More on Mormonism and Scientology
Kevin R. Henke
October 23, 2022
In Henke (2022bh) and Henke (2022b), I stated the following:
“In Lundahl (2022d), Lundahl (2022f), Lundahl (2022b), and in several of his emails, Mr. Lundahl makes a totally unwarranted assumption that if the earliest known audience believed that Genesis 3 or another claim in an ancient text was historically true, then the claims must be true. Of course, this assumption is nonsense for the following reasons:
1. People lie and make up stories.
2. People misinterpret natural events and sometimes credit them to supernatural forces (e.g., volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, severe storms, draught).
3. The history of Mormonism, Scientology, etc. demonstrate that lies can become accepted by thousands or even millions of gullible people in a short amount of time, perhaps in no more than decades or a century.
4. Even if ancient historians (such as the five ancient biographers of Alexander the Great, Section 6.0) were sincere and honest, they still may have included inaccurate information, false rumors and misinterpretations in their works.
5. We don’t know who wrote Genesis 3 and when it was written.
6. The Dead Sea scrolls have the oldest known fragments of Genesis. This was about 1,000 years after Moses supposedly wrote the book. So, how could the writers of the Dead Sea scrolls have reliably known anything about events that occurred perhaps a thousand or more years earlier? How does Mr. Lundahl know that Genesis 3 is not a fabrication that may have been additionally altered or rewritten long before the Dead Sea scrolls? Why should anyone trust the claims in Genesis? Lundahl (2022c) assumes that God would have protected Genesis from corruption, but this assumption is totally without merit.
7. The biology of snakes is incompatible with them talking and there’s no evidence of either a supernatural or biological Talking Snake ever existing.
8. As further discussed in Section 5.0 and Henke (2022a), Hypotheses #3 and #4 on the origin of the Genesis 3 Talking Snake are rational, but Hypotheses #1 and #2 are not.
9. Mr. Lundahl has the burden of evidence to demonstrate that the claims in Genesis 3 and elsewhere in the Bible are factual.” [emphasis in original; my emphasis in italics]
Lundahl (2022t) is largely a response to my nine points. Actually, Lundahl (2022k) earlier responded to these same nine points when they were originally listed in Henke (2022b). I previously responded in Henke (2022bj and 2022bk) and Henke (2022ij through Henke 2022io) to his comments on the first two points in Lundahl (2022k) and Lundahl (2022t), respectively. Here are Mr. Lundahl’s comments in Lundahl (2022t) on my italicized point #3:
“The lies they believe are not about their own history. They get the stories of Joseph Smith and Ron Hubbard right.
Scientology involves no statements about history, as far as I know. Or knew, see addition below.
In Mormonism, the statements about history are in the category "lost and recovered history" - much like pre-history. The category as such is ideal for how a fraud or an honest misunderstanding can be perpetrated.”
Here are the additional comments on the history in Scientology as stated in Lundahl (2022t):
“I seem I was marginally wrong about Scientology.
Wikipedia main page has a feature, On this day - on September 20 it features :
1967 – L. Ron Hubbard (pictured), the founder of Scientology, announced the story of Xenu in a taped lecture sent to all Scientologists.
Here is what the link to Xenu will reveal:
In Scientology, Xenu (/ˈziːnuː/),[1][2][3] also called Xemu, was the extraterrestrial ruler of the "Galactic Confederacy" who brought billions[4][5] of his people to Earth (then known as "Teegeeack") in DC-8-like spacecraft 75 million years ago, stacked them around volcanoes, and killed them with hydrogen bombs. Official Scientology scriptures hold that the thetans (immortal spirits) of these aliens adhere to humans, causing spiritual harm.[1][6]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenu
And it is easier to make a claim on esoteric preservation of history from 75 million years ago, than to make one on normal preservation of history, if at some point historic transmission was tampered with, like Hubbard or Smith did by esoteric or prophetic claims.”
How can Mr. Lundahl trust what Genesis 3 says when it discusses supposed events that occurred thousands of years before Genesis was written, even if Moses wrote it? As I stated before there is a huge knowledge gap between when Genesis was written and our earliest copies in the Dead Sea Scrolls. We don’t know what was fabricated and how the texts may have been manipulated during this gap (Henke 2022iL). Anyone can make up or misinterpret fictional stories and pass them off as “history”, no matter if they involve Joseph Smith Jr., L. Ron Hubbard, or the writers of the Old Testament. The St. Philomena myth demonstrates that made up stories can quickly spread in a few years and be widely believed even by the authorities in the Vatican (Henke 2022es). The case of William Tell demonstrates that if a heroic story claims to be about a nation’s own history, its people are more likely to believe it because of national pride. People want to believe that their nation, their heroes and their gods are special and better than the nations, heroes and gods of their competitors (Henke 2022ek). So, people often believe groundless stories that promote their agenda. False miracle stories about Sabbatai Sevi (Price 2003, pp. 29, 133 and the footnotes) and William Branham easily arose while they were still alive (Henke 2022eo). Religious followers often want to believe that their founders are miracle-workers and ordained by God. So, in reality, Genesis 3 has no more evidence of being true than the Book of Mormon or L. Ron Hubbard’s proclamations about Xenu.
Reference:
Price, R.M. 2003. The Incredible Shrinking Son of Man: How Reliable is the Gospel Tradition?, Prometheus Books: Amherst, NY, USA, 389pp.