Henke 2022cx

Mr. Lundahl in Lundahl (2022m) Still Doesn’t Understand How to Investigate Claims about Past Events

Kevin R. Henke

September 15, 2022

In Henke (2022b), I state:

“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.”

Lundahl (2022m) then comments on the bolded segment of this quotation from Henke (2022b):

“There is no historic reason to label the things I examplified as "fairy tales" and an a priori metaphysical prejudice against miracles is not a high standard of history. There is a reason why I put "lower it" in quotation marks, as I referred to only his own evaluation of it being high, not to an actual lowering.”

No. In the above quotation, I labelled miracles as likely fairy tales. Again, Mr. Lundahl needs to read what I wrote in Henke (2022b) about how miracles rank on my probability scale of past events. They rank low, but they’re not 0 out of 100. That is, miracles are not impossible. Now, Mr. Lundahl would probably agree with me that the Pandora’s Box story is a likely fairy tale rather than history – at least I hope so. However, there’s no more historical evidence for Genesis 3 than there is for the Pandora’s Box story. Unless there is good evidence, we should be strongly skeptical of miracles because, considering that there’s not a shred of evidence that a miracle has ever happened, it’s far, far more probable that a miraculous claim is either a lie or a misinterpretation. Now, if anyone claims: “Look here! After all of these millennia, we have finally found good evidence of a miracle!” I would respond: “Great! There’s a first time for everything. Now, let’s evaluate your evidence and see if it eliminates my skepticism!”

Now, Mr. Lundahl’s approach to history is all wrong and his standards are far too low and totally ineffective in separating probable history from likely fairly tales. The first reaction to any claim should be skepticism and a desire to receive evidence that demonstrates that the claim is real. No one should accept any claim as “history” until it is otherwise demonstrated with good evidence. Only when suitable evidence becomes available, should a claim about a past event be raised into the likely historical range on the scale described in Henke (2022b).