More Groundless Proclamations in Lundahl (2022v) About the Supposed Reality of the Supernatural, Demons and Angels Guiding the Planets
Kevin R. Henke
November 11, 2022
Lundahl (2022v) ends with an extensive reply to quotations from Henke (2022b) and other discussions in Henke (2022bk): “Misinterpretations about the Past.” In Henke (2022bk), I stated:
“This section of Henke (2022b) does not say that only Christians and Jews have mistakenly assigned supernatural causes to natural disasters. Before the causes of lightning, earthquakes, storms, volcanic eruptions, etc. were largely understood, individuals from practically every culture around the world would attribute these natural disasters to something supernatural. Even today, there are still some individuals that attribute unfortunate occurrences in their lives to curses, demons, gods, bad luck, bad karma, fate, or other supernatural causes.
I also agree that misapplying the supernatural to explain away natural disasters does not “prove” that the supernatural does not exist. (See here for Mr. Lundahl’s repeated misuse of the term “proof”: Henke 2022ad). Yes, each case must be judged on its own merits and each claim of supposed supernatural activity needs to have good evidence. Thus far, however, no purported case of the supernatural has withstood a thorough investigation. We’ll see if that changes in the future.” [my emphasis]
Lundahl (2022v) replies to my bolded paragraph:
I was actually saying Pagans had mistakenly assigned the wrong supernatural cause to the disaster through believed prophecy in the case of people like Laios.
Conspicuously, however, the one misinterpretation which Mr. Henke thinks relevant is the one involving a supernatural conclusion, but from de facto natural only observations, reflecting his main prejudice in the question of metaphysics, see the sections on philosophy here.
Given that Laios, Iocaste, Oidipous were living in Thebes as a Phoenician enclave (sorry, here the parts on Cadmus may have been construed to make contact with Phoenicians, as Euboians, near Boiotia did), and attributed to times before the Trojan War (though that could be chronological reshuffling), and given that there is some doubt on whether there was any oracle, let alone one of Apollon, it is indeed doubtful that the oracle answers came from Delphi. However, it could have been some earlier version (not necessarily a Greek one) of the Apollo cult or some earlier oracle at Delphi before the Apollon cult. However, I do not think a purely natural explanation (beyond inventions) can be given for the events. Purely naturally, a priest of Apollo, trying to keep his reputation, would not make a counterintuitive prophecy on this or that person's son becoming both a fatherkiller and incestuous with his mother. The only way that self fulfilling prophecy did work out after Laios had got rid of Oidipous, was that son getting a similar prophecy far off, when he was trying to avoid it ... and heading straight to Thebes in order to flee a destiny he was actually fleeing to. Demons are better than human persons or even networks at such coordination of damning lies.
The problem I have with Greeks using this as proof for Apollo being divine and having foreknowledge of future is, they should have concluded (as St. John, the author of the Apocalypse) that he was a demon. He produced the future with his lies, a future which would not have come about without them.
I also do not think we have valid proof that natural phenomena all of them are brought about by only natural causes. Indeed, if we take what we see as needing corroboration, we would never get any further, because the corroboration itself would be something seen needing corroboration. If we take what we see as default, provisionally true until proven false, a status not unknown to science believers, but given by them to much more abstruse and élitist factoids, like the current paradigm in one's favourite peer reviewed journal, and if we take it we have no actual disproof of angels, the Tychonic orbits (with their spirograph patterns) would argue angels are directing the heavenly bodies in relation to heaven overall, and some very much mightier than they is directing the overall movement of heaven, from east to west each day.
If David Palm* wants to argue otherwise, it's just because he is overestimating the reason of Alec MacAndrew in being swayed by observations and logic rather than the avowed atheism** : he is somewhat gullible, in estimating MacAndrew as so good a scientist, that his expertise status trumps the actual arguments, receivable by Catholics. David Palm is himself a Catholic.
It's also because he is misconstruing a saying of St. Thomas Aquinas:***
I answer that, In government there are two things to be considered; the design of government, which is providence itself; and the execution of the design. As to the design of government, God governs all things immediately; whereas in its execution, He governs some things by means of others.
The reason of this is that as God is the very essence of goodness, so everything must be attributed to God in its highest degree of goodness. Now the highest degree of goodness in any practical order, design or knowledge (and such is the design of government) consists in knowing the individuals acted upon; as the best physician is not the one who can only give his attention to general principles, but who can consider the least details; and so on in other things. Therefore we must say that God has the design of the government of all things, even of the very least.
But since things which are governed should be brought to perfection by government, this government will be so much the better in the degree the things governed are brought to perfection. Now it is a greater perfection for a thing to be good in itself and also the cause of goodness in others, than only to be good in itself. Therefore God so governs things that He makes some of them to be causes of others in government; as a master, who not only imparts knowledge to his pupils, but gives also the faculty of teaching others.
This is misconstrued as being a synonym to Henke's "laws that control reality" ...
But the point is, if some community has a wrong theory of the supernatural (any community believing any such, according to Mr. Henke, pagans according to myself), then that doesn't disqualify a story which it is describing in terms of its wrong supernatural explanation : it is simply wrong in the explanation, and need not be wrong in the story.
Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
St. Linus°
23.IX.2022
* https://www.geocentrismdebunked.org/)
** At least last time I checked, David Palm's scientific go to was an Atheist. It was some time ago, though!
*** Article 6. Whether all things are immediately governed by God?
Summa Theologiae, Prima Pars, Question 103. The government of things in general
https://www.newadvent.org/summa/1103.htm#article6
° Romae sancti Lini, Papae et Martyris, qui, primus post beatum Petrum Apostolum, Romanam Ecclesiam gubemavit, et, martyrio coronatus, sepultus est in Vaticano, prope eumdem Apostolum.
Publié par Hans Georg Lundahl à 10:39
Libellés : Kevin R. Henke
Here, Mr. Lundahl needs to provide more relevant references and other background information on King Laius and how stories about him are even relevant in this debate. Because the existence of the supernatural has never been demonstrated under acceptable and strictly controlled conditions (Henke 2022b), any past claims about supernatural causes are probably either made-up stories or misinterpretations of natural events (e.g., Pele, the volcano goddess, causing eruptions). Instead of Lundahl (2022v) arguing about the “wrong supernatural explanation”, he should be considering the strong possibility that nothing supernatural ever happened. If Mr. Lundahl actually thinks that something supernatural was associated with King Laius, the priest of Apollo, etc., he first needs to present evidence that these individuals ever existed (they may have) and then demonstrate that they were involved with something supernatural, including prophecy, as these stories claim (I don’t think this is possible, see my arguments in Henke 2022cn, Henke 2022co and Henke 2022b). There’s no need for Lundahl (2022v) to invoke demonic activity if there’s no external evidence that the stories ever happened. There’s also no evidence that Revelation (The Apocalypse) is true. To be exact, the claims made to “John” in Revelation 1:1; 3:10-11, 22:6-7, 22:10, 22:12, 22:20, etc. that the prophecies in the book and Jesus’ Second Coming would “soon” be fulfilled have been demonstrated to be false according to any reasonable calendar. I doubt that Mr. Lundahl would accept similar obviously false prophecies if they were in the Koran or Book of Mormon. The 4th century AD Eastern Church had good reasons to widely ignore or reject Revelation as false prophecy (McDonald 2007, p. 399).
Again, Lundahl (2022v) is absolutely wrong to consider a past story to be “provisionally true until proven false.” This is not the default position in science and history. The default position is skepticism; that is, not accepting the story as true until evidence demonstrates (NOT PROVES) otherwise (Henke 2022dv; Henke 2002ad). There’s no evidence to accept the supernatural claims about Laius and the existence of any angels guiding the planets. Physics demonstrates the gravity controls the movement of the planets. There’s no need to inject superfluous angels into that role as Lundahl (2022v) does. Mr. Lundahl needs to read some books on astronomy and learn some astrophysics, such as the following that I previously recommended in Henke (2022aL):
Beatty, J.K., C.C. Petersen, and A. Chaikin (eds). 1999. The New Solar System: Sky Publishing Corporation: Cambridge, MA, USA and Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, MA, USA, 421pp.
Bennett, J., M. Donahue, N. Schneider, and M. Voit. 2014. The Cosmic Perspective: Stars, Galaxies, & Cosmology: Pearson: Boston, MA, USA.
Chaisson, E. and S. McMillan. 2005. Astronomy Today, 5th ed., Pearson-Prentice Hall: Upper Saddle River, NJ, USA.
Freedman, R.A. and W.J. Kaufmann III. 2002. Universe: 6th ed., W.H. Freeman and Co., New York, NY, USA.
Mr. Lundahl also needs to demonstrate the existence of God and that God is intimately involved in the daily operation of this imperfectly designed and often not-well functioning Universe, as opposed to a Deistic God or a Big Bang with no God at all.
Additional Reference:
McDonald, L.M. 2007. The Biblical Canon: Its Origin, Transmission, and Authority: Hendrickson Publishers: Peabody, MA, USA, 549pp.