I know you guys are all serious but I remember in high school watching the news on crop circles. Stories about how the plants had melted over and did not break. Tales of mysterious flying objects that the air force cant explain.
All of these mysterious crop circles were the result of two people or their copy cats. They did this for like 20 years before admitting it. They even signed some of their crop circle art with their initials as scientist rushed to explain that it just looks like initials... it clearly indicates the craft must be malfunctioning and perhaps that is why it keeps landing.
All hoax. People believed in this devoutly. Still do. Been to Roswell? Some have seen aliens face to face and have passed lie detector tests and recounted the story through regressive hypnosis. These people are extremely sincere and many have nothing to gain.
What possesses people to believe this stuff? I mean you believe god is real and he talks and directs through people here on earth you call prophets.
I mean what do these prophets say? (Any prophets in general today...) Be good people. Stay out of trouble. Quote the bible. The end is near. These are the last days.
If you study prophets over time you will find a pattern. A pattern much like mediums for the demon and spirit worlds... Not only is this god of the prophets redundant he doesn't seem to know anything with any substance.
I can go door to door and say doom, doom... here sign up for a membership in antinoobdoom safe guard folk and your good. God will save you.
Obviously I regard god as false so prophets are obvious frauds as well. Statistically though the chance of a personal god, that you know the personal god and even have a sentence of his word in all of our collective holy works, and that you choose the right personal god to follow, and that this god talks to people... its ludicrous.
Most people are born and indoctrinated into... quite luckily.... the one true religion where god is still speaking! Wow... imagine that. Luckily our parents found the truth and raised us right. Yeah yeah... not everyone who is born accepts the code... a problem with the earlier matrixes that were working on now... how many edits to the book and faith and changes over time? The architect will get it right... just give em time... Oh sure... some are converts from door to door too... I get it. And L Ron Hubbard wrote a book that if your just read it you would immediately go insane after reading the last word. Scary...
So your original argument looks silly to me because it pressupposes prophets. Here take your argument and we'll use it to prove unicorn prophets.
Now many people claim to be living prophets of the unicorns.
1. The person knows he is a Unicorn prophet, is telling the truth, and is a Unicorn prophet. (See we dont believe in unicorns, or in your case god... so we cant go with option 1)
2. The person thinks he's a unicorn prophet, is telling the truth of what he believes, but is deceived (by Leprechauns, mental disorder, low intelligence, doesn't understand what a unicorn prophet is, misinterprets personal experiences, etc., etc.) and is not a unicorn prophet.
3. The person knows he is not a unicorn prophet, is intentionally lying, and is not a unicorn prophet.
Listen you have this view of lying which while correct is not complete. People can easily lie to themselves and believe their own lies while having no conscious knowledge of it. (Hypnotic suggestions are one such avenue you could probably explore yourself... But it does happen naturally... You get into a state and if something gets inside your mental loop they can direct feed you without your conscious mind filtering... You can end up with implanted memories and when you later "REMEMBER" them you pericieve them as revalation.) I dunno my mom worked a mental clinic for a few years and I saw crazy people all the time and many were not dangerous... They just posed a threat to themselves.
Isn't it also possible that the majority of the population has begun to evolve a genetic disposition to be subbornly accepting of anything told to them by figures in authority. The benefit being the support of a community, stability through conformity and is solution irregardless of intelligence of allowing anyone to discern the immediate truth of something. (If it disagrees with your programming then its false) Another postulate.
In any event there is no proof that the prophets are prophets other then the prophets saying they are prophets. I dont care if a billion people believed them and the prophet is really, really sincere, religious, mentally sound and an ethics professor and directly descendant from Wyatt Earp. Saying something doesn't make something true. Sheesh if it was that easy we could save a lot time then this here scientific stuff which has had infinitely more results and sucesses in terms of being good for mankind and humanity in just the last 100 years then religion has had in over 1000s of years.
Its why you can read this online. Think about it.