“Burden of Proof” (Onus Probandi) Doesn’t Belong in Science
Kevin R. Henke
October 24, 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 2022bn) and Henke (2022ij through Henke 2022ir) to his comments on the first five points in Lundahl (2022k) and Lundahl (2022t), respectively. Here are Mr. Lundahl’s comments in Lundahl (2022t) on my italicized point #6:
“It so happens, I gave some natural means against total corruption, which would work without God's interference. I only added God as - to us faithful, somewhat irrelevant in the debate with an unbeliever except answering a direct question - a guarantee against any corruption touching all extant versions of the text. But I gave natural means for the text to remain uncorrupt.
The burden of proof is on the one presuming it's a fabrication. Yeah, this classicist used an English translation of "onus probandi" ...
The great distance between Moses and Dead Sea scrolls is not even 150 % of the distance between Julius Caesar actually writing 7 books out of 8 and our earliest manuscript of Bellum Gallicum.
How do I know their attribution is correct? Well, earliest known audience, as with genre. As far as I know Mormons are not generally attributing informations from Book of Mormon to Gibbon or Mommsen. I don't know even one Mormon guilty of such misattribution.
The onus probandi is on the one claiming an author different from the traditionally assigned one. Wellhausen understood that, that's why he actually argued against Moses being the author of the Pentateuch, but his arguments are wrong. If Henke will try to argue Wellhausen, let him do so. General scepticism won't wash.” [my emphasis]
I earlier replied to the first unbolded paragraph in Henke (2022is). Furthermore, in Henke (2022bo), I had responded to Mr. Lundahl’s earlier comments on point #6 in Lundahl (2022k).
Here, Mr. Lundahl again stubbornly refuses to learn something about the scientific method and realize that “proof”, including the legal term onus probandi (i.e., Latin for “burden of proof”) has no place in science (see Albert 1986; Henke 2022ad). Scientists look for evidence. “Proof” is for mathematics. Onus probandi needs to stay in the court room and should actually be replaced by a more reasonable standard: “guilt demonstrated beyond a reasonable doubt.”
Furthermore, Lundahl (2022t) is absolutely wrong to claim that the “burden of proof is on the one presuming it's a fabrication.” Skepticism is always the initial response to any claim (Henke 2022dv). I don’t have to demonstrate that Genesis 3 or anything else is a fabrication, Mr. Lundahl has to demonstrate with good evidence that Genesis 3 or any other claim that he makes actually happened. Indeed, it’s far easier to demonstrate that an event happened or that there’s no evidence that an event happened than to claim that an event could never have happened. It’s not always easy to demonstrate a negative hypothesis (e.g., the uncle’s haunted house example in Henke 2022et).
As I explained in Henke (2022eb), there’s absolutely no reason to trust the claims in either the Old Testament or Caesar’s Bellum Gallicum unless there’s archeological or other external evidence to support those claims. Lundahl (2022t) then compares the time spans for when Moses supposedly wrote the Pentateuch and our oldest known copies in the Dead Sea scrolls, and when Caesar’s Bellum Gallicum was supposedly written and our oldest known copies of it. Mr. Lundahl’s comparison is worthless because we don’t know the authors of the Pentateuch and when it was written and, furthermore, the time spans for both cases are unacceptably bad.
I’ve already discussed the Book of Mormon many times in this debate. Both Mr. Lundahl and I agree that it’s a forgery (e.g., Henke 2022db).
Mr. Lundahl’s appeal to “earliest known audience” and a “historical genre” to promote Genesis 3 and other Bible stories is an utter failure. As I explained in Henke (2022ir) and its numerous links, Mr. Lundahl’s “earliest known audience” scheme is totally unreliable and often documents with “historical genres” are actually works of fiction pretending to be history. As Carrier (2014, p. 389) states, fiction occurs in all literary genres.
As for the Wellhausen JEPD hypothesis, I’ve already stated that I don’t accept that hypothesis Henke (2022ir). I don’t have to accept that hypothesis to realize that the textural and archeological evidence indicates that the Pentateuch is full of unreliable stories from different authors over a long period of time, perhaps as long as 1,000 years (Finkelstein and Silberman 2001; Tov 2001; Dever 2005; Tobin 2010; Price 2017).
References:
Albert, L.H. 1986. “’Scientific’ Creationism as a Pseudoscience”, Creation/Evolution Journal, v. 6, no. 2, pp. 25-34.
Carrier, R. 2014. On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt, Sheffield Phoenix Press: Sheffield, UK, 696pp.
Dever, W.G. 2005. Did God Have a Wife?: Archeology and Folk Religion in Ancient Israel: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, Grand Rapids, MI, USA, 344pp.
Finkelstein, I. and N.A. Silberman. 2001. The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of its Sacred Texts: The Free Press: New York, USA, 385pp.
Price, R.M. 2017. Holy Fable: Volume I: The Old Testament Undistorted by Faith: Mindvendor Press, Coppell, TX, USA, 334pp
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.
Tov, E. 2001. Textural Criticism of the Hebrew Bible, 2nd revised ed., Fortress Press: Minneapolis, MN, USA, 456pp.