Debunk the divine origin

[LinuxGal]

1. The Bible predicts Egypt will lie uninhabited for 40 years (Ezekiel 29:12): "And I will make the land of Egypt desolate in the midst of the countries that are desolate, and her cities among the cities that are laid waste shall be desolate forty years: and I will scatter the Egyptians among the nations, and will disperse them through the countries."

2. The Bible predicts Jesus will come without warning (1 Thessalonians 5:2): "For yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night."

3. The prophecy of Egypt lying empty for forty years remains unfulfilled. 

4. If Ezekiel's prophecy of Egypt's comeuppance is set aside in light of Paul's prophecy of immanence, then Ezekiel is a false prophet.

5. If Egypt begins to lie uninhabited. then Jesus cannot come for at least the next forty years, which serves as a warning and makes Paul a false prophet.

[The Grand Nudger]

The idea that egypt lie in ruin gives us a way to potentially date ezekiel. By the 500s it had been invaded multiple times, fallen very far from it's glory, and was no longer ruled by the natives. Just one region in the face of the vast and advancing persian empire. Babylon, the presumed source of the ot creating culture, had been conquered by the same. The nations that had enslaved the long suffering people in their foundational legends had both been overcome, and the author was feeling pretty darn hopeful about the future, lol.

I think the best way to debunk the notion that this was a prophecy of divine origin is to point out that people think it's credible (real big asterisk here, lol) precisely because the details match what was already happening in the time it's proposed to have been written. Funny how that works out. When they want to give it some truthiness chops we know it's right because that's what had happened, but when we want to give it magical chops we say we know it's right because it predicted what had not yet happened. Pretty brisk game of three card monte right thur.

None of it, obviously, had anything to do with any paul or jesus, and thessalonians is not a prophecy of any kind, it's nt. That story didn't even exist until after christ had already come, allegedly. Also an interesting point of tie in to our other thread. Believers in that story are -all- referred to as brothers and sisters in gods family.

[Nay_Sayer]

Speaking of ol Zeke; Nebuchadnezzar was promised the treasures and pillage from the devastation of Tyre in Ezekiel's prophecy on its destruction (Ezek. 26.12), but sixteen years after the initial prophecy, he was left without money to pay his troops.

FSM tells me he tried to open up a dessert stand to get out of debt ' Lil Nebbies Snack cakes'

[LinuxGal]

The idea that egypt lie in ruin gives us a way to potentially date ezekiel.  By the 500s it had been invaded multiple times, fallen very far from it's glory, and was no longer ruled by the natives.  Just one region in the face of the vast and advancing persian empire.  

The Nile was farmed by somebody every year without fail from time immemorial. But Ezekiel 29:11 says, "No foot of man shall pass through it, nor foot of beast shall pass through it, neither shall it be inhabited forty years."
Naturally the Bible inerrantists come in and say Egypt was made desolate spiritually.

[LinuxGal]

Speaking of ol Zeke; Nebuchadnezzar was promised the treasures and pillage from the devastation of Tyre in Ezekiel's prophecy on its destruction (Ezek. 26.12), but sixteen years after the initial prophecy, he was left without money to pay his troops.

FSM tells me he tried to open up a dessert stand to get out of debt ' Lil Nebbies Snack cakes'

Alexander the Great finally sacked Tyre.  Believers assure us even though Alexander was not physically Nebuchadnezzar, he was Nebuchadnezzar spiritually.

Zeke also said Tyre would never be rebuilt.  Apologists assure us even though Tyre was rebuilt materially, it was never rebuilt spiritually.

Tyre:

[The Grand Nudger]

I feel like, given the content of ezekiel, we can allow that the author might have engaged in a little bit of hyperbole and exaggeration..? Egypt wasn't just a place on the map to the people who came up with this stuff. They obviously felt a certain way about it. Seeing that it had gotten it's shit pushed in multiple times and been reduced to a trading hamlet in someone else's empire is a pretty good case for desolation in a cultural context.

The Tyre bit is interesting.....because that was centuries later. So our upward date has to be revised unless we posit a composite manuscript from multiple authors over multiple centuries.

[LinuxGal]

I feel like, given the content of ezekiel, we can allow that the author might have engaged in a little bit of hyperbole and exaggeration..?  Egypt wasn't just a place on the map to the people who came up with this stuff.  They obviously felt a certain way about it.  Seeing that it had gotten it's shit pushed in multiple times and been reduced to a trading hamlet in someone else's empire is a pretty good case for desolation in a cultural context.

It was a piece of wish fulfillment fanfic. "Sure, God sent the Babylonians in to take our leading citizens into exile but he's going to do the same thing to you too, and even go a step further and clean everybody out of Egypt."

[The Grand Nudger]

That wasn't something, by the supposed authors timeframe, that was going to happen. Like a threat anyone could have leveled (impotent or otherwise). It already had happened.

Alot of the ot is like this.

[LinuxGal]

That wasn't something, by the supposed authors timeframe, that was going to happen.  Like a threat anyone could have leveled (impotent or otherwise).  It already had happened.

Alot of the ot is like this.

56 million dead in World War II, including half of world Jewry

Bible prophecy:  crickets

Moore's Law makes chips small enough and cheap enough to streamline the maintenance of inventory on store shelves.

Bible prophecy: The Mark of the Beast of Revelations tracks the movements of Christian patriots with quantum microdots embedded in their corn flakes.

[The Grand Nudger]

If the religion had still been forming in the way it appears to have been while they were coming up with these stories..there would be Prophecies™ about ww2, written during ww2.

The ot prophecies are what we, today, would call socio-political commentary. The authors were the tucker carlsons of their day. Not nostradamus. The latter was muy verboten and double plus ungood. I'm going to take a step back from litigating details because I think there's something more fundamental to the way that skeptics often respond to this stuff. The implication is that, if magic book got something -factually wrong- then it must not come from god. You're not disproving anything with that, you're accepting their framing... and it's nutball framing. Maybe gods get shit wrong. A failed prediction is not evidence or proof that a god didn't say a thing - there are silent premises at work that only exist because of their convenience to the cultists beliefs but should not exist in any objective criticism of the claim. So never mind that it wasn't a prediction. It's not even logically demonstrative if it were and it were wrong.

"This prophecy is wrong so it didn't come from god" is a blatant non seq (and, not for nothing, how even the believers have been repairing their texts all this time). The conclusion that follows is "god got this wrong, so gods a fuckup, a liar, or both".