Let’s set aside whether there is evidence for one moment, and assume for the purposes of this next question only that there is evidence, ok?
Question: Is there any other area where, faced with evidence, that you ignore the evidence in favor of theories of plausibility, or start using rules of presumptions in order to avoid the evidence? If so, what is it?
There is no evidence for supernatural guidance in any prophecy, ever. That’s just a fact. But aside from that…
Suppose I approach 10,000 people and ask them to choose a number between 1 and 10,000 inclusive.
I then roll a 10,000-sided die and get the result of 5,208.
Think about this next part carefully: Is the person who guessed 5,208 psychic?
If a large number of people make guesses, some small number will be correct, by nothing more profound than probability. It doesn’t make the random individual who randomly is correct supernatural.
Shopping. I know that if I put more research into making my purchases, I can save money and get better deals, but I have a limited amount of patience and will often cut research short when I arbitrarily decide that I’ve found a deal that is good enough.
Similarly, there are fields (such as, say, macroeconomics) where I accept various premises as axioms because I have not taken (and likely will never take) the time to extensively educate myself on the matter, stopping at a similar “good enough” point. I’ve not personally verified E=mc[sup]2[/sup], but I figure it not being true would require some huge century-long conspiracy on the part of physicists, which strikes me as unlikely.
I’m not sure what you mean by “avoid” the evidence. That sounds vaguely like I’ve heard evidence against my beliefs but willfully denied it in order to cling to those beliefs. I suppose I’ve done that on occasion, when I’ve decided I’ll operate on the assumption that Premise X is true even though soundly proving it may be extremely difficult or impossible.
Canada is the best country in the world. Trying to prove it would require determining what economic and social criteria to use, assigning weights to them, then measuring same, then comparing same to other nations… who, aside from statisticians, has the time?
Did you have some examples in mind? And, to be honest, even if I had vast and arbitrary belief systems, I’m not sure how that supports the idea that Isaiah could see the future.
Broad generalizations about how prophecy is wrong are outside the O.P. We are attempting to ascertain the truth or lack of truth of just such a statement by the logical process. No, we will never be able to be absolutely sure. But making such an assumption as your starting point defeats the purpose of the question. And it’s not fact, it is your opinion.
Exactly how can you prove Isaiah is a random situation? Your analog is fairly poor. In your assumption, someone HAS to come out correct. The odds of my making a correct statement do not depend on how many other people also make statements. The proper way to analyze for “guessing” is to look at how many guesses that person made, not how many others guessed.
If one person guesses on your 10,000 sided die and is right on one try, you think it is uncanny. If he gets 2 out of 2 correct you start to wonder about tricks like loaded dice. If he gets 3 out of 3 correct and you are sure there is no trick, the odds are beyond the pale and you wonder the rest of your life how the freaking hell he did that.
I should have qualified it better. I meant when you personally are searching for the truth of a matter. Not cases where the truth doesn’t really matter to you.
We all must accept some such axioms due to the fact none of us can be experts on all things. At some point we have to take someone’s word for it. But if Einstein started with a presumption that E=mc[sup]2[/sup] was not possible and ignored evidence that it is not so, he’d not have made his discovery. If you are the expert in the field doing the work though, favoring presumptions over evidence is going to lead you into mistakes most usually.
Sorry if I made it sound like you personally are clinging to something you know to be false. It just seemed to be the best way to frame the question is all. You’ve been pretty fair in thinking it over.
Has to involve opinion at some point, but the way America is getting it has to be better than here he he.
I can’t think of any example where I am trying to get at the truth of something in a logical reasoning manner, and favor a presumption over evidence.
I see no evidence of that.
You are doing exactly what so-called Intelligent Design advocates (and I hereby make the bold prophecy that you are one of them) do with regard to evolution. You scoff at consensus scholarship, but you seize on whatever tiny nuggets support your predetermined conclusion. If Josephus, writing centuries after the fact, says something about Cyrus that he has no way of knowing, then (according to you) there is no justification for us to say he invented it. But if modern scholars who have devoted their lives to examination of Biblical texts in the original languages say that Second Isaiah was written centuries later than claimed, you dismiss them out of hand, because if you don’t understand their techniques, they can’t be right.
You can’t even grasp the difference between general objections and specific ones. It is OBVIOUS that alleged prophets, even today, make hundreds of educated guesses about the near future, trumpet their hits, and ignore their misses (in a dead pool thread on another board, I correctly predicted that Elizabeth Taylor would die this year), but nobody but an idiot would say that Isaiah was guessing about Cyrus 200 years before the fact. Yet you have consistently misunderstood that, just as you have consistently (and ironically) argued that any secular scholar has already made his mind up before he begins.
You sound exactly like the people who say Genesis must be literally true, because the Second Law of Thermodynamics makes evolution impossible.
Well, in this case the “truth” (i.e. find the best deal) does indeed matter, but over time other concerns (like time itself) begin to intrude and what might be, for example, a quest to find the biggest hard drive for the least amount of money starts to include other factors like how much trouble I have to go through to get it, how long it will be in shipping if I order by mail and if, over the four or five years I expect to use the drive, a $10 premium (if I get it today, as opposed to waiting until next week) is all that significant.
Well, I’m sure a lot of physicists who were Einstein’s contemporaries did presume that E=mc[sup]2[/sup] was impossible (in part because it would disrupt their own hypotheses), and gradually they died out. Your point escapes me. Is there something you think I’ve concluded is impossible and thus will be unable to accept evidence for it, if presented?
And to cut to the chase, I’m unclear on the evidence value of Isaiah as a work or prophesy. Its exact authorship and timing remains in some doubt, after all, and even if it was considered startlingly accurate and predictive in some ways, it’s less so in others.
Well, actually, the U.S. hasn’t been the country to beat for quite some time, and Canada was ahead in a number of important metrics well before, say, 2000. Our main competition, according to numerous “10 best” articles on the subject, are typically the Scandinavian countries, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Australia and Japan.
Of course, the differences among the top ten, or even the top 20, are pretty slight.
If you see no evidence of the fact that I reject circular reasoning wherever I spot it, you haven’t read very carefully.
I see controversy, not consensus. I’m not here for a predetermined conclusion.
You lose your guess that I am an intelligent design believer; not at all, I believe in evolution. It’s you who has no way of knowing, and scoffs at any and all available evidence. It is precisely because I understand the techniques of the scholars, pro and con, that I give no weight to the scholars for their circular reasoning, on both sides. The pro prophecy people say Isaiah is accurate cause God said so, therefore prophecy is real; the other side says prophecy can’t be real and therefore Isaiah is written after the fact–and the evidence against the prophecy is the “fact” that Isaiah was written after the fact, which was proved by the presumption that prophecy can’t happen, which proves Isaiah was written after the fact, which proves prophecy can’t happen…
I’ll not entertain either fallacy. now if you want to provide some scholar’s work who does not start with either presumption, I’ll be glad to entertain it. So far I am working only with what others give me, pro and con. You are welcome to cite any of your claims. I noticed none.
I would like some evidence for your claim that “It is OBVIOUS that alleged prophets, even today, make hundreds of educated guesses about the near future, trumpet their hits, and ignore their misses” specifically for Isaiah, please; I’d like to know how this is “obvious” without a presumption that prophecy can’t happen trumping any evidence. Evidence of some people doing that today is not evidence that Isaiah did it.
Nah the second law of thermodynamics only applies to closed systems, which the earth is not. And whether or not I think Genesis is literally true has no bearing on which side I take in a debate. You have a problem with presumptions, you make way too many, and in this case at least, your presumptions are preventing you from understanding even what is being said.
These “tiny nuggets” you complain of happen to be all the evidence there is. I will not accept your speculations in the stead of any evidence, as they are tinier yet. Show some evidence please. If you’d like to prove your point, I’d suggest another historian who records the same events differently and necessarily contradictory than Josephus did, or the Author of 2 Kings did, or the author of Isaiah did.
“The lying pens of the scribes” needs supported by evidence.
It’s in your next sentence, in the event that you agree with the scholars who doubt the veracity of Isaiah’s identity in authorship or time.
It is less so in other ways. All in good time. I hope in this thread to eventually analyze most of the claims and then look at them with an overview of totality.
Not necessarily you, Bryan, but for the benefit of all, I think there is some mistaking the O.P. going on. It’s much less “what do the scholars think about prophecy” as it is “are the scholar’s views of prophecy warranted?” But it is also a bit more than that.
I have rejected both sides of the controversy in the arguments of the scholars.
And from that you concluded that I was claiming prophesy was impossible and/or that Isaiah was definitely not a work of prophesy?
My very valid concerns are being downplayed or flat-out ignored, and I guess I’m done. As to the thread title question… “No, there are no prophesies I’m aware of that meet a compelling standard of validity or verification.”
No, I concluded that you believed Isaiah to be written after-the-fact.
Good Lord. Your deep understanding of higher criticism is to assume that all scholars begin with an implacable refusal to accept evidence contrary to their assumptions.
I guess it’s time for me to come clean. My name is John F. Kennedy, and I faked my assassination because I needed to devote full time to supervising the studio filming of the fake Apollo moon landings. There is abundant evidence, both written and oral, that shows that the Warren Commission was a fraud, but people with closed minds reject it.
You should believe that I am JFK, because your guiding principle is to assume that any claim of authorship should be considered true until conclusively proven false. But if you need even more convincing evidence, just listen to this: “Ask not what your country can do for you.” Could I say that if I weren’t actually JFK?
Anybody who doesn’t believe me is just engaging in circular reasoning. He begins with the assumption that JFK is dead, and rejects all evidence to the contrary.
Strawman. I never said this or did it. I noted that THE EVIDENCE I read presented in this thread employed circular reason. If you want to provide a cite, I will read it and MAYBE come to a different conclusion, but misunderstanding what has gone on in this thread and complaining is not a substitute for citation. GO GET A CITE already. But if it includes circular reasoning, I will treat it the same.
I suppose you haven’t noticed that I also rejected the pro-prophecy scholars side of it, too.
Hmm… the weight of the evidence is against you.
Did someone recording history make the claim that you are actually JFK?
But if I ignore the evidence, it is less complicated to believe that JFK wanted to escape his life than to believe all these conspiracy theories.
Can I have your autograph? You’re my favorite 20th century president.
I’ve heard a few recently. A newer one by the name of Dr. Owuor from Kenya, and I’ve also revisited the prophecies of St. Malachy.
Can you provide us a brief overview and a link?
Argh. How about I just provide a few links found through Google?
Dr. Owuor
His statement of faith: http://www.repentandpreparetheway.org/faith_statement_of_faith.php
St. Malachy
An interesting chart: http://www.biblebelievers.org.au/malachy.htm
I see that he boldly predicts unrest in Israel. If something as unlikely and specific as that ever happens, I’ll be convinced!