BEAR on 9/12/2008 at 15:24
The bible can't predict anything. Regardless of what we read into it and what patterns we see, there is nothing to the bible that would give it any ability to predict anything at all. There are common themes to life that, should you spread a wide net, you are entirely likely of hitting some things. Warfare and strife are constants that have always existed, so that is a pretty safe bet. You could even name continents and even narrow it down, and there is a good likelihood there will be fighting nearby near the time you said. Water shortage in africa? There was probably water shortage there when the shit was written. I'm going to predict a drought in the Midwest USA in oh, a thousand years plus or minus 200. I'm not even going to bother looking into the claims because someone is going to have to show me how the information it has could have gotten there if it were in fact predicting the future. Anyone can look at words and see patterns given events they already know, because that would violate how the universe works as we know it, and nobody has
ever proven any such metaphysical occurrences. Also, fuck the bible code. I know that's not what you are talking about but still, fuck it in the ass.
Though for curiosity sake, feel free to post some relevant passages, because if its actually 80% accurate (which it isn't) I'm pretty sure that would make some scientists commit ritual suicide. You cant subscribe probability and statistics to things that are totally open to interpretation and subject to ones own perception.
Quote Posted by Hidden_7
Yeah, this is the bit I just don't get about nihilists. Why DO they care about themselves? I mean, let's break it down.
Don't believe in God, afterlife, punishment, whatever. No trying to avoid hell reason for avoidance of suicide
Don't believe in an objective morality, there's no sense in which it would be "wrong" either in a greater metaphysical sense, or as a wrong perpetrated against the people who care about them.
Don't believe in any sort of purpose, constructed or otherwise, to life. So there's no sense in that living is a noble defiance, that there's some meaning that can be cobbled together out of just living.
Now, given that, why stick around? I guess because you get some enjoyment out of life, but most nihilists seem to be a pretty dour sort, but even if they aren't. Even if they love every minute of life, it doesn't mean anything. It doesn't add to any sort of tally after they die, it's an ultimately insignificant blip that always ends the same way. And they can't say that the journey has value, because, well... it doesn't.
Given that there's absolutely no value to be derived out of life, save meaningless fleeting pleasures, given the vast amount of effort living requires to obtain said pleasures, and given that they amount to nothing it seems odd that one wouldn't just elect to speed the inevitable conclusion.
But that's just me.
Since I guess I fit some of the description of a nihilist I'll give you my impression. I wonder sometimes if nihilism doesn't follow dourness instead of the other way around sometimes. I think we take too much credit for our own moods at times, and I can say that at least in my own perception, even if I acknowledge the above ideas, it doesn't necessarily make that much difference. If I'm feeling good and having a good time, I am not likely to care that much about the uncomfortable thoughts I might have. So much of life is just habit and learned action that its actually pretty hard to just quit everything. To be more concise I think that philosophy doesn't directly affect the working of ones brain as much as it might seem.
Starrfall on 9/12/2008 at 16:47
Quote Posted by fett
Common misconception. If you take the whole of OT prophecy (scripture that was intended as prophecy, not scripture that modern evangelicals label as such) its accuracy is somewhere in the 80% range with the another 10% looking very likely in the near future. Nostradomus is down around the 20-30% range, and Cayce comes in around 10-15%.
Says you.
(Or the church, really - I'm using "you" generally here)
I mean look, from my perspective, there's definitely an agenda to be served by claiming that the bible makes a bunch of predictions. Whether or not YOU are in active pursuit of that agenda at this time doesn't fix the problems and questions I'd have about the accuracy of translations, any changes in the bible over time (or between different versions) and the very obvious benefit of hindsight.
It doesn't help that I've got a pretty strong feeling that I could select almost any time period in the last 2000 years and look through the bible and cherry pick a ton of verses that match up to that time period. I'm also pretty damn sure that when you say "80% accuracy" you mean "80% of the predictions we decided to go with, oh and consequently we're going to ignore the ones that haven't come true yet or are just wrong" (Let me know how all that stuff about the world not moving works out for you. Also let me know why Russia is supposed to be Gog when the Goggles are all supposed to ride horses according to Ezekiel 38:15) You also ignore how much it failed to predict. (Or, more to the point, if I asked whether it predicted say, the church would put someone like Gallileo on trial for being right, you'd probably point me to some vague lines about how the learned men would be cast aside but then later would be revered for their wisdom.)
Maybe it's not fair because I don't have the time or inclination to get the information I'd need to evaluate this independently and until I can do that I'm not buying what you're selling just because you assure me that it's fresh. But that doesn't change the fact that the connections you're making appear to be shoddy at best. I'm not going to be impressed that the bible says the jews will plant trees and they have, because the jews have probably heard of that bible verse as well. There's a page where you can buy a tree for Israel and it's got quotes from Ezekiel all over the place. Doing something someone predicted and then using that as evidence that the prediction was true is considered silly by most people. The fact that the bible predicts things that weren't possible at the time of writing doesn't really mean anything either. Science fiction writers "predicted" that people would travel in space long before such a thing was possible but no one worships Jules Verne (probably).
As far as I can tell the best thing you've really got going for you is that a lot of people believe this, but you don't even really have that because on a global scale you're just a loony subset of those Christians eveyone keeps hearing about. (Because I'm guessing, for example, that the Russian Orthodox and Catholic churches don't buy into all of this)
fett on 9/12/2008 at 19:45
I hear what you guys are saying, and there's really no objective parameters for what constitutes a fulfilled prophecy. Neither do I have the time (or inclination) to go point by point. Obviously, some of that 80% can be disputed for being too vague, or at least neutralized by the fact that anyone could have seen it coming. When I say the Bible is more accurate than Nostradamus or Cayce I mean it in the sense that when it does predict things, it does so in a more exacting nature, with more details than do other prophets, which makes it very difficult (at least in my case, as I'm struggling with the issue of belief) to dismiss completely. I'm talking about things like naming the exact date of Alexander's arrival in Jerusalem, or the exact date that Titus destroyed the temple in 70 A.D., along with how he would do it and the fact that the soldiers would literally dismantle the stonework because they believed (unbeknown to the Jews at the time) that there was gold mixed into the mortar (there wasn't). Or how about the exact date and method of the invasion of Babylon by the Medes, the names of the individuals involved, and the inclusion of a water course system that didn't even exist at the time of writing (not to mention that the Medes weren't even a blip on the map at the time)?
Sure, some of it is lucky guessing or coincidence, but how many coincidences can a person take before they start believing there's something else going on? We can't even play the dating card because other texts and extant writings corroborate conclusively that the prophecies were written well in advance of the events, in writings that were codified and cannonized, and later confirmed accurate within a 4% range retrospectively by the DSS (by *liberal* scholars, I might add).
For my own part, I'm a pragmatist and a skeptic. I don't know how to explain it, but I refuse to accept the supernatural viewpoint. Obviously there's information that we still don't have to explain these things. That being said, the Bible is still eerily accurate in ways that these other prophets never dreamed of, and the types of prophecies I'm referring to are far beyond your typical "Russia will invade Poland" stuff.
BloodCat on 9/12/2008 at 20:02
Maybe these parts were added/changed/rewritten later when all of these points were facts already. There is at least a motivation to do so, namely the ability to say: Look, our holy book predicted all this! Surely we're onto something here. Stick with us folks!
fett on 10/12/2008 at 02:35
Um...no. The dates of writing for most prophetic books of the Jewish scriptures were confirmed by the Quamran findings (Dead Sea Scrolls) to have been written and tucked away long before most of the things I'm referring to happened. That's one of the main reasons the Dead Sea Scrolls are such a big deal - they mostly confirmed the chronology of prophecy and fulfillment.
Also, the added/changed/rewritten argument is hackneyed and uninformed at best. There's like all of 9 mistakes (every one insignificant to prophecy, doctrine, or history) between the modern book of Isaiah, and the DSS version of Isaiah. Most of the OT books included in the DSS have better stats than that.
Shug on 10/12/2008 at 02:49
Are there any worthwhile links you could direct us to, fett?
fett on 10/12/2008 at 04:39
Heh. To be honest, I haven't looked at that stuff in about three years, so I'm not sure what's out there now. The problem with this subject is that you either get one of two things:
1) Books/sites by evangelicals that only reference back to the Bible to show fulfilled prophecy (obvious problems).
2) Scholarly sites that ignore DSS dating and have a great grasp of history, but very little grasp on language or context, and therefore miss the correlations completely.
Even the people I personally know (like Randall Price, Chuck Missler, etc.) are brilliant, but their research is mixed with so much evangelical broohaha it's very annoying to dig through it all to find the gems (especially for a non-believer).
It's really a matter of being able to put 1) and 2) together without getting too carried away or irritated with 1).
I guess what I'm trying to say is it's a bit difficult to take you to an English translation of a Bible and point to chapter and verse and say, "See? Here's where it says Darius the Mede would release the Jews from captivity." There's an entire background of things you'd need to be versed in to "get" why that's significant, and why it would count as an objective fulfilled prophecy, such as:
*The dating arguments for the book of Daniel
*Dating of Isaiah texts pertinent to the DSS dating (and a background on the prophetic leanings of the Essenes is almost necessary here)
*The conversion from modern calendars back to Babylonian dating, as it relates to Jewish reckoning of time (i.e. "years and twenty years" etc.)
The obvious complaint is that if it's "the word of god" it shouldn't be complicated (which is an asinine argument anyway). I'm not claiming it *is* the word of god, but I do assert strongly that understanding it to the degree that these things makes sense is not easy--it's like digging into any ancient writing of an unfamiliar culture - it takes a particular and very narrow skill set. This is the reason biblical prophecy is so misunderstood and dismissed by most - they expect it to be a two step process because "it's the Bible". On the contrary, it's the most complex and dense book in existence and the fact that it contains prophecy makes it even worse because there's a whole 'nother skill set that you have to bring to the table, unless you approach it in a very subjective manner (which is illegitimate for obvious reasons).
____THE SHORT ANSWER____
Chuck Missler at (
www.khouse.org) is probably the guy who gets to the point the quickest and is relatively easy to understand if you've mastered some basic vocabulary on the subject. That said, you have to plow through several hours of lecture to get there, and remember that he assumes the listener is a believer, so he assumes certain perspectives that you may not share. Regardless, if you dismiss those presumptions on his part and just listen/read for the meat, there's some fascinating stuff.
fett on 11/12/2008 at 17:55
Woohoo!!! I killed another God thread!
You guys know that's the only reason I stick around, right?
37637598 on 11/12/2008 at 18:26
My dad believes 100% that it is a sin to touch a lizard or snake, and won't let my 10 year old brother anywhere near them. I hate christains like my dad. They ruin everything good about the religion.
