Second Round essays: Henke Can't Read · Henke Can't Argue Philosophy Very Well Either

We shall now transition from Mr. Henke's complaint I do not give my references in the Chicago format, to actual reasoning pertaining to supernatural claims. And we shall do it in a format he dislikes, namely breaking down a text of his into parts, and making dialogue with my insertions:

Kevin R. Henke

Lundahl (2022a) further improperly references chapter 8 of C.S. Lewis’ book Miracles (Lewis, 1960), which is entitled “Miracles and the Laws of Nature”, and then makes a reference to a William Collins. So, who is William Collins and how is he related to C.S. Lewis’ book? It turns out that William Collins was the publisher of the edition of Miracles that Lundahl (2022a) used."

Hans Georg Lundahl

Indeed, I actually found Collins, publisher, on the Amazon version available with preview.

Kevin R. Henke

The pool (billiards) analogy from chapter 8 of Lewis (1960) and summarized by Lundahl (2022a) is totally ineffective in defending the existence of the supernatural. It only illustrates that a physicist would have difficulty making predictions about a pool game if a human (not a supernatural being) unexpectedly decided to hit one of the balls in the middle of the game.

Hans Georg Lundahl

So far my argument went.

Kevin R. Henke

Although the conditions of the pool game might change, notice that Mr. Lundahl admits that no “laws of movement” were violated in this account. That’s because humans, and not God, demons, angels, or other supernatural agents, were playing in this game. When humans play pool, we’re stuck obeying the laws of physics.

Hans Georg Lundahl

The parallel is actually with an agency not foreseen in the physical process studied - in the example chosen by C. S. Lewis, the spontaneous movements of the pool balls on a pool table in a steamer with some definite rolling period.

Kevin R. Henke

Now, if God exists, he, by definition, is not necessarily forced to obey natural laws. He supposedly created natural laws and if he can create natural laws, then supposedly he can make exceptions or undo them.

Hans Georg Lundahl

But the point is, the scientist and his interlocutor weren't playing pool - they were observing the movements of pool balls on a pool table on a steamer. And the interlocutor picking up the queue is very similarily an exception (or interruption) of that process which was being observed.

Kevin R. Henke

God could play pool by either using his supernatural powers or he might simply restrict himself to using only natural laws.

Hans Georg Lundahl

Yes, and there is no law of movement broken in the former, namely His Omnipotence, it is an agency outside their field of description, but not a result contrary to their essence.

Kevin R. Henke

If he exists, he could do anything he wanted to. God could remove the effects of gravity from a pool ball and cause it to pass through the ceiling or allow the atoms of the ball to pass through the table, but humans can’t do these things.

Hans Georg Lundahl

If God removes the gravity, the result does not violate any law of gravitation, it only involves a situation where they do not apply, because what they apply to, gravity, has been removed. However, the view of miracles proposed here is not that God removes gravity, but that He adds an action from outside gravity, in for instance miracles like the Ascension or the Walking on the Water in the Storm. Gravity not being removed is visible in Christ's clothes and hair remaining the ordinary direction.

Before answering the next sentence, go back to what I had written:

“God and angelic beings can do things with bodies that physics doesn't provide their ability for.”

Kevin R. Henke

How is this not an admission by Lundahl (2022a) that God and angels use magic and aren’t restricted to the laws of physics?

Hans Georg Lundahl

The thing is, not being restricted by physics and breaking actual laws of it are not the same concept.

Kevin R. Henke

If physics cannot explain how God and angels can do things with physical objects, then those actions are outside of and inconsistent with the laws of physics.

Hans Georg Lundahl

Outside, yes, inconsistent with, no.

Kevin R. Henke

This is not “adding” to the laws of physics as Lundahl (2022a) claims, but nullifying the ability of the laws of physics to explain the actions of these supernatural beings.

Hans Georg Lundahl

I wasn't claiming the laws of physics could explain the actions of God or could explain the actions of angels. I was claiming the actions of God or of angels were not annulling the laws of physics, that is, I was claiming the laws of physics were not the sole determinant on the event (as with many other events, including freewilled actions by men). Also, the laws of physics are not agents, they are systematic descriptions of agents of a certain type.

Kevin R. Henke

In the above quotation and earlier statements, Lundahl (2022a) is describing “God turning the N/m away from downward vectoriality” to explain how Jesus walked on water without violating the laws of physics (Matthew 14:22-34; Mark 6:45-53; John 6:16-21).

Hans Georg Lundahl

Without violating, yes, but not without adding to.

Kevin R. Henke

While the gospels usually describe Jesus as walking around and engaging in other activities that were consistent with the laws of gravity, the walking on water story is clearly meant to be taken as extraordinary or supernatural.

Hans Georg Lundahl

The point is not it not being extraordinary, or it not being supernatural. The point is, the clearly extraordinary activity of the clearly supernatural agent achieve these things without breaking any actual law, because no clause in any law of nature describes absence of other factors as always applying, nor, therefore, absence of supernatural ones.

Kevin R. Henke

From the perspective of the gospel stories, with Jesus around, supposedly no one could trust that the laws of chemistry and physics and their effects on biological organisms would remain reliable in the next minute, tomorrow or the following day.

Hans Georg Lundahl

Henke has failed to explain why this is the case. I have heard the point made by atheists before, but repeating this as rhetoric does not prove the consequence follows. Christ had a specific reason to walk on the water, and one could expect Him to walk on the ground when the reason did not apply, because He hadn't committed an act of irrational behaviour in performing the miracle.

Kevin R. Henke

According to the gospel stories, blindness, deafness, and lameness could be supernaturally healed by Jesus. In these stories, natural law doesn’t apply when these miracles occur.

Hans Georg Lundahl

What exact law involved in medicine would be broken by such healings?

Btw, that is one area in which the presence of Christ would actually make those around Him expect the normal course of events (but not the natural laws) to be very often broken.

Kevin R. Henke

Miracles counteract and replace the natural consequences, they don’t “add” to them.

Hans Georg Lundahl

In miracles, God adds to the agencies usually involved in a process, those being the ones described by natural laws.

Natural consequences of a pre-existing condition, and the laws of nature applicable to them, are not coextensive. There is natural law about natural healing of wounds taking time and after a certain amount of damage has been reached being impossible. They remain applicable to the normal agent of natural healing processes, since the agent actually replacing tissue damaged by either leprosy or the fall from the window (boy raised by St. Paul, in the presence of St. Luke who had seen him dead) is other than the natural agent for healing. Hence, no laws actually broken. But precisely added to.

Kevin R. Henke

Although there’s not a shred of evidence that Jesus ever walked on water, Lundahl (2022a) just assumes that it’s history and then makes up an excuse to fit his biased worldview by speculating on how God could have set up a force to counteract gravity supposedly without contradicting the law of gravity.

Hans Georg Lundahl

Henke is straying from the topic at hand, namely analysis of the concept of miracle, to the question of historic evidence - a thing he has shown some shadyness about.

However, if we leave the question of evidence to when Henke discusses that, and assume, for argument's sake, it happened, does any contradiction of the law of gravity occur? No. You can counteract gravity simply by placing some agency other than gravity between the object and where gravity would lead it. To this point, it is irrelevant if the other agency is resistance of an object already as low as it can "fall" (like the ground), or of a body-part moved by freewill (a hand extended under a falling object), or aerodynamics (like in airplane wings), or the supernatural. In each case, gravity is counteracted. And in each case, the thing counteracting gravity is an agency other than gravity.

Kevin R. Henke

This is a blatant example of circular reasoning where groundless speculation is used to explain groundless stories from the gospels.

Hans Georg Lundahl

Henke is not even aware that the rules of logic do not prohibit "circular reasoning" (there is no such thing in logic) but they do prohibit circular proof, circular definition, circular explanation. What I did is none of these.

I use the historicity of the Gospels (established on other grounds, like first known audience of Gospels taking them to be historic) to prove there is an exception to the ordinary course of events to be explained, and I use an explanation from God's omnipotence not breaking any actual law of nature (established by theoretical example of pool table in steamer, and only then tested on the Gospel story) to prove the purported history is not impossible, that is, to explain it.

If anyone is circular in proof it is Henke : he uses impossibility of miracles to prove the Gospel story is un-historic, then non-historicity of story to prove this no verified exception to a rule excluding miracles, from "universal experience" established as such only after thus excluding each exception.

Kevin R. Henke

This is like trying to argue that the Yellow Brick Road of The Wizard of Oz must have existed. Otherwise, how could Dorothy have gotten to the Emerald City?

Hans Georg Lundahl

First known audience of The Wizard of Oz took it as fiction.

Kevin R. Henke

So, how does Mr. Lundahl know that God used “N/m” forces to allow Jesus to walk on water rather than just locally shutting off gravity and the laws of physics?

Hans Georg Lundahl

I actually do not know that. I am offering a conjecture that explains the miracle without God simply interrupting a law or contradicting it, it being the normal course of events He interrupts, not the laws. In order to resume the argument from "miracles contradict the laws of nature" Mr. Henke would not have to ask me how I know this conjecture to be fact, which I didn't claim to, but tell us how he knows his own conjecture on the nature of miracles to be the only philosophical option.

Kevin R. Henke

Also, where’s the evidence of invisible support from demons for Mr. Copperfield’s tricks or that demons even exist?

Hans Georg Lundahl

Let's read what I wrote:

Demons and stage magicians can give the impression, falsely, that they break the law of physics. I am not entering into the debate here with the Dimond Brothers whether stage magicians do their thing with demonic aid. For the purpose of the present argument, when David Seth Kotkin, stage name David Copperfield, seems to walk on water, it is one and the same whether he does so with natural or demonic aid. Both ways, something other than the water is keeping him above the water. The surface tension 72.8 millinewtons (mN) per meter at 20 °C - has not been enabled to uphold the 60 - 80 sth N per meter (if we can so convert his kg), which would have been breaking Fick's laws of diffusion.

So, I was not claiming that demons gave David Copperfield / Mr. Kotkin invisible support. I am claiming whatever the visible support was, plexiglass or demons, it was something other than the surface tension of water. In either case, Fick's law of surface tension remains unbroken.

Kevin R. Henke

Mr. Lundahl just might as well forget about references to newtons and meters and just claim that invisible angels held up Jesus’ feet from going underwater.

Hans Georg Lundahl

I have not excluded that option either. I was just taking the model which were the closest to Mr. Henke's charge that the miracle contradicted a natural law, the one closest to applying would have been either gravitation or Fick's law.

Kevin R. Henke

Invoking angels isn’t any worse than the shear speculation and desperation that he offers about invisible “N/m” forces counteracting gravity.

Hans Georg Lundahl

It would indeed be total desperation to suppose N/m forces going any other direction than down on their own. God changing their direction or ordering angels to keep up His feet are not desperation.

Kevin R. Henke

How are “excepts certain matter in and around human bodies” not a violation of the laws of physics? This claim sounds like God temporarily made the mass in human bodies weightless by locally removing the effects of the gravitational constant.

Hans Georg Lundahl

Indeed it sounds like that. And that would not be a violation of the laws of physics, specifically of gravity.

Kevin R. Henke

How would this not be a violation of the laws of physics?

Hans Georg Lundahl

Because the laws of gravity apply where the gravitational pull (not gravitational constant) reaches. Putting a specific mass outside their reach is putting it outside where the law of gravity can be either obeyed or contradicted.

The gravitational constant or the law of gravity pull nothing, it is gravitational pull that does so, and the law, involving in its mathematical statement a constant, describes this pull, but doesn't cause it.

Kevin R. Henke

But, before Mr. Lundahl starts throwing out imaginative physics explanations for how Jesus walked on water or ascended, he actually needs to provide evidence that Jesus even walked on water or ascended.

Hans Georg Lundahl

This is a complaint about my answering one charge at a time. The historical evidence and the philosophical possibility are two different debates, and for the historical evidence, I have already given the "first known audience rule".

Kevin R. Henke

Lundahl (2022a) then accuses me of having a wrong view on what the supernatural is. While I’m not the one trying to inject imaginary forces into these Bible stories, ...

Hans Georg Lundahl

Any force, divine or physical, is accessed to our analytical minds through acts of imagination, before we reason about them.

The problem is, Mr. Henke has made up his mind on what the presence of "imaginary forces" would imply, and when I try to correct this as a logical non-sequitur, he complains I haven't proven the historicity. So, he gets to reason before analysing historicity and I do not get to do so. Quod licet Ioui, non licet boui. I refuse to bow down to his presumption that he as natural scientist and as philosophical naturalist (which are two different things) is the equivalent of Jove, and myself as only amateur in natural science and as supranaturalist, the equivalent of a bull.

As C. S. Lewis once said - "the browbeating has to stop" - it could have been Miracles.

Kevin R. Henke

Most of all, he needs to provide evidence of supernatural beings before believing what they are supposedly capable of doing.

Hans Georg Lundahl

One evidence for them is what they do every day and night (unless you take the Heliocentric cop-out without any visible evidence that it's just Earth turning around itself), and another one is the historical evidence for what they did.

Mr. Henke pretends "we cannot accept the stories as historic, since they require a supernatural being, and we cannot accept a supernatural being, since it is not proven by verified history" all the while bending arbitrarily the weight of what verifying history actually means to suit his anti-supranatural bias.

This is indeed circular proof. A fault actually existing in logic. And committed by Mr. Henke.

Kevin R. Henke

Although the stories don’t try to explain how these “miracles” happened, the reader is probably expected to assume that Jesus was able to magically multiply the available fish and bread through ex nihilo (something out of nothing) miracles.

Hans Georg Lundahl

Mr. Henke has failed to show how the laws of physics, chemistry or biology exclude creation out of nothing by an agent not itself physical, chemical or biological. They only exclude creation out of nothing by agents that have these qualities.

Kevin R. Henke

Bread can only bake so quickly under the laws of chemistry and physics without incomplete baking or burning it to carbon.

Hans Georg Lundahl

Indeed. But these same laws do not exclude creation out of nothing, unlike ultra-quick baking.

Kevin R. Henke

No, the story indicates that Jesus blessed and distributed the fish and bread that were already there and that the available fish and bread miraculously multiplied in violation of natural law to feed thousands.

Hans Georg Lundahl

Break a piece of bread in two. Watch each half refill the lacking parts, as God's omnipotence makes a creation out of nothing. You have not watched the laws involving bakery to be broken, you have watched an agent other than a baker produce more bread by creation out of nothing. Which therefore is clearly not contradicting the laws of bakery.

Perhaps Mr. Henke is referring to "law of conservation of mass" and "law of conservation of energy" - but each of them was at least apparently broken by nuclear power and by Hiroshima. You can obviously fix this by imagining "mass and energy are the same" or "mass is a species of energy" - but that is very clearly going beyond observational proof.

Believing the Gospels got the credibility among Christians that normal processes of observation and of narrating the observed would warrant is in this sense NOT going beyond observational proof.

I am not sure of having to the general reader explained things better here than I did in the original statement, the one given in my third part of the response to Henke, namely:

Creation vs. Evolution : Several Types of "Supernatural" Featured in Stories Believed to be True
https://creavsevolu.blogspot.com/2022/03/several-types-of-supernatural-featured.html

Here, I have only traced the attempts of Mr. Henke to refute that one, and his inability to with logical coherence actually doing so.

Hans Georg Lundahl
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