And according to the Bible Code, California's gonna be hit with one heck of an earthquake this year. (I'm surprised this video didn't get decked aleady, considering the first screen.) It mentions the earthquake in video 4, 7 minutes in.

...Oh, and as you'd expect, it also mentions 2012.

Yeah, I see you rolling your eyes there. At least take a look for humor's sake.












And here's the sequel, which basically repeats a lot of stuff. The comet is mentioned in video 5.











Do I believe it? Maybe partly, but it rather implies fate and destiny, which I am not a fan of. But I'm playing a wait-and-see game for that 2010 earthquake. If it actually happens, I'm going to be very worried about that comet. Tell you what, though, I've been waiting quite a while to mention this to you guys (this came out like five years ago)

... Before I even get into the fallacies of religious code, apparently, something about prophecies needs to be cleared up.

In order for a prophecy/prediction to be accepted as genuine, there are rules it must adhere to:

1) It must be verifiable, specific, and not garble. Nostrodamus fails this one nearly every single time.

2) The text the prophecy comes from must have been written before the actual event took place. Many written texts through history, by methods such as the algorithms used in the Bible Code on much more recent texts, are thus just cases of people seeing what they wish to see to back up their theory.

3) The prophecy must, in all cases, not be contained within a compilation which contains verifiably false prophecies, or be written by a seer who has been conclusively incorrect in the past. Such is to be expected of somebody with a true gift, or a text with true holy origin.

4) The prophecy must have absolutely no hole in it which can have it be attributed to being a guess. This ties into seer's accuracy.

5) The prophecy must not be capable of being aided into realization by means such as simply believing it will happen. For example, in Avatar, the Na'vi believe that their people will band together for a great cause when one of their hunters tames Toruk. Thus, when somebody does it, the people band together simply because they believe in the prophecy.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of the Bible Code is open to interpretation and many of the predictions within it fail on rules 3 and 4. While this Earthquake passes for part marks on rule 1 (a time frame of 1 year isn't very specific, the location is acceptable), it proceeds to fail on rules 2 and 3.

For example, for rule 3, there is a "prophecy" found with the algorithms of the Bible Code that states the Earth is flat - much do believers argue the opposite, though. A translation of one of the words used in the prediction of the spherical attribute of our planet, prior to scientific and verifiable evidence existing for it, is translated as "circle", but in our language circle does not mean sphere. A circle, by all means, is two dimensional. Believers tend to argue that there is no word for sphere in the original language, which is true if you argue toward specifics, but they do have a word meaning "ball", which is three dimensional.

... and that's all I feel like typing right now.

I don't agree with 3. First the seer could simply be wrong in some cases and right in others as long as his prophecy was genuinely in his mind a vision and not something he knows he made up. Of course we can never know what is in his mind but the essence of the prophecy could still exist even if the seer is fallible.

And the converse is such that if someone is right 3 times out of 3, is it necessarily a prophecy or a good prediction or maybe just a random guess? In other words the source is not relevant to whether or not the message is ITSELF a prophecy.

Plus if the book is a compilation like the bible the whole book itself may have been compiled by non-seers whereas the individual book or prophecy may have been by a single prophetic source. Just because we don't have the original source manuscript and only now have it as evidence in this later compiled form (that the original seer had nothing to do with) doesn't make the message essentially a non-prophecy but rather it may be a prophecy we just unnecessarily or inconsequentially tied to fallible sources or fallible prophecies. It is set theory or group theory. Instead of treating the single message AS a single message (and the prophet as immaterial) if we start grouping or tying unnecessary things together as though they are necessarily pertinance we could just as easily say that if any human is prophetically wrong another human cannot be propehtically right because we can group all human minds as one. Well if it is unreasonable to do that then I say it is also unreasonable to treat all individual messages in a single mind as one. Some can be true prophecy and others fallible hallucinations. EDIT: (or intentionally made up)

EDIT: Actually I don't completely agree with 1 or 4 either.

I am mostly onboard with 4 as I do agree that 4 brings up the issue that within the message itself if something is wrong the overall prophecy is not right although the source or message itself might still be prophetic enough to be a prophecy loosely speaking.

But I disagree heavily with 1. True something non-specific can be easily attributed to anything (so a broad, non-specific non-prophecy can look like a prophecy) but an actual prophecy has to have some pragmatic limitation on how specific it is so who gets to decide if it is specific enough. I could always hide behind an arbitrary standard to say that anything attributed as a prophecy is not specific enough. Effectively 1 by definition rules out prophecy altogether because it is all about how the message looks instead of how it has come to be known by the seer.

On the topic of 3: If the seer has a real gift, then he won't be wrong in any case. We have no way of knowing if he is making his prophecies up, and being incorrect is a huge sign toward that direction.

See, we have a word for "seeing" things, visions, and they're called hallucinations. Someone who is seeing something real, a genuine prophecy - which is not bound by rules of reality that we know of - will not provide us with incorrect visions.

Being wrong once does not necessarily denounce him completely from prophet status, but it does give us good reason to question his other ones, and definitely discredits his work - especially if more than one turns out false.

With compilations, such as the Holy Bible, an incorrect prophecy goes a long way in showing how believable the text is. It showcases the fact that the bible itself is a fabrication of human hand, which far too few people understand. The correct ones, though, can be traced to their source text or seer and can be externally verified. This only refers to the accuracy of human intervention in determing compilation accuracy.

On the topic of 4: The "hole" I was referring to does not refer to pieces of the prophecy being wrong, it refers to holes in the logic that allow for interpretation. Any prophecy open to any interpretation is not a prophecy. This is where "specific" comes in.

On the topic of 1: You are placing that limitation yourself. A prophecy is something we cannot measure with the knowledge of life and the universe and all of its contents based on any and all of the information we have, so assuming they have any limitations at all is overstepping your bounds as a thinker.

We can, however, set guidelines for what can be accepted as prophecy, and specificity is one of them. There are tons of queues for non-specific vernacular, and with a command of English like you and I have they should be pretty easy to spot. Saying something will happen at some point during a 1 year timespan is not specific enough. That leaves far too wide a range for chance to allow the prophecy to occur.

Rule 1 exists solely BECAUSE of many of the seers in the past relying very heavily on being vague, or allowing lots of cushion time to allow them to be correct. Many make small predictions about the immediate future based on their expertise in niche subjects that weren't well understood by the majority, like weather, and then made tons of grand assertions about the farther future in order to increase their standing with their ruler. Rule 1 also does not deny a book or person's prophetic status based on one prediction, either, it would only rule that one prediction out.

These are the generally accepted rules of prophecy and prediction. If any one seer or holy book adheres to all of these, then I would accept him or it, and so would nearly everybody else - including most atheists (who are the main skeptics). Also, the difficulty of these guidelines are not meant to give us the ability to write off a book or person as false - they are meant to be difficult in order to persuade people not to claim to be prophetic if they can't deliver something tangible.

And on one last related note, predicting three things and being right all three times is definitely compelling. However, it's not convincing. If all three of these prophecies adhere to all of the guidelines, then that speaks volumes for their validity. However, it says nothing for the validity of the actual seer - in order to be recognised as a seer, he must consistently provide predictions that adhere to all of the above - with a margin of error considerably smaller than his accuracy rate. Again, though, the guidelines refer more to the prophecies themselves than the actual source.

I do not find any reason to accept this dogmatically. We may decide on the conditions by which we are willing to accept a message as prophecy but unless we are the creaters of prophets ourselves (intended or accidentally...i.e. God or evolution), we do not get to designate what criteria a seer must have in addition to being able to see prophetically. In other words there is no evidence that "not being wrong in any case" is a prerequisite to "truly" seeing even if we choose to designate it as criteria by which we are willing to accept what they claim to see.

As an example, I can easily imagine having a specific detailed prophetic vision of the future that I share with others which comes true. One that is so detailed and significant that I think I am a prophet or one that gets me so much attention that I want to profit as a prophet. In either case I either might be misleading my self or others, respectively, make prophetic claims that do not come true and find that I am not recognized as a prophet. I would however, myself, consider just the ability to see that initial prophecy come true (when I never asked to have this experience) as a "real gift". But even if that is not enough for some, then I suggest that being right 9 out of 10 times (and thus being wrong 1 in 10 times) is still a real gift.

EDIT: I forgot to mention that your quote seems to conflict with your other comment that "being wrong once does not necessarily denounce him completely from prophet status". It seems if your quote above were true then it should, unless you do not equate being a prophet with being a seer with a real gift, in which case I don't understand your distinction.

Inclined to agree with Bo on most things here. Prophecy is not so stringent as you make it seem Stythe. That's why it's prophecy and not predetermined fact.

A prophecy existing at all implies predeterminism.

Just sayin'.

It might imply it but I can imagine at least one way in which it does not require it.

Use God as the example to make it easier to believe for some. There is a religious belief that god knows the future but still gives us free will. Now how is that possible? Because god does not predetermine what we choose but knows the infinite amount of possible choices we can make. Furthermore god is not bound by time and space so in god's 'present' moment sees all actual (as well as theoretical) outcomes. Therefore god can see the choice we will make by looking into the future 'before' we make it without forcing our hand. Now if god is the source of prophecy, god could then provide this sightline directly to a human (at least in theory) or more likely could give a specific image to a human in a form tied to a psychological certainty of belief. Thus the human 'knows' that the detailed image they see will come true and when it does they will 'certainly' 'know' it was a prophecy. It is up for those outside his mind to determine if they agree or not that it was a prophecy (according to something like the criteria you presented Stythe).

Now the existence of god is always problematic because there is apparently no first cause which is irrational or because the cause itself is irrational. Once someone embraces that there has to be some kind of truly actual irrational existance (and they have to if they question the origin of god or the universe...i.e. the origin of existence enough) the floodgates are open to any irrational event being possible to potentially be true. We can then remove god from the equation and look to a prophet or seer's ability to communicate with the universe's ultimate irrationality in a way that the rational human cannot. Thus the prophet might be able to transcend time and space to see into actual infinity to memorize a future which was not predetermined but essentially existed nontheless and deliver it in a message for those who could not.

EDIT: Now all of this doesn't change the difference between what a seer 'knows' in first person and what the public 'should believe' in third-person (relative to the seer's mind) but it does at least suggest that part of the reason the public may never recognize actual prophecy is because the are too rationally limited. And yet rational limitation is essentially rightfully a useful means to avoid those particular irrational beliefs which have no basis in actual existance.

This topic gives me a headache. And I've only read the half a sentence of each post.

Don't blame me... I'm just the messenger.

^ is mohammed.

So much for the Bible Code.

Too bad the Bible didn't mention Chile instead of California.

Yeah, it would've been soooo much better had we reason to believe a comet really was gonna hit the planet in 2012.