The Failed Two-Step in Lundahl (2022t)
Kevin R. Henke
October 26, 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]
Lundahl (2022t) is largely a response to my nine points. Mr. Lundahl also earlier commented on these same points in Lundahl (2022k). I previously responded in Henke (2022bj and 2022bq) and Henke (2022ij through Henke 2022iv) to his comments on the first eight points in Lundahl (2022k) and Lundahl (2022t), respectively.
In Henke (2022br), I had earlier replied to the comments on point #9 in Lundahl (2022k). In this essay, I’ll further discuss point #9. Here are Mr. Lundahl’s additional comments on point #9 in Lundahl (2022t):
“My way is double:
1) establish - by first known audience - that the text is historic rather than fictional
2) refute any claims Henke may make for its being specifically a fraud perpetrated like this or specifically a misunderstanding which happened like that.
He fails to see what the first claim even means (since he confuses it with "first known audience" being right to trust every fact in the text) and never goes on to what I would have to further refute. So, his incompetence in debating me sticks me to step one of this two-step method.”
Mr. Lundahl fails to realize that his “first known audience” scam cannot successfully distinguish between a text that is actually historic and a clever work of fiction pretending to be a historical text (e.g., Henke 2022ee and its links). Fiction can be written in any genre, including in an historic one (Carrier 2014, p. 389). Forgers certainly write in a historic genre to deceive their readers. So, Mr. Lundahl’s first step is unreliable.
Now, as I clearly explained in Henke (2022bh), I don’t expect any historical text to be 100% accurate so that we can “trust every fact in the text.” However, Mr. Lundahl has not given any good reason at all to trust any of the claims in Genesis 3. We don’t simply know when Genesis 3 was written. Even if Moses existed and wrote it, he supposedly lived thousands of years after Adam. Where’s the reliable chain of custody between when Genesis was written and our oldest copies in the Dead Sea Scrolls? Where are the documents about Adam that Moses supposedly received according to Hypothesis #1 in Henke (2022a) that Mr. Lundahl so desperately wants to believe? Mr. Lundahl does not have a shred of evidence to support his far-fetched speculations about the origin of Genesis 3 and, as I’ve repeatedly stated, no one should accept the claims of any document at face value. People must be initially skeptical of all claims until they are demonstrated to be reliable (Henke 2022dv).
Mr. Lundahl has utterly failed to demonstrate that Hypothesis #1 in Henke (2022a) with its reliance on far-fetched characters, such as a Talking Snake, Adam and Moses, is a more realistic explanation for Genesis 3 than Hypotheses #3 and #4, which are based on common occurrences. Mr. Lundahl has the burden of evidence to demonstrate (NOT PROVE!) that Genesis 3 actually occurred. He has failed to do so. Because skepticism is the default position for Genesis 3 or any other claim, I don’t have to demonstrate that Genesis is a fraud. However, there’s plenty of bad Flood geology and silly animal breeding in Genesis 30:31-34 to dismiss the book as an untrustworthy work of fiction (Henke 2022ev).
As for who is winning this debate, our readers will decide that. They can choose between my essays and Mr. Lundahl’s essays with their deliberately distorted spelling, his improper referencing and use of references, his circular arguments and his other logical fallacies, Mr. Lundahl’s total lack of skepticism about Biblical claims and Roman Catholic traditions, and his unfamiliarity with the scientific method and how history should be critically evaluated. His research methodology is all wrong.
Reference:
Carrier, R. 2014. On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt, Sheffield Phoenix Press: Sheffield, UK, 696pp.