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No longer take comments. Post's 'labels' are unreliable for linking or searching. Use the INDEX OF POSTS instead. A fairly accurate, but incomplete INDEX of Posts & good overview and understanding of this blog READ SOME REASONS TO REJECT ORTHODOX JUDAISM my April 2014 post or click link above. Born into an Orthodox Jewish family (1950's) and went to Orthodox Yeshiva from kindergarten thru High School plus some Beis Medrash.Became an agnostic in my 20's and an atheist later on. My blog will discuss the arguments for god and Orthodox Judaism and will provide counter arguments. I no longer take comments. My blog uses academic sources, the Torah, Talmud and commentators to justify my assertions. The posts get updated. IF YOU GET A MESSAGE THAT THE POST IS MISSING - LOOK FOR IT IN THE INDEX or search or the date is found in the address.

Monday, April 22, 2019

Proof of God from Prophecy Part 4

It will probably be helpful to read all my Prophecy posts where I have argued that alleged fulfilled Tenach prophecies do not justify evidence for supernatural. Start with  Proof of God from Prophecy Part 1

Many religious claim there are no false prophecies in the Tenach.  A few prophecies they claim are at present unfulfilled, but they will be fulfilled someday. The focus of this post are  the prophecies the religious claim have been fulfilled.  Some religious argue that the virtual 100% success rate of Tenach prophecy is evidence of supernatural.

For the sake of argument I will accept the (questionable) religious claim above. That there are prophecies in the Tenach and they made predictions that were fulfilled.

There were numerous prophets in ancient Israel including many unknowns.  {ETA 5/21/2020 Many more prophets were active in ancient Israel and Judah than those whose work is represented in the prophetic books of the Bible. SOURCE Page 457-458 of  THE JEWISH STUDY BIBLE Adele Berlin and Marc Zvi Brettler editors 2004.}

   No doubt they made numerous predictions/prophesies and no doubt many of them would be argued by the religious to have been fulfilled  prophecies.  Yet,  it is also possible  many of the numerous predictions/prophesies they made did not come true.  What if the scribes and priests who were recording the prophecies only selected to record what they thought were prophecies that came true ?  What if the canonization process only selected the prophecies the scribes and priests thought had come true. We would be left with a biased record of fulfilled prophecies, plus some prophecies that the religious claim are at present not fulfilled ! 

Thus the high prophecy success rate could be due to the biased recording and canonization process whereby the (thought to be) successes  get written down and canonized. What were thought to be  failures were not recorded. This created a biased data set of prophecies in the Tenach. 

The religious may respond that the Tenach does record some false  prophecies. If so, then this means Tenach prophecies contain failures not something the religious desire to argue. Also, it is possible the  canonizers were unaware that the prophecy was really a failure.  Thus the failed prophecies got recorded and canonized anyway.   

The religious may claim there is a special category of prophecies that have  come true after the canonization process and so my argument fails. My response is very few if any prophecies are known to fall into the special category.  Besides those prophecies that allegedly fall into the special category are not amazing or fail the requirements for a valid prophecy.   

There is no evidence the alleged extremely high prophecy success rate requires the invocation of supernatural.  The high prophecy rate could be the result of a biased recording and  canonization processes. 

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