THE BIBLE!

[Agent Syrup]

Okay there have been two off topic threads that have been warrenting a lot of discussion lately, one concerning how moral homosexuality is and the other concerning faith... needless to say the Bible was brought up quite a bit. However the Bible is a hard book to talk about in a general sense as there is so much in there, and talking about specific verses tends to make the conversation veer off topic. So I thought I might make a separate thread for a more specified discussion on the Bible. Feel free to make any point you wish to make and remember this is only an internet thread, don't getting too emotionally invested in getting your point across ( like I can at times )

[Dre]

The Protestant belief that scripture alone is divinely inspired (and not the tradition of the Church as well, like Cathollics believe) is logically circular and therefore fallacious.

You can't actually use scripture to prove that scripture is divinely inspired, that's cirular. That's akin to a piece of paper saying 'believe I'm divinely inspired, because I said so'.

So if you cite scripture as a means of justifying your belief in scripture, that's automatically an informal fallacy and your beliefs are irrational, end of story. There is no way around that, that is a direct fallacy, and that's why Christian philosophers don't do that in debates.

To justify belief in something, you actually need to use external soures or reasoning to verify it's credibility. Only Catholics really do this, because the reason why they believe scripture is divinely inspired is because the Church told them that it is.

I don't understand how someone can believe that scripture is divinely inspired, but the organisation that wrote it and put it together isn't. It doesn't make any sense.

I would also like to know that if scripture is the exclusive source of divine knowledge, why Jesus never wrote anything down himself, and never enlisted any scribes. He never expected anything to be written down, but apparently scripture is the source of divine knowledge.

Also too, why a divine person would leave the preservation of his teachings to an organistion that is corrupt and not divine.

[Agent Syrup]

Feb 20, 2013 14:52:39 GMT -8 Dre said:

You can't actually use scripture to prove that scripture is divinely inspired, that's cirular. That's akin to a piece of paper saying 'believe I'm divinely inspired, because I said so'............

To justify belief in something, you actually need to use external soures or reasoning to verify it's credibility.

Well there is this: www.100prophecies.org/page7.htm

A nifty website I found, should be useful . I mentioned in another thread that the Bible dose predict events that came true after the fact. Many people find this a very convincing argument for the Bible's legitamacy.

Now the page I linked were random events in history concerning Babylon, but the site also references some prophecies concerning Jesus.

The apostle Peter actually cites the prophets as a reason to believe in the gospel of Christ.
"And we have the word of the prophets made more certain, and you will do well to pay attention to it, as to a light shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts." -2 Peter 1:19

[Dre]

I don't really buy into the predicting prophecies argument. One, predicting a couple of prophecies really isn't enough to justify so many otherwise unreasonable supernatural beliefs. It just isn't enough to justify belief in the supernatural.

Secondly, the Bible also got a lot of predictions wrong from what I heard, so that kinda canels it out. I guess you have to ask yourself what you would do if the Koran also predicted the same number of prophecies. It's possible that another religious text could do that, but by believing both you would have conflicting beliefs.

The Peter argument is just using scripture to justify scripture again.

[Agent Syrup]

Do you have any examples of wrong predictions incorrect perdictions? Because otherwise...
Also your Koran argument does hold weight... but thats asuming there are correct predictions in the Koran, which you gave no examples of. You can't use hypothetical scenerios to try and argue a real point being made.

Also the Bible gets absurdly specific at times, its hard to brush off. The book of Daniel predicts Babylon falling to the Medes and the Persains. The Greek and Persian wars. Persia falling to "a king of Greece". Alexander the Great's kingdom being split into four. (Daniel 8/ Daniel 11:2 and on)
Also (I need to refresh my memory on where this is in Daniel) the book accuratly predicts exactly when the temple of Jerusalem is destroyed. (which was done by the Romans)

Predicting the future is as supernatural as it gets you know...

Also the Peter thing was telling people to look at what the prophets said and compare it to history (something external)... or in their case, current events.

[Dre]

I don't think you get the point about other religions predicting prophecies.

You think that predicting prophecies justifies belief in a religion. So let's call that X evidence.

Religious theologies conflict with each other, so two religions can't simulatenously be true.

So if one religion has X evidence, either it is impossible for other religions to also have X evidence, or X evidence simply isn't enough to justify belief.

So if you want to believe that X evidence is sufficient, you basically have to belief that for the rest of human civilisation, it will be impossible for another religion to have X evidence.

It doesn't matter whether there actually is another religion with X or not. The point is that your logic is suggesting that something which is physically possible (in this case the prediction of prophecies) is impossible, which is wrong.

[Agent Syrup]

Wait... you think predicting the future is physically possible with the supernatural? How?


EDIT: *without

[Dre]

That's not what I'm saying.

The evidence you have is completely physical. It is a physical document which predicts events documented in other physical documents, or simply just predicts other physical events.

What I'm saying is that it's possible that in the future another religion could get the same evidence, because it is physically possible that predictions of this kind could be replicated. Now if this did happen, and you believe that these predictions (what I called X evidence) were sufficient for belief, you would now have to believe two contradicting religions.

That's why physical evidence can pretty much never reliably prove the supernatural. Even if supernatural phenomena did occur and the only thing you could do is document it, that isn't sufficient evidence for other people. Now you may say 'well how am I supposed to prove it happened?' and the unfortunate answer is that there is no real way, because if a supernatural occurence like this did happen it clearly wasn't meant to be believed by everyone. Just like how all the amazing mysteries of the universe aren't designed to be discovered by humans.

If these supernatural occurences were meant to be believed by everyone, well that would mean that there is an intellect behind them, and this intellect would simply allow everyone to see these occurences. If only a few see them, then either an intellect wasn't behind them, or they weren't designed to be believed by everyone.

[Agent Syrup]

Feb 21, 2013 15:14:59 GMT -8 Dre said:

That's not what I'm saying.

The evidence you have is completely physical. It is a physical document which predicts events documented in other physical documents, or simply just predicts other physical events.

What I'm saying is that it's possible that in the future another religion could get the same evidence, because it is physically possible that predictions of this kind could be replicated. Now if this did happen, and you believe that these predictions (what I called X evidence) were sufficient for belief, you would now have to believe two contradicting religions.

That's why physical evidence can pretty much never reliably prove the supernatural. Even if supernatural phenomena did occur and the only thing you could do is document it, that isn't sufficient evidence for other people. Now you may say 'well how am I supposed to prove it happened?' and the unfortunate answer is that there is no real way, because if a supernatural occurence like this did happen it clearly wasn't meant to be believed by everyone. Just like how all the amazing mysteries of the universe aren't designed to be discovered by humans.

If these supernatural occurences were meant to be believed by everyone, well that would mean that there is an intellect behind them, and this intellect would simply allow everyone to see these occurences. If only a few see them, then either an intellect wasn't behind them, or they weren't designed to be believed by everyone.

Okay so let me make sure I understand what your saying (correct me at any point)

Your second paragraph: So, you think that the prophesies in the Bible were fabricated after the fact. Thus any religion could do the same as done with the Bible and create a conflict of belief.

Your Third Paragraph: Physical evidence of an event, does not prove the event.Thus it can't prove the supernatural.
.


I just want to make sure I understand these points correctly before I... you know, disagree with you about them.

[Dre]

It's a bit more complicated than that.

I'm not saying that that the prophecies were fabricated, they could have been genuinely predicted.

What I'm saying is that this can't be sufficient for belief. The reason is that it is entirely possible in the future that another religion will also predict prophecies. So if you think prophecy prediction justifies belief, you would have to believe two contradictory religions. I'm basically saying that prophecies, or any physical evidence, aren't a sufficient criteria for justifying belief.

The Bible may well in fact be divinely inspired, but there are no reasonable grounds for us to believe that based on physical evidence.

Physical evidence can't justify belief in the supernatural, because physical evidence can always be replicated by another religion, and you would have to believe two conflicting religions.

I'll admit it's a complicated point to understand, so if you're still struggling I'll try and explain it better.

[Agent Syrup]

Um lets just focus on the "could have been genuinely predicted" part. I might be mistaken, but I thought you didn't believe in the supernatural. How then the could events have been genuinely predicted.

[Dre]

I wasn't referring to supernatural predictions, because they can't be proven at all. I was referring to predictions of physical events, such as the fall of Babylon etc.

If you're claiming that the Bible predicted supernatural events, well then I have to question that, because we don't really have any proof of those supernatural events occuring.

[Agent Syrup]

Okay I think I know what my misunderstanding was...

I understand how a prophecy about the resurection of Christ can be dismissed by someone (a supernatural thing).
But every prophecy I explicitly stated were a political prophecies, all of which came true. And if a prophet of God gave an accurate prophecy about what was to come, then it adds weight to the idea of the Bible being Divinely inspired.

[Dre]

And what I'm saying is that predicting political prophecies isn't sufficient evidence. That is because in the future another religion could also predict political prophecies, and by your logic you would then have to believe two conflicting religions.

[Agent Syrup]

Feb 21, 2013 19:45:01 GMT -8 Dre said:

And what I'm saying is that predicting political prophecies isn't sufficient evidence. That is because in the future another religion could also predict political prophecies, and by your logic you would then have to believe two conflicting religions.

I would like to note that this is not the reason I am a believing Christian, however after finding out about the prophecies I was quite ecstatic.
Anyway you keep saying that in the future another religion could also predict political prophecies, but that isn't possible. Why? Because humans can't predict the future without Divine Providence. The fact that the Bible is the only one with fulfilled prophecies, points to the idea that Christianity (...or Judaism, one or the other...) is the one true religion. Thus no other religion will have fulfilled prophecies because they won't have any Divine revelations about the future, because their religion is false.

So taking from two view points...
If you're a Christian (or a Jew): other religions won't have fulfilled prophecies because they worship false gods.
And if your an Atheist: then other religions won't have fulfilled prophecies because.... humans can't predict the future.
Thus with both your perspective (sorry in advance if I misrepresented it) and my perspective, its pointless to talk about "if other religions have predicted prophecies" because they don't and it would be safe to assume that they never will.

[magic9mushroom]

Feb 21, 2013 17:11:54 GMT -8 Agent Syrup said:

Um lets just focus on the "could have been genuinely predicted" part. I might be mistaken, but I thought you didn't believe in the supernatural. How then the could events have been genuinely predicted.

If I were to prophesise that a lightning bolt will strike somewhere on Earth tomorrow, or that the Middle East will still be a mess 10 years from now, and those came true, would you bow down and worship me?

Predictions with large prior probabilities don't lend a great deal of statistical weight to one's claims of supernatural predictive powers.

Now, I haven't looked at the prophecies in question; the Bible is a bit too heavy reading for me. But I'm inclined to suspect that they're broad enough to be "fulfilled" in a bunch of different ways that can then be explained after-the-fact as predicted by the prophecy.

[Agent Syrup]

Oh no no no no! Sometime this week when I have time I'll talk about some prophecies that really arn't just broad statements, but rather are absurdly specific.