Is it impossible to write prophecy?

[Wertbag]

From a purely practical standpoint would it be possible for a prophecy to be created that would be beyond reasonable doubt? 

It feels that the number of hurdles it would have to pass are nigh on insurmountable. Firstly you would need it written down so that it is in an unchanging hard copy, which in turn means copies are invalid unless they can be compared to the original. That needs to be safely stored for as many years as it takes for events to unfold, then recovered and compared to the real world for accuracy. 

You need people to not know the prophecy or they can actively work to make it happen. 

You need the text to be dated so that it is obviously a prophecy and not a contemporary news article. 

You need the prophecy to be accurate and specific so that there can be no doubt as to the events it refers. 

It has to be on a subject that is highly unlikely and something that doesn't repeat so that pure guesswork is unlikely. 

If you are making multiple claims then you need to hit 100%, as anything less casts doubt on the result. 

 

Maybe you could write the prophecy and lock it in a vault, only to be opened in a centuries time with multuple people and video evidence. Anything less seems unlikely to be acceptable and with fake videos even that is probably not enough to convince people. I can't imagine any ancient writings coming close to a trustworthy standard, let alone modern ones. 

[Joshpantera]

On 2/18/2020 at 1:18 PM, Wertbag said:

You need people to not know the prophecy or they can actively work to make it happen. 

 

And there goes modern Israel off the list....

[Joshpantera]

On 2/18/2020 at 1:18 PM, Wertbag said:

I can't imagine any ancient writings coming close to a trustworthy standard, let alone modern ones. 

 

No, it looks like a wash all the way around. How could any of them know the future? They will say that a god showed them. But that leans on an inerrant view of the bible as divinely directed. That claim of inerrancy is demonstrably false. So it makes little sense to think that a god did show the future, but then failed to fix contradictions between writers and everything else that can be demonstrated in black and white terms as false or incorrect in the bible.

 

The simple explanation is that none of the prophecies are actually prophecies. Most are after the fact texts written to look as though a prophecy was fulfilled. And all of the so called prophecies that used to outline our modern era are just plain wrong to begin with. We were talking about this a while back. The Tyre prophecy is one that christians have tried to lean on as proven. But even their best examples crumble when analyzed for content. @LogicalFallacy thoroughly went over this so-called prophecy a while back. 

[LogicalFallacy]

Ahh the Tyre prophesy. It works... if you don't pull off your rose tinted glasses, squint through your third eye, and apply liberal interpretations to the text.

[Joshpantera]

When you really think about it, how in the world could anyone know a future that has not yet taken place? It's fun to imagine it and dream up sci-fi, but honestly, the future has not taken place yet. We could guess based on probable, vague outcomes. But how could anyone actually know or even see it? 

 

Maybe the universe is cyclic. Maybe everything repeats itself over and over again. 

 

But even if that were the case, how could anyone see what happened in an incredibly remote past in order to know to the detail how it will happen again now or in a remote future? These are tough questions. The simple explanation is that it's pure fantasy. Fun. Interesting. But fantasy. What all prophets have in common is that their vague sayings fall short of actually prophecying anything. From the biblical writers to Nostradamus and beyond. People are grasping at straws to force fit old texts and vague declarations to fit current events. And under close examination, they never really do fit. 

[Wertbag]

Another issue is volume. If you have a thousand people write prophecy, then a century later find one that is accurate were your chances any better than pure guesswork? If you hadn't seen all of the other failures then individually it would be impressive, but from the wider view its little more than hedging your bets.