Koyaanisqatsi

My two cents, the simplest answer to this has already been touched upon; the self-fulfillment of what was already written and therefore within the collective psyche.

If you'll note in the NT, for example, every single time any "prophecy" is fulfilled, the words "in order for the prophecy to be fulfilled" are included. Jesus rides on a donkey in order for the prophecy to be fulfilled.

The authors are stating quite clearly that Jesus did certain things on purpose "in order for the prophecy to be fulfilled." They don't even attempt to hide the fact that Jesus has deliberately orchestrated certain events in accordance with what was written thousands of years prior. Do a search for the word "prophecy" in the NT and you'll find this qualifying statement in almost every instance.

We can see a similar thing happening in modern science fiction. Not to out myself, but Star Trek is an excellent example.

In the original series, whenever Spock would record anything off of the computer it was done on a small rectangular disk that looks almost identical to our DAT tapes today.

Does this mean that Gene Roddenberry was a Messiah for predicting what DAT tapes would look like and how they would function? Of course not.

The idea was extrapolated from then current technology and written down and then entered into the collective subconscious. Decades later, lo and behold, the "prophecy" came true.

In the same vein, it could easily be said that George Orwell "predicted" many things about our current culture in his book 1984, but it is more likely that he merely envisioned a possible, logical extension of his current culture, which was later realized.

It's all in the selective interpretation; the recognition of certain elements that "fit" modern conditions and are then retroactively applied.

Hindsight is 20/20.

In the film of my namesake, the Hopi Indians predicted that one-day canisters of ashes would reign down fire upon the earth from the sky. In the climax of the film's imagery, we see this ancient prophecy "fulfilled" when a rocket explodes in flight as the payload--in flames--tumbles inexorably down toward Earth.

Now, does this symbol of our nuclear weaponry necessarily fulfill the Hopi prophecy? Does that, in turn, mean that the Hopi Indian who first made and/or recorded this prophecy was a god or even inspired by a god?

It seems far more likely that certain humans among us have a keen sense of human nature and what we are capable of doing to ourselves and our environment based upon personal observation and simply extrapolate from that.

It is assumed by modern culture that the Hopis lived centuries before human flight (even though many of their paintings depict what could arguably be called "flying saucers" and the like, but that's a topic for Art Bell), but isn't it more likely that the interpretation of the original words only became prophetic in hindsight; that the translators of the prophecies, searching for comparable words and meanings in their own language (in this case English) applied their own cultural knowledge and bias subconsciously to the original words and arrived at an interpretation that only has the appearance of prophecy retroactively? Or that the "cannisters of ashes" were more the extrapolation of man's inumanity to man that was just as prevelant then as it is today?

Revelations is supposed to be prophecy of the "end times," most likely as the result of the current state of human affairs the author found himself entrenched within and, like Orwell, extrapolated from his experiences to paint (more as a warning, IMO, than anything else) the possible, (semi)logical extension of what was going on in the collective subconscious at the time.

In that instance, the fantastic, supernatural mythology the author was evidently consumed with, however, grows more and more ludicrous as humanity progresses, so it's a perfect example of how such "predictions" can also be laughably off base and yet logically consistent with the overall base of all prophecy; the unknown as it applies to the known.

It's a crapshoot and as Vibr8ngkiwi so eloquently put it, only the strong survive until demonstrated wrong and discarded.

Both Christianity and Judaism survive not because the prophecies were fulfilled (none were), but because people thought the prophecies were fulfilled; they retroactively applied modern events in a selectively interpreted fashion in order for the prophecies to be fulfilled.

The same can be said for Islam or any of the "predictive" cults that litter our collective.

Regardless, even if every single one of the prophecies in both the OT and NT had been highly specific and did in fact come true, this still would not be sufficient evidence to conclude "The God of the Bible exists;" it would merely be yet another element of human consciousness as it relates to existence within our universe that doesn't have a (currently) sufficiently understandable explanation.

Leaping to retroactive definition as an explanation, IMO, just doesn't cut it.

[ December 29, 2001: Message edited by: Koyaanisqatsi ]</p>

Coragyps

Ventin- you might be interested in <a href="http://www.harunyahya.com/m_miracles_quran,php" target="_blank">this site.</a> It uses your precise argument to prove irrefutably that it is the Koran that's true, not the Bible.

hinduwoman

Ventin, Krishna warned the Kauravas that should they perisist in their evil ways they would perish. Well, there a'int any Kauravas hanging around any more.

Jack the Bodiless

davidH:
And many have not become true: <a href="http://www.skepticsannotatedbible.com/prophecy.html" target="_blank">False Prophecies, Broken Promises, and Misquotes</a>

Others are "true" only because the Bible says so, as noted previously. A good example of this is the "Bethlehem prophecy".
There are several problems with this, and each illustrates the distortions incorporated into "Biblical prophesies" in general.

1. The wrong "Bethlehem"
The original prophecy referred to the clan of "Bethlehem Ephrata", not the town near Nazareth. The author invented the reference to "the land of Judea".

2. The wrong time period
The original prophecy referred to a military leader who would defeat the Assyrians, centuries before Jesus. Other prophecies have also been ripped out of context like this.

3. Was it fulfilled?
There is no good reason to assume that Jesus actually was born in Bethlehem. The earliest gospel, Mark, makes no mention of this. It appears to be a story introduced later to make a "fulfilled prophecy". And it's shoddy even by Biblical standards: there was no actual massacre of children by Herod, for instance.

ecco

Ventin:
[q] For me, the strongest evidence that there is a God and this God is reveal in the Bible is through creation, fulfilled prophecies[/q]

OK. Let me see if I have this straight. God is evidenced by fulfilled prophecies made by god in written text. If I follow this logic, then Jean Dixon is God and the National Inquirer should be considered Holy Scripture.

Ventin,

Do you consider Jean Dixon to be God and do you read the National Inquirer as Holy Scripture? If not, then please explain this contradiction.