ancient histories say about Alexander the Great because their histories could be based on lies. Lundahl (2022f) provides additional discussions on the Hellenistic Era, which are discussed in Section 6.10.

Lundahl (2022d) then spends several paragraphs discussing various Greco-Roman historians, what they wrote and how their works were published over the centuries. Although much of this material is irrelevant to the existence of Alexander the Great, Lundahl (2022d) makes a few admissions that need to be discussed, including the following selection taken from a Wikipedia site entitled “Parallel Lives”:

“Two of the lives, those of Epaminondas and Scipio Africanus or Scipio Aemilianus, are lost,[7] and many of the remaining lives are truncated, contain obvious lacunae and/or have been tampered with by later writers. [citation needed]” [my emphasis]

Lundahl (2022d) did not bother to include the contents of the footnote [7] from the Wikipedia article, which should not be confused with the “Footnote” [7], which is at the end of Lundahl (2022d), and that has nothing to do with lost manuscripts. It is actually not a footnote at all, but verse 7 from 1 Maccabees 1:

“[7] And he called his servants the nobles that were brought up with him from his youth: and he divided his kingdom among them, while he was yet alive.”

Also, notice that the above quotation from Lundahl (2022d) contains a [citation needed] marker, which is also from the Wikipedia article, “Parallel Lives”, that was never completed. Even more importantly in this quotation, Lundahl (2022d) readily admits that some of these ancient histories “have been tampered with by later writers.” This is not surprising since Lundahl (2022d) admits that our “chief manuscripts” of Plutarch’s Parallel Lives are from the 10^th and 11^th centuries AD or centuries after they were written. Furthermore, Lundahl (2022d) states that our oldest copy of Bibliotheca Historica by Diodorus is from the 10^th century and our oldest surviving of copy from Rufus is from the 9^th century AD! In some cases, our oldest available copies date over a thousand years after the original was written! This raises yet another serious problem with these ancient histories. There is plenty of time for copies to become deliberately or accidentally corrupted between the time of the originals and our oldest copies. We might be able to detect tampering if we could compare two different copies of the same ancient history and readily see missing sections, added materials or other noticeable changes in them. However, what if we only have copies of an ancient history that were substantially corrupted by someone with a religious, political or other agenda after the author died? How could we possibly separate the original from the corrupted text? The situation is even worse for Genesis 3 because we don’t know when it was written. Not only must we be concerned that the original materials could have made utterly false claims, but we must also be concerned that later scribes corrupted the text to comply with a religious, political or other agenda. For these reasons, we need to verify claims in ancient documents and they’re also good reasons why we cannot trust Hypotheses #1 and #2 with Genesis 3.

Lundahl (2022d) then discusses Arrian’s history of Alexander the Great. Now, McDaniel (2019) states that Arrian’s and Diodorus’ histories of Alexander the Great are considered the most reliable of the five. Furthermore, Henke (2022a) demonstrates that archeological and other scientific discoveries have verified some of the claims in Arrian’s Anabasis of Alexander. Nevertheless, even statements in Lundahl (2022d) readily show that unverified claims in Anabasis of Alexander must be taken with skepticism and caution because the history is far from trustworthy:

“Arrian?

I don’t even get a mention of earliest manuscript. We do know he was mentioned by Photius, later patriarch and schismatarch, in his Bibliotheke. He lived in the 9^th C.

I do not know if we can see the same handwritten books he saw. I will however cite his preface:

‘I have admitted into my narrative as strictly authentic all the statements relating to Alexander and Philip which Ptolemy, son of Lagus,11 and Aristobulus, son of Aristobulus,12 agree in making; and from those statements which differ I have selected that which appears to me the7 more credible and at the same time the more deserving of record. Different authors have given different accounts of Alexander’s life; and there is no one about whom more have written, or more at variance with each other. But in my opinion the narratives of Ptolemy and Aristobulus are more worthy of credit than the rest; Aristobulus, because he served under king Alexander in his expedition, and Ptolemy, not only because he accompanied Alexander in his expedition, but also because he was himself a king afterwards, and falsification of facts would have been more disgraceful to him than to any other man. Moreover, they are both more worthy of credit, because they compiled their histories after Alexander’s death, when neither compulsion was used nor reward offered them to write anything different from what really occurred. Some statements made by other writers I have incorporated in my narrative, because they seemed to me worthy of mention and not altogether improbable; but I have given them merely as reports of Alexander’s proceedings. And if any man wonders why, after so many other men have written of Alexander, the compilation of this history came into my mind, after perusing13 the narratives of all the rest, let him read this of mine, and then wonder (if he can).’”

There are no footnotes for #7 and 11-13. Although the contents of this paragraph sound impressive and indicate that Arrian was a careful writer and historian, he admits that some of the accounts of Alexander the Great’s life contradicted each other and that he was forced to make subjective decisions on which accounts were more probable. This is understandable. Historians often have to make these difficult decisions. Unfortunately, we don’t have Arrian’s sources. They’ve been lost. So, how can we confirm that Ptolemy and Aristobulus were actual associates of Alexander and wrote reliable biographies on him when their works are lost? We can’t. We simply can’t evaluate the sources or Arrian’s decisions on which accounts were more reliable. What seemed reasonable to Arrian might not be to other experts. We also can’t verify whether or not Arrian’s sources might have been altered through the production of copies of copies of copies... between the time that they were written and Arrian used them. So, no. There is no justification for taking the claims of Arrian or any other historian at face value. Their works must be carefully verified with external evidence. Given that, we can still perhaps consider some of Arrian’s claims as being plausible (see my Section 3.2) and we can use Arrian’s and other ancient histories as possible guides for locating archeological and other confirmational evidence. But, no, we never take these unverified claims at face value and declare them as fact. Lundahl (2022d) accuses me of “hyperscepticism.” I gladly accept that label as a scientist because it means that I’m less likely to be deceived by hoaxes or misinterpretations, such as those that involved “Martian bacteria”, the Hitler diaries, Bigfoot or the stories of Luke-Acts.

Lundahl (2022d) further asks a relevant question:

“But then why do we believe that Diodorus' and Trogus' audience knew rather than mistakenly believed that Alexander was historic rather than fun fiction?”

Like many people, including many modern historians, the audiences of Diodorus and the other biographers of Alexander the Great simply took the claims in these documents at face value and assumed that Alexander the Great actually lived and did the things that these histories claim about him. Today, archeology gives us the potential to actually check some of these claims and be able to separate fact from fiction and the authentic from fakes. As discussed in Henke (2022a), relevant archeological evidence has confirmed that Diodorus and the other Greco-Roman biographers were right about Alexander the Great being an influential military leader in the 4^th century BC. More detailed information in these histories, if not confirmed by archeology, is not necessarily reliable. We must remember that lies, misinterpretations and gullibility have always existed and that not everything claiming to be history is necessarily valid.

Next, Lundahl (2022d) mentions my dad’s experiences during WWII and discusses the role of eyewitness testimony in establishing history. Unfortunately, the memories of eyewitnesses fade over time and when they die, we only have second-, third-, etc. hearsay of what happened. Nevertheless, we have countless artifacts, news reports, films, video interviews, photographs, etc. of WWII, so we can piece together the various events of that war often to great certainty. This external evidence is extremely valuable in confirming the eyewitness reports of those still living and the video interviews of those that are gone.

Lundahl (2022a) discusses another supposed account from the life of Alexander the Great taken from Alexander The Great in Egypt Posted by The World of Alexander The Great on August 14, 2012 https://theworldofalexanderthegreat.wordpress.com/2012/08/14/alexander-the-great-in-egypt/#more-1465 :

“After only a few days crossing the sands, the party ran out of water and were only saved by a sudden violent rainstorm, interpreted by the expedition historian Callisthenes as divine intervention. Their sojourn was then interrupted by one of the regular terrifying sandstorms sweeping up from the south to obliterate any recognizable landmarks, and with the track indistinguishable from desert and the landscape featureless as far as the eye could see, the guides employed for the journey were soon lost. Mindful that hostile Persian forces of Cambyses had been obliterated in exactly the same circumstances in their attempts to reach Siwa two centuries before, his companions had been unable to dissuade Alexander from undertaking the perilous journey. ‘Fortune, by giving in to him on every occasion, had made his resolve unshakable and so he was able to overcome not only his enemies, but even places and seasons of the year’ says Plutarch. And indeed, disaster was once again averted when two black ravens miraculously appeared, Alexander exhorting his colleagues to follow them as they must have been sent by the gods to guide them. Callisthenes records that the ravens limited their flight to accommodate the party, even cawing loudly if their charges deviated from the correct path. Ptolemy says that their guides took the form of two snakes, and whilst unsure which, Arrian confesses that ‘I have no doubt whatever that he had divine assistance of some kind’.”

This reminds me of the Mormon pioneers’ seagull story (Hartley 1970) https://issuu.com/utah10/docs/uhq_volume38_1970_number3/s/107089 , where legend-making by the devout distorted what actually happened.

So, did this story about Alexander the Great happen? Perhaps, in general. But, even if Alexander successfully crossed this desert, the story may have been embellished almost to the point of legend. Were snakes and ravens really guiding Alexander the Great? It is far more likely that a series of fortunate events occurred and that imaginative theists embellished the accounts than any gods actually helped Alexander the Great. Arrian may have gotten many historical accounts about Alexander the Great correct, but that does not mean that we should believe everything he said or believe his opinion that Alexander the Great had Divine guidance. Lundahl (2022a) thinks that Alexander the Great was helped by God. Again, where’s the evidence for this? How can the events mentioned in this account be trusted as reliable? How can these events of so long ago be verified as acts of Mr. Lundahl’s God or any god? They can’t. Mr. Lundahl is trusting questionable accounts from historians that lived long after Alexander the Great and then invoking another god-of-the-gaps “God did it!” fallacy. A series of fortunate occurrences may have happened to Alexander the Great in this account, and people like Arrian or Mr. Lundahl, think that God or gods must be responsible. No, some military leaders not only have skills, sometimes they just get lucky.

In his last three essays of March 15, 2022, Lundahl (2022e-g) discusses the various archeological evidence for the existence of Alexander the Great. Here, he attempts to improperly minimize their importance in confirming that the claims in the five ancient biographies of Alexander the Great are something more than works of fiction. Once archeology confirms that certain battles, ascendancies to the throne, or other events occurred, a careful evaluation of the five ancient histories can provide further details of those events that archeology cannot provide and tentatively suggest additional battles or other events that archeologists could possibly investigate. To really understand history, both written manuscripts and archeological evidence related to the historical event are required. Unlike Alexander the Great, we don’t have any of that level of confidence about the magical Talking Snake and fruit trees of Genesis 3.

6.2. Cuneiform Tablets Mentioning Alexander the Great

As discussed in Henke (2022a), Marciak et al. (2020a) used two Babylonian tablets and the Babylonian Astronomical Diaries to resolve inconsistencies in Arrian and Plutarch about the exact date of Alexander the Great’s victory at the Battle of Gaugamela. Henke (2022a) states:

“Using the two Babylonian tablets and the Astronomical Diaries, Marciak et al. (2020a, pp. 538-539) were able to derive more precise and consistent dates than what could be derived from Arrian and Plutarch alone. Their results are September 18, 331 BC for the panic, which they think probably coincided with Alexander’s crossing of the Tigris River, the lunar eclipse was on September 20, 331 BC and the Battle of Gaugamela occurred on October 1, 331 BC. Marciak et al. (2020a, pp. 539-543) then correct and reconcile the accounts in Arrian and others with their results. In another study, Polcaro et al (2008) used an astronomy computer program to confirm that the lunar eclipse would have been visible in the region where Alexander the Great, his troops and his opponents were located shortly before the Battle of Gaugamela and that it would also have been observed by the Babylonian astronomers on the evening of September 20, 331 BC.”

Marciak et al. (2020a) is an important study that demonstrates that the five ancient histories, by themselves, are often contradictory and incomplete. Both the written histories and all available archeological results must be used to obtain the most accurate and thoroughly available description of Alexander the Great. McDaniel (2019) then mentions the existence of two other Babylonian tablets that also appear to mention the battle:

· The Chronicle Concerning Alexander and Arabia, also called BCHP 2 and BM 41080.

· The Alexander Chronicle, also identified as ABC 8, BCHP 1 and BM 36304.

As discussed in Henke (2022a), these two tablets, especially the Chronicle Concerning Alexander and Arabia, are badly damaged and have limited use. Nevertheless, the Alexander Chronicle clearly refers to Alexander the Great, his troops and King Darius. These individuals were humans and not myths.

Rather than discussing the more definitive results in Marciak et al. (2020a) and Polcaro et al. (2008), Lundahl (2022e) only responds to the less impressive results on the more damaged tablets mentioned in McDaniel (2019) and Henke (2022a). Without considering possible copyright restrictions on quotations, Lundahl (2022e) quotes the entire English translations of the two damaged tablets from the following webpages:

BCHP 1 (Alexander Chronicle)

https://www.livius.org/sources/content/mesopotamian-chronicles-content/bchp-1-alexander-chronicle/

BCHP 2 (Alexander and Arabia Chronicle)

https://www.livius.org/sources/content/mesopotamian-chronicles-content/bchp-2-alexander-and-arabia-chronicle/

After citing the English translation of the Alexander Chronicle (BCHP 1), Lundahl (2022e) makes the following comments:

“For most of the time when we considered ourselves as knowing Alexander became first King of Macedon and soon de facto ruler of all Greece, then victor against great odds and finally conqueror of the Achaemenid empire, we did not know of this parchment. Did we back then not know this of Alexander?

Moreoever, while it confirms or is interpreted as confirming some givens from Arrian, it doesn't tell us, Alexander conquered the Persian Empire from the outside.”

Of course, this badly damaged tablet by itself tells us very little about Alexander the Great. Again, to get the most accurate history of Alexander the Great, all of the available archeological evidence must be reviewed along with a careful examination of the five available ancient histories. This evidence is like pieces of puzzle. The individual pieces tell us very little. All of the evidence together must be critically examined and used.

Instead of having a comprehensive view of history to obtain the most accurate view of Alexander the Great, Mr. Lundahl’s approach is seriously flawed. He and others in the past gambled and simply trusted the five histories and their lost sources without seriously knowing about archeology or archeological evidence. Mr. Lundahl makes a terrible mistake of just trusting the histories to be accurate. His approach becomes even more problematic with the Talking Snake of Genesis 3 because he has absolutely no archeological or other external evidence to support his desires to believe that Genesis 3 is history.

While archeology is helpful with obtaining information on Alexander the Great, it is limited. Certainly, the five histories should be carefully used to fill in gaps on Alexander’s life and obtain a fuller account of who he was. Thus, when I just restricted myself to only using the archeological data in Henke (2022a), I only wanted to draw the following broad and “bare bones” conclusions about Alexander the Great:

1. [he was] a human being that lived in the 4^th century BC and not a mythical or fictional being.

2. he was a military leader that had an extraordinary political effect over a wide region of at least the Middle East.

After citing the English translation of the Chronicle Concerning Alexander and Arabia (BCHP 2), Lundahl (2022e) makes the following statements:

“Note that while it may confirm a scene from Diodorus and one of Arrian, as well as a comment by Strabo, we would know very much less from this tablet than from these Greek authors.

Again, did we not know of Alexander before finding this one? Cuneiform (thank you, wiki!) was not read by human readers between the démise of ...

· Hittite (1200 BC = Trojan War / "Bronze Age collapse" or just before)

· Hurrian (1000 BC)

· Old Persian Cuneiform alphabet (in the time of Alexander!)

· Elamite (a bit later)

· Sumerian (1st C. BC)

· Akkadian (1st C. AD)

And once again, doesn't tell us that Alexander was a Westerner who had conquered the East.”

As I admitted in Henke (2022a), this tablet by itself is not very useful. It’s just another piece of the puzzle. Again, all pieces of the puzzle, both written and archeological, must be used to more fully understand and confirm Alexander the Great’s origin and accomplishments. Lundahl (2022e) should have discussed the Marciak et al. (2020a) study instead of just these two poorly preserved tablets. This is also why Henke (2022a) includes the Marciak et al. (2020a) and other evidence, and not just relying on the topics briefly raised by McDaniel (2019). By the way, Alexander or Alexandros is a Greek name meaning “defender of men.” It’s not Babylonian or Aramaic. So, the archeological evidence by itself indicates that a king with a Greek name Alexandros was ruling in central Asia in the 4^th century BC.

Of course, people have known about Alexander the Great going back to the 4^th century BC. However, people have also believed in nonsense over the centuries, such as astrology, demons and the Talking Snake of Genesis 3. Mr. Lundahl seems to believe that if a large number of people have believed in something for centuries, then that belief must be true. This is an ad populum fallacy (Copi and Cohen 1994, pp. 128-129, 690). He also fails to realize that there’s a big difference between believing in something and having the knowledge to demonstrate that the belief is true. Demonstrating that the claims in Diodorus, Arrian and or a single cuneiform tablet requires external confirmation. As Lundahl (2022e) admits in the above quotation, the Chronicle Concerning Alexander and Arabia tablet, despite its poor preservation, may confirm some of the claims in Diodorus, Arrian, and Strabo. But, again, the tablet by itself is not very useful. Archeology and written histories must be used together to confirm the past.

6.3. Evidence from Egypt for Alexander the Great

Contrary to statements in Lundahl (2022e), I did discuss the contemporary Egyptian inscriptions on Alexander the Great in Henke (2022a). I said:

“McDaniel (2019) mentions the Egyptian hieroglyph showing Alexander the Great addressing the god Min in the Luxor Temple in Egypt. According to McDaniel (2019), the inscription dates to about 332 BC. Additionally, Bosch-Puche (2013) and Bosch-Puche and Moje (2015) lists numerous examples of contemporary Egyptian inscriptions referring to Alexander the Great during his reign. Dates for the inscriptions are often included. For example, Bosche-Puche and Moje (2015) list the dates of the 22 inscriptions. One inscription has an uncertain range of dates from 332-323 BC. The other 21 inscriptions tend to have dates that are quite specific and range from about 331 BC to 12 April – 11 May 327 BC.”

Lundahl (2022e) then has the following statements:

“No discussion indicating the Egyptians considered Alexander as having conquered from a position of inferiority the empire of Darius III.

The name is in a cartouche, so presumably "A LKS I NDRS" was a royalty, presumably with Egyptian pharaonic status.

The temple of Min has more to do with fertility than with conquest.”

Notice that Lundahl (2022e) never discusses the additional discoveries discussed in Bosch-Puche (2013) or Bosch-Puche and Moje (2015) or what they tell us about Alexander the Great. Instead, he links to a largely irrelevant Wikipedia article on the Temple of Min. It’s not unusual for powerful political leaders to associate themselves with God or gods, or have their names displayed in houses of worship.

Again, Lundahl (2022e) makes the mistake of looking at each piece of evidence in isolation and inappropriately dismissing it as inadequate. He can’t see the forest because of the trees. If Mr. Lundahl really wants to know as much as he can about Alexander the Great, he needs to look at all of the evidence and not just believe whatever is in five ancient biographies or the Bible.

6.4. Bactrian Aramaic Manuscripts Mentioning Alexander the Great

Henke (2022a) provides a link, cites Naveh and Shaked (2006) and discusses the importance of the 4^th century BC Bactrian documents in providing contemporary information on Alexander the Great as shown here:

“ https://www.khalilicollections.org/collections/aramaic-documents/khalili-collection-aramaic-documents-a-long-list-of-supplies-disbursed-ia17/

This is a link that shows an administrative document, identified as sample C4, which states that it was written starting on 15 Sivan in the 7^th year of “Alexandros” and then extending over the next three months. This date, which is June 8, 324 BC, is based on when Alexander ascended the throne in Babylon and not Macedonia (Naveh and Shaked 2006, pp. 199, 206). The document deals with the distribution of supplies. It is one of 30 administrative documents all written in Official Aramaic from the province of Bactria in central Asia. Some of the other documents in the collection mention Artaxerxes III, Artaxerxes V, Bessus, and Darius III. Naveh and Shaked (2006, pp. 15-19) discuss the paleography of this and the 29 related documents and the cities in Bactria where they might have been written. Naveh and Shaked (2006, p. 15) indicate that the Official Aramaic script is from the late Achaemenian period and into the time of Alexander the Great. Of the 30 documents, 29 are confirmed to be from the 4^th century BC. The 30^th document is fragmentary, but the writing suggests that it may be from the first half of the 5^th century BC (Naveh and Shaked 2006, p. 16).

Document C4 by itself indicates that it was written in Bactria during the 7^th year of the reign of ‘Alexandros’ – a king with a Greek name. The paleography of C4 and associated documents confirms that they were written in the 4^th century BC. This is an excellent example of a contemporary document.”

Lundahl (2022e) then replies to my statements:

“For most of the time when we considered ourselves as knowing Alexander became first King of Macedon and soon de facto ruler of all Greece, then victor against great odds and finally conqueror of the Achaemenid empire, we did not know of this parchment. Did we back then not know this of Alexander?

This document according to the discussion is mentioning only Alexander's carreer [sic, spell check please!] as King of Babylon. It doesn't prove he came to Babylon as a conqueror from the outside. Perhaps this part was somewhat downplayed in the Bactrian administration? At least this document doesn't show it.”

Again, Lundahl (2022e) completely misses the point. When evaluating the archeological evidence for the existence of Alexander the Great, Henke (2022a) only had two very modest goals:

“1. [that he was] a human being that lived in the 4^th century BC and not a mythical or fictional being.

2. he was a military leader that had an extraordinary political effect over a wide region of at least the Middle East.”

Notice my two goals do not attempt to evaluate and confirm that Alexander the Great was from Greece and not Babylon, or that “Alexander became first King of Macedon and soon de facto ruler of all Greece, then victor against great odds and finally conqueror of the Achaemenid empire, we did not know of this parchment.” Instead of Henke (2022a) trying to “prove” that Alexander the Great “came to Babylon as a conqueror from the outside”, Mr. Lundahl could confirm that Alexander the Great probably came from Greece by consulting other evidence besides the Bactrian documents and then look at all the evidence in total. Each piece of evidence by itself does not reliably answer all the questions. Some pieces tentatively provide new information that will need confirmation before it can be added to the knowledge base. Other pieces confirm the reliability of other evidence. Still other pieces refute claims or resolve conflicts in the ancient histories (e.g., Marciak et al. 2020a, which Lundahl 2022a-g never bothered to review). Lundahl (2022e) also again fails to recognize that there’s an important difference between people over the centuries believing that they know something about Alexander the Great and them actually being able to say with great confidence that they know that those claims are true. The Bactrian documents are very important contemporary central Asian evidence that helped me to largely confirm my two very modest goals in Henke (2022a) and that was all that I was interested in doing.

Lundahl (2022e) then makes the following additional comment:

“We do get real information that Alexander existed, campaigned, was accepted as king of Babylon - but not really that he was a Greek.”

Here, he is agreeing with me that we get real information from this ancient document that Alexander the Great existed and was a leader in central Asia. Again, this largely helps to meet the requirements of my two modest proposals. However, where in my two modest proposals do I say that I’m trying to demonstrate that Alexander the Great came from Greece and not Babylon? Where do I say that here?

“1. [that he was] a human being that lived in the 4^th century BC and not a mythical or fictional being.

2. he was a military leader that had an extraordinary political effect over a wide region of at least the Middle East.”

Lundahl (2022e) is constructing a strawperson fallacy by complaining that Henke (2022a) did not happen to provide the information that he wants on Alexander’s Greek origin. Certainly, the name Alexandros, which means “defender of men” in Greek, gives a pretty good hint on where he came from. Nevertheless, if Mr. Lundahl really wants to know where Alexander the Great exactly came from, he’s going to have to consult other evidence, and when he does, he needs to independently confirm those claims and not just blindly trust them because others may have for millennia.

6.5. Persian Account of Alexander the Great

Lundahl (2022e) quotes and comments on the following statements from McDaniel (2019):

“We even have written sources about Alexander written by authors who are neither Greek nor Roman. For instance, we have an extremely negative account of Alexander’s conquest of the Achaemenid Empire from the medieval Persian Book of Ardā Wīrāz. It is hardly contemporary, but it is still neither Greek nor Roman.”

This issue is not discussed in Henke (2022a). It also should be noted that Lundahl (2022e) does not provide a link and reference to McDaniel (2019), which is at:

https://talesoftimesforgotten.com/2019/06/14/what-evidence-is-there-for-the-existence-of-alexander-the-great-quite-a-lot/

Lundahl (2022e) then discusses some of his opinions on Zoroastrianism and how they relate to these statements by McDaniel (2019), which do not interest me. Lundahl (2022e) further claims that the book mentioned by McDaniel (2019), Ardā Wīrāz, was written around 1300 years after the events. He’s correct and this is why I had no interest in Henke (2022a) in discussing this much later text. I was only interested in artifacts that were contemporary or nearly contemporary with Alexander the Great. There were also several other issues in McDaniel (2019) that I thought were not important enough to discuss in Henke (2022a). Individuals can read McDaniel (2019) for themselves and draw their own conclusions.

6.6. Alexander’s Letter to Chios

In Henke (2022a), I briefly mentioned Alexander the Great’s letter to Chios and summarized its archeological importance:

“The letter from Alexander the Great to the people of Chios is an inscription on a limestone slab. It’s currently in a museum on the Greek island of Chios. McDaniel (2019) does not discuss this artifact. The inscription is in the present tense and refers to Alexander as the king (Heisserer 1973, p. 192). Heisserer (1973) discusses the dating of the slab. Some scholars think that the slab refers to events recorded by Arrian and should date to the late summer of 332 BC. Heisserer (1973, pp. 192-193) also uses Arrian and other ancient references, but disagrees. He thinks that it’s more consistent with Alexander’s attitude towards the city of Ephesos in 334 BC.

Certainly, Heisserer (1973) and his references depend on Arrian’s work. However, this is an example of where an artifact helps to confirm the claims in Arrian about Alexander. Heisserer (1973) also discusses some of the characteristics of the Greek lettering on the slab. So, potentially, the Greek vocabulary and paleography might also confirm the age of the slab. However, Heisserer (1973) and his colleagues seem confident that the slab dates from 334 to 332 BC and was from Alexander the Great.”

So, this slab could be an important contemporary artifact from the reign of Alexander of Great. Although Arrian’s history helps in dating when the slab was inscribed, I would still like to see further confirmation of the date of slab and its authenticity. Perhaps, the language of the text and paleography will help in confirming a 4^th century BC date.

In his reply to the discussions of the Chios artifact in Henke (2022a), Lundahl (2022f) states the following:

“And Moses does not exist, because he wrote the Pentateuch?

Heisserer is confident the slab is from when Alexander was around, but depends on Arrian for the interpretation.

There is no physical dating, the dating as contemporary depends on Arrian who wasn't a contemporary.

Palaeography had very small variations in letter shapes to play with back in the time of majuscule only, as between 4th and 1st CC. BC. It is also possible to copy successfully older writing styles as well as older linguistic styles. Apollonius of Rhodes was no contemporary of Homer and Hesiod, but his Argonautica (from 3rd C. BC) could on such criteria have been dated to their time, if we didn't know better.

The real reason to believe the letter to the Chians is my argument that the first known audience is an adequate judge of the authorship of a text, seeing that later known audiences are less close to the authorship. Precisely as with genre of a narrative being historic or fiction.”

First of all, Lundahl (2022f) does not have a shred of evidence that Moses ever existed. Even if Moses existed, there’s no evidence that he wrote the Pentateuch. Our oldest fragments of the Pentateuch are the Dead Sea Scrolls, which were produced about 1,000 years after Moses supposedly lived.

In contrast to the groundless claim that Moses wrote the Pentateuch, the Chios artifact is potentially a contemporary piece of evidence from the reign of Alexander the Great. Despite the confidence in Heisserer (1973) that the slab is from the 4^th century BC, after further thinking about this artifact, I still want to see the authenticity and age of the slab confirmed, if that is at all possible. I now see that it’s possible that the slab could be a forgery that has deceived the people of Chios for centuries. If so, the above argument in Lundahl (2022f) about the first known audience being an “adequate judge” of the authenticity of the text is worthless. To get attention, to feel self-important or to even get tourists spending money, individuals and towns often claim to have artifacts in their museums from famous people and ancient cultures that actually turn out to be fakes, such as the Newark Holy Stones and the Spanish Holy Grail:

Bush, J., R. Kocher and B.T. Lepper. 2022. “The Newark Holy Stones”, The Public Historian, v. 44, n. 1, February, pp. 78-93.

Cascone, S. 2014, “Spain’s So-Called Holy Grail is Fake, Experts Say”, Artnet News, https://news.artnet.com/art-world/spains-so-called-holy-grail-is-fake-experts-say-8941

Dating the Chios slab will not be easy. As Lundahl (2022f) points out, paleography might not provide a reliable answer. Nevertheless, unlike popular, but groundless, claims that Moses wrote the Pentateuch, this slab has the potential to add to the growing archeological evidence along with the contemporary coins and the 4^th century BC Bactrian Aramaic documents that Alexander the Great was an influential king.

6.7. The Alexander Sarcophagus

Although Alexander the Great was never buried in the Alexander Sarcophagus, the tomb probably depicts events in his life and was probably made shortly after his death (Henke 2022a; Heckel 2006; McDaniel 2019). Here is what I wrote about the sarcophagus in Henke (2022a):

“McDaniel (2019) states:

‘Another piece of archaeological evidence of Alexander the Great’s exploits is the famed Alexander Sarcophagus, a remarkably well-preserved Hellenistic marble sarcophagus from Sidon dating to the fourth century BC, within a few decades of Alexander the Great’s lifetime. The carvings on the sarcophagus depict Alexander the Great’s conquests.’

She further mentions that the Sarcophagus is currently located in the Istanbul Archaeological Museum.

McDaniel’s statements on the Alexander Sarcophagus are generally accurate and Heckel (2006) presents additional information on it. Heckel (2006, p. 385) states that the style of the artwork on the Sarcophagus dates to the last third of the 4^th century or as McDaniel (2019) states ‘…within a few decades of Alexander the Great’s lifetime.’

Although the Sarcophagus is decorated with scenes involving Alexander the Great (Heckel 2006), it did not contain the body of Alexander. The ultimate fate of Alexander the Great’s body is unknown, although scholars like, Chugg (2002), have their convictions. The Sarcophagus gets its name from its artwork of Alexander the Great’s achievements.

Traditionally, most scholars thought that the sarcophagus was the resting place of Abdalonymus, who was installed as King of Sidon in late 333 or early 332 BC (Heckel 2006, p. 385). However, there are a number of controversies associated with Abdalonymus. First of all, we’re not certain if Alexander the Great himself or someone else installed Abdalonymus as king (Heckel 2006, p. 385). Secondly, Heckel (2006, pp. 386-388) is skeptical that Abdalonymus is represented in any of the artwork and that his body was placed in the Sarcophagus.”

As further discussed in Section 6.8, Lundahl (2022f) briefly mentions how he believes that the Shroud of Turin is better evidence for Christ than this sarcophagus is for Alexander the Great. However, most of his comments on the sarcophagus are in Lundahl (2022g).

Lundahl (2022g) first mentions how some experts think that the battle scenes on the sarcophagus are mythological and that there is no Alexandros inscription on the tomb. He then cites the following paragraph from an anonymous October 26, 2020 webessay at https://www.academuseducation.co.uk/post/the-so-called-alexander-sarcophagus :

“This identification has prompted some scholars to view the scene with an historicising approach as they have attempted to reconcile it with a real event from Alexander’s campaigns. Those in favour of identifying the sarcophagus’ owner as the Persian leader Mazaeus have suggested that the scene depicts the Battle of Gaugamela. However, it is most widely assumed to depict the Battle of Issus in 333BCE, a decisive military victory for Alexander which opened up much of the area around Sidon to his control. However, an alternative interpretation is that the scene is likely not intended as a direct record of a certain battle but is a semi-mythologised scene that alludes to a point in the military conquest. It has been noted that some of the figures are rendered in the nude. Nudity in ancient Greek art was used as a deliberate costume implying heroism, divinity or, in some contexts, mortal athleticism. The appearance of nude figures in an otherwise realistic battle scene can support the idea that the viewer is intended to view the scene within a partially mythic context, and not as an entirely historical depiction.”

Lundahl (2022g) then improperly concludes:

In other words, no reliable record of a real life actual ruler, Alexander or otherwise - even if contemporary to the events given in the Alexander literature.

The marble statue is from 1st C. (reference later) either BC or AD. The mosaic is from 1st C. BC.” [my emphasis]

Here again, Mr. Lundahl improperly takes each piece of archeological evidence in isolation and then proclaims that it’s not good enough. Of course, the coins, Bactrian documents, Babylonian tablets, and Egyptian inscriptions together verify that a wealthy and very influential king named Alexandros lived in the 4^th century BC as I demonstrated in Henke (2022a). They confirm some of the claims in the five ancient histories. However, contrary to Mr. Lundahl, old documents by themselves are not good enough to establish history. There’s a big difference between a claim in an ancient document and being able to say that the claim is reliable history. Again, all historical claims must be confirmed by independent external evidence! Unless two documents come from totally different areas of the globe, we probably won’t know if the claims in them are independently confirmed. Ancient authors may simply be repeating the same myths. Mr. Lundahl simply wants to believe whatever is in the Bible and he has a similar unhealthy attitude towards the five ancient histories that discuss Alexander the Great.

Lundahl (2022g) also mentions a marble statue and mosaic of Alexander the Great that were made centuries after his death, which have nothing to do with the sarcophagus. Notice that he never provides an appropriate the promised reference for the statue:

“The marble statue is from 1st C. (reference later) either BC or AD. The mosaic is from 1st C. BC.” [my emphasis]

Previously, Mr. Lundahl had briefly discussed this mosaic and statue in his February 21, 2022 (9:44 am Eastern US time) email to me. Henke (2022a) mentions that mosaics and statutes have the potential to provide valuable confirmation of military leaders and kings. However, because this statue and the mosaic of Alexander the Great were made long after his death, they do nothing to test my modest proposal and they are not specifically discussed in Henke (2022a).

Lundahl (2022g) concludes the following:

“None of above could, independently of the Alexander literature or other kinds of memories of Alexander establish that he lived as a mortal both ruler of Macedon and conqueror of the Persian Empire.”

It’s uncertain what Lundahl (2022g) means by “none of above.” If he’s only referring to the sarcophagus, I would again remind him that he needs to look at all of the evidence and not just complain that one artifact doesn’t tell him everything that he wants to know. If Lundahl (2022g) is referring to all of the archeological evidence mentioned in Henke (2022a), I will again remind him of what was in my modest proposal. I was not trying to answer every question about Alexander the Great. Nevertheless, whatever artifact that I mention, Mr. Lundahl can always complain that it doesn’t answer this or that question. The problem is that unless he has real independent confirmation, he won’t have any assurance of what he thinks that he knows about Alexander the Great from just the five histories or tradition. Both the written histories and the archeology need to be used to really understand who Alexander the Great was.

As discussed in Henke (2022a), I state that Alexander was powerful and wealthy enough to get coins minted in his Greek name in Greece. The Babylonian tablets mention his campaigns there and the Bactrian documents indicate that he ruled in central Asia. The Egyptians could not or would not stop him from putting his name numerous times in their temples. So, if Lundahl (2022g) had taken the time and put together all of the evidence discussed in Henke (2022a), he should have realized that Alexander was “a mortal both ruler of Macedon and conqueror of the Persian Empire.” Understanding historical data requires careful, skeptical and critically thinking, that is, detective work, and not just combing the ancient literature to look for simple spelled-out answers to take at face value.

Lundahl (2022g) then makes the following additional statements:

“If all examples, manuscript or printed, of the Alexander literature were somehow lost (say sth [sic] like the decrees and acts of Qin Shi Huang, 213 and 212 BC, according to narratives after the events) one would however be able to use these as some kind of confirmation of oral memories, since these are less easy to physically destroy.

But our knowledge of Alexander from these things depends on our knowledge of Alexander from narratives, not the other way round.

The coins, like Greek art in Bactria, would obviously testify to the unity of the Hellenistic world from around the time of Alexander, and my argument is, we trust the narratives of the Hellenistic world on how it started - like I also do with "post-Achaean unity" Greece or ancient Israel or the line of patriarchs - not to mention the Christian Church.”

Here, Lundahl (2022g) again fails to realize that memories tend to be forgotten or become easily distorted over time (Section 5.2; Neisser and Harsch, 1992). So, oral tradition is often not reliable. Also, anyone can say or write down anything and false claims can become widely believed as “reliable narratives” by a gullible and often superstitious crowd. So, oral traditions and written claims by themselves are not good enough to establish reliable history. Each claim must be independently confirmed, which usually involves archeology and not just other written documents that might also be based on myths.

Now, the art of central Asia certainly shows a Greek influence, as McDaniel (2019) discusses. However, the 4^th century BC Bactrian documents actually mention King Alexandros. What was a king with a Greek name doing in central Asia? The other artifacts discussed in Henke (2022a) answer this question, and the statements in the five ancient histories also clarify the situation.

Furthermore, Mr. Lundahl has absolutely no justification to believe that Genesis 3 or Moses are history or to conclude that the traditions of the Church are entirely reliable just because the Church says so.

Now, the final comment in Lundahl (2022g):

“But Henke's too smart to believe (grosso modo) Homer or Genesis or Exodus or Gospels (where grosso modo would be a fair intro to believing them as inerrant, because of the divine intervention testified). Hence, he's blocking himself from this argument on the Hellenistic world too.”

“Grosso modo” according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary is Italian for “roughly speaking.” Now, I certainly appreciate Hellenistic culture. However, appreciation does not mean believing everything that the ancient Greeks said. Furthermore, Mr. Lundahl has yet to provide a shred of evidence that God inspired anything in Genesis, Exodus or the Gospels.

6.8. The Shroud of Turin: A New Topic from Lundahl (2022f)

Rather than further discussing the Alexander Sarcophagus, Lundahl (2022f) indicates that the Shroud of Turin is better “proof” of Christ than the sarcophagus is for Alexander the Great. As shown in the following quotation, Lundahl (2022f) then criticizes the radiocarbon dates that were done on the Shroud of Turin back in the 1980s:

“The Shroud of Turin is better proof of Christ, in this case.

Btw, the claim of forgery as per carbon dates too late has been debunked:

The Shroud of Turin : Were the radiocarbon dating laboratories duped by a computer hacker? (1)

http://theshroudofturin.blogspot.com/2014/02/were-radiocarbon-laboratories-duped-by.html

Were the radiocarbon dating laboratories duped by a computer hacker? (2)

http://theshroudofturin.blogspot.com/2014/02/were-radiocarbon-laboratories-duped-by_20.html

Were the radiocarbon dating laboratories duped by a computer hacker? (3)

http://theshroudofturin.blogspot.com/2014/02/were-radiocarbon-laboratories-duped-by_22.html“

As seen in this quotation, Lundahl (2022f) links to a three-part series of essays at a website that endorses the Shroud of Turin as the actual burial cloth of Jesus Christ. The essays promote a far-fetched conspiracy, possibly involving the Soviet KGB, to explain the problems with the radiocarbon dates.

Here are a couple of recent peer-reviewed articles on the problems with the radiocarbon dates of the Shroud of Turin:

Walsh, B. and L. Schwalbe. 2020. “An Instructive Inter-Laboratory Comparison: The 1988 Radiocarbon Dating of the Shroud of Turin”, Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, v. 29, #102015.

Di Lazzaro, P., A.C. Atkinson, P. Iacomussi, M. Riani, M. Ricci, and P. Wadhams. 2020. “Statistical and Proactive Analysis of an Inter-Laboratory Comparison: The Radiocarbon Dating of the Shroud of Turin”, Entropy, v. 22, #926.

The problems with the radiocarbon dates appear to be due to contamination, inadequate laboratory preparations, and perhaps unexpected variations in the carbon isotopes of the samples rather than some sort of conspiracy as perpetrated by the above three links endorsed in Lundahl (2022f). Readers can review these and other articles, and make up their own minds. I have no interest on going off on yet another one of Mr. Lundahl’s tangents when he has not adequately demonstrated the central issue of our dialogue: Where’s the evidence that Hypothesis #1 better explains the origin of the Talking Snake of Genesis 3 than Hypotheses #3-4 (Section 5.0)?

6.9. The Marcus Aurelius Column: Yet Another Topic from Lundahl (2022f)

Lundahl (2022f) abruptly raises yet another topic that has nothing to do with Alexander the Great or Genesis 3 before adequately dealing with these issues:

“The Marcus Aurelius Column, as per Richard Carrier, has a depiction of an event pagans attributed to an Egyptian magician and Christians to prayers by a Christian legion.

The Rain Miracle of Marcus Aurelius: A Case Study in Christian Lies

BY RICHARD CARRIER ON MAY 27, 2017

https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/12480

As I believe Arrian, I also believe Abdalonymus was installed by Alexander. But neither McDaniel or Henke can yse that argument, their position being the five 1st C. Historians are inadequate proof of Alexander's carreer.” [sic, spell check needed!]

Concerning Abdalonymus, I agree with Heckel (2006, p. 385). We should be skeptical that Abdalonymus was installed by Alexander the Great. This is what I said about Abdalonymus in Henke (2022a):

“Traditionally, most scholars thought that the sarcophagus was the resting place of Abdalonymus, who was installed as King of Sidon in late 333 or early 332 BC (Heckel 2006, p. 385). However, there are a number of controversies associated with Abdalonymus. First of all, we’re not certain if Alexander the Great himself or someone else installed Abdalonymus as king (Heckel 2006, p. 385). Secondly, Heckel (2006, pp. 386-388) is skeptical that Abdalonymus is represented in any of the artwork and that his body was placed in the Sarcophagus.”

So, I think that Lundahl (2022f) is again being premature in accepting whatever is written in these ancient histories.

Now, concerning the new topic that Mr. Lundahl raises in Lundahl (2022f). Marcus Aurelius was a 2^nd century AD Roman Emperor. Supposedly, the Roman army was miraculously saved from the Germanic Quadi force and thirst by a severe thunderstorm around 172 AD. This was the “rain miracle.” Earlier, Aurelius and his Romans troops had been saved when their enemies were killed as the result of a lightning strike. This was the “thunderbolt miracle.” Marcus Aurelius was supposedly at the “thunderbolt miracle”, but not the rain one.

According to Richard Carrier (2017) in the above link from Lundahl (2022f), the two accounts were combined into one miraculous event by Roman historian Lucius Cassius Dio in the 220s AD. The rain account was carved onto the Marcus Aurelius Column sometime around the late 170s to 193 AD, or no more than about two decades after the event. At least, the column was carved at a time when there were still Roman eyewitnesses. Carrier stresses that the events on the Marcus Aurelius Column are better attested in history than any of the miracles of Jesus. Although it’s very possible that the Roman army was fortuitously saved by thunderstorms, there’s no reason to think that there was any divine intervention by either a Christian or Roman god. For good or bad, weather often affects military campaigns. Even today, the spring rains in the Ukraine are fortunately hindering Russian tanks, trucks and other equipment on muddy roads. Nevertheless, readers can evaluate Carrier’s article on their own if they wish.

6.10. The Hellenistic Era: McDaniel (2019) vs. Lundahl (2022f) and Mr. Lundahl’s Baseless Claims for Nuclear Wars before Noah’s Flood

I didn’t bother in Henke (2022a) to discuss the origin of the Hellenistic Era and Alexander the Great’s contribution to it. Nevertheless, McDaniel (2019) deals with the topic and begins her discussions with the following statement:

“Finally, we have what is perhaps our greatest piece of evidence in favor of the existence of Alexander the Great: the Hellenistic Era (c. 323 – c. 31 BC).”

In response, Lundahl (2022f) gives the following rambling reply on the Hellenistic Era, which is incredibly bizarre and includes an absolutely baseless claim about nuclear wars before Noah’s Flood:

“McDaniel, 14.VI.2019

The Hellenistic era shows it started with Alexander

Kevin R. Henke, 1.III.2022

no mention.

My reply

The Hellenistic era is a kind of cultural community (to which among others Apollonius of Rhodes belonged) and a community usually knows how it started.

Like New York knows - independently of old archives, which actually also are accessible as confirmation - that it began with Nieuw Amsterdam.

Exactly as "the Jewish Church" knows it started with God making a covenant with Moses, and that it later split into Jewish proper and Samaritan after the rule of King Solomon.

Exactly as the Catholic Church knows it started with Christ showing Himself to be God by the Resurrection and making a covenant with His chief disciples, Matthew 28, followed by the sending of the Holy Ghost, Acts 2.

Objection 1

Rome thought it was founded by Romulus, but wasn't.

Answer

Romulus doesn't need Mars for actual father to have existed, and apart from that, ditching the story in Livy is guesswork.

Objection 2

Athens and China pretend to have started with Kekrops and Fu Hsi who had human torso and arms and head, but below the torse the body of a large snake.

Answer

Probably they were both born in the time after the Flood when cosmic radiation was higher from above and radiation from pre-Flood nuke wars in the ground was higher too, and were born with legs not properly separated, and managed to move by wiggling around. This didn't stop them from becoming leaders, unlike what it would in these days of medical tyranny.

Objection 3

Mormons thought there were 5th C. AD Mormons on later COTUS territory.

Answer

Yes, but they are quite aware that they themselves as Latter Day continuators of a supposed Mormoni actually started by Joseph Smith.” [my emphasis]

The sources of the “objections” mentioned by Lundahl (2022f) are unknown. McDaniel (2019) says nothing about Romulus, Kekrops, or Fu Hsi.

Once more, Lundahl (2022f) makes a huge mistake of just assuming that whatever view an ancient community may have had about its origin, it must be reliable history. No. Such stories about the founding of various communities may be fairly accurate history or they may contain legends or consist entirely of myths without historical evidence. It’s the job of historians to separate history from fantasy. Although we have plenty of evidence about New Amsterdam proceeding New York City, there’s not a shred of evidence for the existence of Moses or the Exodus, Moroni’s ghost and his golden plates, or the events in Matthew 28 and Acts 2 (Finkelstein and Silberman 2001; Fitzgerald 2013; Loftus 2010; Loftus 2011). Rather than realizing that half-human and half-snake creatures are probably just made-up stories like the centaurs, Lundahl (2022f) thinks that they may have been humans with fused legs. While such a birth defect is certainly possible, his reasoning for this defect in Lundahl (2022f) is not. Without any evidence whatsoever, Lundahl (2022f) argues that nuclear wars before Noah’s Flood contributed to their conditions. Of course, Flood geology is bogus and there’s no evidence whatsoever in the Precambrian for a 4,400-to-6,000-year-old civilization with nuclear weapons (see my essays against Flood Geology here). If Mr. Lundahl has evidence for such a nuclear ancient civilization, I want to see it and I’m willing to change my mind. Until that evidence ever comes forward, Mr. Lundahl is totally failing to separate history from his fantasies about the nuclear pre-Flood civilizations. The speculations about pre-Flood nuclear wars in Lundahl (2022f) are so bizarre, outrageous and unfounded that I doubt that even the young-Earth creationists at Creation Ministries International and Answers in Genesis would take them seriously.

6.11. The Tyre Land Bridge

As discussed in McDaniel (2019), ancient histories indicate that Alexander the Great’s army built a peninsula out to Tyre island as they laid siege to the city. As a geologist, I included some discussions and references on the Tyre Land Bridge in Henke (2022a) even though the references contain no archeological or direct geological evidence to tie the bridge to Alexander the Great.

Henke (2022a) mentions the following geological investigations that were made of the peninsula: Marriner et al. (2007), Marriner et al. (2008) and Nir (1996). Lundahl (2022a) and Lundahl (2022g) also mention the land bridge. Lundahl (2022g) states that written sources identify Alexander the Great’s army as being responsible for the peninsula. This is true. Although the geology of the peninsula indicates that humans constructed it, the peninsula has not been dated well enough and there’s no archeological evidence as far as I know to link the peninsula to Alexander the Great. I even mentioned in Henke (2022a) that none of the radiocarbon dates in Marriner et al. (2008) appear relevant to the time of Alexander the Great. So, this is a case where the construction of the peninsula is tentatively assigned to Alexander the Great based solely on claims in ancient histories. The claims that the peninsula was constructed by Alexander the Great still need to be confirmed with archeological data.

6.12. Coins of Alexander the Great

As mentioned in Henke (2022a), Alexander the Great had numerous silver coins minted in his name during his lifetime. Lundahl (2022g) makes the following responses to Henke (2022a) and the coins:

“I would need to acknowledge that someone or something at the time of the coining referred to as Alexander existed.

That this entity disposed of a mint in Macedonia - and elsewhere in the budding Hellenistic world.”

While Lundahl (2022c) blindly accepts that Genesis 3 is history and without a shred of evidence believes the old story that Moses wrote it, Lundahl (2022g) thinks that the individual that ordered the minting of these coins and the humans that did it were only “someone or something.” How could a “something” order the minting of coins and then carry out that order? How could “someone or something at the time of the coining referred to as Alexander” afford to mint all of those coins, have the power to do it, and have so much influence that those coins would be widely used from India to Greece and Egypt if he wasn’t a powerful and wealthy leader? Again, all of the archeological evidence must be examined together – the Alexandros coins, the Egyptian temple inscriptions, the Bactrian documents, etc. – and not just the five ancient histories to confirm the existence of Alexander the Great. While I see no historical value whatsoever in Genesis 3, I do not dismiss these five ancient histories of Alexander the Great as worthless. They are very valuable when their individual claims are confirmed by archeological data. Once specific events in these histories are confirmed, then the information in the histories may carefully provide additional details and possibly answer questions raised by the archeological data. The written histories and the archeological data must complement each other – in isolation they are inadequate to truly provide the best information on who Alexander the Great really was.

Lundahl (2022g) then discusses the Amphictionic League and other details not discussed in Henke (2022a). Lundahl (2022g) makes the following comments about the Amphictionic League and quotes Kontes (2000):

“And even that around the time of Alexander coinage was changed for Amphictyonic league.

But that epigraphic evidence in itself does not feature the Alexandrou coins:

‘Realizing the importance of the Amphictionic League and Delphi to a ruler trying to establish himself as hegemon of Greece, we can understand the importance of these inscriptions. The new Amphictionic money was set up under Palaios, the last archon during the reign of Philip. The decisive battle of the Chaironeia essentially united all of Greece under Philip. It is not hard to imagine then that the striking of a new Amphictionic coinage would be at the behest of Philip, identifying himself as the hegemon. Following that then, as Marchetti argues, Alexander would have wanted to establish himself at Delphi as soon as possible upon his accession to the throne. The abrupt cessation of the newly created Amphictionic money must have been ordered by Alexander. If this money was stopped before the recasting of money on an Attic standard, as Marchetti has shown, then the use of the Attic standard cannot be separated from Alexander's use of the Attic standard for his own coinage. Therefore, Alexander's coinage must have already been in effect.’

Thank you, Zoë Kontes, I agree, but you will have to admit that your argument does depend on the Alexander literature (Diodore to Arrian) for certain specifics and can therefore not establish these independently of the ancient narratives.”

As indicated in Kontes (2000), the Amphictionic League formed after the earthquake in Delphi in 373 BC before Alexander the Great was born and continued into the reign of Alexander the Great. I never discussed the Amphictionic League in Henke (2022a) because that level of detail was never needed for me to demonstrate that Alexander the Great was:

“1. a human being that lived in the 4^th century BC and not a mythical or fictional being.

2. he was a military leader that had an extraordinary political effect over a wide region of at least the Middle East.”

We could investigate how the ancient coins and other archeological evidence might confirm the existence and activities of the Amphictionic League and King Philip II, but I have no interest in going into that level of detail. I want Mr. Lundahl to finally give me evidence of a Talking Snake.

When looking at the archeological evidence in total, Mr. Lundahl also needs to ask himself why a Greek name (Alexandros) was inscribed numerous times in temples in Egypt, mentioned as a king in bureaucratic documents from central Asia, his military exploits discussed in Babylonian tablets and his name on countless coins spread throughout the region. Even without the five ancient histories, it’s obvious that there was a king named Alexander living in the 4^th century BC that had a lot of wealth and power that extended from Greece and Egypt into Central Asia as demonstrated in Henke (2022a). The people in Egypt were simply not going to allow just any individual to walk into their temples and inscribe his name and image on at least 22 places (Bosche-Puche and Moje 2015). No one would put the name Alexandros on countless coins from India to the Mediterranean unless a powerful leader paid for it and had the power to enforce the order. Meanwhile, Mr. Lundahl can’t find a shred of evidence to support his belief in a Talking Snake and Moses.

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