Falsifying God? (Agnosticism)

by Balance_Maintained , U.S.A., Friday, December 26, 2014, 19:33 (3620 days ago) @ dhw

DHW: I have no sympathy with Dawkins, but science has made great strides in tracing the material causes of many phenomena that had been incomprehensible to our ancestors. I drew your attention to a long list of unfulfilled prophecies, and of the few you selected, two (Ezekiel and Egypt, Isaiah and the Nile) “can neither be definitively proven nor disproven yet”. I also referred to the prophecies concerning the 144,000 male virgins who would conquer the beast etc. I have no more faith in Dawkins' “yet” than I have in yours, but we are not talking of “one small detail”.-
Actually, I have to recant my statement. The one issue that I said had not been proven has indeed been proven. -http://www.egyptology.org.uk/detail.html (look at item 4)-"Upper Egypt has become an empty waste... a man goes to plough with his shield... The virtuous man goes in mourning because of what has happened in the land ... No one is left to maintain order... pestilence is throughout the land, blood is everywhere... many dead are buried in the river; the stream is a sepulcher... men are few... barbarians from abroad have come to Egypt... there are no Egyptians anywhere... without paying taxes owing to civil strife... he who was buried as a falcon [dead king] is devoid of biers..."-
> 
> Dhw: The problem is that atheists and Jews and Christians and Muslims and Hindus all claim that their theory provides the best evidence. But belief in the Judeo-Christian God does not have to depend on the literal truth of every word in the Bible.
> TONY: Literal? I've never claimed that the entire bible is literal. However, the parts where it is figurative are generally pretty clear. 
> 
> I wasn't referring to those passages that are explicitly figurative. The problem lies with passages such as Eden, which you seem to think are historical whereas even many of your fellow theists regard them as fiction. -
Well, quite frankly, if Eden were figurative why would the bible give an explicit location and actually use it as a reference for geographical location?-> -> DHW: Is it not possible that the unknown authors of this tale deliberately set it in an identifiable location? Fiction writers have been known to use such devices. And I can't help wondering where the omniscient narrators got their information from, right down to the precise dialogue that took place between the different characters who had died thousands of years earlier. However, to get back to the subject of this thread, and putting on my theist hat, I still don't see how you can argue that a failed prophecy will falsify the concept of God, rather than falsifying the concept of the bible as the word of God.-I don't claim that, the bible does. Explicitly it states: -Deut 18:22 21"You may say in your heart, 'How will we know the word which the LORD has not spoken?' 22"When a prophet speaks in the name of the LORD, if the thing does not come about or come true, that is the thing which the LORD has not spoken. The prophet has spoken it presumptuously; you shall not be afraid of him.(Also Jer 28:9, Eze 33:33, --> 
> Thank you for your very direct response to the Mormon question (was Joseph Smith a fraud, mad, or telling the truth?), which could of course be asked about any self-proclaimed prophet of any religious denomination. Without committing myself in any way (thus spake the agnostic!) I would supplement the list with “deluded”.-See Above, there is a absolute surefire way to test a prophet :P

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What is the purpose of living? How about, 'to reduce needless suffering. It seems to me to be a worthy purpose.