More on Mormonism and Demons are Not Needed to Explain Xenu
Kevin R. Henke
November 8, 2022
In Henke (2022b), I argued that people often lie, misinterpret and make up stories, and these are factors that undermine Mr. Lundahl’s “first known audience” scheme, which he uses in an attempt to separate history from fiction. In response, Lundahl (2022k) made the following comments:
“Let's go through Henke's principled objections to my theorem, "if the earliest known audience took it as history, it is a historic, not a fictional text" - here:
1. People lie and make up stories.
Those are two different things. A liar also makes up his story on some level, changing real for made up, where that is strategic for a purpose, but a poet makes up all of his story.
I think this is in fact the key principle Henke should ponder before answering any more. So much of his argument depends, so far, on equating Spiderman with Book of Mormon and with Russian reports on who it was who liberated Prague and how after most of WW-II was over.”
In Henke (2022bj), I gave the following response to Lundahl (2022k):
“Yes, poets often write total fiction and the author of Spiderman admits that it’s fiction. However, both Mr. Lundahl and I would agree that the Book of Mormon, Genesis 3, and Russian news reports are meant to be factual and not fiction and not poetry. The question then becomes, are they actually factual or just a lot of lies? To avoid being deceived by such lies, we need good evidence. The Mormons have no good evidence for the book of Mormon, Mr. Lundahl has none for Genesis 3, and Russian news reports are also highly untrustworthy.
It’s also important to recognize that liars in the religious and political realms may not simply take a real account and partially change it into something deceptive. They may totally make up a story so that there’s no truth in it whatsoever. As examples, I see no kernel of truth whatsoever in the Book of Mormon or in the Scientology Xenu story.
Mr. Lundahl also overlooks another critical point here. People often lie and make up stories for a variety of reasons. In the political and religious realms, money and/or power are often primary reasons for why politicians and religious leaders lie. In other cases, politicians may lie in an attempt to avoid criminal prosecution. In Henke (2022b), I further stated:
“The most common reasons for why ‘prophets’ invent false stories are for power and/or money. I think Kat Kerr invents stories to get attention and contributions. Joseph Smith Jr. used Mormonism to gain wealth and power, including the power to fornicate with whomever he wanted. No doubt, the ancient Israelite priests found the Pentateuch useful in gaining a lot of power and tithes and offerings that would otherwise have gone to the temples of Baal and other competing religions. The ancient Israelite priests were especially able to gain wealth and power when they had the support of Hezekiah and other powerful kings backing up their religion with force. As I explained in Henke (2022a), unlike the Talking Snake, we have external evidence that King Hezekiah actually existed.”
I think that Mr. Lundahl seriously underestimates how much disinformation is out there and how many millions of people often accept these falsehoods as fact. Interestingly, Lewis (1960, p. 159) makes an interesting statement that is generally correct:
“Lies, exaggerations, misunderstandings, and hearsay make up perhaps more than half of all that is said and written in the world.”
One could quibble about the percentage of spoken and written material that turns out to be false. Nevertheless, Lewis (1960) is qualitatively correct here. The internet, newspapers, magazines, and the Bible are full of false information. So, lies are widespread and serious problems. The only way to combat lies is to be initially skeptical of every claim and to immediately demand evidence when the claim is first presented (Henke 2022dv; Henke 2022eu). This is where peer-reviewed science publications may help to provide reliable evidence and separate fact from fiction. Peer-reviewed science journals are certainly not inerrant, but when multiple peer-reviewed articles obtain the same results using different procedures, these results are generally more trustworthy than anything given by TV preachers or the Bible.” [italics in original; my emphasis in bold]
In my last essay, I responded to Mr. Lundahl’s (2022v) comments on the first paragraph in the above quotation from Henke (2022bj). Lundahl (2022v) then responds to my next paragraph in the above quotation, which is in bold:
“While the author of Book of Mormon did not take a real story and change it, they took a thought as real story and changed it - and the thought as real story was itself the change on a real story : the Church of Jesus Christ survived the Apostles. Now, this truth points (highly unwelcome in Protestant circles, like those where Joseph Smith got his erly followers) to the Catholic Church. Ergo, seek a kind of wasteland where the Church survived without being recorded in normal Old World historiography. Why not Americas? Joseph Smith's book gave a welcome confirmation. Even so, this even relative freedom from fact was only possible due to the genre of "forgotten and spectacularily recovered history" ...
The Xenu story is given as an explanation of demons, and demons are, whatever Mr. Henke may think, unfortunately a true story. But it is set - like so much other nonsense - 70 million years back into time.
When it comes to presenting something as history in the way that can be taken as news, as recent history, or as history better known by someone with historian status, one has to adher somewhat more to facts. TerraX (a youtube channel in German) has made ridiculous and contradicting claims of herbal lore being inefficient when handled by doctors of medicine in the Middle Ages, but exact same herbal lore was highly efficient when midwives in Cologne were using them withut studies at medical faculty a few centuries later. And of doctors being behind witch hysterias because of their incompetence, and of midwives being victims of it because of their competence. But the fact remains, in the Middle Ages and a few centuries later, doctors studied at university, midwives didn't, both used herbal lore. And at the very end of the Middle Ages up to a few centuries later, there was a witch hysteria. So, a lie about history - not "forgotten and spectacularily recovered history" but simply history - has to adher somewhat to already known facts.”
I agree with Mr. Lundahl that the Mormonism is based on lies. However, the Roman Catholic Church has also perpetuated lies based on false “prophecy” and the genre of "forgotten and spectacularily [sic, spelling] recovered history" (e.g., the St. Philomena Hoax – Henke 2022es).
There’s no evidence of demons or anything else supernatural being involved with the Xenu hoax. L. Ron Hubbard simply made up the story and managed to convince a lot of gullible Scientologists that it really happened.
I don’t know anything about herbal remedies. However, I agree with Mr. Lundahl that history needs to adhere to known facts (evidence).
Reference:
Lewis, C.S. 1960. Miracles, 2nd ed., printed 1974: Harper One: HarperCollinsPublishers, 294pp.