What Henke Responded - up to "Henke2022aa" (with ab and ai looked up in advance, since referred to in previous) · Ah, Some New · Back to Philosophy · Beginning on Henke2022az? Nope. · Why Catalogue the Supernatural? Why Catalogue Fiction? · Henke(2022bi) Starts It Today! But I only get to Henke(2022bk) For Now. · New Batch of Henke Essays · Resuming at Henke(2022bL) after Interruption, up to 2022br. · Why Did I Bring Up Greek Myth? · Historicity of Certain Religious Stories, Notably Genesis
Henke (2022bi): “Don’t Trust Everything that was Said in the Enlightenment, the Bible or the 21st Century”
In this case, I at least agree with Lundahl (2022k) that there is no rational reason to believe any of these stories about Paracelsus or others having contracts with the devil.
That is more than I said. I said the demonic explanation is, at least within the Christian culture, one version of the supernatural highly likely to get attached to people for no better reason than those people having extraordinary achievements. Confer what I said about Hercules and Theseus in a pagan culture.
So, the supernatural least likely to be true is the one that is most likely to be believed for inadequate reasons. One may be suspicion against an enemy or potential enemy, one may be simple explanations of extraordinary but on the whole natural achievements, and the modern version would be things like complex high functioning mental illnesses. For instance "syndrome du savant" ...
However, I’m the skeptic in this debate.
So the level of argumentation is "I'm the sceptic, ergo I am right" or "I'm the sceptic, ergo the other guy has no right to use a sceptic argument" ... or? No, he gets even worse than that.
It’s Mr. Lundahl that cannot separate cartoonish delusions (e.g., Genesis 3) from reality (e.g., an ancient Earth).
Heavily presuming what needs proof ... at the very least this is adressing an already biassed evolution believing audience instead of myself, the actual opponent.
I also do not automatically believe any story coming out of the Enlightenment.
He'll actually show off believing one ... here it is, with me answering after it:
All stories must be verified with evidence, no matter if they are in today’s New York Times, recorded in the Enlightenment or found in the Bible.
And a New York Times journalist believing a story to be true doesn't strike Henke as evidence? Is it a kind of disingenious forgetfulness of what news source he habitually trusts, or is it just a snide remark on how low he rates the journalists of NYT?
More presumably, he does actually consider, if a NYT journalist has found evidence, he presents a story, and if he hasn't, he doesn't. Unless it's for the issue of April 1st.
That is basically my view on the "first known audience" - if such and such a journalist from NYT, published Tuesday 4th of August in 2022 has found institutionally believeable evidence that Putin's labs were producing a vaccine with viruses cultivated in human fetal cells from an abortion, that's why he publishes it.
He in turn also believed the "first known audience" - namely those participating in the actual work.
With interesting remarks on what was used before human fetal cells to cultivate viruses for vaccines.
But Henke may perhaps to this day doubt that Putin's pharmaceutical researchers were doing vaccine purposed cultivation of Corona-viruses in human fetal cells? There are some guys on the right who would applaud that. I do not (but then I never was a huge fan of Putin).
As I state in Henke (2022b), Henke (2022dv) and Henke (2022eu), the first reaction to any claim should be skepticism.
It cannot be biographically in any given person as to all and any claims given by his parents.
The end result of this position is therefore that most people applying it (converts and apostates being two exceptions) will continue believing what the parents taught them, and use that as ground for scepticism against any claim going against it. End of debate, not just this one but every one.
The first reaction to any unusual claim will inevitably be some kind of scepticism. Mild or suspicious, hidden or shown.
But finally, the reason for not believing story A cannot be that it isn't backed up by stories B and C, each of which needs to be backed up by two more stories, since ultimately that would be a reason against believing any story at all, including obliging you to second guess everything you were taught by your parents. The final reason for not believing story A is believing story B instead.
Both I and Henke show this attitude.
I have quoted how Henke shows it : his ultimate reason against Genesis 3 being his belief that "an ancient Earth" (presumably beyond the 7000 + years accorded by Biblical chronology, and presumably very far beyond it, nearly 7 million times beyond it) is not a story, but reality itself. That is exactly how little he realises a very basic reality, that, reality or not reality, Henke learned this precisely as a story.
Now, the two principles where we disagree (when evaluating stories, apart from belief systems) are:
- I believe that most people under most circumstances behave like the NYT journalist and like people believing him so that a story presented as historic fact should be believed until there are specific reasons to doubt it;
- Henke believes that journalistic standards of some paper (perhaps NYT, perhaps some other, certainly peer reviewed journals) are an exceptional mild breeeze of sanity in an overall hurricane of human irrationality;
- Henke believes that reconstruction by scientific agreed on standards of research is a fairly safe way at arriving at truth, also about the past, even without support from stories;
- I believe that is another example of the trope "history lost and spectacularily recovered" which is, on my view, the real bad thing not to believe, which unfortunately Mormons believed about Golden Plates, some Scientologists (perhaps not lower levels) about Xenu, and Evolutionists about Millions and Billions of Years.
I don't think this adds up to Henke being and me not being the sceptic in this debate. For that matter, it need not add up to me being and Henke not being the sceptic in this debate either.
That's why I think a certain concentration on actual arguments and refraining from ad hominem's like Henke's would be a good idea.
Because, obviously, it was a very grave ad hominem and also a claim of authority on Henke's part, to state, in essence "I am the sceptic between me and HGL, therefore I am the one who can tell what one should be sceptic about."
This is why good evidence should always accompany a new claim.
Yes, and "earliest known audience" is a good proof, not directly for total factuality (misunderstandings and lies do occur), but for historicity as opposed to deliberate fiction being the original status of the story.
If the purveyors of a claim simply promise to provide evidence later or if they claim that large numbers of people already accept it as fact or that the “earliest known audience” believed it, it’s wise not to accept the claim until reliable evidence comes forward.
One of the things is not like the others (I think there is a ditty used for games on TV shows, directed at children) ...
- first known audience believed a text to be history, not fiction is NOT a promise to provide evidence later: it is one key evidence about any historic claim;
- first known audience believed a text to be history, not fiction is NOT "large numbers already accept this as fact" (like the latent argument Henke does about "an ancient Earth" being reality, the reality being that large numbers already accept it is such), no: it is an argument stating "if you want to argue the history was misunderstood or manipulated by a fraud - up to you to show such."
First known audience is therefore reliable evidence as far as it goes, namely up to this precise next question, which Henke so far hasn't dared enter into : "is there evidence for a misunderstanding" or "is there evidence for a successful fraud" ... Henke's argument here has been on the level, "misunderstandings exist, therefore this could be one" or "frauds have been successful, this could be a successful fraud" - that is on the precise level as if I had argued, which I have not "some stories from the past are true history, therefore this could be one too" - that's not providing evidence that it is true history.
So, my strategy is and remains two step:
- prove this is history, not automatically true such, by what earliest known audience has considered;
- prove this is true history by refuting any specific claims of it being false history.
And Mr. Henke has so far not made any such claims, but persisted in complaining that my claim for it being history doesn't work even on that level (showing his weak grasp on history), and pretended that I made a claim on it being automatically true history, just because it was believed such, which was not my exact claime either.
Henke (2022bj): “Lies About the Past”
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.
Shall I finally take this as an indirect admission that works of fiction received by a community as such are not likely to be within that community rebooted into the status of texts of history? Because that in its turn shows the principle that first known audience can be a standin for first audience. But now to the examples he admits as not starting out even as fiction.
To avoid being deceived, we have good evidence that Book of Mormon was not successfully foisted on anyone as simply normally remembered history, but it has the status, in itself highly suspect of "forgotten and spectacularily recovered history."
We also have good evidence that Russians and Ukraineans have on top levels had a training under the Soviet empire, which was a master of lies.
We therefore know the source to be a suspect one.
What is Mr. Henke's evidence (or proof!) that Genesis 3 at any time had the status of spectacularily recovered but previously lost history? Or that any actual author of it (including the purported one, Moses) was a master of lies? So far none.
Once the category fiction is away, the next question is : good history or bad history, fact, fraud or frivolous explanations? My position has so far been "fact" and Mr. Henke has provided no argument for either fraud or frivolous explanation.
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.
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.
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.
And lies get exposed. When what a given generation has inherited is by it presented as history, and no previous generation is known to have taken it for fiction, the salient point is : why could someone succeed in so imposing it, why was his lie successful?
Making up a lie doesn't equal making up a successful one. In Denmark, when I was homeless, I found out Norwegians are more popular than Swedes. Both Denmark and Norway were occupied, both had some kind of resistance, and Sweden was neutral, sometimes giving Germany material support, and this is taken with some animosity from some. So when my Danish at a meeting with someone wasn't good enough to be taken as that of a native, I was asked where I was from, and I tried saying I was Norwegian. Only partially a lie, since my paternal grandmother is a native Norwegian, but a deception nonetheless in this context. I knew no Norwegian soccer players or players of association football. I knew exactly one Norwegian actor, namely the one who had been broadcasted in Sweden and most probably Denmark as well, that being Fleksnes (who's the character, I had no idea the actor's real name is Rolv Wesenlund! - It's like referring to Viggo Mortensen as Aragorn!) ... yes, wiki states Fleksnes Fataliteter was also broadcast in Denmark, so, knowing Fleksnes was no valid proof of being Norwegian. I ended up admitting to being a Swede, and pleaded that Norwegian was not a total lie, since I am one quarter such.
So, "someone made up a lie at some point and for some reason, mankind being naturally very gullible, this was accepted" is pretty much like saying "I don't have the proof yet, but it's upcoming, honest!" - to which the appropriate answer would be : OK, tell me when you have your actual case!
The most common reasons for why ‘prophets’ invent false stories are for power and/or money.
Very probable indeed. When the stories are invented, that is very commonly so.
I think Kat Kerr invents stories to get attention and contributions.
Whether she does or not, they are not presented as history, but as prophecy, straight off. "I saw a vision" or "I was in heaven" are not historic claims, they are prophetic claims. For a claim to be properly speaking historic, it has to be something witnessed by people, transmitted by people and ending up telling someone who didn't see it what people saw with eyes and ears in normal circumstances. Not in a vision. However, it is a historic claim that Kat Kerr has made a prophetic claim.
Part of my case is, no part of Genesis, except the six days account (ended in at latest in the text chapter 2 verse 4) has been presented as prophecy.
Joseph Smith Jr. used Mormonism to gain wealth and power, including the power to fornicate with whomever he wanted.
Most of it through claims that were prophetic rather than historic. And again, the part that's remotely historic fits the very suspect subcategory "lost history that's spectacularily recovered" ....
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.
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.
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.
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.
Henke(2022bj) quotes C. S. Lewis:
Lies, exaggerations, misunderstandings, and hearsay make up perhaps more than half of all that is said and written in the world.
One of the four is not like the other ... a hearsay that does not go back to a liar, to an exaggeration or to a misunderstanding and to which the one promoting is not adding such is not in and of itself counterfactual.
Now, to return to the case of newspapers, I seriously doubt that Mr. Henke starts out with scepticism about each and every story until it is corroborated. I very much think journalists did that job for him. And that he thinks so too.
Does this make me anything like a very gullible person when it comes to modern journalism? No, I am one of the persons who actually challenged a story on hearing (or reading) it.
After Utøya, Norwegian police had presented Mr. Breivik as a "Fundamentalist Christian" - same day as I heard it, I pointed out two links proving he was anything but, he had been excluded from the Norwegian freemasonry, the Johanneslosjen of Oslo, the day following the attack that killed 77. He has also later been reported as having stated he was not a Theist in the philosophical sense, he believed Evolution, he wanted Norwegian Lutheran Christianity (which is very far from Fundie in its mainstream) simply as a piece of Norwegian culture, as accidentally being the mold in which Norwegian morality and manners were cast.
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).
I really don't think Mr. Henke is doing that when reading New York Times. I don't think anyone is doing that. If that were the only option, we would be fried. Because it is an option that isn't open to anyone.
This is where peer-reviewed science publications may help to provide reliable evidence and separate fact from fiction.
Peer reviewed science may certainly help to separate current science from debunked one. It may certainly help to give exact minutiae of either a natural law or the specific way it is realised in certain circumstances. B U T history is not science, and while the peer reviewed journals in history do give access to less known source material, they are not the supermen of reason that one would need to separate "fact from fiction" as if there were any account where those were the alternatives.
Their major weakness isn't blunders, but false paradigms, and Mr. Henke is voicing one of them, as I am here and elsewhere on this debate arguing.
Meanwhile, my example of challenging the story of Utøya perpetrator being a Christian Fundamentalist shows there actually is an alternative : provisionally believing all, but challenging anything that there is a reason to actually disbelieve.
Henke (2022bk): “Misinterpretations about the Past”
This section of Henke (2022b) does not say that only Christians and Jews have mistakenly assigned supernatural causes to natural disasters.
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.
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.
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
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.
On to : New Batch of Henke Essays
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