Why Catalogue the Supernatural? Why Catalogue Fiction?

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

The following, namely those between Henke2022ba and Henke2022bh, seem to go into some detail:

Henke (2022bb): “Additional Ramblings in Lundahl (2022k) Involving a Racist Term”

Like I did in Henke (2022b), I have no interest in quoting any of his statements on this issue because Mr. Lundahl has absolutely no justification for using that term.

Even when translating a racist term?

As a general rule, if a group of people do not refer to themselves by a term, then it’s probably not a good idea to use the term either.

Depends a bit on how close you live to them.

Now, to be fair to ancients who called slit eyed people cynoscephaloi or people in the sixties calling them gooks, they were not usually living close by.

My own sole interest in using the racist term from today is as a translation of the racist term back then.

I should also point out that Lewis (1960, p. 64) used a racist term for Native Americans.

Oh, dear me ... Indians is "racist"? If that was not the term, what was it?

However, Mr. Lewis died in 1963 and lived during a time when people were less sensitive to racial groups.

Perhaps more to the point: living in Oxford and part time his native Northern Ireland, with a few voyages into Wales, Republic of Éire and also Greece, he was not close to any Native American who could possibly have been wounded by the word.

However, Mr. Lundahl in Lundahl (2022a) and Lundahl (2022k) has no excuse for using any term that was identified as morally offensive and inappropriate decades ago or about the time he was born.

Even when doing so without approval?

Henke (2022bc): “The Hovind Reference in Lundahl (2022a) and (2022k): Why Would Mr. Lundahl Ever Cite Such an Unreliable Source?”

Hovind gives by bombardier beetle a possible parallel (to dragons) that has not been refuted, Henke's reference ...

Senter, P.J. 2019. Fire-Breathing Dinosaurs? The Hilarious History of Creationist Pseudoscience at Its Silliest: Cambridge Scholars Publishing: Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, 211pp.

... gives a possible refutation, which has at least not been confirmed by arguments anyone shared with me (the book would probably also be available only on BnF, and taken out only on demand made in advance, and it would be much harder to cite it).

Henke (2022bd): “If Mr. Lundahl Wants to Debate, It’s His Responsibility to Obtain the Necessary References”

If Mr. Lundahl or our readers really want to see Senter (2019), they can look up the reference and get the information first-hand and in a level of detail that I could not summarize in an essay.

Fact is, Henke doesn't even make one of the arguments from Senter.

Henke (2022be): “Lundahl (2022k) Doesn’t Know What an Agnostic is and He Continues to Make Claims Without Providing Any Suitable Evidence”

Proof is for mathematics. I’m asking for evidence of miracles, God, etc.,

A piece of evidence is simply the material or observational part of a proof. If Mr. Henke doesn't know that, too bad for him, and repeating catch words calculated to skew the debate (pretending an incomplete or possibly even complete proof on my part is "no evidence" or claiming he has given "evidence" when he hasn't used it in a valid proof) won't change that issue.

Henke (2022bf): “No Evidence that Anything Miraculous Occurs in Transubstantiation”

Well, when does God change chemical processes directly

The usual processes were changed (without breaking any laws of chemistry) at Cana.

If Lundahl (2022a) wants to actually demonstrate that any transubstantiation miracles occur,

To an unbeliever? No. The proof for transsubstantiation is "nil hoc veritatis verbo verius" and as long as you have not accepted that Jesus is the Word of Truth than which Nothing is More Truthful, I cannot demonstrate the truth of transsubstantation.

I can however point out it is very different to prove that it occurs and to prove that the objection offered by Henke is nil.

Henke (2022bg): “Lundahl (2022k): More on Alchemy and Why Bother Classifying Fiction?”

Apparently, Mr. Lundahl changed his mind at some point and no longer considers it likely that Theophrastus Paracelsus of Vienna actually changed a copper coin into gold or was possibly involved in some sort of a “demonic sham.” Good for him.

Because I bothered to classify legends - and this one is from the Enlightenment era, when:

• they began (wrongly) to be regarded overall as fiction
• and as a result fictional "parallels" to this literature started to appear.

I have not verified that Paracelsus' contract with the devil was similarily probably fiction.

It may very well have been a real rumour about him at the time, just as their was one on Gerbert (Pope Sylvester II) and on Janko Šajatović (the model, indirectly, for Otfried Preußler's Krabat). But my whole point in citing it in this connection would have been

• either:
  a demon would have been even better at a sleight of hand;
• or:
  even a demon could not have actually changed the copper into gold.

Finding out that this particular story was from the Enlightenment gave me the needed aha to avoid the looming uncomfortable alternative.

And yes, Paracelsus is not a fictional, but a perfectly historic character. He invented the modern pharmaceutics.

So, why would Lundahl (2022a) even need to consider the possibility of demonic activity when this entire story can be explained away as a legend or a simple trick?

Why not catalogue the possibilities one believes feasible or if not at least possibly relevant from start, just because one of them is not believed by Mr. Henke?

Now, the title of Lundahl (2022a) is “Several Types of ‘Supernatural’ Featured in Stories Believed to be True.” However, when his essay is carefully studied there’s absolutely no reason to believe any of the stories that he thinks are true.

Already answered. My point is not : these varieties occur in stories you should believe to be true, but these variaties occur in stories that some in fact do or did believe to be true. Let's catalogue them to see how many of them would - even on atheist terms - be potential reasons to not believe them to be true.

For instance, an ancient voyager using the term "doghead" is no less credible (and no less racist) than one using the term "gook."

A late antiquity biographer of either St. Christopher or Merovech describing them as dog faced is no less credible than the painter of Pedro Gonsalvus and his family.

Indeed, those who trace The Beauty and the Beast back to Pedro Gonsalvus have given an example of the process opposite the one that Mr. Henke would need to demonstrate.

Henke has more than once implied (if not directly claimed) that fiction could undergo a process making it mistaken for history, like that process would refute my "first known audience" claim for historicuty, but he mistakenly thinks of this as synonym to lies having been taken as fact (including historic fact).

But if the story of Pedro Gonsalvus is behind The Beauty and the Beast, we have the opposite process - a historic fact has become a fairy-tale. My cataloguing of St. Christopher's dogheadedness is therefore not as a racist slur for a slit eyed person, but I count him as having the same condition as Pedro Gonsalvus. I was even prepared to identify St. Christopher with Merovech, but St. Christopher is killed under Diocletian in the very earliest years of the fourth C. and apparently Merovech was ruling some time in the second quarter of the fifth C. Even so, St. Christopher could, the time he was serving Satan, have become the ancestor of Merovech.

Meanwhile, the comparison of Pedro Gonsalvus and Merovech are instructive on Middle Ages and Early Modern era. Hypertrichosis in the Late Antiquity or Early Middle Ages didn't stop you from being a martyr or a king. Hypertrichosis in the Early Modern era made you likely to be the human pet of a king, or a queen, who was circumvening the laws against slavery in France or elsewhere.

And again, there is no reason to write something off as fiction just because it points to either hypertrichosis or slit eyes. One great reason to "catalogue the supernatural in stories which some have believed to be true" - if you just have one single mass of incredible details, fine, you may conclude that people do get to believe things as historic for no reason at all. The next step up is to realise that most of these stories are not super- or even preternatural. And if there is suddenly lots less of stories with details that would require the supernatural to be a fact, lots less which would need to be fiction on materialistic principles, then perhaps the ones remaining* do prove the supernatural.

Wonder if Henke will ever take that third step.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
St. Matthew, after First Vespers
evening to 21.IX.2022

* Non fecit taliter omni nationi, et judicia sua non manifestavit eis. Alleluja. Psalms 147:9