Do Fulfilled Prophecies Validate the Bible?

[ICMoney]

Do Fulfilled Prophecies Validate the Bible?

I found a short article that illustrates the chance that 8 or 48 fulfilled prophecies would occur by chance.

I would be interested in hearing what DS and the other skeptics think.


ICMoney

[vhawk01]

[ QUOTE ]
Do Fulfilled Prophecies Validate the Bible?

I found a short article that illustrates the chance that 8 or 48 fulfilled prophecies would occur by chance.

I would be interested in hearing what DS and the other skeptics think.


ICMoney

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Prophecies don't validate the Bible, although they would lend it some credibility. However, a single unfulfilled prophecy would invalidate the Bible, I think. Probably part of the reason there is rarely a time limit on a prophecy.

[MidGe]

Fulfilled prophecies do not validate the bible. I agree with the previous poster unfulfilled prophecies invalidate the bible, as do mental contortions required to try to fit some pseudo facts to the prophecies.

[ICMoney]

I was using validate in the sense of "giving strong evidence for" and not necessarily "proving 100%".

Thanks
ICMoney

[suppasonic]

While I am a believing Christian, to be fair, the bible was compounded 200 years after the death of Jesus. Thus, Constantine and the Bible Construction Commission could have thrown out books with profecies that didnt come true and only kept the ones that did.

[JMa]

Do the prophecies in the bible have any time limit? If not, no.

[arahant]

[ QUOTE ]
Do Fulfilled Prophecies Validate the Bible?

I found a short article that illustrates the chance that 8 or 48 fulfilled prophecies would occur by chance.

I would be interested in hearing what DS and the other skeptics think.


ICMoney

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That was an amusing article...
If the bible had actually been compiled BEFORE christianity, the prophecies had been neatly laid out (rather than later being extracted), and they had then been fulfilled to some level of likelihood, then it would tend to support the bible.

What we have here, though, is an excellent example of post hoc analysis and the gross abuse of statistics. Also, a silly attempt at an appeal to authority (do you know what the 'American Scientific Affiliation' is?).

You do realize that the Jews were sitting around actively waiting for the Messiah...it's a little silly to believe that someone came in and hit 456 out of 456, but the Jews just shrugged their collective shoulders about it.

[goldcowboy]

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You do realize that the Jews were sitting around actively waiting for the Messiah...it's a little silly to believe that someone came in and hit 456 out of 456, but the Jews just shrugged their collective shoulders about it.

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But what if they were expecting a messiah who would be a mighty warrior king and free them from subservience to Roman rule and restore the grandeur of Israel/Judah? Might they then miss it if the real thing did come along and was an entirely diferent kind of messiah?

[arahant]

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[ QUOTE ]
You do realize that the Jews were sitting around actively waiting for the Messiah...it's a little silly to believe that someone came in and hit 456 out of 456, but the Jews just shrugged their collective shoulders about it.

[/ QUOTE ]

But what if they were expecting a messiah who would be a mighty warrior king and free them from subservience to Roman rule and restore the grandeur of Israel/Judah? Might they then miss it if the real thing did come along and was an entirely diferent kind of messiah?

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Are you saying that Jesus only gets 456 out of 459? Or that the Jews withheld a few prophecies...kind of like the police withholding crime scene details?

[Brenner Hayes]

They aren't absolute proof, but if there were really authentic prophecies, it would be very reasonable to assume that these prophets were so supernatually special that I for one would follow them right off a cliff if they told me to. Here's the rub: these prophecies are not authentic.

They fall under two categories:
1 - Either they are very unspecific, in which case the believer can delude himself into thinking that they mean anything that they want them to mean in hindsight.

2 - If they are very specific, you will find that they are very specific about things that are confirmed by other made-up Bible stories. For example, some early book of the Bible will say that the messiah will be born in Bethleham. And then sure enough, what do you know, but Jesus is born in Bethleham. But the truth is that the story of Jesus is largely, if not entirely made up. So the writers of the Jesus story simply made-up facts so that they would fulfill previous prophecies.

I hope you will take a hard look at how curious it is that no prophecies are ever something along the lines of: In the year that is to be commonly known as 1969 a man named Neil Armstrong will set foot on the moon. If these were real prophets, why do they never come up with something impossible to mistake for one of the 1 & 2 categories I previously mentioned? They're in the prophecy business. Why don't they ever toss one out that even skeptical scientists would scratch their heads at? Hey, I know why...

Because they're not really prophets. But in answer to your question, if they really were, that would certainly go a long way in my book toward validating the Bible.