Henke 2022gf

No Historic Evidence for Either Genesis 3 or Christ Walking on Water

Kevin R. Henke

September 27, 2022

Throughout this debate, I’ve stressed that Mr. Lundahl does not have a shred of evidence to support the biblical claims in Genesis 3 and Jesus walking on water. Now, Lundahl (2022r) again makes the following proclamation:

For the talking snake, or Christ walking on the water, the evidence is historic.

What historic evidence, Mr. Lundahl? Where’s the evidence outside the Bible that confirms that these stories actually happened? The statements in Genesis 3 and the Gospels are mere claims without any good evidence to support them. As I stated in Henke 2022dv, the first reaction to any claim in the literature should be skepticism and asking where the evidence is. No one should have the attitude of just believing in something until it's demonstrated otherwise or just because some “first known audience” from thousands of years ago were gullible enough to believe it or because the author wrote it in a format and expected it to be taken as history. As I’ve said many times, people lie and misinterpret all the time. Carrier (2014) argues that the writers of the Gospels wrote fiction disguised as “history”, and countless numbers of people have been deceived by this New Testament propaganda. No one should accept a claim at face value in the Bible, the Koran, the Book of Mormon, Dalrymple (1991) or in any other document. No, the claims in any document must be thoroughly supported with evidence, and Genesis 3 and most other Bible stories are not. Anyone can check the references in Dalyrmple (1991) and confirm if he is correct. They can check the more recent literature and see if his claims are still supported by radiometric dating, geology and chemistry. They can look at work of different researchers and see if they got the same results using independent and different methods. They can determine the accuracy and precision of any dates. They can check valid peer-reviewed scientific studies to determine what the strengths and weaknesses of radiometric dating really are. Genesis 3 and the claims in the Gospels simply have no evidential support any more than the claims for the existence of the gods Mars, Thor and Pele.

References:

Carrier, R. 2014. On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt, Sheffield Phoenix Press: Sheffield, UK, 696pp.

Dalrymple, G.B. 1991. The Age of the Earth: Stanford, California, Stanford University Press, 474 pp.