Lundahl’s Erroneous Methodology for Doing History as Seen with the Ten Questionable Saints of Jimenez (2014)
Kevin R. Henke
September 15, 2022
As I discussed in my previous essays of Henke (2022eL through 2022es), Lundahl (2022n) repeatedly uses bad arguments and often fails to appropriately reference his sources when responding to the essay on the ten questionable Roman Catholic saints in Jimenez (2014). Rather than making “mincemeat” of the claims in Jimenez (2014), Lundahl (2022n) again illustrates how little he knows about investigating history. He’s far too willing to accept whatever the Bible and his pre-Vatican II Roman Catholic Church tells him. Mr. Lundahl really needs a mentor on these topics, but he’s too proud to do so (see his email from May 17, 2022, 12:41 PM US Eastern Time and discussions in Henke 2022r).
In response to the claims in Jimenez (2014) that there really is a lack of evidence for the very existence of ten Roman Catholic saints, Lundahl (2022n) repeatedly takes the wrong approach to investigating history and talks about Jimenez (2014) failing to give reasons not to believe in the saints. Here are three examples from Lundahl (2022n):
“There is no specific reason to doubt her [St. Veronica’s] existence except that the Latin version of her name is an anagram, and that she is not in the Bible, neither of which is a reason.
No reason at all to not consider him [St. George] historic.”
The following statement by Lundahl (2022n) refers to St. Christopher:
“But no real reason is given to believe it did not happen.”
Instead of looking for reasons not to believe in the saints, Mr. Lundahl should be skeptical of these saints until he obtains evidence to believe in them.
For the sake of an illustration, let’s say that you have an uncle that believes that he has an invisible ghost in his house. He might ask you to give him a reason not to believe in the ghost. So, how would you demonstrate to your uncle that his house is not haunted? If you were to try, it probably could not be done to his satisfaction. Trying to demonstrate that something does not exist or did not happen is very hard and sometimes it can’t be done. Instead, your uncle needs to demonstrate with positive evidence that there is indeed a ghost in his house. The burden of evidence is on your uncle to demonstrate his belief and not on you to try to refute it. The same goes for Mr. Lundahl. He needs to find evidence to support his beliefs that these ten saints actually existed and that they actually accomplished the great and unbelievable feats in the stories about them, such as getting swallowed by a dragon and surviving (Henke 2022eo). Actually, all Jimenez (2014) needed to do was emphasize that there’s no historical or archeological evidence that any of these ten saints ever existed, and then Mr. Lundahl and other believers would need to take the discussions from there and show that there is.
References:
Jimenez, L. 2014. “10 Beloved Saints The Church Just Made Up”, Listverse, https://listverse.com/2014/05/17/10-beloved-saints-with-fictitious-biographies/ (accessed July 25, 2022).