Henke 2022bk

Misinterpretations about the Past

Kevin R. Henke

September 15, 2022

In Henke (2022b), I stated that:

“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 [sic, drought]).

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.” [my original emphasis in italics only; my current emphasis in bold]

Lundahl (2022k) makes the following comments about point #2 in Henke (2022b), where I stated that people often tend to misinterpret natural events for something supernatural:

“And supposing the supernatural to exist they often, when not Christian, misinterpret the supernatural too. Laios, Iocaste and Oedipus, if indeed consulting "Apollon" (that part could be anachronistic) would have been safer for their happiness if they had seen "Apollon" = "Apollyon" - but they were pagans and hadn't read the Apocalypse.

The fact that some supernatural claims are based on misunderstood natural events doesn't in any way shape or form prove this is always the case, rather each case should be judged on its merits.” [my emphasis]

This section of Henke (2022b) does not say that only Christians and Jews have mistakenly assigned supernatural causes to natural disasters. Before the causes of lightning, earthquakes, storms, volcanic eruptions, etc. were largely understood, individuals from practically every culture around the world would attribute these natural disasters to something supernatural. Even today, there are still some individuals that attribute unfortunate occurrences in their lives to curses, demons, gods, bad luck, bad karma, fate, or other supernatural causes.

I also agree that misapplying the supernatural to explain away natural disasters does not “prove” that the supernatural does not exist. (See here for Mr. Lundahl’s repeated misuse of the term “proof”: Henke 2022ad). Yes, each case must be judged on its own merits and each claim of supposed supernatural activity needs to have good evidence. Thus far, however, no purported case of the supernatural has withstood a thorough investigation. We’ll see if that changes in the future.