Falsifying God? (Agnosticism)

by dhw, Saturday, December 27, 2014, 13:30 (3619 days ago) @ Balance_Maintained

Tony claims that biblical prophecies are divinely inspired, and have proved accurate, and any inaccuracies would “falsify the concept of God”. I maintain that they would falsify the concept of the Bible as the Word of God. I drew Tony's attention to a list of failed prophecies: 
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Failed_biblical_prophecies-TONY: 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..."-Once again, thank you for going to all this trouble. Like yourself, I rely on the work of “experts” in the field, and it would be pointless my entering into a dispute over the accuracy or otherwise of prophecies. I've read the rebuttal, and note that Ezekiel says: “No foot of man shall pass through it, nor foot of beast shall pass through it, neither shall it be inhabited forty years. 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.” If a man goes to plough, a virtuous man mourns, men are few, barbarians have come to Egypt, it can hardly be claimed that no foot of man shall pass through it and it won't be inhabited. There is no mention of forty years, of surrounding countries being desolate, or the Nile drying up (Isaiah) or Egyptians speaking the language of Canaan (Isaiah). However, if you are happy that the prophecy has been fulfilled, that's fine with me! Individual prophecies are not the subject of this thread, and if you say A and another scholar says B, I'm in no position to judge.-dhw: 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. -Tony: 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?-Many writers use specific locations to give verisimilitude to their fictional stories. Joseph Smith gave precise details about lots of things, both in his statements and in his Book of Mormon, but to a degree we are able to check on his credentials, and you have unhesitatingly pronounced him a fraud. We don't even know who wrote Genesis, and since it purports to record events that happened and words that were spoken thousands of years before the text could have been written, I find it difficult to believe that the authors did not need to use their imagination.-DHW: 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.
TONY: 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.
 
I'm sorry, but this quotation is making precisely the point that I am making: if a prophecy is false, it doesn't falsify the concept of God, but the authenticity of the prophet who makes it. If a failed prophecy is recorded in the bible, it will therefore be the bible's claim to be the word of God that is falsified and not the concept of God.