spin

Of all the ancient cities that you know of, how many have been rebuilt? Nineveh? Asshur? Caleh? Ur? Uruk? Susa? Nippur? Kish? Adab? Lagash? Umma? Larsa? Isin? Mari? Eshnunna? Shuruppak? Tuttul? Emar? Carchemish? Washshukkane? Hattusa? Shubat-Enlil? Sippar? Ctesiphon? Dura-Europos? Nuzi? Alalakh? Ugarit? And on and on...

"Kind of pedestrian" Yep, sure is.


spin

TheInerrantWord

I predicted that spin would sign off with every letter in a different color.

Seriously, I did. And now it's written down! I kick ASS that I so predicted (nay, prophesied) that he would do that.

Of course, I didn't want to change the future by saying it publically, but still..

Oh, and Lee.. predicting that a city will one day be destroyed and never be rebuilt is not "astonishing;" it's "lame." What would impress me is a prediction that a hail and brimstone will fall on my house TOMORROW at 11am. If that came true, I'd be impressed.

Jack the Bodiless

Again, you seem to have omitted the fact that THE PROPHECY HAS ALREADY FAILED. It predicted that Babylon would be uninhabited when it was the BIGGEST CITY IN THE WORLD.

So, yes, it IS just like God saying there will never be inhabitants south of Dallas. This, too, has ALREADY been disproved: by the existence of people who HAVE lived south of Dallas.

So, WHY would you rush out and try to prove that nobody could ever live in Mexico (for instance), when the existence of MEXICO CITY (and a few other places) has already disproved the prophecy?

Nobody nowadays is likely to rebuild Babylon, because it's an important arcaeological site (which is why archaeologists were so horrified by Saddam's antics there). But as for Arabs pitching tents there: yes, of course they can! We already know what would happen: nothing at all (indeed, I expect at least some of the people who were LIVING in the ruins were of Arab descent). So why bother to try this?

Johnny Skeptic

But who says that your interpretation of Isaiah 13:19-20 is correct? If your challenge had any merit, at least one prominent Christian would be making it, but not ANY prominent Christians have made the challenge. How do you account for that? Please answer the question. In past debates regarding the Babylon prophecy, you refused to produce ONE SINGLE corroborative scholarly source, EVEN A FUNDAMENTALIST CHRISTIAN SCHOLARLY SOURCE. Can't you come up with at least one scholarly corrobortative source? Even a fundamentalist Christian source will do. Do you have any? No?, well, I already knew that.

Consider the following:

Believer's Bible Commentary, by William MacDonald

That flatly contradicts your interpretation of the Babylon prophecy.

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." That also flatly contradicts you.

It is quite odd that even though you are the challengee, you have never delivered your challenge to the challengees, the Iraqis. As far as I know, this is unprecedented, issuing a challenge to parties (skeptics) who have no authority to accept the challenge. Why are you so bashful. Why didn't you contact the Iraqi government years ago? Well, because you know that whatever their reply was, it would immediately discredit you. Are you not in the least bit curious what a response from the Iraqi government would be? If you actually believed that your challenge had any merit, you would definitely be curious, as would any challenger who believed that his challenge was legitimate, but since you do not actually believe that your challenge is legitimate, you are not curious at all what a response from the Iraqis might be.

What benefits would the Iraqis derive if they spent billions of dollars and years of time rebuilding Babylon? Would more than a relative handful of Christians give up Christianity and become Muslims? There is no credible evidence that that would happen.

Would the U.S. government be willing to deliver your challenge to the Iraqi government at the same time that the U.S. government is trying to bring stability to Iraq? Well of course not, which proves that the U.S. government does not believe that there are any benefits that the U.S. could derive from making the challenge.

Readers can be assured that your intention to limit debates to the Internet and avoid any contact with the Iraqi government, the U.S. government, Muslim scholars, Liberal Christian scholars, and fundamentalist Christian scholars. No Christian who really believed that he had a good case to make would exclude all of those parties. If I was defending your position, I would have contacted all kinds of people in order to find corroborative support for my arguments.

I posted most of this before, but you conveniently avoided replying to it. Isn't this about the time when you say "Well, I think that I will bow out now," which you said on another occasion when you withdrew from a debate on the Babylon prophecy, or "I'm too busy to make any more posts at this time."

Johnny Skeptic

What may I ask do Persians have to do with anything since they live in Iran, not in Iraq?

There are hundreds of thousands of Arabs in the world. If even one of them pitched his tent in Babylon, that would discredit Isaiah 13:19-20. Is it your position that it would be difficult to find an Arab? If it would, then it would also be difficult to find a Jew, in which case your "there will always be a Jewish people" argument would not be valid.

Johnny Skeptic

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."

How would you like your serving of crow cooked?

Any rational person would know that if a God exists, and wants people to believe that he exists as a specific being, he would show up in person and provide all kinds of useful evidence. That would certainly be much more convincing than any evidence that you could ever come up with. Isn't that correct? Why send a young boy to do a man's work?

digitalbeachbum

I can't quote it exactly, but some where in the bible it says "No man will know when the end will come" (or to that effect).

So much for all the predictions...

-Jay-

Lee -

Again, please explain why there are no putative prophecies that don't reflect an ancient Near-Eastern worldview.

The overarching fact remains that there are no Biblical prophecies that relate to people, places, and events that weren't immediately relevant to the Biblical writers - Biblical prophecy reflects an ancient Near-Eastern understanding of the world.

The fact remains that there is not a single Biblical prophecy that can't be explained in terms of either:

A) reasonable (if perhaps optimistic) extrapolations of contemporary events
B) ex post facto writing about historical events that is styled to look like prophecy

The mypoic nature of Biblical prophecy is a very telling strike against any sort of divine origin for it.

regards,

NinJay

Johnny Skeptic

Yes indeed. Why would a loving God favor a motley group of barbaric Jews and turn his back on the rest of the people in the world?

Chosen people? Chosen for what, may I ask? All Old Testament Jews expected the messiah to be a genetic descendant of David. Jesus certainly did not meet that requirement.

lee_merrill

Right, but if a claim of divine origin rests on such a prediction, it can be overturned. Presumably some would like to see the claim of a certain book overturned.

Because he's not especially impressed with fine speeches and soldier marches in the streets? Being God, you know...

Ah, but this can be overturned, no need therefore to knock yourself out about such disputable matters as to whether David had an actual descendant...