Not that I want to debate necessarily (not sure this is the right forum for my post), but I’ve always wondered about the validity of prophecies in the bible, and prophecies in general.
Religious people tend to refer to their book (bible, qur’an, etc.) as an authority. God says in such and such chapter that xyz. I asked someone I know (a Christian, actually a JW) to try talking to me without referring to the bible. Alternatively, I asked if she could first convince me of its validity as an authoritative source for religious truth. She gave me a book called something like “How Do We Know the Bible is True?”
There were three or four basic arguments one of which was, the bible is true because recorded prophecies are fulfilled.
My question is: Is there any evidence of a recorded prophecy which pre-dates the prophesied (?) event? I thought that all the existing bible records post-date the events being supposedly predicted, like the fall of babylon, cyrus of the persians, etc. I can’t very well find a post-dated prediction to be miraculous, can I? I mean this question sincerely. I’ve never gotten an answer even close to satisfactory.
In this case Rationalwiki has a good review of important prophecies that are more controversial or that failed.
In essence, like Bryan Ekers reports, one has to be very, very generous with those prophecies to claim them to be true. IMHO the biggest problem here is to continue to interpret the bible literally, there would be less of a problem if it was viewed more symbolically.
Yeah, but the people most likely to yell from roofs that it’s, not even true, but T.R.U.E., are literalists. They also often come up with interpretations that make zero sense, such as an eagle in the book of Revelations referring to the US rather than to Rome or even to empires in general (if eagles aren’t the most common heraldic symbol for empires they’re real close).
I was listening to a Bible radio station, and the nice preacher was showing how the Old Testament prefigured the New, and especially how everything (!) pointed to Jesus.
He cited the (almost) sacrifice of Isaac by Abraham, and how the substitute, the goat that God provided, was caught in a thicket by its head. Lo! A crown of thorns!
To him, this was a fulfilled prophecy. To many of us, it’s no such thing.
This is one of the biggest problems in the prophecy biz: what actually is a prophecy, and what is just a coincidence of events?
When you can only look back, and say, “See, this was foretold” – but when you can never functionally look ahead and say, “This specific event will happen in this specific time-frame” – then your prophecies all look like excuses.
Harold Camping decreed that the world would end on May 21, 2011. Give the guy credit: he made a very specific prophecy, which could easily be compared to actual events. And…he was wrong. This, alas, is the pattern for prophecies of any useful specificity.
Also, a problem with the “post dated” business is that in the Bible, everything is postdated. There was no such thing as journalism back then, the things which eventually got recorded are always things that seemed important to whomever recorded them years later. This isn’t just an issue with the Bible, but with the passage of any culture from oral to written records.
Well, Daniel works pretty well for me. Let’s assume the late daters are correct and it was written during or even after the war of the Maccabees against Antiochus, so c. 160 B.C.
Daniel still predicts an even fiercer empire after Alexander’s and its fourfold division. In Daniel 2, it’s the iron legs of the image. In Daniel 7, it’s the fourth beast with ten-horns, from which an eleventh arises to dominate. And in both, they fall to the Kingdom of God, represented by the Great Rock and the Son of Man, which I believe refer to Jesus and His Church. The fourth empire, the coming of a Messiah, and the rise of his organization to eclipse the empire were definitely after-the-writing occurences.
I really like Matt Dillahunty’s take on this (then again, I might as well be the leader of his fan club) - just google “Atheist Experience prophecy” and you’ll find quite a few really well-thought-out deconstructions of various biblical prophecies. Short version:
Many prophecies contained therein are extremely vague, to the point where it’s trivial to find events that would fulfill them
There are so many there that when one or two come true we shouldn’t be surprised
Old testament predicting new testament events is not impressive when the authors of the new testament knew about the old testament
Any prophecy with a possible natural explanation that has millions of people working towards fulfilling it is liable to come true sooner or later
Countless wrong and failed prophecies
Also, here’s something to keep in mind. Muslims also try to support their religion with prophecies within the Qur’an which have been fulfilled. And most of them are faulty by the same criteria. Claims that biblical prophecy is a valid source of information are not as comically false as the claims that the bible contains advanced scientific knowledge, but it’s still not good evidence.
So in Daniel, it says an empire will arise after Alexander & then said empire will fall? Putting aside the Messiah part, is it more specific than that?
I never saw Rationalwiki, nice page. Glancing through the page you sent, I noticed that some of the prophecies which are not fulfilled seem to be ones that religious people are still awaiting fulfillment. This is, of course, convenient, but could be valid.
Wait, so… Daniel 2:31-46? Or is that a different passage? Because if that’s what you’re talking about, that seems incredibly vague - the kind of thing that could be interpreted after the fact to mean virtually any kingdom. And, of course, it seems to presume that god will create a kingdom which will exist for all eternity in the days of kings. Did this happen? They can’t possibly be talking about Israel; that was born long after the age of kings… Honestly, I don’t see the justification for any of this being treated as specific prophecy. It’s exceedingly vague and refers to the kinds of events which happen constantly throughout history, with a few details which are also so vague as to be easily applicable to any given kingdom.
Sure, but so what? Most of the Biblical prophecies that aren’t either too vague to take seriously, or aren’t post-dated, are about some kingdom or other being defeated or punished, and that eventually happened to all of them.
Plus, just like with modern psychics who predict stuff in the January 1 edition of the Weird World News every year, they predict a hundred different things, and next year, they remind you of the three things they got right. Over a forty year career, getting a hundred things right looks impressive, but anybody who follows the news can do as well.
When they were deciding which books to include in the Biblical canon, of course they threw out the prophets who got everything wrong. That doesn’t mean the ones they kept had any prophetic powers, it just means that the coin came up heads for them once in a while.
I’m sort of surprised that JWs would try to build an argument on the basis of fulfilled prophecies (Biblical or otherwise) - their track record is quite poor on that front.
In a broad sense, beyond Biblical prophecy, the answer to this is a clear, unequivocal, resounding “yes.” At least inasmuch as broken clocks are right twice a day. I predicted I’d go to bed at 10:00 last night, and I was right. Never mind the three predictions I made earlier in the evening; that one was right, and predated the prophesied event.
It’s like asking “Has a psychic ever gotten anything right?” Well sure, of course. Decent cold reading isn’t that difficult, it’s just a combination of chutzpah, vagueness, and verbal agility. Gullibility and confirmation bias take up the slack.
I think it’s the same for prophecy. Make it vague, say it loud, have a ton of people who are really, really willing to interpret it in one particular way.
So yeah, there’s evidence of accurate prophecies. Not compelling evidence, nor clear evidence, but there’s evidence.
Best example is the virgin birth prophecy, which “came true” though it was actually a misreading of the text.
So the Christians can say that over 100% of the prophecies were fulfilled.
Not to support the Bible, but Egypt does currently speak a Canaanitic language. Hebrew and Arabic are both descended from Canaanite (aka Semitic) languages. I’d be curious whether that particular prophecy is listed in the Quran.