Johnny Skeptic

Nope, your interpretation of the Babylon prophecy is a very small minority opinion even among fundamentalist Christian laymen, and even moreso among fundamentalist Christian scholars. At least five Bible commentaries that I checked disagree with you, including one of which is edited by noted fundamentalist Christian scholar and author F.F. Bruce.

If your challenge had any merits, surely at least one prominent Christian would be making it, but such is not the case. How do you account for that?

It is interesting to note that you, as the challengee, have never delivered your challenge to the challengees, who are the Iraqis. As far as I know, this is unprecendented, issuing a challenge to people (skeptics) who have no authority to accept the challenge. Only a irrational person would do that.

That is cute. Not only do Persians live in Iran, not in Iraq, but according to a web site at http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohisto...pages/651.html, "Arabs constitute the majority in Iraq and the second largest group of Iraqi migrants to Chicago." At any rate, even if you were right that Persians live in Iraq, it would be easy to import some Arabs from other places. Of course, you already knew that, which invites the question "Why did you make a ridiculous argument like that?" I've got it, you wanted to be evasive because you knew that you have been beaten, but your evasiveness did not work. Part of Isaiah 13:19-20 says that no Arab will ever pitch his tent in Babylon. That part of the prophecy would be easy to overturn, and probably already has been overturned on many occasions.

If a loving God exists, and wanted to communciate with humans, he would not use written records as a primary means of communicating with them. He would be tangibly present for everyone to see and talk with. As an analogy, if you had a flying pig, and you wanted people of your generation and all subsequent generations to believe that you had a flying pig, anyone who has just a modest amount of common sense knows that the best thing for you to do would be to tangibly show everyone of all generations that you had a flying pig. You would know that neither you nor anyone else would have anything to gain if you did not show your flying pig to everyone of all generations.

It is a question of motives. The lack of any known reasonable motives regarding why God does what he does is good evidence that the Bible is false. It is impossible even for a God to effectively reveal and conceal things at the same time if his express intent is to reveal.

Johnny Skeptic

Here is just one of many examples of a fundamentalist Christian scholar who disagrees with Lee Merrill's interpretation of the Babylon prophecy:

In his 'Believer's Bible Commentary,' William MacDonald says the following:

How many expert sources has Lee produced that corroborate his interpretation of the Bablylon prophecy? The correct answer is "zero." I do not know any Christian other than Lee who refuses to produce any expert sources who agree with him. No one ever wins a debate without posting expert sources.

spin

You're supposed to stop going ga-ga because yet another ancient city never got itself back up out of its own decay. (Besides who'd want to rebuild Babylon? Its location no longer holds appeal to commerce.)

It was par for the course for ancient cities to go to the wall. What you're supposed to go ga-ga about was how long it took for Babylon to go to the wall after the prediction. It took many centuries. That an ancient city went to the wall must be a very high risk, so the longer it took lessens the effect of the prediction of its downfall because they nearly all went to the wall anyway. It took several hundreds of years before Babylon finally got silted up, so the prediction of its destruction seems to have been totally exaggerated by you from a yawn to a gosh. This is a reflection on you. Trumpeting the banal.


spin

lee_merrill

Because Alex should have been able to rebuild it, and Saddam, this is within the range of human ability. So if we read in the Bible that Bill will never say "Snark!" he can undo the claim that the Bible is inerrant fairly easily, by saying "Snark!" If however he may find himself somehow unable to do so, though he can say other similar words, this is evidence that the Bible's claim to be supernatural is correct.

Not so, say the historians, Alex died during his rebuilding project, which was then abandoned, and the empire divided up among his generals.

I'm not saying he built in a swamp, all building requires ground preparation, I'm saying that area is however typically swampy.

You know journalists do need to check their sources! What evidence do we have for the claim that people were living there and moved?

They were in any case, in a position to object.

Well, quoting this again does not address my points in reply to this writer.

I'm not actually amazed. What I point out is that here is a clear way to do what you all are earnestly trying to do, that being to disprove the Christian claim, to disprove the supernatural, and show that there really is no prophecy.

shirley knott

But we don't know that it is a prophecy.
We have excellant grounds for rejecting the unsupported assertion that it might be prophecy.
We already know the Christian claims [afaiac, all of them without exception] are false.
YOU are the one who is claiming that the Babylon prediction is a prophecy.
WHY must this be prophecy, rather than prediction?
There is nothing at all surprising or unexpected about it.
Nothing supernatural.
Nothing that cannot be explained, fully and completely, without recourse to the supernatural.
YOUR claim that this prediction is a prophecy is what is at stake.
There are no prophecies, recourse to a prediction will not help your case.

no hugs for thugs,
Shirley Knott

Johnny Skeptic

But according even to most fundamentalist Christians, you have misinterpreted the Babylon prophecy. Why should anyone accept the word of you and a relative handful of people who might not even outnumber the number of people who believe that the earth if flat, or that men have not landed on the moon? You have not posted even one single expert fundamentalist Christian source who agrees with you. This is unheard of in serious debates, trying to impress people with a narrowly held position even among your own group. Can you produce even one single Bible commentary that agrees with you? Well of course you can't. I check five Bible commentaries a couple of years ago, and they all disagree with you. Of course, since you are the claimant, I should not have to do your homework for you. You do not want to do any homework because you already know that almost no, if any recognized fundamentalist Christian scholar agrees with you. Since you like Wheaton College, why don't you contact a professor there and ask him what he thinks of your challenge? Readers can bet that you will not do that because you do not wish to embarrass yourself.

For the benefit of readers who have not checked out a number of Bible commentaries like I have, consider the following:

In his 'Believer's Bible Commentary,' William MacDonald says the following:

MacDonald has done his homework well. He knows that a number of pieces of the puzzle do not fit, and that some future events must take place in order for them to fit.

That is cute. Not only do Persians live in Iran, not in Iraq, but according to a web site at http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohisto...pages/651.html, "Arabs constitute the majority in Iraq and the second largest group of Iraqi migrants to Chicago." At any rate, even if you were right that Persians live in Iraq, it would be easy to import some Arabs from other places. Of course, you already knew that, which invites the question "Why did you make a ridiculous argument like that?" I've got it, you wanted to be evasive in spite of the fact that you know that Arabs are as easy to find as Jews are, but your evasive tactic did not work. Part of Isaiah 13:19-20 says that no Arab will ever pitch his tent in Babylon. That part of the prophecy would be easy to overturn.

If your challenge had any merits, surely at least one prominent Christian would be making it, but such is not the case. How do you account for that?

Johnny Skeptic

But skeptics do not have any authority to rebuild Babylon. May I ask why you, as the challenger, have refused to deliver your challenge to the challengees, the Iraqi government? As far as I know, this is unprecedented, delivering a challenge to people (skeptics) who do not have any authority to accept the challenge.

Johnny Skeptic

Consider the following:

http://www.raptureready.com/rr-iraq.html

The article says that "Some [Bible scholars] believe that [Babylon] will be rebuilt on the very real estate once occupied by ancient Babylon." Of course, Lee Merrill would have people believe that he can settle the issue all by himself, and that people should forget what scholars have to say and trust his own uncorroborated person opinion.

ApostateAbe

Whenever I encounter claims of prophecy fulfillment, I evaluate using my list of "Prophecy Pitfalls."

Prophecy Pitfalls

1. Making a prophecy that is vague in meaning so that one may specify exact meaning to fit the proposed fulfillment.
2. Making many prophecies, and a mentioned minority of them are fulfilled by probability, but an unmentioned majority of them either failed or remain unfulfilled.
3. Making a prophecy without a time deadline, so that nobody can claim that the prophecy has failed, and the prophecy is probable to come true sometime in the entire future.
4. Falsely claiming a prophecy of the past to fit the proposed fulfillment. This can be done three ways:

   a) Directly lying about the contents of a past prophecy.
   b) Re-interpreting a past statement so that the statement becomes understood as prophetic though the statement was not actually meant to be a prophecy when it was first said.
   c) Re-interpreting a past prophecy so that the prophecy fits the proposed fulfillment, though the prophecy was at first intended to have a different meaning.

5. Making a prophecy that is naturally probable to be fulfilled--an intelligent person knows that it is likely to come true without the need for any supernatural agent.

   A variation of this pitfall is that the prophecy is self-fulfilling, meaning that the prophecy causes its own fulfillment, and the event proposed as a fulfillment would not have occurred were it not for the prophecy.

6. Falsely claiming the fulfillment of a legitimate prophecy.

You can use this list, if you like. It is helpful, because there are many ways to jimmy around with prophecies. I love the one about, "not one stone here will be left on another," and the fulfillment is, "Yep, prophecy fulfilled, oh, except for the west wall, but who cares?" Before, I was thinking that the temple thing might be the best example of fulfilled prophecy that Christians have, and there is still a chance that it could be. The temple was destroyed not longer after Jesus. The biggest problem, besides that west wall thing, is that the original writing of the books of Matthew and Luke (where the prophecy is contained) are dated ambiguously before or after 70 AD, when the temple was destroyed, so it could be an example of Pitfall 4a.

Jack the Bodiless

No, let's fix your analogy:

1. God says "from tomorrow, Bill will be unable to say Snark".
2. The next day, Bill says "Snark".
3. Bill then gets into the habit of throwing open his bedroom window every morning and bellowing "SNARK!".
4. Bill gets so good at this that he becomes able to shout "SNARK!" louder than anyone else in the world.
5. Bill continues to shout "SNARK!" every morning for the rest of his life.
6. Bill eventually grows old and dies.
7. Lee Merrill declares that the prophecy was vindicated, and Bill was supernaturally struck dumb.

Lee, you are STILL IGNORING the fact that Babylon was to be taken, destroyed and depopulated by THE MEDES, this DID NOT HAPPEN, and Babylon went on to become the BIGGEST CITY IN THE WORLD.
Which historians say that Alexander's building project "was abandoned"?

...Not that it really matters, of course, because Alexander wasn't REBUILDING Babylon (merely carrying out a few repairs), because Babylon had NOT BEEN DESTROYED and was the BIGGEST CITY IN THE WORLD.
So, when presented with (further) proof that the prophecy failed, you will simply assume that the source must be lying?

If so: what's all this garbage about challenging Arabs to pitch tents in Babylon? You will simply assume THEY are lying, too... right?

And if Babylon is completely rebuilt, and tens of thousands of people go to live there... that must be a lie too, right? After all, you insisted that Tyre (4th largest city in modern Lebenon) does not exist, for similar reasons.
Been there, done that.