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Old 03-06-2008, 07:24 AM   #1
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Default A simple way to evaluate a self-fulfilled prophecy

It is easy to reasonably estalish that the Partition of Palestine was a self-fulfilled prophecy. If the Partition of Palestine was not a self-fulfilled prophecy, if Jewish and Palestinian history had been reversed, and Hitler and other parties had persecuted Palestinians instead of Jews, the 32 Christian nations that voted in favor of the partition would have awarded control of Jerusalem to the Palestinians, and a grossly disproportionate amount of land per capita like the Jews got. Everyone knows that that would not have happened, which proves that the Partition of Palestine was a self-fulfilled prophecy. If is much too much of a coincidence that 32 of the 33 governments that voted for the Partition of Palestine were Christian governments, and that 12 of the 13 governments that voted against the Partition of Palestine were non-Christian governments, and one government, the Greek government, was nominally Christian.

Consider the following:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-fulfilling_prophecy

Quote:
Originally Posted by wikipedia

A self-fulfilling prophecy is a prediction that directly or indirectly causes itself to become true. Although examples of such prophecies can be found in human literature as far back as ancient Greece and ancient India, it is 20th-century sociologist Robert K. Merton who is credited with coining the expression "self-fulfilling prophecy" and formalizing its structure and consequences. In his book Social Theory and Social Structure, Merton gives as a feature of the self-fulfilling prophecy:

“The self-fulfilling prophecy is, in the beginning, a false definition of the situation evoking a new behaviour which makes the original false conception come 'true'. This specious validity of the self-fulfilling prophecy perpetuates a reign of error. For the prophet will cite the actual course of events as proof that he was right from the very beginning.”

In other words, a true prophetic statement — a prophecy declared as truth when it is not — may sufficiently influence people, either through fear or logical confusion, so that their reactions ultimately fulfill the false prophecy.
In other words, all that it takes to self-fulfill a prophecy is the belief that it is true, and enough military power to make it come true. If the Koran said that a Mulsim temple would be rebuilt in Mecca, and a Muslim temple was rebuilt in Mecca, no Christian would believe that that was a legitimate fulfillment of prophecy.

All Bible prophecies are disputable. No rational God would make 100% disputable prophecies. I wish to distinguish disputable prophecies from false prophecies. A false prophecy is a prophecy that does not come true. A disputable prophecy does not necessarily have to be a false prophecy. Even if all Bible prophecies are true prophecies, they have needlessly failed to convince the vast majority of the people in the world that they are true prophecies. If Jesus had accurately predicted what the names of the Roman emperors would be for the next 200 years, and their dates of birth and death, those would have been indisputable prophecies if we were to define indisputable prophecies as prophecies that could not have been made by humans, and would therefore plausibly have been made by a God. Since the New Testament says that Jesus made some predictions, Christians cannot intelligently argue that if Jesus had predicted what I said, that that would have unfairly interfered with people’s free will. If Jesus had predicted what I said, surely more people would have become Christians. That is a reasonable assumption since historically, many people have accepted all kinds of outlandish religions based upon much less convincing evidence than that. In addition, Nostradamus and Edgar Cayce attracted a lot of followers based upon a lot less convincing evidence than that.

Matthew invented the story of the three wise men in order to try to self-fulfill Micah 5:2.

In my opinion, no prophecies at all would be much better than 100% disputable prophecies. That is because the Bible says that God is not the author of confusion (1 Corinthians 14:33), and yet Bible prophecies have needlessly caused lots of confusion. If God could have prevented a lot of confusion by inspiring prophecies that were more convincing, then he is the author of confusion. It is called negligence. We have laws against negligence. I assume that arnoldo and sugarhitman approve of them.
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