Debating the honesty of Prophets

[thanoz]

I've been trying to find a good forum for debating this topic openly because my previous attempts to debate the topic have been met with topic changing replies, personal insults, and sometimes just utter silence. I think the issue of prophets needs to be debated more often because it's really the weakest point in every religion. It's kind of silly for us to debate whether a "god" did this or that or even exists, when the only information supporting the argument for a god doing anything is written by people we have no reason to trust, we've never met, and lived up to a few thousand years ago.

I'm not sure what format would be preferred by anyone willing to debate the legitimacy of their prophet(s). But I will leave it open ended as far as which religious groups would like to defend their prophets(s). I'm not aware of many religions that haven't used prophets at some point or another so I figure this should allow a wide range of religious affiliations to participate.

The basic topis is "Prophet(s) proving or disproving their legitimacy as secretaries or mediums for God(s)"

Any takers?

[itsdatruth]

Your offer seems good. But the topic is slanted! Prophets don't prove their God anymore than God proves himself through the prophets! So... how about something like this:
"Resolved: Truthful long term fortelling prophecy is impossible." I put fortelling because fortelling is NOT the only form of prophecy. The other form is forthtelling. Nothing is even predicted then. We need to have a good definition of prophecy to begin with. I don't want to debate about non-OT/NT prophets, and I don't want to debate on the definition of prophecy. I will note that I will be leaving on the 22nd... We need a good time frame too...

[itsdatruth]

I could see this debate heading off the path and degenerating into a Biblical Inerrancy or God: Eixisting or not? debate... how do we keep something like that from happening? Also-would the quality/quantiy of ancient texts be the issue? How about the textual dating methods? I would rather keep the debate to the staight and narrow. If I cite an ancient fragement of parchement to be 250 B.C., I would rather cite the scholar, and not be required to know every little thing about the evolution of Hebrew charaters. Also, I want to know if you consider yourself a reasonable skeptic, or an extremist. For a test question, give me the aproximate year you think the book of Daniel and the book of Isiah was written, and I will know if you are an extreamist or not.

[thanoz]

From the options you gave, I think the stance I am arguing against is "Forthtelling". I'm arguing against the truthfulness of your (insert religion here) prophets due to the means in which they were implimented. And I'm arguing against the sensibility, reasoning and logic of any deity choosing to use prophets at all.

It's kind of a 2 part debate in that sense and I hope it doesn't complicate things, but I just feel that the two topics are so intertwined that debating one topic kind of leads to the other.

I'm actually much more of a skeptic than an "extremist". If it comes down to me "proving God doesn't exist", I'm quite aware that I could always refer someone to where the burden of proof lies within that question (not on me). But for the sake of avoiding that brick wall, I like to acknowledge that a God, or God(s) are entirely possible, just as aliens are possible. I think aliens are far more likely, but that's because I find Telescopes to be more objective instruments than people.

And the other question - when was that text from Daniel and Isiaah written, I have no idea, probably when the prophets said it was written, I know that in all likelihood the men writing those documents had to let some people read them promptly after they were finished, maybe even an entire village had the texts read aloud to them. I'd guess that if a village of people, a few dozen or more heard a story in which the date the story written was a few hundred years off, and the author of the story was nearby, that story (and its author)would become very unpopular very fast. Then again, if the author claimed the story was written 1000 years before his own time, and no one that he read it to had seen him writing it, I seriously doubt that anyone in that time would go forensic on his paper trying to carbon date it, they'd probably believe whatever he told them since the author was literate and therefore much smarter than the average joe back in the old days.

I'm really not a big stickler for research, and quoting any sources. I want this to be more a debate about logic and defining what is truth and what is fiction and what definitely lies between the two.

[itsdatruth]

To be honest with you, as a Christian, I am not much for debating with debating the logic of God. I believe the Athanasian creed is a correct exposition of Scripture. Athanasius was the catholic leader in the struggle between the Arians (not the race; the apostay) and the catholics (NOT Roman Catholicism-that evolved later; catholic, denoted by a small c, means universal, as in the universal Church [big C] and Christian faith). In the Athanasian creed (creed means symbol. A creed is a symbol of faith, not a set of only fundamentals; by accepting the creeds I symbolize my acceptance of all 66 books as the word of God and faith on their truthfulness), it states,

"The Father incomprehensible, the Son incomprehensible,
and the Holy Ghost incomprehensible.
The Father eternal, the Son eternal,
and the Holy Ghost eternal.
And yet they are not three eternals,
but one eternal.
As also there are not three incomprehensibles, nor three uncreated,
but one uncreated, and one incomprehensible."

Since I believe that God is , to a large extent incomprehensible, I don't want to debate about the HUMAN logic behind what God does, because God does what God does, and our best logic is still dumber than the most illogical thing about God.

St. Paul puts it very well in his epistle to Romans:
Rom 11:33 Oh the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and the knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past tracing out!
Rom 11:34 "For who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor?" (World English Bible; in public domain)

So, in short, to debate the logic of God would make me a heretic from what I already believe. (A heretic means somebody who believes differently, not necessarily a person who is not saved.)

[itsdatruth]

Interesting you target forthtelling prophets, prophets that tell people what has happened. I consider myself to be a forthtelling prophet. I don't get direct mental messages from God, but I do read God's Word and I tell people about it. True prophets are commisioned by God: here is my commision:

Mat 28:19 Therefore go, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,
Mat 28:20 teaching them to observe all things that I commanded you. Behold, I am with you always, even to the end of the age." Amen.

The Bible gives three main guidelines for testing a prophet:
1. Does what he say agree with the Bible?
2. Does he do good or evil; do good or evil result from him?
3. Does what he say will happen actually happen?

Since you are a skeptic, #1 is out.
Since we are talking about prophecy in general, #2 is out.
If you are willing, #3 could work. I know it is fortelling, though.

[thanoz]

I'm sorry for not replying sooner. I'm looking at what you've narrowed things down to, and it looks as if you're more shooting for a debate on par with debating concepts like whether Nostradomas predicted 9/11 by referring to "metal birds" or if Noah actually experienced a flood and frankly, I can't see that leading anywhere good. Sooner or later we'd both get bogged down in references to various texts whether religious, scientific, or that cute mix of scientific and religious that breaks from the scientific method altogether. I really prefer to debate the logic of things because neither of us is going to agree with eachother's sources in the end. But since you do not find the need for logic in your religion then I can't really debate the logic of the religion, the prophets, or your god.

Maybe we could debate the idea of whether logic should be a relevant issue to a religion? I don't want to leave us both empty-handed, and I am rather dumbfounded by the idea of believing selectively or not at all in logic. How does one come to the conclusion that logic can be abandoned, and are there any non-religious reasons for that choice?

[thanoz]

I did notice you mentioned debating whether the actions of a prophet were "good" or evil" etc. That interests me some just because I find evil to be a very very hard word to define. How do you define it? It seems to me that evil is a word that applies itself to practically anything or anyone depending on the perspective of those applying it. What is your take?

[wiploc]

That interests me some just because I find evil to be a very very hard word to define. How do you define it? It seems to me that evil is a word that applies itself to practically anything or anyone depending on the perspective of those applying it. What is your take?

I remember the first time I thought I knew what "evil" meant. I was playing Dungeons and Dragons, and I encountered a sword that was +3 against player characters.

crc

[itsdatruth]

I did notice you mentioned debating whether the actions of a prophet were "good" or evil" etc. That interests me some just because I find evil to be a very very hard word to define. How do you define it? It seems to me that evil is a word that applies itself to practically anything or anyone depending on the perspective of those applying it. What is your take?


Well, I am back from my trip now, and now I can answer your question: I will begin to do so in giving a general overview of what makes for a true prophet according to the Bible. I do not wish the other requirements to be overlooked , but will give the basis for these along with that for love and hate, since they are eventually tied in. I will quote the Bible a lot, for my own words may be fallible. It will take me a while to do justice to the definition. Please do not choose to not read this because it is long, for I didn’t think I could describe them well in a short definition. Being concise is not my gift.

Deu 18:21 If you say in your heart, How shall we know the word which Yahweh has not spoken?
Deu 18:22 when a prophet speaks in the name of Yahweh, if the thing doesn't follow, nor happen, that is the thing which Yahweh has not spoken: the prophet has spoken it presumptuously, you shall not be afraid of him.

However, this is not the only test, as prophecies given through demons may also "come true".

1Jo 4:1 Beloved, don't believe every spirit, but test the spirits, whether they are of God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.
1Jo 4:2 By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit who confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God,
1Jo 4:3 and every spirit who doesn't confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is not of God, and this is the spirit of the Antichrist, of whom you have heard that it comes. Now it is in the world already.

There are messianic prophecies in every major Old Testament prophet's writing, so they not to be disqualified as prophets in this way. Below is what I was refering to as to the good and evil thing:

Mat 7:15 "Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly are ravening wolves.
Mat 7:16 By their fruits you will know them. Do you gather grapes from thorns, or figs from thistles?
Mat 7:17 Even so, every good tree produces good fruit; but the corrupt tree produces evil fruit.
Mat 7:18 A good tree can't produce evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree produce good fruit.
Mat 7:19 Every tree that doesn't grow good fruit is cut down, and thrown into the fire.
Mat 7:20 Therefore, by their fruits you will know them.

Mat 12:34 You offspring of vipers, how can you, being evil, speak good things? For out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks.
Mat 12:35 The good man out of his good treasure brings out good things, and the evil man out of his evil treasure brings out evil things.
Mat 12:36 I tell you that every idle word that men speak, they will give account of it in the day of judgment.

So, as for fruit, here it is meant as actions or deeds. As for what is good and evil, here is where we must be careful. Evil in the moral sense is a lack of harmony with God. It does not come from God, but from the lack thereof, of God's work in one's life:
Mat 15:19 For out of the heart come forth evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, sexual sins, thefts, false testimony, and blasphemies.

What this harmony actually is is defined by the moral law found in the Old Testament and elsewhere.

Jesus summed it up here:

Mat 22:35 One of them, a lawyer, asked him a question, testing him.
Mat 22:36 "Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the law?"
Mat 22:37 Jesus said to him, " 'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.'
Mat 22:38 This is the first and great commandment.
Mat 22:39 A second likewise is this, 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.'
Mat 22:40 The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments."

Notice that since evil is not following the law, and since following the law is to love God and others, evil is the lack of love. I have done some looking into the Greek and Hebrew definitions of "love" and "hate." I will not type up my entire findings on this, but I have found that, in the Hebrew sense, there are no gray areas between "love" and "hate." The lack of love, unlove, IS hate. The Hebrew word for unloved is the SAME word as that for an utter hate. Since there were multiple definitions of love in the Greek of the time, I will make note that this is not sexual or brotherly or family type or love, but an unconditional love that loves even though the other person may give hate and do wrong in return.

Evil is very universal. Solomon wrote:
Ecc 7:20 Surely there is not a righteous man on earth, who does good and doesn't sin.

also

"one man among a thousand have I found; but a woman among all those have I not found. Behold, this only have I found: that God made man upright; but they search for many schemes."

This translation is kind of confusing. I have seen better, but they are not in the public domain. What Solomon did here was to search the schemes of men and women to see if any were good. Notice that "a thousand" is the cube of 10, the Hebrew number for completeness. So what Solomon is saying is that he searched for an upright, good person among lots of people, but came across only one man who was good. This is a reference to the Messiah. All people except Jesus are evil. We are separated from God by what we do. Simply put, without the Holy Spirit, without Christ, we cannot truly love. Things that may resemble this love in non-Christians fall short. Any condition on love, any failure to love, any personal beneficial motive (i.e. to get to heaven, achieve nirvana, to get love-type actions from others). Indeed, many times, Christians resist the Holy Spirit, which keeps us from faith, and choose to hate. Any lack of caring about anybody is hate. Ignorance of this last kind of hate is VERY common. As people are loved by God, hate separates oneself from God. As humans, we cannot always distinguish between what seem to be acts of love and what is really love.

So, how can some prophets be called good? Indeed, Jesus said that "No one is good but one, that is, God." Paul agrees, "Rom 3:11 There is no one who understands. There is no one who seeks after God.
Rom 3:12 They have all turned aside. They have together become unprofitable. There is no one who does good, no, not, so much as one."

Here is what Paul concludes:

Rom 3:21 But now apart from the law, a righteousness of God has been revealed, being testified by the law and the prophets;
Rom 3:22 even the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ to all and on all those who believe. For there is no distinction,
Rom 3:23 for all have sinned, and fall short of the glory of God;
Rom 3:24 being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus;
Rom 3:25 whom God set forth to be an atoning sacrifice, through faith in his blood, for a demonstration of his righteousness through the passing over of prior sins, in God's forbearance;
Rom 3:26 to demonstrate his righteousness at this present time; that he might himself be just, and the justifier of him who has faith in Jesus.

and

Rom 3:28 We maintain therefore that a man is justified by faith apart from the works of the law.

So here it is. Goodness in people comes from God through faith that is given by grace. I wish to clarify the word "justify." It means to show or regard just or innocent. Certain prophets are good because God makes them good. Does that means that actions are irreverent? Paul says "by no means" should we keep on being evil, for in the faith we have died to evil with Christ, and should not continue to live in it. Does it mean that the law is nullified?
Rom 3:31 Do we then nullify the law through faith? May it never be! No, we establish the law.
So, HERE is where the actions tie in!

Jam 2:14 What good is it, my brothers, if a man says he has faith, but has no works? Can faith save him?

"faith, if it has no works, is dead in itself," says James. Obedience to the law, truly being good, is a result of being in faith. As to what James writes, I will put that a generic faith in some god, even one god, will not make anybody good. Only faith in God as Christ crucified for the forgiveness of sins.

So, the "good works" test is not in the way you might have thought. Faith from God in God as described as a requirement in the second reference, the one from John, is needed for the qualifications given in the third reference.

And this is how the first referenced ties in:
Tit 1:2 in hope of eternal life, which God, who can't lie, promised before time began;

This simply shows that any prophecies by the God who gives faith in Christ for the hope of eternal life will not be false. And this honest God replaces an evil heart for a good one.

[itsdatruth]

I'm looking at what you've narrowed things down to, and it looks as if you're more shooting for a debate on par with debating concepts like whether Nostradomas predicted 9/11 by referring to "metal birds" or if Noah actually experienced a flood and frankly, I can't see that leading anywhere good. Nostradomas practiced the art of guessing a prophecy. God doesn't love lies, so a prophet that is proven false once is a false prophet, not from God.

Maybe we could debate the idea of whether logic should be a relevant issue to a religion? I don't want to leave us both empty-handed, and I am rather dumbfounded by the idea of believing selectively or not at all in logic. How does one come to the conclusion that logic can be abandoned, and are there any non-religious reasons for that choice? Oh, I believe in logic. What I don't believe is that my puny brain is capable of making sense of all the logic of God, which greatly surpasses human reason. If God made us as smart as he is, we would have figured out women a long time ago. If you are dumbfounded, consider this: Say YOU believed in God, who created not only humans, but the entire earth, and not only earth, but galaxy upon galaxy. In addition, God figured out a plan of salvation, that they might be saved, for all the people you see today. Consider the sheer knowledge God must have to do that. And to make us as smart as we are, he only had to breath some air into a form or dirt. Hey, if your breath was that strong, wouldn't you reason on an entirely different level?

As for actually debating, I better not. My dad says that people on this site reason in circles, wasting time, and that I better stop visiting this site. So, will stop visiting this site soon. Yet, if you still want to have a mutually beneficial exchange of information with me, as I would like to have with you, we could exchange email addresses via private message. I do wish to run some of my thoughts through you to look for holes. You are not unreasonable, like certain members of this site that I have been wasting my time on.

[thanoz]

Well your dad is right in one respect, depending on what you want to get out of this site you can and will run around in circles debating things if your goal is to change someone else's mind. I don't want to or intend to change your mind about your religion, it's just not my place to do it, people believe what they want to believe and I can't change what you or anyone else wants.

I just want to see a really definite and rationally laid out reasoning for someone to believe in their own prophets over someone else's. I wish I could say I was educated more by the quotes but they seemed to leave the word "evil" in very ambiguous terms. Most of the quotes seemed to involve "good means you have good" or "evil means you don't have good" or "good is love of God and evil is hate of God". It's ok though, I don't really expect a non-circular definition on that term from any religion.

What it all comes down to is this. You believe in the prophets because the words they've written say that they are right. That's fine, circular but fine. The issue is - why believe their circular story over other's? Why not Mohammed? Or the Mormon's Joseph Smith? Somewhere your own human reasoning and logic really does have to come into this because either you're smarter about picking a religion than half the planet, or half the planet is smarter about it than you are.

It's no big deal saying that you are a righteous minority either, I'm an atheist and others like me make up less than 50% of the world's population, yet I am undeterred because I have my reasons. Namely, I don't trust men to tell me what God says. Is there a God? Don't know, don't care, he isn't chatting with me right now so you're a lot more real than he is at the moment.

So what are your own personal reasons that separate you from the guy on the other side of the planet that worships someone or something different? Has his prophets been discredited? Have yours been verified in a way that isn't circular (I am right because the paper I wrote says I must be) and inside of religious text written by prophets? I'm just curious, there aren't any wrong answers.

[KnightWhoSaysNi]

Hi folks,

I think it's best to carry this discussion over to the General Religious Discussions forum or to private messaging (especially since itsdatruth has declined to enter a formal debate). Remember that this forum is meant for setting up formal debates and discussions, not for the discussion/debate itself.

Anyways, I'll keep this thread open if someone else wishes to take up thanoz's gauntlet.

Jason

[itsdatruth]

Well, the moderator is right. This will be my last post in this string. Thanoz, if you want, contact me via email, as I would rather not let the free for all mob at General Religious draw me into stupid discussions. Thanoz, I have come across a prophecy that predicts the actual numberic years of Jesus ministry and death. I ran a test of my own on it, and it still seems impossible to pull off without the existence of the supernatural. It suprised me when I found it, and I still want to run my line of thought through you. When I did it to another agnostic, he didn't really come up with anything. I am looking for somebody logical like you to examine it from a bias unlike my own. That is why I wanted to debate you in the first place.