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The Incredible odds of fulfilled bible prophecy
- Thread starter DOC
- Start date
ddt
Mafia Penguin
Well I suppose I should give you credit for posting a link which is accessible outside the US, it saves me from reminding you that the US is less than 5% of the world's population.
No, I don't believe any of those prophecies "came true" if by "came true" you mean they were prophesied prior to the event, and have extra-biblical proof of occurrence. Unfortunately, I have a feeling that your meaning of "came true" is somewhat different.
The bible is not proof of anything; it's a collection of stories which were written after the fact, and it has been altered and edited several times until it ended up as the 66 books we have today, in several different versions. You cannot point to it as evidence of anything which it contains, this is circular reasoning. You'll have studied circular reasoning in that logic course you claim to have taken.
welshdean
Michael McDonald 1967 - 2021
- Joined
- Jul 10, 2002
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- 5,883
In all fairness to DOC,
Just one module (that he aced) of a philosophy course he's taken.
Elizabeth I
Philosopher
I think it's been fairly well established that, except for one person, nobody participating in this thread thinks that "any of these came true."
(Add me to the second list of "no"s)
TimCallahan
Philosopher
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DOC, if you see the Book of Jonah as being historical, do you accept the following as true?
1) Jonah was swallowed by a great fish, in which he lived for three days.
2) Nineveh was so large it took three days to cross it.
1) Jonah was swallowed by a great fish, in which he lived for three days.
2) Nineveh was so large it took three days to cross it.
And me too, please.
abaddon
Penultimate Amazing
Absolutely not.
Um, what other way is there to go about that business? I have two of my own and have found a woman to be a requisite part of the equation.
Mary got up the duff by means of the holy spook.
Yet somehow was born of the line of Abraham.
And Isaac.
And Jacob.
And David
And Judah.
And Jesse.
Conveniently.
For no particular reason.
See, here's your problem. If you are going to trace your genealogy all the way back through Joseph to David, then Joe boy must be the father.
But if you are going with the Holy Spook, then Joe boy is not the father at all, so you cannot claim the genealogy.
Not to mention the given genealogies don't even match.
So your choice is this, Holy Spook, therefore not descended from David, or born out of wedlock (there is a word for that). Pick one.
Hokulele
Deleterious Slab of Damnation
Your car was so large it took three days to cross it? Must have been a "full-size" Chrysler.
Hokulele
Deleterious Slab of Damnation
pakeha
Penultimate Amazing
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It's so simple to explain away, once you know how!
I don't know how "simple" it is for an omniscient being to change his mind. Why would he do it? Because he has obtained new information? Because he realises he made a mistake? In fact I can't imagine how an omnipresent, omniscient entity can make any changes of state at all. He can't move from place to place (he's everywhere) or learn anything (he already knows it).
As to an omniscient being deciding to repent ... Well, my far-from-omniscient brain can't handle that concept at all. DOC, can you help me with this one?
Blue Mountain
Resident Skeptical Hobbit
With regard to taking three days to go from one end of Ninevah to the other, I always read that as Jonah taking three days to go into every neighbourhood in the city and preach his message. Does anyone else here see that as a legitimate interpretation?
Jonah 3
Make of that what you will, but it looks as though the city is 3 days' journey across.
See also The Skeptical Review at http://www.theskepticalreview.com/tsrmag/2city92.html
The tl;dr version is basically that some of the stuff in this list one could believe is true simply because it's blatantly obvious, like the Messiah being a Jew. Others like the massacre of the children are examples of a misreading or misunderstanding of existing "prophetic" works and others, like item 1 on this list, are examples of non-prophecies being turned into prophecies.
Well let's take a look at these prophecies:
Some list said:
Quite frankly this one is a given. Unless you happen to live in some parallel universe where men get pregnant like in that episode of Red Dwarf.
That list again said:
Ah yes, this one. This one depends on whether you accept that the translation of that verse is indeed "virgin" and not "young woman". And if it is indeed a "young woman" then this falls under "blatantly obvious" considering the time period we're talking about.
Even more list said:
Well first, I don't know how you can consider the Genesis verse to be a "prophecy". Unless you are saying that no other descendent of Abraham did anything, which if you believe the Bible is blatantly wrong, or are reading far more into what is written there. I'm guessing you've got a way to handwave away the contradiction between Isaiah 7:14 and Matthew 1:16 because if Jesus is not the son of Joseph then he also can't be a descendent of Abraham. As it stands so far 2 and 3 are mutually exclusive, so which one is correct?
A bunch of points from that list said:
Ah yes, the other contradictory genealogy of Jesus. And don't bother trying to claim that one is Mary's and the other is Joseph's since both Matthew and Luke make it clear that their genealogies are of Joseph despite being contradictory.
I don't see how the Genesis verse is a "prophecy".
I would consider the Numbers verse to be an example of a failed prophecy especially when read in context since it is prophesying things that didn't happen. Perhaps the part where Jesus crushed the foreheads of Moab and the Shethite skulls was supposed to be in the sequel.
I would consider the Jeremiah prophecy to be another failed one since it's rather apparent that Jesus didn't reign as king.
Yet more list said:
Jesus? A Jew? Well I never. I mean who would have thought that the messiah to the Jews would come from within the community? I sure as hell didn't. /sarcasm
Why couldn't this part of the list be point 7 so I could more easily group the genealogy bits? said:
Oh look, another reference to Luke. Why is it that Luke is the authoritative genealogy while Matthew isn't?
And if Isaiah 11:1 was fulfilled then why didn't the stuff in 11:4-10 happen?
I would just like to point out that the mutual exclusivity of prophecies 2 and 3 also applies to prophecies 4-6 and 8. Either 2 is correct and by default prophecies 3-6, 8 are wrong, or 3-6, 8 are correct and 2 is wrong.
The list 2 said:
So we have the Matthew story of the
More shoehorning from the list said:
Let's just ignore the fact that there's no evidence that the Matthew part actually happened, reading the Jeremiah verse in context suggests that it's not literally about children but the dispersion of the Jews after the Babylonians conquered Judah. I say this specifically because Jer 31:21 speaks of the people retuning to the lands that they were taken from.
Summary so far
So far we have at least two "prophecies" that are stupidly obvious, and one more that can be added depending on your interpretation. (1, 7; 2)
Six "prophecies" that are exclusive in a way that either one or five of them are wrong. (2-6, 8)
Two "prophecies" where the initial "prophecy" don't count as prophecies. (1, 4)
Four "prophecies" which predict things that didn't end up happening (5, 6, 8, 9)
One "prophecy" which when read in context has nothing to do with Jesus (10)
But there are still more "prophecies" to go:
The list said:
I'd like to check the accuracy of this claim, I really would, unfortunately the Micah verse does not seem to exist in my Bible, or any of the online ones either.
Wherein psalms are quoted said:
How do we know that this psalm is referring to Jesus? This "prophecy" is a perfect example of using the Bible to prove the Bible, the only evidence we actually have that this is true is because the cited Acts passage says so.
Where we learn "Jesus" means "Immanuel" even though it doesn't said:
It's Isaiah 7:14 again. What fun. This one really relies on Matthew though. Somehow, according to Matthew, Jesus, is somehow equivalent to "Immanuel" despite the fact that he's never called "Immanuel" after that passage.
Prophety list said:
Oh wow, a passage from Deuteronomy that is fulfilled by nearly everyone who has a book named after them in the Old Testament and even more among the characters within. If anything all this says is that a holy book will contain a greater number of prophets within compared to any given book that isn't about prophets.
Priestly list said:
It's Psalm 110 again, only slightly later in the psalm. And it's the one about Melchizedek. The thing that confuses me is how exactly the Hebrews verse shows that the psalms verse is fulfilled. Hell logically verse 6 doesn't follow from verse 5.
Judgedly list said:
Isaiah is referring to God in this passage. And what's even stranger is that the John passage actually contradicts the Isaiah passage by saying that God isn't a judge but his son, who is also God, is a judge which comes across as a paradox that kind of explains why Arianism was a popular theological school of thought for several centuries.
Kingly list said:
Jesus pretty much denies that he's a King in John. How exactly can you say that this is a fulfilled prophecy?
Spiritually annointed list said:
The only evidence that we have that this happened is the Bible. We have no way of proving either way that the events in Matthew, Mark and Luke actually happened so you can't say that it was fulfilled as much as I can say that it didn't happen.
Zealous list said:
The cite from Psalms is from a larger piece about being delivered from persecution but the way it's worded suggests that this "prophecy" could be fulfilled by pretty much any person that's zealous towards God in the history of people being zealous towards God. The John passage suggests that the disciples didn't know their psalms very well.
Summary for this section
You may have noticed that I didn't really talk about the "prophecies" in this section. That's because of the nine prophecies in this section, only one, number 18 comes anything close to a "prophecy" and is one that nobody except Jesus can prove true. Every other "prophecy" in this section are just verses that have been turned into "prophecies" after the fact, either by the gospel authors themselves or by others later on trying to show the "prophetic nature" of Jesus' appearance. The fact that what we're seeing here is a bunch of out of context verses being pushed as "prophecies" really suggests that a lot of barrel scraping had to happen in order to show that "prophecies" have been fulfilled.
I might go through the rest of the list but I'm bored now.