done4good:
How an Atheist can Believe In Bible Prophecy
It is not necessary to believe in "THE BIBLE" to believe in Bible Prophecy. It is obvious that a lot of the Bible is pure mythology and is therefore unbelievable. A reasonable person would weigh each part of the Bible to see whether it meets their criteria for "belief".
This brings us into the realm of diagnostic reasoning. The conclusions of someone who has just a passing acquaintance with a particular subject are often going to be different from someone who has devoted a lot of time and effort on a subject. A doctor who specializes in the diseases of certain organs might reach a different diagnosis than a doctor who has a more general orientation. This is no guarantee that a persons experience and background make a diagnosis correct. Generally, those who criticize Bible Prophecy are doing so because they feel that it is necessary to accept all of the Bible and all of its claims if a prophecy would prove to be accurate.
I look at Bible Prophecy to see if it really predicts something. That's the first stage. I don't care what the source is. I can always speculate about the source, later, if the predictions are accurate beyond probability.
PROPHETIC SET
I would define a prophetic set as a predicted sequence of events that have a common time frame. The events of the prophecy must have their fullfilment in significant NOT trivial events. This is to prevent the criticism that you can grab just any event as a fullfilment.
How I would estimate the probability of a Prophetic Set.
Suppose a Prophetic Set consists of 4 events (E) in a sequence. (E1,E2,E3,E4). An event can be any significant identifier, action, relation. Can we assign number values to the probability of an event? Sure. Even if we don't know the antecedent causes? Yes. The chance that any event occurs is 50% if we know nothing about the causes that precede it. Any event could have occurred or not occurred. If we say that there is only a 10% chance that an event could occur that would mean that we have some kind of predictive knowledge about the event. The same would be true if we say that an event has a 90% chance of occurring. But the most neutral position is a 50% probability for any event occurring.
If 4 things are predicted and the 4 things take place the probability of that is .5 X .5 = .25 X .5 = .125 Things really reduce quickly. 10 things have only a 1 chance in a little over 1000 of taking place. I have identified several Prophetic Sets that are too improbable to be chalked up to lucky guesses.
The preterists are severely handicapped because they can't use the "it hasn't happened yet" escape door when things don't match the actual events. Their fall back position is that it was never intended to really be prophetic in the first place. So they basically commit the fallacy of arguing in a circle.
So this is basically How an atheist might believe in Bible prophecy. It is of course dependent on finding really SIGNIFICANT events that fulfill the Prophetic Sets. It would be wrong to jump to the conclusion that ALL interpretations have the same validity. Validity requires that interpretations are weighed against each other. To just throw up your hands and say you can't make judgements in this area is just an admission that your are either not up to the task (you don't have time) or you just aren't interested. But be honest if you just aren't interested. Don't resort to ridicule.