Biological Evolution and the Ancient Earth are Supported by Evidence, A Talking Snake and Magic Fruit Trees Are Not
Kevin R. Henke
November 10, 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 five essays, I responded to Mr. Lundahl’s (2022v) comments on some of the unbolded sections in the above quotation from Henke (2022bj). Lundahl (2022v) then responds to my bolded sentence in the above quotation:
“Supposing that they did, that doesn't prove that they made it up. Mr. Henke has shown no inclination to forego the material advantages of being an Evolution believer with the status of scientist. Doesn't mean he made Darwinism up (the blame goes to Darwin), doesn't prove he made old age up (the blame goes to Hutton), and doesn't even mean he made K-Ar or U-Pb or Th-Pb up (again, blames go to other people). My position is, the ancient priests in the Temple of Judah under Hezekiah were big fans of the Pentateuch, but they were heirs, not inventors.
The allegation that's underlying Mr. Henke's line of thought has been more elegantly made by the guys I refuted in the first of these two connected posts:
somewhere else: Did Helcias and Saphan Invent the Torah? · Great Bishop of Geneva!: What About the Scroll of the Law that was Mislaid?
The second deals with Protestantism, or with one of the pseudo-rationales for it.”
Again, we’re not dealing with “proof”, we’re dealing with evidence. Finkelstein and Silberman (2001, pp. 240-243), Dever (2005) and other archeological sources indicate that the ancient Israelites stared out as polytheists and not monotheists. There also was no Exodus. To be exact, one of the prominent Hebrew names for God, “El”, is also the name of the head god of the Canaanite pantheon (Dever 2005, p. 136). This is no coincidence. The Israelites were Canaanites and they first got their polytheistic religion from their fellow Canaanites.
As a scientist, I look for evidence. I accept biological evolution and the ancient Earth because the evidence demands it (Dalrymple 1991; Prothero 2007; Strahler 1999; my website). Contrary to the young-Earth creationist (YEC) propaganda, genetics and paleontology support biological evolution and not Adam and Eve (Prothero 2007). Hutton, Buckland, Playfair and many other early 19th century naturalists were right (Young and Stearley 2008, pp. 89-100). The Earth is ancient (Dalrymple 1991; Strahler 1999). Geochronologists are also right. U/Pb and other radiometric dates largely give consistent results despite YEC propaganda (Dalrymple 1991). Why does Mr. Lundahl think that the lead isotopes in zircons usually give ancient dates, but typically lack 204Pb (Faure 1998, pp. 287-290)? Why do most meteorites give consistent dates of 4.55 billion years with various methods, including: Ar-Ar, Rb-Sr, U-Th-Pb, and Sm-Nd? Even YEC Snelling (2015) admits that “accelerated radioactive decay” can’t explain these ancient dates in meteorites. He’s stuck with a meaningless god-of-the-gaps “God did it! God made the meteorites look old!”. Young-Earth creationism with its Talking Snake and magic fruit trees is intellectually bankrupt.
As far as I can tell, Mr. Lundahl doesn’t even bother to identify his opponents or what they exactly said in his two rambling rants at: Did Helcias and Saphan Invent the Torah? and What About the Scroll of the Law that was Mislaid? However, I never said that Hezekiah made up the Torah. We don’t know when the Pentateuch was written or who wrote it. The Pentateuch could have been made up long before Hezekiah (727-698 BC; Finkelstein and Silberman 2001, p. 20). Nevertheless, Mr. Lundahl should not rule out the possibility that the most devout could be forgers. Although forgeries were generally not considered acceptable in the ancient times, Ehrman (2013, p. 118, 532) argues that sometimes it was the most devout that created forgeries to “honor” their religious founders, gods and organizations. These forgers thought that they were honoring the Kings, Apostles, etc. by using their names to better “summarize” and “promote” the “Truth”, such as in Ephesians (Ehrman 2013, pp. 182-190).
References:
Dalrymple, G.B. 1991. The Age of the Earth: Stanford, California, Stanford University Press, 474 pp.
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.
Ehrman, B.D. 2013. Forgery and Counterforgery: The Use of Literary Deceit in Early Christian Polemics: Oxford University Press: Oxford, UK, 628pp.
Faure, G. 1998. Principles and Applications of Geochemistry: 2nd ed., Prentice Hall: Upper Saddle River, NJ, USA, 600pp.
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.
Lewis, C.S. 1960. Miracles, 2nd ed., printed 1974: Harper One: HarperCollinsPublishers, 294pp.
Prothero, D.R. 2007. Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why It Matters: Cambridge University Press: New York, NY, USA, 381pp.
Snelling, A.A. 2015. “Radioistope Dating of Meteorites: V. Isochron Ages of Groups of Meteorites”, Answers Research Journal, v. 8, pp. 449-478.
Strahler, A.N. 1999. Science and Earth History: The Evolution/Creation Controversy: 2nd ed., Prometheus Books: Amherst, NY, USA, 552 pp.
Young, D.A and R.F Stearley. 2008. The Bible, Rocks and Time: Geological Evidence for the Age of the Earth, IVP Academic: Downers Grove, IL, USA, 510pp.