Atheist only. If GOD isn't real, how can a book written so long ago tell of what is going on in the world2day

Question

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Answer 1

examples?

Answer 2

you mean like that right now there are wars and people have sex with each other even if they're not married? Yeah, I don't know either, that must be a miracle! Seriously, people have been pointing to the same bible verses over and over for about 1700 years saying "look! it's right here! it's happening right now!" And well, it is, but just because a prediction comes true doesn't make it remarkable. As a general rule: if the same prediction keeps coming true over and over again, it's not specific enough to be an interesting prediction. For example "stuff will happen" is not a prediction at all, "something will go wrong" is hardly an interesting prediction, "somebody will hit you" will probably come true sooner or later, "somebody will hit you on the nose with an ancient chinese flute", now that is a prediction. A newspaper I know has horoscopes like "you will buy a fuchsia. It will have a weird disease. Ask your neighbour about it, she has just bought a fuchsia as well, and hers has the same disease. Besides, while you're at her home (on wednesday, 4:56 pm) you'll meet Will Ferrell, who will ask you to play the lead role in his next film." That is what miraculous predictions should look like.

Answer 3

I think you need to be more specific about which book you are talking about. Are you talking about the Torah (much older then the bible), Quaran, the Gohonza, which one? If you are talking about the bible, which one are you talking about, KJV, New International, the Living Bible, which one?

I may not be an atheist but at least I do not go around in a delusion that my religion/faith or lack of faith is the only one out there. Explore the world for petes sake, honestly there are actually other countries and religions out there other then the US and christianity. Man, some of you christians need to get out more often.

May you find wisdom and peace,
R

Answer 4

Yeah, ABOUT prophecy...didn't God make a busted prophecy when he told Adam that, if Adam ate of the Tree of Knowledge, then ON THAT DAY he will surely die? ON THAT DAY? Wasn't God mistaken, since Adam lived another 939 YEARS??

And before you give me some crap explanation which uses something OTHER than the literal word of God, think again! For example, at this point lots of Christians claim God works on a different time-scale or "a thousand years is but a day to God". But if THAT were true, what about the fact the plants were created "the day before" the Sun, which is necessary to sustain plant life. I can envision a plant going a day without the Sun, but 1,000 years?! Contradiction!

OR the silly Christians claimed that at that moment Adam died "spiritually". Did it SAY so in the Bible at that point? Nooo! God was just threatening Adam with regular, garden-of-Eden variety Death! There is no "spiritual" since there turns out to be NO spirit. NO soul. Anywhere. If you think otherwise you'll have to PROVE a spiritual realm first before we accept your explanation.


So here we clearly have a BUSTED PROPHECY right in the first few pages of the Bible, and God made it himself, it was false words uttered by his own throat! Clearly, the Bible is not to be taken seriously as an instrument of prophecy.

In God's defense, he was probably just a teen-ager at the time...


Lots of people try to take a very LIMITED book, the Bible, and try to extract information about everything from it. This is not possible according to Information Theory. People who claim the Bible prophesies end up with egg on their faces. Michael Drosnin, author of THE BIBLE CODE, claimed the Bible clearly predicted a "Nuclear Holocaust" in the Jewish year which corresponds to 2006. Hmm, 2006 was pretty quiet nuclear-wise, wasn't it? I could have thought of one or two places that richly deserve a nuke up the snoot, and I won't name them but one of them is pronounced MECCA. But no such luck, all the world powers and rogue nuke powers were exceptionally well-behaved...It's pretty funny to see Drosnin say that, in the first few minutes of the HORIZON video documentary #22 in this list:

http://www.tv-links.co.uk/show.do/9/5252

It's hilarious. I also knew of a preacher in the 80's who was convinced that the Bible predicted the fall of the righteous nation (which he took to mean America) by Gog and Magog (which he took to mean the Soviet Union) and that therefore according to Bible prediction, Ronald Reagan would sign the "Surrender Documents" giving control of the USA to the Soviet Union. Hmm, didn't seem to work out that way, better go off and pray some more...

Answer 5

I am not sure what you mean by telling of "what's going on in the world today." The human condition has more or less stayed the same and as far as a book written so long ago -- it was not only written but re-written, re-translated, re-interpreted thousands of times before it got to us. And always, mutated to reflect its times.

Answer 6

It doesn't. All it does is have a few generalized predictions, but nothing really solid. And there are plenty that aren't happening. For instance Damascus is the oldest continually inhabited city but:

Isaiah 17:1 The burden of Damascus. Behold, Damascus is taken away from being a city, and it shall be a ruinous heap.

"When one reads Bibles, one is less surprised at what the Deity knows than at what He doesn't know."
-- Mark Twain

Answer 7

Well some examples would have been nice. But lets say there are some good example sin the bible that I don't know about.
Jules Verne predicted nuclear submarines and giant squids decades in advance in 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea.
And don't get me started on what Orwell did with 1984.
So maybe luck or maybe the world never really chances much. I can't say because you weren't nice enough to say what it said was going o be going on in the world today.

Answer 8

It doesn't. Actually the bible doesn't even tell what was going on back then. It is one of the poorest histories ever written and if it could not get things right when it was created what would that mean for any possible predictions.

Answer 9

Alice in wonderland was written a long time ago, should we believe and base a religion around that, or maybe a Shakespeare play, hail o mighty Falstaff zeblood.

Answer 10

There's a lot happening in the world today that the book you refer to has no mention of. You can take almost any philosophical writings and interpret them to be applicable to something that's going on today.

Answer 11

For example?

What specifically does it say about what is going on in the world today? And I don't mean some line of poetry that requires heavy interpretation or some generality about human nature (something that is timeless). I mean SPECIFICS.