Looncall
Well-Known Member
The Jews were conquered by everyone who happened by. Not much of a prophecy.
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Atheists, where did the universe come from?
- Thread starter Remté
- Start date
The Jews were conquered by everyone who happened by. Not much of a prophecy.
PruePhillip
Well-Known Member
The prophecy concerned a:
1-future Jewish state
2-a monarchy by the tribe of Judah
3-a religious law
4-the coming Messiah
5-the end of the monarch
6-the end of the Jewish nation
7-the Messiah is accepted of the Gentiles
that's seven prophecies in a single verse.
And Jacob was a tribal elder, living in Egypt.
Bob the Unbeliever
Well-Known Member
So you claim. So you cannot prove even a little bit accurate.
Milton Platt
Well-Known Member
You should ask a cosmologist or a physicist..........They are more qualified.
An atheist does not need to have an answer to a question about the origin of the universe.
JChnsc19
Member
Of course. I’d rather wait for the actual answer vs just asserting one. It makes people more uncomfortable to have this question go unanswered but if one doesn’t know then it’s the only intellectually honest response for that person.
Are you implying as most do that biblical prophesies are evidence of a superhuman knowledge, that is, words that could not have come from unaided human beings? If not, why talk about them?
If so, the claim can be rebutted. Prophecy can be deemed low or high quality. Low quality prophecy is often vague, may be made after the fact, may predict something unremarkable, may contain inaccuracies, or may be self-fulfilling. This describes all biblical prophecy. Consider messianic prophecy. The messiah of Isaiah doesn't resemble Jesus much at all for reasons given in part here already.
And it is self-fulfilling as well. If you're expecting a messiah, it's easy to point a finger at somebody and say, "Him!" Not much prescience needed for that.
High quality prophecy is unambiguous, specific, and detailed - often specifying time and place. It predicts things not commonplace nor expected. It is all accurate, that is, not mixed with errors. The prophecy must precede that which was predicted, but cannot be self-fulfilling.
There was a movie called Frequency some years back in which Dennis Quaid's character’s son contacts his father from his father's future by ham radio. To convince his father that he really is calling him from the father's future - from 1998 back to 1969 - the son discusses the outcome of game five of what is for the father the as-yet unfinished 1969 World Series, which the father is watching live (for him) on TV in a local pub:
"Well, game five was the big one. It turned in the bottom of the 6th. We were down 3-0. Cleon Jones gets hit on the foot - left a scuffmark on the ball. Clendenon comes up. The count goes to 2 and 2. High fastball. He nailed it. Weis slammed a solo shot in the 7th to tie. Jones and Swoboda scored in the 8th. We won, Pop."
Then the father watches it happen on TV.
That's high quality "prophecy." That's a convincing knowledge of future events, once fraud such as a tape-delayed broadcast of an already played game is ruled out. Extremely specific and unexpected, and accompanied by no error. Biblical prophecy can't compare to that.
But would you like to know what does? Scientific prophecy. Scientific prophecy meets the criteria of high quality prophecy.
Early last century, Einstein predicted that gravity bends light, something that turned out to be correct, but was not known to be true at the time, nor expected. And he provided specifics on how much it would bend. A clever experiment involving distant starlight grazing by the edge of the eclipsed sun on its way to earth demonstrated that the sun caused a deviation in the path of that distant starlight causing the star to appear to be in a position in the sky in which it was known not to be, Einstein also accurately predicted to what degree the curving of the starlight would displace the apparent position of the star, that is, how far from the star's know position its apparent position would be.
The Big Bang theory predicted that because there had been a time in the early universe's past when it cooled enough to allow electrons to join protons and neutrons and form neutral atoms, we should find the ghost remnant of the decoupling of light from matter that then occurred, a faint electromagnetic radiation coming from every direction in space at a fixed intensity and wavelength ought to be present in our universe. Once again, this was unexpected. A few years later, the cosmic microwave background was found, and it was at the precise frequency (temperature) predicted.
The recent find of the Higgs boson at precisely the energy predicted, and with the other characteristics predicted (charge, spin, parity) is the latest triumph in scientific prophecy. So great was the scientific community's and its underwriters' confidence in science and its ability to prophecy, and incredibly large, powerful, and expensive device, the Large Hadron Collider was built to find the particle, which was right where it was predicted to be.
These predictions and the confirmatory findings that followed them are all examples of high quality prophecy. They all outperform biblical prophecy, which is all low quality prophecy as defined above - trivial predictions, vague predictions, etc..
Even so, scientist do not claim to possess superhuman knowledge, and do not offer their prophecies and their confirmations to be evidence of more than quality thinking by human beings, not divine knowledge. If believers are presenting their biblical prophecies as support for a superhuman element in the authorship of those prophecies, they shouldn't expect much success outside of their gatherings with fellow believers.
PruePhillip
Well-Known Member
Well done, well written. Thank you.
The periodic table of Medeleev is prophecy - low or high I cannot tell as his table
isn't the one we know today. But you could "predict" where missing elements are
with this table.
It's super highly subjective what is high or low quality prediction in the bible. I take
Isaiah 53 to be a Gospel of the Old Testament (OT) It has no date - dates as we
know them didn't exist, and if they did, none would be provided. It provides what
you NEED TO KNOW about the Messiah as Redeemer.
Ezekiel 38 would be a "high quality" prophecy as it details a single war which has
yet to be fought. No date - it's event dated, ie when the Jews return a second time
to their land and they are attacked. The nations are identified, such as they were
back then 2500 years ago. And Israel's ally is mention - but the one nation with
no name other than on or over the ocean. I take that as America.
Ethiopia changed over the years but it's northern Africa. Libya speaks of the Arabs.
Persia is Iran and Magog is Russia, the "uttermost north", yet Israel's ally will "send
fire upon Magog" from the north. Interesting - that contradiction could be how a
nuclear war would be fought - across the poles.
It was a prophecy BTW which was ridiculed for centuries because Palestine now
belonged to the Muslims and the Turks. Chillingly it says "all of them" when speaking
of the Jews being home. That suggests to me that antisemitism will drive all Jews
out of all nations.
But other prophecies, how can you tell if they are high or low quality? Job said "I
know my Redeemer lives and He shall stand on the earth in the latter days."
Parsing this single verse:
I - me, myself
know - not believe, know
my - he belongs to me too
Redeemer - not a king, but one who pays the price for me
lives - not did live, not will live, but lives now
and - there's more
He - will come as a man
will - not maybe, but Will
stand - walk, stand for for something
upon the earth - with us, among us
in the latter days - at a point far into the future
Is that high or low quality? How can you tell? What if he gave a date? Would you
still not believe? And if he gave a date, what of all the generations who wait in hope
but don't live in the visited generation? You see, the bible is a spiritual book, offering
hope and comfort. Sure, history is there - initially debunked by scientists, but that is
not the bible's brief.