I was thinking about the nature of prophesies today and it occurred to me that tying something that happens to something someone said previously and trying to hold that up as supernatural, doesn't actually make sense.

I thought about putting a caveat on that, like, "Well, if it's super specific..." but no, that falls prey to the same flaw as regular, vague/ poetic prophecy does.

A prophecy is "you have told me how this will happen." You have given me directions to follow. If I want to fulfill a prophecy, I could(or likewise, anyone else who comes along with the intent to do so). The fact that I do so, doesn't mean you actually predicted the future. And isn't that poisoning your control group if you tell people a prophecy? There's no way after that to determine if the future was predicted or some one did something to fulfill it deliberately. 

The only way you could know a prophecy was real and true is to blind fold the prophecy speaker, take them to an unfamiliar place, and keeping them blindfolded, they predict things happening mere seconds before they do. 

Or, you predict a bunch of stuff, write it all down, but don't tell anyone, then lock the prophesies in a box with the date you locked it written inside. It would have to be untouched until after the prophesies were fulfilled and you'd need to prove without a doubt no one heard them before, after, or during the locking it in a box. Then you could open it and see all these super specific things and dates that were predicted before they happened. But proving a prophecy IS a prophecy and not just directions in a scam, is a very unhelpful magic trick at that point.

My favorite take on prophecy was created by the writer Terry Goodkind in his Sword of Truth series.

https://sot.fandom.com/wiki/Prophecy

Another way to test a prophecy would be to make sure the subject had no knowledge of the prophet or the prediction beforehand.

If Izmir the Mysterious prophecizes that John Smith of 231 Waffleton Road will, at 12:03 PM on 22 June 2022, tumble down the steps of his local city council hall and fracture his tibia in two places, and it happens even though Mr. Smith knew nothing about the prediction, it’s probably worth looking into.

Of course, in order to prevent this being the result of a lucky guess, Izmir would have to make more prophecies with a similar degree of accuracy.

Boru

"Prophet" is a nonsense word rooted in superstition and tribalism. Polytheism long before the modern big three monotheisms had holy people/oracles/soothsayers/seers. All nonsense.

The prophecies of the OT, if that's our frame of reference, are something like contemporary political commentary. Sure, they turned out to be true in their own time, but the writing was on the wall...trapped as they were between two bickering superpowers and pulled in a multitude of cultural directions.

They invented prophets to make weathermen look legit by comparison....

(March 4, 2021 at 1:23 pm)onlinebiker Wrote: They invented prophets to make weathermen look legit by comparison....

I really hate this shit. Climatologists are accurate. There is a reason they say "scattered" with thunder and snow storms and a reason they talk about "cones" with hurricanes. Because what happens to you personally does not mean that it will affect the entire viewing area they are covering. 

I live in a huge county. I get this all the time. The weather person says "scattered" and  I take it as just that.

(March 4, 2021 at 1:35 pm)Brian37 Wrote:

(March 4, 2021 at 1:23 pm)onlinebiker Wrote: They invented prophets to make weathermen look legit by comparison....

I really hate this shit. Climatologists are accurate. There is a reason they say "scattered" with thunder and snow storms and a reason they talk about "cones" with hurricanes. Because what happens to you personally does not mean that it will affect the entire viewing area they are covering. 

I live in a huge county. I get this all the time. The weather person says "scattered" and  I take it as just that.

A climatologist is not the same as a meteorologist. The person on your local news who talks about ‘scattered thunderstorms’ or a hurricane’s chance of landfall is not a climatologist.

Boru

(March 4, 2021 at 2:24 pm)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote:

(March 4, 2021 at 1:35 pm)Brian37 Wrote: I really hate this shit. Climatologists are accurate. There is a reason they say "scattered" with thunder and snow storms and a reason they talk about "cones" with hurricanes. Because what happens to you personally does not mean that it will affect the entire viewing area they are covering. 

I live in a huge county. I get this all the time. The weather person says "scattered" and  I take it as just that.

A climatologist is not the same as a meteorologist. The person on your local news who talks about ‘scattered thunderstorms’ or a hurricane’s chance of landfall is not a climatologist.

Boru

McFly, there is still a huge difference between science and looking out the window and guessing.

They are also not basing it on chicken bones, like Voodoo dice.

What does make sense about the belief in wish granting magic sky pixies?