Silent Dave

To save Dave a bit of typing, I thought I'd start that thread for him and head him off at the pass, so to speak.

In my formal debate on the existence of God last fall, I listed seven criteria that a given prophecy must fulfill in order to reasonably call it a genuine instance of fulfilled prophecy:

1. Is the claimant of genuine fulfilled prophecy (in this case, afdave) properly interpreting the text upon which he is basing his claim?
2. Do we know that the prophecy was made before the event that allegedly fulfilled it?
3. Do we know that the prophecy was made far enough in advance of the alleged fulfillment event so as to make educated guesswork impossible?
4. Did the alleged fulfillment event, in fact, occur?
5. Is the prophecy specific enough that it could not be fulfilled by a wide variety of events?
6. Did most or all of the predictions made by this particular prophet come true, rather than just a few of them? (If you make hundreds or thousands of prophecies, it is likely that a few of them will be right; divine powers of prophecy are unnecessary to explain this.)
7. Can we reasonably rule out that the fulfillment event was staged, or the relevant circumstances manipulated, so as to deliberately fulfill the prophecy?

Whetstone, my opponent in that debate, agreed that these are reasonable tests to give a candidate for fulfilled prophecy.

So the good news for Dave is, he doesn't need to list and discuss many different prophecies -- he only needs to give us one prophecy to convince us that maybe, just maybe, there's something to this Bible thing after all! The catch is, of course, the burden is his to demonstrate that the prophecy he provides passes all seven of the above tests in order to reasonably regard it as a genuine fulfilled prophecy, else we can (and must) assume there's a more likely, naturalistic explanation.

Just one prophecy. That's all Dave needs.

Dave, the floor is yours . . .

mung bean

While I agree your points are good and you probably have him by the goolies
(and I'd much rather your hands were holding them than mine) do you realise
that you have just given him the perfect excuse to dodge questions in other threads?

Silent Dave

Does he NEED an excuse?

And don't worry, I haven't forgotten about the other threads. And I'll make sure Dave doesn't either, believe me. But since the guy has shown himself capable of multitasking, I thought, what the heck. Either way, I've basically made Dave my bitch.

mung bean

Well that's alright then.

cajela

I wonder if Dave can admit that Tyre exists. We had one prophecy defender here who refused to admit it exists, despite maps, google earth and photos from the Tyre tourist board...

mung bean

Funny you should mention that......................

BWE

I think Dave addressed Tyre once before. Something about a bare rock hard set of abs on his favorite male model? I can't remember. Anyone got a link?

mung bean

BWE, Tyre is mentioned briefly on this page of the RDF Flud Debate Comment Thread but it doesn't say much.

The really good stuff is on the following page.:rolling: :rolling: :rolling: :thumbs:

http://www.richarddawkins.net/forum/...yre&start=2340

shirley knott

I'd like to move the questions back a step and ask
What the heck IS a prophecy, anyway?
We know what predications are, and they do not count as prophesy, correct?
We know what guesses about the future are, and they do not count as prophecy, correct?
We know what general statements in the future tense are, so which ones get to countas prophecy and which ones do not? And note that we must be able to make this distinction before the candidate is fulfilled or fails to be fulfilled.
What makes a prophecy a prophecy, and how can we tell we have one?

Thanks,
Shirley Knott

Calilasseia

I wouldn't worry too much.

If he dodges this thread the way he dodges my "where is the flood deposit" thread, you need not worry about this thread being a 'cause' of him dodging questions in other threads. He does that without outside assistance.