Let's talk about prophecy! For the purposes of this discussion it doesn't matter if it is "Bible-Based(tm)" prophecy or Koran-Based prophecy or any other type of prophecy as long it is to be assumed the prophecy comes from or was divinely inspired by God.
THE FIRST BIG QUESTION FOR PROPHECY
The first question I have is one that no one seems to bother to ask whenever the subject of prophecy arises.:
"Why have any prophecy from God at all?"
When that question is asked, it brings up new questions that True Believers never ask. They only assume they know the answer without really thinking about the question.
There are only two possible asnwers to that question I can come up with.
1) God is trying to tell us something that is very important for us to know for our benefit or, if the prophecy is a dire one, God is trying to scare the shit out of us. This question would include the notion that God is also trying to tell us He DOES exist and He IS INVOLVED in our affairs and He wants to let us know that only a true God could make prophecies that always come true.
True Believers believe this is the correct answer for having prophecy at all, but they haven't thought through the ramifications of this answer. If they did, they would cease being True Believers.
2) God is just having fun and is trying to mess with our heads.
It isn't difficult to surmise that most people would dismiss reason #2 as absurd. I wouldn't be too hasty in doing that if I were you, though. There are mountains of evidence that God messes with our heads, but for the sake of brevity, I will only mention one piece of rock-solid evidence for this: The Watchtower Society claims to speak for God, but they don't, and God hasn't done a damn thing about that. So there.
So we end up with reason #1 as the sole reason for God giving us prophecy. To my skeptical and somewhat demon-infested mind, ths brings up several questions. If God really wanted to CONVINCE us of His existence and that He is involved in our affairs, He could do much better than just have some prophecies written.
Here are a few good reasons why I say this:
Fatal Flaw # 1) The prophecies in the Bible can be interpreted in a number of totally different ways, each of which makes about as much sense or as much nonsense as any of the other ways. This problem doesn't do much to help God's image and in fact, tends to defeat reason #1, namely that God wants to convince us He's the one and only Big Kahuna.
Fatal Flaw # 2) Many of the prophecies in the Bible were worthless to the people living at the time they were written, since they were not to be "fulfilled" for hundreds or thousands of years later. Since the people living when they were written didn't see any fulfillment, they would either end up being skeptical of the propheices and the "God" who made them, or else they would make up shit about the prophecies being fulfilled in their day, or worse, die believing but also frustrated that nothing happened in their lifetimes. Whatever the reason, it doesn't look good for God and therefore the idea of "prophecy" defeats the very purpose it was created for.
PROPHECY THAT WORKS
For a God to be totally convincing through the use of prophecy, God would have to make prophecies very often throughout history, at least once every generation. Those prophecies would have to be fulfilled in that generation so humans (not just Jews) could see the hand of God at work firsthand and thus be motivated to do the will of God. A few long-range prophecies would be okay as long as they stated they would be long range (they don't now), and as long as they were used in moderation. And the prophecies should be (let me emphasize this) EASY TO FIGURE OUT, EVEN FOR IDIOTS LIKE ME!
Suppose in 594 B.C. Daniel of the Bible wrote:
"On the first day of a future month called "September" and 1939 years after the start of the Christian Era or 2,532 solar years from now (there will be NO zero year), an "Austrian" man named "Adolf Hitler" from a Country called "Germany", using a brand new type of warfare called "Blitzkrieg" involving machines that fly and will be called "airplanes will invade a Country called "Poland" (which will also be a Country brunted by very tasteless jokes)."
Now, THAT is a prophecy worthy of any God who wants to get into the prophecy business!
Fatal Flaw #2 (prophecy far into the future) also tell us that the people living at the time the prophecy was written weren't important enough, good enough or worthy enough to know what the future fulfillment of the prophecy would be. They had the privilege of writing the prophecy but were denied the privilege of knowing the prophecy. That sucks and makes God look like either a malevolent prankster or a sadist. Besides, I don't think that any prophecy that is fulfilled say, 40 years into the future is that much less significant than one that is fulfilled 2,500 years into the future. So why punish the ancients with that ignorance of prophecy, then? It just isn't fair. God is supposed to play fair, is He not?
THE UNDENIABLE DILEMMA OF PROPHECY
Next, let us assume for the moment that God does cause prophecies to be written and that they always come true. Those are two huge "IFs", but we shall proceed anyway.
We can draw some conclusions from this hypothesis.
The bad man had no other choice than to do the bad thing. Otherwise, God's prophecy would have been false.
If fulfilling prophecy is a good thing and vindicates God's ability to see the future, then those who fulfill the prophecy have caused a good thing to happen (fulfillment of God's prophecy), even if the prophecy states they are wicked and do wicked things.
Now I know what argument is now popping up in the minds of True Believers. "Just because God can see the future, doesn't mean that he causes the future. Men have free will. It's not God's fault that the prophecy predicted that an evil man would do an evil thing."
So, now we come to the biggest dilemma of all: God can either "see" the future, or God cannot "see" the future. If God cannot see the future, God is not omniscient and God cannot make infallible prophecy about the future. If God CAN see the future, then God already knows everything that is going to happen. Do you know what that means for you, little dubbies? It means all your lives have been WASTED with your futile preaching. This means that EVERY decision you make in life is already NOW known by God. Don't want to go preaching this Saturday and Sunday? God already knows you won't. Don't ever want to go preaching again? God knows that, too. Looking for those "honest-hearted ones", dubbies? God knows who they are, and God saves honest-hearted ones, so why bother with them? You can't make a non-honest-hearted person honest-hearted, either. They are either honest-hearted or they are not. You have been wasting your time. God already knows the outcome. Go see "Avatar!" God knows you're goiing to do that, too! Go get some strange poontang! He knows that, too!
The Watchtower Printing and Marketing Corporation knows about this dilemma and they have offered the following ridiculous explanation for it: "Yes, God can easily know all future events, but he can also choose NOT to know SOME future events."
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHA!
Just imagine God with this huge "God brain" full of trillions of trillions of "know future / not know future" switches. There would have to be enough of those switches to cover every future possibility for every future human who is alive. Can you imagine God "turning off" a ton of these switches on his own God-brain to PREVENT Him from knowing certain future events? He needs "switches" to dumb-down his brain!
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHA!
I guess one could speculate that God could merely "will" Himself to NOT know certain future events. "I, God, now will Myself not to know what choices Farkel will or will not make during his life. Whew! Now I only have to do this with 6,500,000,000 more people and then I'm done!"
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHA!
AN ALTERNATIVE TO PROPHECY
We have seen some of the many problems that are involved when God gets into the prophecy business. We haven't even discussed another possibility, namely, that God would have to "tweak" certain people to force them to make choices they wouldn't normally make just in order to make a God prophecy come true. Doing this would make people doomed to their fates from birth through predestination. This is otherwise known as "the collective screwing up future humans to make prophecy come true."
IF God REALLY wanted to convince his human family of His existence and powers, He would have been better served through the use of clever miracles every 30 years or so. Nothing harmful or even super spectacular; just something that only a God could do. Here are a few humble suggestions for God to consider:
1) Make it rain marshmellows in Antarctica. Be sure to set up a web-cam first.
2) Make all politicians in Government honest. (Not sure even God can do that.)
3) Make the Watchtower Society get ONE prediction right. (Nearly impossible, but doable.)
4) Turn Jesse Jackson white.
5) Make brussel sprouts taste good.
6) Make lions eat straw and pettable
Well, God? What do you think?
Farkel, Just Tryin' to Help Out CLASS