Bible Prophecy
A couple of recent comments over on my AIG Research Paper Winner article were about Bible prophecy. I thought it would be a good idea to expand that a bit into its own article.
Reader Tara states:
One thing that bewilders the human mind is the ability to foretell the future. God has that ability. I would strongly suggest studying Bible prophecy. This subject is not something many like to hear about because the fact is, IT IS PROOF that God exists.
I responded to her assertion with:
No. It is merely proof that somebody can go into the Bible after the fact and data mine for sentences that they like and twist and conform the “evidence” into whatever shape they want.
Most people who believe in Bible prophecy do not believe in the prophecies of Nostradamus, but they are effectively identical. In both cases, supporters take ambiguous statements and pair them with ambiguous historical events and say it’s a match.
If you disbelieve Nostradamus, you must disbelieve Bible prophecy for the exact same reason!
Tara’s only response to this was:
As far as Nastradamus [sic] is concerned; he was proven to be a hoax long ago. Actually, he took some prophecies from the Bible and claimed they were from him.
To be fair, the exchange was mostly about other issues raised in the article. The Bible prophecy stuff was more of a side argument. She was probably more interested in the main debate, which is why she didn’t address my prophecy points too thoroughly.
Let’s look at the one point she did mention. I had said:
If you disbelieve Nostradamus, you must disbelieve Bible prophecy for the exact same reason!
To which she replied:
As far as Nastradamus [sic] is concerned; he was proven to be a hoax long ago.
I guess she’s saying that she rejects my premise. OK. But why? The only difference that I can see is that the Bible is a “holy book” and “the word of God”, whereas Nostradamus was just a charlatan.
But what facts are there that the Bible is a “holy book” and “the word of God”?
None.
Now that we’ve established that, let’s compare Bible prophecy with Nostradamus’ prophecies. Their credibility and accuracy are identical (Credibility: none. Accuracy: poor). As I said above, the only way either book looks accurate is because their supporters went in after the fact and bent historical events around vague statements.
Since both texts are equally bogus, you must reject both as oracles.
As further proof that both books are bogus, answer this question:
Why have there been no accurate and specific predictions derived from either book before the fact?
There is a cottage industry of people making claims that the Bible says that XYZ will happen on a certain date. Remember Y2K? Some of those were Biblical predictions. Nothing happened. Numerous Christian sects are based on Bible prophecy, such as the 7th Day Adventists and the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Both organizations made very specific predictions about when the world would end. When it didn’t, they both made new predictions. When those didn’t happen, they tried again, etc.
If the Bible is so prophetic, then why can’t it be used as prophecy? I’ll tell you: It’s because people are going in after the fact, cherry picking data, and molding it around vague, ambiguous Biblical statements.
Internet Infidels
I did a quick Google search, and I came across a good thread at the Internet Infidels Discussion Board. A reader wants to know how to assess a claim of Biblical prophecy. Another reader writes:
There are several criteria for claiming prophecy fulfillment. Farrell Till has outlined them numerous times before. Here are five of them:
1. It must be shown that the event predicted actually occurred.
2. It must be shown that the prophecy was made prior to the event predicted.
3. The event must be far enough in advance to eliminate guesswork. I could predict we will send a manned mission to Mars, but such an educated guess would hardly be prophetic.
4. The prophecy must be specific. If claiming prophecy fulfillment requires “correct interpretation” of vague statements, it isn’t prophecy fulfillment.
5. The prophecy cannot be easily self-fulfilled.
That same reader added this in a later post:
I thought of the 6th criteria: The prophecy can’t be overly general or about things that occur all of the time. E.g., general predictions about earthquakes, famine, and pestilence fall into this category of non-prophecies.
So there you have it. Six excellent criteria for assessing any prediction, no matter the source.
Farrell Till and Biblical Inerrancy
This Farrell Till fellow seems quite astute, so I went in search of his website. He publishes The Skeptical Review. It has a FAQ (Frequently Asinine Questions). Here are a few excerpts:
Who is Farrell Till?
Farrell Till is a well-known voice in the battle against the absurd doctrine of biblical inerrancy. A Church of Christ minister and evangelist and now an atheist, Till’s speciality is disproving that any prophecy in the Bible has ever been fulfilled in all of its details. In other words, Till holds and proves that the Judeo-Christian Bible contains 100% false prophecy. [emphasis added]
What the hell is “inerrancy,” anyway?
It’s the belief that the Judeo-Christian Bible is free of all errors or contradictions in matters of science, geology, theology, cosmology, or anything else you’d care to name. Yeah, we know what you’re thinking: “How pathetic.” But it’s hard to maintain power and control over “the faithful” if the pastor concedes that the Bible is shot full of errors (which it is), and that’s what the inerrancy doctrine is all about: power and control.
Some “inerrantists” believe that the as-is Bible — the one that you bought at Wal-Mart this morning — is 100% free of any errors whatsoever. There are other inerrantists who hold that the King James Version (KJV) of the Bible is 100% free of errors, but not any other versions of the Bible. And then there’s a THIRD crowd of “inerrantists” who believe that the inerrancy doctrine applies to only the “original autographs” (manuscripts) of the Bible’s books, but it doesn’t necessarily apply to any contemporary copy of the Bible. Since there is no such thing as an “original autograph” of any of the Bible’s books, this third group of inerrantists is little more than a bunch of weasels. The have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too crowd, if you will.
Logical Fallacies
The best part of the FAQ deals with three of the most common logical fallacies:
Each time that a Christian or Jew comes along and joins this email list, they almost always engage in at least three of the many dozens of logical fallacies, namely:
• special pleading,
• question begging, and
• arguing by assertion.SPECIAL PLEADING
My playing field needs to be superior to yoursYou insist that we accord to the Bible a special status as the “inspired Word of God,” thus granting it an exemption from logic, reason, human experience, history, contrary evidence, textual analysis, and every other tool that humans use to separate fact from fiction. If the Bible claims that Jesus rose from the dead, then, by George, we’re obligated to accept that as a historical fact.
QUESTION BEGGING
Let’s reason in circlesYou insist that the Bible is the “inspired Word of God,” and you know this because the Bible says of itself that it’s the “inspired Word of God,” and you know the statement is true because “God never lies,” and you know “God never lies” because he says of himself in the Bible that he “never lies,” and you know that God must have ACTUALLY SAID THIS because the Bible is the “inspired Word of God,” and you know this because the Bible says of itself that it’s the “inspired Word of God,” and…
ARGUING BY ASSERTION
It’s true because I say soYou claim that the Bible is the “inspired Word of God,” and you insist that we accept this because you said it.
Now tell me that the fundies don’t use all three of these (usually simultaneously!).
October 10th, 2007 at 8:58 am
The World, a leading New York newspaper of that time, featured this headline in its August 30, 1914 magazine section: “End of All Kingdoms in 1914”
“The terrific war outbreak in Europe has fulfilled an extraordinary prophecy….For a quarter of a century past, through preachers and through press, the ‘International Bible Students [Jehovah’s Witnesses], best known as ‘Millennial Dawners,’ have been proclaiming to the world that the Day of Wrath prophesied in the Bible would dawn in 1914. ‘Look out for 1914!’ has been the cry of the hundreds of traveling evangelists who, representing this strange creed, have gone up and down the country enunciating the doctrine that ‘the Kingdom of God is at hand.’
That’s not too bad, is it? For prophesy? It’s not in the Bible as is, but it is based on an interpretation of the 4th chapter of Daniel, which JWs made in the 1870’s and gave wide publicity.
I thought this might fall under your category of “Special Pleading” (a prophesy recognized by one faith, but not others) but no, you have defined S.P. differently.
October 10th, 2007 at 10:51 am
Tom:
You threw me for a loop. I thought you were going to use this as evidence that Bible prophecy is bogus, because that is exactly what you example demonstrates.
The JWs said that 1914 was going to be the beginning of the end of the world. It wasn’t. Prophecy failed.
I agree that WWI was quite horrible and that getting their prediction to line up with it 40 years in advance seems impressive. However, the 20th century was rife with calamitous events. When viewed that way, their prediction seems a little less impressive.
I would further argue that WWI is actually a miserable failure of a prediction. Despite the violence (and it was a very bloody war), it killed “only” nine million people. Compare that with the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918-1920, which wiped out somewhere between 50 and 100 million people! WWI pales in comparison. If anything qualifies as the Day of Wrath it would be that.
To quote Maxwell Smart: “Missed it by that much!”
October 11th, 2007 at 9:19 am
I wasn’t sure the day would come where I’d hear the phrase “killed ‘only’ nine million people,” but there ya go!
October 11th, 2007 at 10:29 am
Ron:
Well, it’s a bit more involved than that. Sorry, it can’t really be expressed as a sound byte. But even as is it rates as a solid triple. I’ll concede, as is, you wouldn’t count it as a grand slam.
For reasons that take some time to lay out and I doubt would interest you anyway, when “God’s kingdom comes,” it is established invisibly in the heavens, only later to extend its influence over the earth. A rough comparison might be how the election determines the next Pres, who only takes authority later after he has assembled his team for inauguration day.
Counterintuitively, God’s kingdom being established in heaven temporarily means temporary disastrous conditions on the earth (not unlike a world war), which enters its “last days.” In harmony with Rev 12:7-12
“And war broke out in heaven: Mi′cha·el and his angels battled with the dragon, and the dragon and its angels battled but it did not prevail, neither was a place found for them any longer in heaven. So down the great dragon was hurled, the original serpent, the one called Devil and Satan, who is misleading the entire inhabited earth; he was hurled down to the earth, and his angels were hurled down with him. And I heard a loud voice in heaven say:
“Now have come to pass the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ, because the accuser of our brothers has been hurled down, who accuses them day and night before our God! …..12 On this account be glad, you heavens and you who reside in them! Woe for the earth and for the sea, because the Devil has come down to you, having great anger, knowing he has a short period of time.”
This is the event thought to have begun in 1914, based on those verses in Daniel mentioned before.
Though WWII was greater than WWI, it really was just a continuation. The aftermath (insisting the defeated countries pay every time of damages incurred) of the first war led almost directly to the second. Any number of historians have pointed to 1914 as a turning point year in human history. To my knowledge nobody has done so with regard to WWII.
As I said, it can’t really be expressed as a one-liner. Even what I’ve written is by no means thorough
October 11th, 2007 at 11:20 am
Tom:
I didn’t mention WWII, except indirectly. As far as kingdom being established in heaven, there’s no way to confirm that.
If a prophecy has enough ambiguity or enough details that can’t be confirmed, you won’t be able to convince the skeptics that it’s true, and it gives the claimant too many outs.
October 11th, 2007 at 1:55 pm
Agreed. It’s hard, not easy.
What do you think of this one: from the book of Micah? (OT)
“And you, O Bethlehem Ephrathah, the one too little to get to be among the thousands of Judah, from you there will come out to me the one who is to become ruler in Israel, whose origin is from early times, from the days of time indefinite”
a refererence to where Christ would be born. Nobody claims it wasn’t written well before NT times. Bethlehem was a tiny backwater of a town. And Bethlehem Ephrathah is a bit like specifying Naples, NY, as opposed to Naples, FL or Naples, Italy.
October 11th, 2007 at 9:36 pm
Tom:
Farrell Till discusses that prophecy in this article (It’s a long article. Search for “Micah” and you’ll find it.). The short version is that the Bethlehem mentioned here is actually the name of a clan, not a town. It was saying that a member of the Bethlehem clan would become the ruler.
October 14th, 2007 at 8:16 am
*looks up at the Jehovah’s Witness arguing that the world’s-end prophecy has already been fulfilled*
so tom, you havin’ fun here in post-Armageddon cyberspace?
L
November 3rd, 2007 at 5:42 pm
Well if all these bible prophecies are true then I must have missed JaySus and the end of the wold in 2000. Damn it I hate to miss a big party.
November 3rd, 2007 at 5:47 pm
Oh I like the point about none of these “predictions” were noticed ahead of the fact. If they had been San Francisco wouldn’t have burned in 1906 and the trade center wouldn’t have come down in 2001.
It’s like closing the barn door after the horse escaped.
May 15th, 2008 at 12:29 am
As for Micah “predicting” the location of Christ’s birth…
You begin your argument with the assumption that Jesus in fact lived. There is actually no historical evidence to support this. The Jesus myth was cobbled together from earlier pagan myths and used as a marketing tool by a young and ambitious cult/church.
Why should your arguments carry any weight if they are derived from your illogical belief in patently absurd myths?
(For more info., watch the documentary “The God Who Wasn’t There.”)
May 15th, 2008 at 5:03 pm
People have been claiming the end of the world is nigh since long before Christianity — it seems like almost every religion has its own doomsday prophecy. (I can’t recall the precise details, but old Norse paganism has a myth saying a wolf will eat the sun and everyone will die in the ensuing winter.) It’s just one of those things all faiths have, much like a story of the creation of the world.
So far as Christianity goes, first the Apocalypse was going to come in 666, because *gasp*, that’s the mark of the Beast. Then it was the year 1000, because that’s a big round shiny number. Hundreds, maybe thousands of tiny cults believed it would end between then and the year 2000, usually on some ’significant’ date, not realizing that the Julian calender is not, in fact, entirely accurate.
I always have to laugh at the ‘this will happen on such-and-such day at such-and-such time’, because — WHERE? They say a certain time of day, but where in the world will it be that particular time? Even saying it’ll happen on a certain day is flawed, because, as an Aussie friend of mine says, “Don’t worry that the world will end tomorrow, because it’s always tomorrow in Australia.”
August 4th, 2008 at 4:38 pm
If you really want the absolute truth with 100% accuracy regarding End Time events then you need to read all of the post of the MAY 15 PROPHECY which has been the only source that has given the Who, What, Where and when with 100% accuracy
Do a Google search of the MAY 15th PROPHECY and you will see for yourself
August 4th, 2008 at 5:45 pm
May 15th? Damn. I’d always hoped it would be the Ides of March.
August 4th, 2008 at 7:39 pm
Sharley, you’re thinking of Ragnarok! Just ask a Norwegian, we’re all up on that shit. Ragnarok was not only the end of the world, it was the death of the gods, as well. Those Vikings believed the earth would be destroyed by fire and ice, and who knows - climate change might just succeed at that. They also looked forward to the death of the gods, and I like to see that as just plain old good sense. Maybe they foresaw that people (at least some of them) would get smarter, find rational explanations for natural phenomena, and give up on the whole idea of gods.
August 4th, 2008 at 8:27 pm
I just visited May 15’s website. First words on the page…
Okay, and whose fault is this again? “Tax and spend” Democrats? **BUZZZZZ* WRONG! Reaganomics and Bushanomics. **DING DING**
Self-fulfilling prophecy much?
August 5th, 2008 at 3:42 pm
*snerks*
Good one, PL. ZING!
And duuude! I LOVE Norse mythology. The idea of a giant wolf eating the sun is totally bad-ass. So much cooler than the seven headed beast and lake of fire thing.
I’m a Pagan, yo. Fundies, my Gods can totally pwn your God, so there! ;p
August 6th, 2008 at 10:12 am
I want to go live on Stratford-on-Avon.Forget May 15..Ides rule!
LOL LadyR.