Lundahl (2022m) Rambles On About Monty Hall and the “Let’s Make a Deal” Gameshow
Kevin R. Henke
September 15, 2022
Starting with Henke (2022dm), I am replying to responses that Lundahl (2022m) gave to a series of questions and statements 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 and statements for Mr. Lundahl to answer dealing with his support for Hypothesis #1.
The tenth comment/question in Section 5.2 of Henke (2022b) comments on a PS in Lundahl (2022d). In Lundahl (2022d), Mr. Lundahl brings up an irrelevant argument involving Monty Hall, a 1960s TV gameshow host of “Let’s Make a Deal.” Lundahl (2022d) states:
“PS. Have you heard of a Monty Hall problem? You pick a door, and Monty opens one other door with no car behind it and asks if you want to switch. Since there is just one car and two goats (or whatever the zonkey might be), you are 2/3 likely to be wrong on your first choice, and you have zero likelihood he opens one with a car, because he knows where the car is. In 1/3 of the cases, you would move away from the car, in 2/3 you would move to the car. But a chronicler is not Monty Hall. A chronicler goes by different rules and one of these is, he knows what his audience knows and therefore at least on certain levels, honesty pays. Hence, sticking with the chronicle rather than going with the reconstruction makes as much sense as switching the door in Monty Hall problems./HGL.”
In Henke (2022b), I made a brief statement about that PS, which is bolded and #10 below:
· [#10] The analogy with Monty Hall in the PS of Lundahl (2022d) is totally irrelevant. There is no rational reason to believe Genesis 3. [my emphasis]
Lundahl (2022m) then rambles on incoherently in his reply to my tenth statement:
“It was in fact an opposition to Monty Hall:
But a chronicler is not Monty Hall. A chronicler goes by different rules and one of these is, he knows what his audience knows and therefore at least on certain levels, honesty pays. Hence, sticking with the chronicle rather than going with the reconstruction makes as much sense as switching the door in Monty Hall problems.
And it is not "d" it's the seventh and final of my essays in the first round. The Real Reason Why we Can and Could All the Time Say we Know Alexander's Carreer - my disposition being to give the real reason, after eliminating the false ones (or in some cases ones that atheists cannot use without it backfiring against them).”
Again, why doesn’t Lundahl (2022d) and Lundahl (2022m) just clearly tell us how the “Monty Hall problem” applies to Genesis 3? Even better, why doesn’t he, for once, just give our readers some rational reasons to think that Genesis 3 is history? The reason is clear why Mr. Lundahl does not. He can’t. So, Mr. Lundahl tries to be clever by bringing up irrelevant diversions, like the one involving Monty Hall.
There’s little doubt that over the millennia, the scribes that copied Genesis 3 believed that it was history. There’s no evidence to back up that belief, but they wanted to believe it anyway. It's also clear that either the writer of Genesis 3 mistakenly believed that Genesis 3 happened thousands of years before he was born (Hypothesis #3 of Henke 2022a) or that he wanted his readers to think that his hoax was history (Hypothesis #4). Over the millennia, millions of people have just accepted what he wrote and believed him, including Mr. Lundahl.
Finally, because I’m the only individual in this debate that consistently uses an appropriate and clear bibliographic system, I’ll continue to use that system, like I do in all of my books and articles. That includes concisely and properly identifying Mr. Lundahl’s error-filled essay on Alexander the Great as Lundahl (2022d). I have to do this because so far in each round of the debate Mr. Lundahl refuses to put all of his thoughts into only one coherent, well-thought out and organized essay (see Henke 2022c and Henke 2022d). Mr. Lundahl should simply be grateful that I liberally link to his essays in the texts of my essays.