Even Though We Can’t Identify the Culprits that Wrote the Lies in Genesis, Their Lies Still Have Been Totally Discredited
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 six 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:
“And I think Mr. Henke seriously overestimates how much of it fulfils the following criteria:
· presented as history (not science, not prophecy, not "lost but spectacularily recovered history" but history - a series of stories we all took over from the past, with individual lacunas)
· not traceable to a given liar or set of liars
· not traceable to a misunderstanding of sth else that is a fact and from some particular angle looks a bit similar.
That Genesis 3 was presented as history is not seriously challenged, and Mr. Henke has so far not been very eager to point out even one liar or misunderstanding as probable.”
Mr. Lundahl totally fails to realize that a lot of the Bible is fiction pretending to be history (e.g., Carrier 2014; Finkelstein and Silberman 2001; Henke 2022im; Henke 2022ev). There’s no evidence of a Talking Snake, a six 24-hour creation week (Weintraub 2011; Babinski 2010; Dalrymple 1991), or a worldwide Flood as described by Genesis (No Answers in Genesis). Also, any livestock breeder can testify that there’s no evidence to support the absolutely silly idea that the patterns on the coats of livestock can be determined by them breeding in front of sticks (Genesis 30:37-39).
So, would Mr. Lundahl tell us to believe that the apostle Thomas wrote the “heretical” Gospel of Thomas and to believe that Jesus said and supported the statements in this Gospel just because we can’t identify the individual that likely forged this Gospel in Thomas’ name? Nevertheless, it’s too late to identify the culprits that produced the lies, misinterpretations and deceptions in the Bible. The evidence is long gone. Also, we don’t need to identify the culprits in order to identify their lies and misinterpretations. Their lies about the origin of the Earth, a Noah’s Flood and other far-fetched stories either have been totally refuted by modern science or they don’t have a shred of evidence to support them. No matter how often Mr. Lundahl repeats his sincere wishes for the Bible to be entirely true, his desires are without merit and should be abandoned.
References:
Babinski, E. 2010. “The Cosmology of the Bible” in J.W. Loftus (ed.) The Christian Delusion: Why Faith Fails: Prometheus Books: Amherst, NY, USA, pp. 109-147.
Carrier, R. 2014. On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt, Sheffield Phoenix Press: Sheffield, UK, 696pp.
Dalrymple, G.B. 1991. The Age of the Earth: Stanford, California, Stanford University Press, 474 pp.
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.
Weintraub, D.A. 2011. How Old is the Universe?: Princeton University Press: Princeton, NJ, USA, 370pp.