Contrary to Lundahl (2022t), I Clearly Stated in Section 4.0 of Henke (2022b) that I’m Only an Agnostic about God.
Kevin R. Henke
October 25, 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]
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 2022bo) and Henke (2022ij through Henke 2022it) to his comments on the first six points in Lundahl (2022k) and Lundahl (2022t), respectively. In this essay, I’ll further discuss point #7, which is in italics above. In Henke (2022bp), I had earlier replied to the comments on point #7 in Lundahl (2022k). Here are Mr. Lundahl’s additional comments on my point #7 in Lundahl (2022t):
“A very good argument for the Christian interpretation of Genesis 3 : a) the Devil took visible form in the shape of a snake or, b) the Devil controlled sounds coming from the snake, like a good angel controlled sounds coming from the donkey of Balaam. In other words, this makes the comment of Bishop Challoner very relevant.
You could of course counter by stating "angels don't exist" - which will inevitably lead to Genesis 3 (not just for talking snakes, but also for Cherubs with firey swords) not being accurately reported history and this would leave it with a probability of not originating as history at all. This would be a kind of proof against Genesis 3 being history. But Henke claimed to be an agnostic, and as such he cannot take this road. That's why he is trying to shift the burden of proof - stating that a text taken as history could have originated as a totally different genre.”
No! I only claim to be an agnostic about God. I don’t believe in angels, demons, ghosts, fairies, 800-year-old vampires, fire-breathing dragons, and other mythical creatures. I made this distinction very clear in Section 4.0 of Henke (2022b), which Mr. Lundahl should have read:
“4.0 Like Most People, My Agnosticism is Limited
Although Mr. Lundahl clearly didn’t understand my agnostic views when he wrote Lundahl (2022a), he begins to figure it out in Lundahl (2022b) when he concludes that I’m only agnostic when it comes to deciding between atheism and Deism:
“It would seem, despite your claim to Agnosticism, that you are only agnostic between the Atheist and the Deist alternative, but very much not agnostic, rather claiming basically to know, that only such alternatives that agree in excluding the supernatural should be considered.”
Just because I’m agnostic about the existence of a Deistic God(s) that does not mean that I’m agnostic about the existence of other magical beings, such as angels, leprechauns, demons, ghosts, a Talking Snake or fairies. I also see no current evidence of miracles. People are usually skeptical or agnostic about some claims, but that does not mean that they are skeptical about all claims. I think that there might be a Designer God or gods. I don’t know. I’m agnostic about that. However, I see absolutely no evidence to think that angels, leprechauns, demons, ghosts, a Talking Snake or fairies are real. I won’t remain silent if Mr. Lundahl or anyone else argues for the existence of any of these beings or miracles unless they can produce some evidence. The burden of evidence is on them to demonstrate that these beings or miracles actually exist and are not the products of people’s fertile imaginations. I don’t have to travel around the world to demonstrate their claims for them. Believers in the supernatural have to demonstrate their own claims. Also, unlike the pretentious miracle-deniers portrayed in Lewis (1960, chapter 3), I will not dogmatically proclaim that “nature is all there is.” If I’m shown evidence for the existence of supernatural beings or miracles, I will gladly change my mind and abandon my skepticism of their existence. Until evidence of angels, leprechauns, demons, ghosts, a Talking Snake, fairies or miracles are produced, there’s not any good reason to be believe that any of these claims are real. It’s far more reasonable to conclude that these claims are just made-up stories, as I state with the Talking Snake in Genesis 3 (Section 5.0; also Henke 2022a).
In Henke (2022a), I also commented on cryptozoic creatures that are apparently not supernatural, such as Bigfoot and Nessie:
“In addition, there are claims of natural and not necessarily supernatural creatures where the evidence of their existence is either inadequate or nonexistent, such as Bigfoot, Nessie or the Cyclops.”
In response, Lundahl (2022a) asks me:
“How much of the stories can you go through and consider the ‘evidence as non-existent’? I'm talking of Bigfoot and Nessie, now.”
But, I already answered this question in the same paragraph of Henke (2022a)! Here’s the full context of what I said:
“In addition, there are claims of natural and not necessarily supernatural creatures where the evidence of their existence is either inadequate or nonexistent, such as Bigfoot, Nessie or the Cyclops. Claims for their existence are either based on personal testimony or ancient written records, which, so far, have been untrustworthy. Although their existence is naturally possible, we currently have no physical evidence of their existence. The presentation of a living example or a dead body that can be examined for authenticity, such as a Bigfoot, would be enough to demonstrate that they exist.” [my original emphasis]
So, I want good evidence of a living or an autopsy of a body of Bigfoot or Nessie. Endless stories and supposed eyewitness accounts aren’t good enough.”
Mr. Lundahl has no justification for dictating to me that because I’m an agnostic about God that I also need to be an agnostic about angels, demons, ghosts, etc. As for the Christian interpretation of Genesis 3, it’s worthless. The argument is nothing more than a case of desperately invoking a likely fabrication (demons) to explain another likely fabrication (the story in Genesis 3). In all probability, Genesis 3 is nothing more than a made-up story as explained by hypotheses #3 and #4 in Henke (2022a) and Henke (2022b). I have also repeatedly stated that the first reaction to any claim must be skepticism (Henke 2022dv), that Mr. Lundahl has the burden of evidence when it comes to Bible stories (Henke 2022br), that fiction may use an historical genre to pretend to be history (Henke 2022hg; Carrier 2014, p. 389) and that all claims must be supported by external evidence (Henke 2022b). Genesis 3 does not have a shred of archeological or other external evidence to support it, and there’s no logical reason to think that it ever happened.
References:
Carrier, R. 2014. On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt, Sheffield Phoenix Press: Sheffield, UK, 696pp.
Lewis, C.S. 1960. Miracles, 2nd ed., printed 1974: Harper One: HarperCollinsPublishers, 294pp.