I'm too lazy to search if this topic has been discussed. But even if it has, it wasn't my thread, so it's irrelevant.

Simple concept. Show a Biblical Prophesy that can be proven beyond reasonable doubt. That shouldn't be too hard, given the millions that believe in Biblical Prophecy.

A few rules:

-Be familiar with the definition of Hebrew and Greek words.
-Don't be stupid
-If you are Craig or Aaron, you are limited to 150 words, or your post will be ignored.

My thread, my rules.

If it's ok with op, I'm happy to continue my prophecy discussion with Lagtight here instead of the other thread. Although I don't really have much more to add.

Regardless of whether or not a good prophecy can be presented a la op (I don't expect it), my proposition is that prophecy isn't supported by a God-did-it** explanation any better than some other mysterious explanation (time travel, precognition, witchcraft, or any other unexplained mystery -did-it).

You may hold a god-belief in which prophecy occurs (i.e. it's internally consistent), but you won't be able to justify that god-belief being true simply from prophecy.


** (or a god-did-it)

Feel free to bring it here, but understand the bar is "beyond reasonable doubt".

I can prophesy that my grass will be green next spring, and show you an authenticated picture that my grass is, indeed, green. That is beyond reasonable doubt. I'm not going to proclaim that "God did it", because it happens every year.

Now, Jesus was prophesied to be born in Bethlehem (the real Bethlehem we know). Can that be proven beyond reasonable doubt?

Bring it.

No, the thread opener doesn't get to set the rules.

I will flagrantly violate your rules if I want to and there is nothing you can do about it.

HAHAHAHAHA

I would like to encourage Aaron and Craig to make all their posts OVER 150 words.

HAHAHAHA

Probably no historical event from Antiquity can meet the "beyond reasonable doubt" standard.

"Preponderance of Evidence" would be the standard that real historians would realistically endeavour to achieve.

In college, I took a course in Philosophy of History.

(There was less history back then.)

Sure there is. You can be completely ignored.

Hidden patterns + projection + confirmation bias + desire to validate predestination + status seeking. End thread.

Promise?

I was hoping for more like: familiar prophesy + understood facts (evidence) + discussion of presented facts (evidence) = reasonable conclusion.

But your non-equation works fine too.

It wouldn’t matter. Irrationality is a feature of reality seeking, so it is essential to religion, which should be more accurately defined as the interaction between human consciousness and reality. Empiricism simply measures the sensory world, which is great, but that is outside the domain that religion operates in.

Religion shouldn’t be making any empirical predictions. I know Jesus didn’t. People that interpret him doing that are mistaken.

Sorry, I meant outside the domain that the mythological element of religion operates in.

I know what you meant.

Many would say Jesus was a prophet. He wasn't. His words are, arguably, the most important ever remembered -- but he never prophesied.

Not the view of most Christians. Most American Christians are premillenariann in eschatology, which typically includes reading Jesus's sermon on the Mount of Olives in Matthew 24 as a prophesy about the end times:

An older and still common view interprets this passage as primarily a prophecy referring to the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD - after Jesus putatively said these words, but before they were written.

I believe at one time most scholars had Matthew being written prior to AD 70. Maybe the scholarship has changed?

We don't know for sure when it was written. Reputable scholars have claimed anywhere from 50-120 AD. Most of the scholarly resources I've used in the past date it after 70 AD, in the 80s or 90s, in part because they believe the prophecies in Matthew 24 show an awareness of the fall of Jerusalem. If you are interested, John Nolland's commentary on Matthew has a good discussion of dating (he also claims a pre- 70 AD authorship).

I'll check it out. Thanks!

That section from Matthew is clearly told and received as a prophesy and it’s inevitable that Christians looking back would view it as Jesus predicting the fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD.

I maintain that he is speaking metaphorically there however. He told his followers that they would face persecution, so it can be viewed as a prophesy in that general way. But, if the question is: did Jesus know Jerusalem would fall in 70 AD? He did not.

Just like he didn’t know when the “second coming” or return of the Son of Man would happen. At the end of John, when he is talking to Peter, it’s clear that he had hopes it would happen during the time of the Apostles, which was obviously not the case.

Omnipotence doesn’t apply to this universe. God traded in omnipotence for creation, which is reflected in the act of Jesus laying down his life for his followers, so that they will one day choose to lay down their own lives. Death as an act of creation: a perennial pattern in the story of consciousness.

Therein lies the "prophesy problem" that I have.

It is easy to find something that someone said and say, "See, see, he's a prophet! What he said came true!"

Yet, those same people conveniently forget all the things that same person said that didn't come true.

Is this interpretation based on any kind of textual or historical analysis, or are you pattern-matching from your own experience of enlightenment to what Jesus might have meant if he went through a similar experience?

Original, there is no one on this forum I respect more than you.



See the problem here?

Yeah, the latter. In Matthew 24, temple = body, world = psyche.

Bart Ehrman has pretty definitively shown that an empirical dominant framework will shred Christianity. It would be better if all sides can just agree to that, so that we can move forward, but that’s my problem I realize.

Oh well... I guess it didn't take very long for you to break your own rules.

The issue is that you hold the trump card of always having the ability to deny that something was, in fact, a prophecy. Pick any prophecy that is claimed to have been made, and you have your choice of foils. You can claim that the prophecy was not sufficiently specific. You can claim that the event doesn't meet the standards of the prophecy. You can claim an alternate dating of the prophecy. And there is no sufficient response to any of these objections.

Of course, the irony (which has already been seen) of the last objection is that some of the dating of materials uses as part of the argument the idea that prophecies could not have happened. So you end up with a circular argument.

And with this sentence, I am at 151 words.

I haven't really said anything. But, whatever floats your boat.


Yeah, that's kind of the point.


Standard.


That was a lot of nothing for 151 words. I'm not sure 250 would make any difference.

Do you use Christian religious writings as devotionals to spark breakthroughs, or is this kind of reading retrospective for you?

I don't agree with the bolded claim. Historical criticism of the Bible, of which Ehrman's scholarship is fairly typical, has shown that arguments for Christianity based on the historical record fail, but I don't think it has shown Christianity's historical claims to be false. Whether or not you believe Jesus really performed the miracles described in the Bible or made the prophesies he is claimed to have made (or fulfilled) will primarily depend on your priors about the likelihood of such things happening, and how credulous you are towards the specific claims of the early Christians.