Valid Criteria for evaluating Biblical Prophecy

[Tart]

I recently came into a debate with someone about prophecy. We discussed creating criteria for the debate on how to evaluate prophecy.

So what is a "True Prophecy" (according to the Bible)?

I would suggest it would be God inspired, from an "All Knowing God", and would have to either be fulfilled, being fulfilled, or going to be fulfilled...

For the point of this discussion, I am asking for what criteria we can use (perhaps a set of rules) for evaluating whether or not prophecy is true. Im not asking to evaluate any specific prophecy itself, but creating criteria to do so. However, if you think it would be beneficial to reference a prophecy to help explain/understand some kind of suggested criteria, that would be appropriate for the discussion... Debating about the prophecy itself is beyond this topic and should be taken to other threads...

Keep in mind, that not being able to prove or convince someone does not invalidate prophecy, it simply says it cant be proven... The prophecy could still be true even if not proven, in which case the prophecy shall not be rejected or confirmed, but shall be put into a state of "reasonableness" (What is reasonable to believe).... This is just my suggestion...

The point is to give a set of criteria to establish what can make up a true prophecy...

Anything goes for what you like to suggest. But first, id like to suggest that there should not be in place a criteria that can be used to reject prophecy, that could be true prophecy. If we were to set up some criteria to reject even real prophecy, that is not good criteria... I think that is like the "No True Scotsman Fallacy"...

Here is two list you can look at for sources...
You think they would or would not meet a good set of criteria? Why/ why not ?
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Biblical_ ... e_prophecy
viewtopic.php?t=2142&lofi=1

[rikuoamero]

[Replying to post 10 by Tart]

I am simply requesting that the criteria for evaluating if prophecy is true, should actually have room to allow a true prophecy to be evaluated as true...

RedEye's criteria allows for that. There's nothing in the criteria that a priori disavows a "real" prophecy.
If you disagree, then please show us where, in his list of criteria, it would do so.

If it is not a true prophecy, it should be thrown out, but if it is a true prophecy is should be accepted.

Agreed. So take what you think is a true prophecy and run it through the gauntlet for us. If it actually is a real prophecy, it ought to survive.

Are you suggesting we should create criteria that can reject true and valid prophecy?

That *can* reject it. Yes, it's something we have to be prepared to risk. Just like I have to be prepared to risk my car not actually being a rare vintage model, even if it's something that I think it is.

So to quote Shia LaBeouf "Do it! Just do it!"

[rikuoamero]

[Replying to post 9 by samscilley]

What specific prophesy in the Bible do you say does not meet this criteria that has already taken place?

I'm of the opinion that nothing actually passes the criteria. However, if you disagree, if like Tart you're of the opinion that there are real prophecies, then please run them through this gauntlet.

[Tart]

[Replying to post 10 by Tart]

I am simply requesting that the criteria for evaluating if prophecy is true, should actually have room to allow a true prophecy to be evaluated as true...

RedEye's criteria allows for that. There's nothing in the criteria that a priori disavows a "real" prophecy.
If you disagree, then please show us where, in his list of criteria, it would do so.

Ok this is his list...

1. It must be accurate. A statement cannot be Biblical foreknowledge if it is not accurate, because knowledge (and thus foreknowledge) excludes inaccurate statements. TLDR: It's true.

yes it needs to be true

2. It must be in the Bible. A statement cannot be Biblical foreknowledge if it is not in the Bible, because Biblical by definition foreknowledge can only come from the Bible itself, rather than modern reinterpretations of the text. TLDR: It's in plain words in the Bible.

yes only talking about prophecy from the Bible... But even this is putting a constraint that does not determine the legitimacy of a prophecy... All these prophecies were created before the Bible was created... Is it required that a God inspired prophecy can only be in the books of the Bible... No... But this is irrelevant to the conversation nontheless, becuase I plan to only comment on Biblical prophecy.

3. It must be precise and unambiguous. A statement cannot be Biblical foreknowledge if meaningless philosophical musings or multiple possible ideas could fulfill the foreknowledge, because ambiguity prevents one from knowing whether the foreknowledge was intentional rather than accidental. TLDR: Vague "predictions" don't count.

This is not a requirement for prophecy... Prophecies could consist of hard to interpret langue... They could be non-precise... That isnt a requirement for true prophecy...

However, if you want to say "It should be non-accidental".. I agree, it shouldnt be a guess. Prophecy, that we are speaking of, should be for knowledge from God... The exact precision of that knowledge might not be relevant...

4. It must be improbable. A statement cannot be Biblical foreknowledge if it reasonably could be the result of a pure guess, because foreknowledge requires a person to actually know something true, while a correct guess doesn't mean that the guesser knows anything. This also excludes contemporary beliefs that happened be true but were believed to be true without solid evidence. TLDR: Lucky guesses don't count.

I agree it cant be a guess.. It has to be God inspired, however, how "improbable" anyone wants to judge it as isnt necessarily relevant... The statement "It must be improbable", is not some kind of scientific measurement... It is funny how he says it must be precise, but this statement from him, isnt precise... If you want to say it cant come from just a guess, must be God inspired, i agree with that... But saying it must be "improbable" is crossing barriers that, not only becomes in ambiguous but also isnt a requirement from prophecy... God inspired prophecy is not dependent on how probable an event is.

5. It must have been unknown. A statement cannot be Biblical foreknowledge if it reasonably could be the result of an educated guess based off contemporary knowledge, because foreknowledge requires a person to know a statement when it would have been impossible, outside of supernatural power, for that person to know it. TLDR: Ideas of the time don't count.[/color][/list]

It must be God inspired...

• 6. The event must be a complete fulfillment of the prediction. That is, the prophecy must accurately predict the event. And the event must fulfill each component of the prophecy in a passage. If I say that the god Sodales revealed to me that next week Tom Cruise will purchase a red Ferrari and next week Mr. Cruise actually buys a red Porsche, my prophecy has failed the test.

Saying a prophecy must be fulfilled is not a requirement... It just cant be false. It can be fulfilled, being fulfilled or going to be fulfilled...

7. The event must be shown to have actually happened. The event must be independently confirmed to have happened. Ideally, there should be historical or archeological evidence that the event really occurred. The outcome of the prophecy must be evident by the present time, with that outcome well documented by publicly available facts. For instance, reliable and independent historical records, stones and relics found at archaeological sites and museums and evident facts of world history all count as publicly available facts. But unverifiable reports do not count, especially reports of miraculous events that are exceedingly improbable from an objective perspective. (Lack of evidence that the event has happened does not necessarily disprove the fulfilled prophecy. The event may still have happened. But without reliable evidence of the event happening, the fulfilled prophecy has lost any apologetic value).

Notice in this criteria, he is actually saying that real true prophecy might actually be rejected by this specific criteria... That is exactly the problem i am talking about.

If you want to say "it needs to be objectively fulfilled" i would agree... and we can judge that by what reasonably happened from our point of view. All the rest of this specific criteria is not necessarily for true prophecy...

For example the statement "The event must be independently confirmed", isnt true. If someone independently confirms an event, that doesn't cause the evnt to happen... If it isnt independently confirmed, that doesnt cuase the event to never had happened... This isnt necessary for the event objectively happening.

8. The prophecy must have happened before the event. The prophetic statement must be proved to precede the fulfillment event in time. Definite empirical evidence must be publicly available to document that the prophecy predates its fulfillment. For the Jewish prophetical books, this criterion is satisfied by all outcomes dated after 150 BC, the average date of copies of Bible books among the Dead Sea Scrolls. This is also about the time the independently-circulated Greek translation, the Septuagint, was completed in Alexandria, Egypt. Otherwise, knowledge of the outcomes could have influenced the selection process, canonizing those books with fulfilled prophecies while discarding other books with embarrassing ones, thereby producing a spurious prophetic accuracy using the unfair advantage of hindsight..[/list]

If you want to say "the prophecy need to be prophecied before the event happened" id agree... That is what makes a "true" prophecy... If the prophet write these things after the event, that would be like lying or something like that...

but saying "Definite empirical evidence must be publicly available to document that the prophecy predates its fulfillment."

documentation of when a prophet wrote his prophecy is completely irreverent if, let alone "publicly available" documentation... What if it wasnt documented, but the prophecy came before the event? What if it was documented but not known publicly?

It is irrelevant...


There are many aspects of this criteria that can reject real and true, God inspired prophecy.. Which means this is not a good list... I dont see how this wouldnt be a True Scotsman Fallacy... Or why we should accept criteria that can reject true prophecy..

[rikuoamero]

[Replying to post 13 by Tart]

Is it required that a God inspired prophecy can only be in the books of the Bible... No... But this is irrelevant to the conversation nontheless, becuase I plan to only comment on Biblical prophecy.

I invite you to recheck the title of this thread. I'll put it here for you
Valid Criteria for evaluating Biblical Prophecy

[strike]If now you want to discuss a quote unquote prophecy not in the Bible, then I have to ask...why? This is YOUR thread Tart. You made it, you gave it the title that it has. Why now the desire to start talking about something not in the volume of books typically called the Holy Bible? If I accused you of a bait and switch, how is that not an inaccurate charge? [/strike]
Apologies here - Having re-read this, you are planning on commenting only on the Bible.

This is not a requirement for prophecy... Prophecies could consist of hard to interpret langue... They could be non-precise... That isnt a requirement for true prophecy...

It is a requirement for us humans in order to distinguish "true" prophecy from bogus prophecy. Why would you be willing to call something "true" prophecy if it's vague, unintelligible, could mean many things?
This smacks of desperation, Tart.

However, if you want to say "It should be non-accidental".. I agree, it shouldnt be a guess. Prophecy, that we are speaking of, should be for knowledge from God... The exact precision of that knowledge might not be relevant...

Please clarify what you mean. You disagree with RedEye that prophecy must be precise and unambiguous, but then now you say it shouldn't be accidental, not be a guess?

Why is it you seemingly do not care about precision?

God inspired prophecy is not dependent on how probable an event is.

It is how one ought to be able to recognise a prophecy, is it not? If it's something improbable, but happens anyway? Did Bismarck, the German Chancellor of the late 1800s, tap into divine foreknowledge when he predicted (ten or twenty years beforehand)
"Europe today is a powder keg and the leaders are like men smoking in an arsenal … A single spark will set off an explosion that will consume us all … I cannot tell you when that explosion will occur, but I can tell you where … Some damned foolish thing in the Balkans will set it off."

We're talking about being able to distinguish actual real prophecy from things some smart people might have been able to guess or figure out. So far, you don't seem to want to be able to actually make a distinction.

It must be God inspired...

Are you disagreeing with point 5 "It must have been unknown"? How could you tell that any given "prophecy" IS God inspired, if it turns out that any reasonably smart person could have figured it out? Again, to go back to my Bismarck example, what you say so far would mean he would count has having made a real divine prophecy, even though in all seriousness, he was just a very smart and experienced political and military leader, who was able to discern patterns of events.

Saying a prophecy must be fulfilled is not a requirement... It just cant be false. It can be fulfilled, being fulfilled or going to be fulfilled...

How are you able to tell that a prophecy is genuine, if it has NOT HAPPENED YET? Why are you being so quick and eager to grant the status of "real prophecy" to things that have not occurred?

Notice in this criteria, he is actually saying that real true prophecy might actually be rejected by this specific criteria... That is exactly the problem i am talking about.

Which is a risk we have to be prepared to take. Otherwise, none of us have any business talking about what is a real prophecy and what is not. We have to be prepared to be wrong or mistaken.
So far, it seems to me that you want things to count as real prophecy (to be in that category) even if they have yet to occur, even if they could be the result of an educated guess and most astonishingly enough... even if we cannot corroborate that they happened at all.
You are not being careful. You apparently do not care for accuracy or being correct. You apparently from what I can see just want to be able to parade real prophecies without subjecting them to any rigourous testing.
Notice that so far in either this thread, or the H2H thread you started with RedEye, you have yet to actually put a prophecy through the gauntlet. So far, we (you, I and RedEye) have just talked about doing so, but nothing has actually been tested yet.
Why is that? I have a reason I suspect is likely true for why you are unwilling to do so.

If you want to say "it needs to be objectively fulfilled" i would agree... and we can judge that by what reasonably happened from our point of view. All the rest of this specific criteria is not necessarily for true prophecy...

If apparently we don't need to corroborate...then how can we stand up and say with any seriousness that the prophecy happened at all? We need to remove point of view, bias, which is why I agree with RedEye that we need this corroboration.

For example the statement "The event must be independently confirmed", isnt true. If someone independently confirms an event, that doesn't cause the evnt to happen... If it isnt independently confirmed, that doesnt cuase the event to never had happened... This isnt necessary for the event objectively happening.

We're talking about determining how likely it is the event happened, versus it not happening. Since apparently you don't want to even care about corroboration, why do you want to grant the status of "real" to things you call prophecies, if you are unable to show that they happened at all?

If you want to say "the prophecy need to be prophecied before the event happened" id agree... That is what makes a "true" prophecy... If the prophet write these things after the event, that would be like lying or something like that...

Or if he says it based off an educated guess, but tries to pass it off as divine foreknowledge?

What if it wasnt documented, but the prophecy came before the event? What if it was documented but not known publicly?

Then we cannot grant the status that you so earnestly desire. We can't jump ahead of ourselves and due to our desires just slap the desire of real on something, if it cannot actually be backed up.
So far everything you have written on this topic (in both threads) has this undertone of fear, of you earnestly wanting to slap the label of real on something you believe is real, but are afraid of the possibility of actually being shown to be wrong.

I was once a Christian (no matter if you don't believe me...). I once believed more or less the same things you do. The difference between you and I is that I was willing to question my beliefs. I was willing to say to myself at one point "If my beliefs are not actually supported by evidence, I cannot justify having them".

At the moment, you are desperate for there to be real divine Biblical prophecies. However, when you read RedEye's list of criteria, in the back of your mind, there was this suspicion, this fear, that putting anything that you currently believe to be a real prophecy through the gauntlet would mean that they would fail. So here you are, desperately looking for a loophole, complaining that one or more of the criteria could mean quote unquote real prophecies could be mistakenly tossed aside.
Well...how do you know that they ARE real prophecies, if you are unwilling to actually run them through a gauntlet? How do you know this isn't pure bias and blind faith (as I think is likely) if you are unwilling to risk it?

It'd be one thing if you could say that you believe these things to be real prophecy, end of story, no need to check. Then I and my colleagues here could just write you off and point out that you are unwilling to check...but no. You talk about evaluating prophecy using criteria, but to date, have yet to do so. The only thing you have done is complain that some criteria that have been suggested might (not will, because again, you have yet to test any prophecies) rule out what you a priori believe are real prophecies.

The ball is in your court. Nothing in the criteria offered by RedEye automatically discount real prophecies.

There are many aspects of this criteria that can reject real and true, God inspired prophecy.. Which means this is not a good list... I dont see how this wouldnt be a True Scotsman Fallacy... Or why we should accept criteria that can reject true prophecy..

Only if one is unwilling to risk being wrong, would one say something like this. You apparently are not willing to risk it, therefore you won't bother evaluating prophecy.