Prophecy fulfilled.

On a marginally more on-topic point:

If you erect a stupid standard, you get a stupid result. Nobody is denying that you, the individual, have capacity to doubt anything you want to doubt. According to some, you cannot prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the earth is round.

Congratulations Aaron. I get to ignore myself. A pleasant surprise for the holidays. Thank you.

At this point, it’s retrospective. I have all these pieces in my mind of this sort of maze / obstacle course that I’m trying to put in order from beginning to end. At the same time, I’m trying to zoom in on each piece to clarify all the variables needed to complete the right action and advance beyond that piece. And then I’m trying to clarify the overall story that best fits with the entire experience of navigating through the maze. Finally, I’m trying to find salient stories or examples that can be used to communicate information about aspects of the maze.

I’m trying to figure out how to increase the chances of navigating through the maze for as many people as possible. The way I did it isn’t scalable.

What about the biblical flood? I wish I was an expert on this. But don't all religious scriptures have the biblical flood in common?

Roundguy, 70% of pastors believe the formation of the state or Israel was prophesied. For them there is no reasonable doubt if that helps.
https://lifewayresearch.com/2020/04/...urrent-events/

That survey is of evangelical and black Protestant pastors, not all pastors. Not sure why you think they are so certain either. That is not my experience of most American Christians and prophecy.

IF there is an omniscient Being, and IF that Being wanted us prove to people at some point that He was omniscient, one way He could do that would be to have prophets record future events that would invariably come to pass.

Scores of prophecies in the Bible have come to pass. No other book has this quantity and kind of fulfilled prophecy.

Furthermore, if a book contains scores of fulfilled prophecies, wouldn't it make sense to take seriously prophesized events that have yet to pass, such as The Great White Throne Judgement where all people who ever lived will be judged?

"Eternity is too long to be wrong."

The Bible is the "only game in town" when it comes to amazing prophecies coming true. No prophecies in the Koran*, Book of Mormon, Hindu Veda's, etc.

*There is one prophecy in the Koran in which Mohammod "prophesizes" that he will later travel to Mecca, and later on (wow!) actually does. Not an especially amazing prophecy, but that's as good as it gets in the prophesy department in ANY "Holy Book" other than the Bible.

Virtually all societies with ancient written records have a story of a great, cataclysmic flood.

Why does God hide his existence from honest seekers like myself? With the stakes as high as they putatively are, what is the reason? Why does He instead communicate with us through these dribs and drabs of ancient legends? I don't get it. Given a fair chance to become one, I would rather Christianity be true than naturalistic materialism. Surely God could easily persuade me of the truth, so why doesn't He?

Almost uniformly the prophecies of the Bible do not provide independent evidence for the theological claims of Christianity.

Someone said: "Scores of prophecies in the Bible have come to pass".

Pick a few, and post the literal translations in the original Hebrew and Greek, and consider when they were written (or not), and when they came to pass (or not). All without using intellectual dishonesty.

Go for it.

https://reasons.org/explore/publicat...y-of-the-bible

I will certainly endeavor to avoid being intellectually dishonest. As a Christian, I believe dishonesty is unethical. However, if people are just bags of chemicals as a result of blind physical processes that are not intentionally directed to achieve some specific purpose, what's wrong with being intellectually honest? If I can fleece my gullible flock with intellectual dishonesty and go undetected by those ignorant rubes, why shouldn't I go for it? SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST, BABY!

[I was in the middle of responding to your questions when what I wrote vanished for some reason.

Its getting late, so ill have to try again later. Sorry.

I have asked myself this question a couple of times. I hope my answer might be matching what lagtight was going to say.

A: We have free will and he isnt really hiding.
Sort of like when we walk into a gorcery store, we have the freedom to chose whatever we like to get. We can make good choices and bad ones. The poor choices will make us end up with a bad belly and a lack of energy. The good choices will make us feel better and act efficiently.
You can project this on life itself, where you are always able to freely make choices. We have to live with the results.

B: I find this to be true: A true seeker will always find what he is seaching for. The fact that you used the phrase "honest seeker" makes me suspect you havent looked hard enough.

I would also rather have christianity be true, than natural materialism.
Natural materialism is on the other end of the spectrum and is what is holding you from staying "pure"

My references are, my mother, who took me to church as a child and is always reading the bible, telling me to go to church, an ex gf who is crazy with the church, and a good friend who is a pastor. (he moved away and started a family, so I dont have regular contact with him anymore)

They are all protestants and are reading the new testatment, they are making out the majority of christians, even in the United States.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christ..._United_States

When my ex gf told me about the last chapter of the bible I was shocked to learn from her what it means, and did some research: so I called my pastor friend. He confirmed to me that we are in the last chapter and that means the world is coming to an end. He also said something along the lines, this could take another 1000 years or so, which was rather calming.

Great, I thought. So we are in the end stages of humanity, the devil is on the rise, and I only find out because I did some digging myself.

No, science is saying the same thing. Humanity is heading into many problems, mass extincition, over population, diseases, and catastrophes.
If we dont stop this, it will invetibly cause humanity to end, or to relocate. (I do not believe reloaction is the answer)

Yes, that is true. And I dont think cataclysmic floods are the only thing
mentioned in other scriptures as well as in the bible.

Just as virtually all of them have stories of various gods. Tell me, do all these societies say Yahweh caused it, and Noah built the ark, etc?

Not to mention that geology and archaeology disprove the reality of these STORIES. With religion, it's what we want to believe, not what is reasonable and evidence based, that that we hold as true.

Give up the ancient stories and myths if you want to know what is true. If making wishes, believing uncritically, and lack of personal agency is your choice -- religion is the answer.

Which archeology of the bible has ever been disproven?
If anything the archeology and geology proves the bible is correct narrative imo
/www.express.co.uk/news/science/1298523/Bible-proof-archaeology-evidence-Lachish-Assyrians-Old-Testament-archaeology-news/amp

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bibl...0the%20stories.

Which geology of the bible has ever been disproven?

"Geologists long rejected the notion that cataclysmic flood had ever occurred — until one of them found proof of a Noah-like catastrophe in the wildly eroded river valleys of Washington State."

https://www.discovermagazine.com/pla...utely-enormous
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flood_geology

"New book explores Noah’s Flood; says Bible and science can get along "
https://www.washington.edu/news/2012...can-get-along/

"The four kings mentioned in Revelation are, right now, taking center stage for the first time in world history."

One of the 4 kings according to this source is Putin.

https://www.jhm.org/Articles/2019-03...phecy-revealed

Prophecy explained. "YES you can understand bible prophecy"

https://www.adventist.org/bible/unde...ible-prophecy/

You are talking about a particular theological doctrine, dispensationalism, which is common among evangelical Christians, but is an implausible interpretation of the Bible. This way of interpreting the Bible understands much of the final book of the Bible as a series of metaphors predicting current events and describing the near future as a grand cosmic battle between the heaven and hell.

My view is that this whole method of interpreting the Bible is pretty obvious crap. It also doesn't function as independently verifiable fulfilled prophecies because the text in the Bible they claim to be recently fulfilled are all to vague and metaphorical to be useful as evidence.

As a skeptic, I believe dishonesty is unethical. However, if people are just supposed to obey god regardless of what he says and just because he says it, what's wrong with being intellectually dishonest? If I can fleece my gullible flock with intellectual dishonesty and go undetected by those ignorant rubes, why shouldn't I go for it? DIVINE COMMANDMENTS, BABY!

It's intellectually dishonest to keep repeating your claims about the incompatibility of naturalism and morality when you have no good answer to my arguments proving your claims are false.

Yes it is common among evangelical christians to believe that and thus cannot be implausible imo. My friend the pastor has a 4 year degree in theology from a german university. They study the old and the new testament if I recall right. So this is a common believe as you said. They are looking at the same pages of the bible, Daniel and the book of revelation.
He could have become a catholic priest, only then he couldnt have a gf or wife among other things that didnt make this a real option.


I took a quick look at the biggest megachurches in the US and can only make out evangelists, no catholics at the top ranks.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o..._United_States

If you are talking christians, there is only a few options:
-evangelists/babtists
-catholics
-and some other smaller subforms-mormons, jehovas whitnesses,etc.

If you listen to my ex gf she will tell you the catholics are all satanists.
While I agree that some, if not most of the old testament is outdated.
It is all the same the bible. I dont agree with a lot of things the catholic church did. If you ask me they were just a bunch of exploiting, greedy, racists, who forced their believe on several nations. It was believe or die. The enslavement of nations and murder in the name of god. Nothing that I can agree with. I do not despise modern catholics to be clear. I have respect for them, know people that are catholics, there is nothing wrong with them. I question what the church did in the past.

Then came the protestants, who as the name says were protesting these injustices in the church. They are making up, the majority now, and are reading the bibles last pages.
I do not think these pages of the bible can be considered crap, if its what the majority of christians believe in.

I think we are arguing about the book of daniel, or the "Revelations"

This book is also part of the toorah or the Hebrew Bible.
"The Book of Daniel in the Hebrew Bible has twelve chapters evenly ... Christian apocalypses include not only the Revelation of John in the New ..."
https://oxfordre.com/religion/view/1...99340378-e-152


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Daniel

"The Book of Daniel is preserved in the 12-chapter Masoretic Text and in two longer Greek versions, the original Septuagint version, c. 100 BCE"

"Dating

The prophecies of Daniel are accurate down to the career of Antiochus IV Epiphanes, king of Syria and oppressor of the Jews, but not in its prediction of his death: the author seems to know about Antiochus' two campaigns in Egypt (169 and 167 BCE), the desecration of the Temple (the "abomination of desolation"), and the fortification of the Akra (a fortress built inside Jerusalem), but he seems to know nothing about the reconstruction of the Temple or about the actual circumstances of Antiochus' death in late 164 BCE. Chapters 10–12 must therefore have been written between 167 and 164 BCE. There is no evidence of a significant time lapse between those chapters and chapters 8 and 9, and chapter 7 may have been written just a few months earlier again.[42]

Further evidence of the book's date is in the fact that Daniel is excluded from the Hebrew Bible's canon of the prophets, which was closed around 200 BCE, and the Wisdom of Sirach, a work dating from around 180 BCE, draws on almost every book of the Old Testament except Daniel, leading scholars to suppose that its author was unaware of it. Daniel is, however, quoted in a section of the Sibylline Oracles commonly dated to the middle of the 2nd century BCE, and was popular at Qumran at much the same time, suggesting that it was known from the middle of that century.[43] "

correction: the catholics too have the revelations.

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/revelation/0