Geology Explains the Past, Genesis Does Not
Kevin R. Henke
September 15, 2022
Starting with Henke (2022dm), I am replying to responses that Lundahl (2022m) gave to a series of questions from Henke (2022b). In Henke (2022b), I reintroduced the four hypotheses on the origin of the Talking Snake story in Genesis 3 and I gave a series of questions for Mr. Lundahl to answer dealing with his support for Hypothesis #1. Here’s the context along with the response that Lundahl (2022m) gave to the sixth question and associated statements in bold from Henke (2022b):
“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 11th 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:
· [#1] How can Mr. Lundahl demonstrate that any of his three eighth generational examples were passed down uncorrupted and without any mythology?
· [#2] Where is the evidence that Moses and Adam even lived?
· [#3] Where is the contemporary evidence that this individual named Moses had anything to do with the origin Genesis 3?
· [#4] 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 8th from Adam, there’s absolutely no evidence or reason to trust this claim (Price 2017, pp. 59-92).
· [#5] 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.
· [#6] 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?” [my emphasis]
Lundahl (2022m) then responds to the sixth question and its associated statements:
“Kevin R. Henke: ‘Millions of people believe in the Book of Mormon,…’
Yes, as mentioned, it is a case study on how gullibility preserves the trace of the probable fraud.
Kevin R. Henke: ‘…astrology and other nonsense.’
Astrology is a totally different story. You usually do not believe a certain battle happened because a horoscope for 2 August 216 BC shows (if it does so) Mars in some prominent position (Mars for battle) and Venus (for Rome) in a weak position. You believe it happened because Livy says so. It is called the Battle of Cannae.
In Henke (2022dq), I replied to the above comments from Lundahl (2022m). Now continuing on with more comments from Lundahl (2022m):
Kevin R. Henke: ‘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.’
The most stark cases of something achieving a false status of history involve prophecy (as with Joseph Smith) or "historic science" as with geology posing as a key to understanding what million year span a rock is from.
Mr. Lundahl has no knowledge of geology or science in general. Geologists are paid very well to use the geological time scale, and not the Bible, forked sticks or “prophecy”, to locate oil and valuable ores so that Mr. Lundahl can have access to computers and other items that he needs on a daily basis. Everything made of metal and plastic comes from geologists and how they successfully use the scientific method and the geologic time scale. Genesis offers us nothing. Geology explains the reality of the past. Flood geology does not. The rocks are evidence of the past and their origins can be explained with the laws of chemistry and physics. Genesis is not evidence. Radiometric dating is generally reliable and is confirmable (Dalrymple 1991; Reinfort 2019). Genesis is not (Tobin 2010). Mr. Lundahl has completely unrealistic views of geology and science in general, and he has absolutely no critical standards when it comes to the stories in Genesis. Without any reasonable evidence whatsoever, too many people just accept that a Talking Snake is history, but despite the decisive chemistry and mineralogy of a basalt, these same individuals might be needlessly skeptical if I told them that it erupted out of an ancient volcano.
References:
Dalrymple, G.B. 1991. The Age of the Earth: Stanford, California, Stanford University Press, 474 pp.
Greenberg, D.L. 2004. “President Bush’s False ‘Flashbulb’ Memory of 9/11/01” Applied Cognitive Psychology, v. 18, pp. 363-370.
Neisser, U. and N. Harsch. 1992. “Phantom flashbulbs: False Recollections of Hearing the News about Challenger” in E. Winograd and U. Neisser (eds.), Affect and Accuracy in Recall: Studies of "Flashbulb" Memories, Cambridge University Press, pp. 9–31.
Reinfort, E.M. 2019. Young-Universe Creationism Versus Naturalism: Comparing the Best Responses from Two Opposing Sides: Volume 2: 12 Questions on the Solar System, Amazon Digital Services, Kindle Edition.
Tobin, P. 2010. “The Bible and Modern Scholarship” in J.W. Loftus (ed.) The Christian Delusion: Why Faith Fails: Prometheus Books: Amherst, NY, USA, pp. 148-180.