PaperCut

Often Christians point to the Bible prophecies as a proof for the existance of their god.

Are there really no explanations for so claimed Bible prophecies than god did it?



P.

davidbach

This has been extensively discussed. The upshot is that there are three categories:

1 - Prophesies that are of the "you lose/I win" type. These are similar to "it is going to rain", or such that if they do not come to fruition, we do not hear of the prediction, or are of such generality that no credence can be supported, such as "God will bless the tribes of Israel".

2 - Those of which there is considerable doubt, if not proof, that the prophesy was written after the event.

3 - Those which clearly did not get fulfilled.

The latter are the most interesting - clear proof that the Bible was not "Divinely Inspired" or whatever proposition is offered to be "proven". Far more telling logically than a small number of dubiously fulfilled prophesies is a single unfulfilled example. A single time an apple jumps up and re-attaches itself to a tree will destroy the Theory of Gravity!

David.

Malachi151

#1) I'd recommend doing a search on "prophecy" in this forum.

#2) See my articles related to this:

http://www.rationalrevolution.net/ar..._history.htm#3

http://www.rationalrevolution.net/ar...ospel_mark.htm

This issue is somewhat more complicated than it first appears.

The "Old Testament" (Hebrew Bible) does contain some so-called self-fulfilling prophecies, which some Christians do now cite, but these so-called prophecies aren't the source of the idea that the Christian religion is "proved true" via prophecy.

The source of this idea is the Gospels, and how they relate back to the "Old Testament".

In various scenes in the Gospels Jesus "does things" that correlate to passages in the "Old Testament". This was pointed to by early apologists such as Justin Martyr and Eusebius, etc., (practically all of them) as "evidence" that Jesus was the "true messiah".

The problem, however, as I discuss in the linked articles, is that these correlations between the Gospels and the Old Testament are really a product of the author's fabricating the stories and using the Hebrew scritpures as their source material.

There are also of course cases of self-fulfillment in the Gospels as well, such as when Jesus "predicts his own death", and then get s killed "according to his own prediction", etc.

Obviously, such things are the product of literary invention, not a "proof of prophecy fulfillment".

Like I said, people do bring up supposed "Old Testament" prophecies these days as well, but that was always secondary to the supposed prophecy fulfillment of Jesus from the "Old Testament". After the church fathers began to believe that the Hebrew scriptures were truly prophetic, because of the Gospels, then centuries were spent by thousands if not millions of people pouring over the Hebrew scritpures looking for other instances of "prophecy fulfillment".

chrisengland

There are criteria for a fulfilled prophecie

It must be written before the event
Must not be to vague and so can be vetrofitted
Must not be self fulfilling
Must not be able to have been an educaed guess
Probably most importantly must have actually happened

Neither Christian or skeptic will budge I don't think when it comes to htis argument.
What Christians don't seem to understand is that if a prophecie can be retrofitted then it isn't going ot convince skeptics' they seem to do that alot find a way in which the prophecie could have come true and then say it was fulfilled e.g. With the Tyre prophecie when it say Tyre will never be rebuilt they say it isn't in the same place or has not been fully rebuilt or hasn't got the same splendor ect but when you do that your also saying that the prophecie could be interpretted in more than one way and so becomes less impresive then.
Although while we're on the subfect what evidence is there that tyre was on the island during Nebuchadnezzar's time because Christian say it was on the mainland because the prophecie is describing a land based attack and because it was never rebuilt on the mainland it came true.
I get the impression that most schoalrs think it was on the island but appearently a schoalr called Patricia Maynor Bikai said that due to severe space constraints on the island a mojority of the population and most of Tyre's factories and warehouses were moved to the mainland.
Even if that were true though the prophecie would only of half come true it would meen that half of it wasn't rebuilt propbably not enough to convince a skeptic
Chris

-Jay-

I submit another:

4 - Stories written after the fact in a style that makes them look like prophecies. The Book of Daniel fits here, as it is generally accepted to have been written several hundred years after the events it portrays, so that "prophecy" in Daniel is really history.

regards,

NinJay

Nero's Boot

....which, pathetically, it even manages to get wrong on many, many subjects. What a moronic divinity: Gives a "prophecy" long after the event, masquerades it as being genuinely prophetic, and yet still clusterfucks all the important bits!

--ahhh, BibleGod; truly your clairvoyant eye needs some Visene NB

chrisengland

When I,ve looked at the Messanic prophesies' alot of them appear to be self fullfiling e.g. if a prophecie says the messiah must ride into Jerusalem on a donkey then that could easily be self fulfilled.
Of course there the ones that say they peirce my hands and my feet but from what I,ve read its not entirely shore whether the originals said that they may say like a lion' but I still think some of them say it wich were written before the event but its not clear if their actually talking about the Messiah(am I right)
Even if they did that would only be one' I don't don't expect the odds of one coming true would be astronomical' although christians still have every right to believe they are fullfilled prophecies but if your talking about using them to convince skeptics then I don't think thats enough.

-Jay-

Note that the Gospels were all written some decades after the events which they portray, and that the author GMk (in particular) appears to have spent some time combing through the Hebrew Bible looking for nuggets that might be prophetic hints about what a Messiah ought to do. In effect, you've got a story that in some ways is made up of nuggets cribbed out of the OT.

Given this, it's easy to see how there would be many "prophecies" fulfilled by Jesus, insofar as Jesus' story was crafted based upon those "prophecies" in the first place. It's all rather recursive, and contains just a bit of literary incest.

regards,

NinJay