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The Kalam Argument: How does God create before time?

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Life as a Christian apologist must be hard. They have to deliver weak arguments with enthusiasm, and the Kalam Cosmological Argument (KCA) is one of the most prominent weak arguments.

Here it is:

1: Whatever begins to exist had a cause

2: The universe began to exist

3: Therefore, the universe had a cause

This is #2 in a three-part series responding to a Christian defense of the KCA (part 1 here).

Here are three more responses to skeptical attacks on the KCA. The skeptical argument is shown in bold and the Christian response in italics.

5. The first cause is logically incoherent because it existed “before” time.

This isn’t an objection to either premise.

Oh, but it is; it’s an objection to premise 1. It questions whether there can be a cause of any sort given that time didn’t exist before the universe did.

The First Cause didn’t precede the universe, because it acted in the first moment—that is, the First Cause and the first moment were simultaneous. “So what we have is a timeless, unchanging (because it is timeless) First Cause whose first act is bringing the world into existence.”

This is metaphysical bullshit. The simple solution is to drop the idea of any cause (First or otherwise) for the universe. The God hypothesis is jammed in as the answer despite its not fitting into this puzzle at all. The naturalistic explanation doesn’t need a cause of the universe, and the KCA vanishes without one.

How could a god outside of time decide anything, such as that the universe should be created? “Timeless and unchanging” means frozen and inert. No conclusions, no changing of his mind, no initiation of any creative act.

“What could cause the universe if there were no time beforehand?” is like “How could a frozen and inert god do anything, like create a universe?” And they’re both neatly dismissed by hypothesizing no cause for the universe, as allowed by quantum mechanics. God becomes a solution looking for a problem. Apologists spend more effort keeping the God card relevant than using it to show that it explains things better than naturalistic solutions.

Cosmologist Sean M. Carroll debated Craig on cosmology (more on that debate here), and Carroll ticked off several models of the universe with no place for a First Cause such as a universe with a beginning but no cause and one that is eternal without a beginning.

And let me step back to marvel that this godly First Cause is advanced by apologists with no evidence whatsoever. Carroll noted that cosmology textbooks don’t rely on “transcendent cause” or “First Cause” or God, they use differential equations!

Even trying to put the Cosmological Argument in the best possible light, it doesn’t solve the infinite regress. You’ve still got God infinitely old who existed infinitely long before the Big Bang. How does he traverse that time? And while we’re puzzling over Christianity’s unexplained mysteries, how does a noncorporeal being affect our world? Do we just call it magic and move on? And if God created the universe, that must’ve been to improve things, but how is that possible since everything was perfect already?

Maybe this is really the Kalam Kosmological Argument, just a bit of fun that’s not to be taken seriously.

6. If some metaphysical truth is not well-established, one is unjustified in saying it is true.

Does “not well established” mean that philosophical truth is discovered by a poll? And how can new truth bubble to the surface if no one accepts it until a majority do?

When metaphysicians have a track record like scientists where they give us reliable new knowledge, then yes, polls would be useful. We laypeople could rely on them to know where they’ve reached a solid consensus, and we could treat that as provisional truth. But metaphysics has no such track record. (I argue that laypeople must accept the scientific consensus here.)

As for his concern about “a new idea is fine as long as it’s not new,” we must separate the experts from laypeople. In an evidence-guided meritocracy with a high bar for entry like science, the experts can dream up, advocate, and accept whatever they feel the evidence demands. While we lay outsiders can critique, we have no standing for accepting anything but the consensus (where it exists).

That describes science, not philosophy or metaphysics.

7. There could be other deities besides the Christian God.

This doesn’t object to either premise of the KCA. Let’s be clear that the KCA is used as natural theology (understanding God through nature), never revealed theology (understanding God from his personal revelations).

Nevertheless, the properties of the cause of the universe—timeless, spaceless, changeless, powerful, creator—do sound like the Christian god.

“Imagine, if you will, a timeless, spaceless, all-powerful Creator of the universe. Sounds like God, doesn’t it?” Well, it sounds like what Christians today think of God, but consider God before he hit the big time—back in the Old Testament when he was still doing vaudeville.

  • He had to personally investigate Sodom and Gomorrah to see if the gossip he’d heard was correct (Genesis 18:21),
  • he regretted having made mankind (Gen. 6:6),
  • he spoke to Moses “face to face, as one speaks to a friend” (Exodus 33:11),
  • he was beaten by the Moabite god Chemosh and couldn’t defeat tribes with iron chariots (more),
  • and he was just one of many gods in a pantheon.

He was more super than the rest of us, but certainly not the omni-everything god of today. God has evolved.

The final four arguments: The Kalam Argument: infinite regress and more

Astronomer Pierre-Simon Laplace presented his
5-volume work on the solar system to Napoleon.
Napoleon wanted to know why it contained
no mention of the Creator.
Laplace replied, “I had no need of that hypothesis.”

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(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 11/2/16.)

Image from NASA, public domain

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One small Christian conclusion has sweeping political consequences

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It starts small. Pro-life voters say that a fetus is a baby. When it’s eight months old and is viable on its own, it’s a baby. When it’s five months old and the mother can first feel the fetus moving, it’s a baby. When it’s three months old, with tiny eyes and fingers, it’s a baby.

When it’s a single fertilized human egg cell at day one, just 100 microns across, it’s not much of a baby, but who can begrudge a couple calling it whatever they want?

So let’s say it’s a “baby” right back to day one—that’s a popular Christian conclusion. Babies must be protected. Everyone has a right to safety, and babies are vulnerable and deserve particular attention. Our natural instincts to protect cute big-eyed things come into play—who could complain about that?

The simplest moral logic would demand that these babies be protected, and it isn’t surprising that millions of American voters are single issue voters, declaring that it’s a baby right back to day one. Does the conservative candidate say that they’re going to fight to protect those lives and the liberal candidate not? With Supreme Court appointments in play for the future president, that makes it easy—you vote for the conservative even if you must hold your nose to do so.

Where does it end?

That first step is like a drop of rain falling at the crest of a mountain range that is carried downhill by a stream and then a river. If it falls a little this way, it flows westward. A little that way, and it flows eastward. A small change makes a big difference.

And the small change in our example of pregnancy is that definition of “baby.” You say that it’s a “baby” on day one, and you flow inevitably to cute, then vulnerable, then protective instincts, then society must protect it, then government must protect it, … and then voting for Donald Trump.

But maybe you don’t need to start with that. Let’s make a small change. What if you said that as a newborn in your arms at the hospital, that’s a baby. The five-month-old fetus that begins to kick? It’s not really a baby if it hasn’t developed enough to be viable on its own. The three-month-old fetus with eyes and fingers? That’s even less of a baby—it’s just two inches long, not very baby-like, and nowhere near able to live on its own.

Reconsider those definitions

On the left is a three-month-old fetus. Think that that’s an adorable baby that must be protected by law? Guess again. On the right is a five-week-old embryo that’s less than half-an-inch long and looks like that thing from the Alien movies.

You see the progression. When you go back in time from a trillion-cell newborn to a single cell, it becomes less of a baby at each step as you regress along that spectrum. When you go from a newborn with arms and legs, eyes and ears, brain and nervous system, heart and circulatory system, and all the rest back to where there isn’t even a single cell of any of these, it becomes not a baby at all. (More here.)

Gestational development is a spectrum. It’s a baby when it’s done; it’s not a baby when it starts.

A pregnant woman can call her fetus anything she wants. The problem is when someone wants to impose their own definition of “baby” onto the rest of the country by law. You say the cell is a baby? You say you’d never have an abortion? That’s fine, just don’t force that on the rest of us. And consider the political consequences when you demand that a single cell is a “baby.”

I do not believe that just because
you’re opposed to abortion
that that makes you pro-life.
In fact, I think in many cases,
your morality is deeply lacking . . .
if all you want is a child born but not a child fed,
not a child educated, not a child housed.
And why would I think that you don’t?
Because you don’t want any tax money to go there.
That’s not pro-life. That’s pro-birth.
We need a much broader conversation
on what the morality of pro-life is.
— Sister Joan Chittister

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(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 10/28/16.)

Image from Phil Warren (license CC BY 2.0)

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How to Say, “I Told You So”

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It seems to always be election season, and that pushes many of us into heated political conversations. Or maybe the arguments are about public policy (how to address climate change or infrastructure improvements). Or science education (evolution or sex ed in schools). Or religion (end times or church scandals).

Suppose you jump into such an argument. Will you get anywhere? What most frustrates me is not being able to say “I told you so” after the evidence is in. When things play out like I said they would—whether ten days have passed or ten years—I never even get the minimal satisfaction of hearing my antagonist admit that they were wrong. They adapt to (or ignore) the new data without going through that unpleasant I-was-wrong phase.

It’s not about me. It’s not about how smart I am for being correct. I’d just like for my antagonist to learn something, creating a small hope that our argument was worthwhile, and they will be less likely to make this kind of mistake again.

Let me add two hopefully obvious clarifications. First, sometimes the antagonist does indeed admit their error (it’s just that this is rare). Second, this goes both ways, and it might be me eating the humble pie and learning the lesson.

I’m guessing you’ve been in similar situations.

Commit to a public declaration

So how can we improve our chances of eventual satisfaction? Let’s say that the topic is rabbit overpopulation, and your antagonist is in favor of the upcoming ballot initiative to use mutant weasels to control the rabbit problem.

You list the problems with this approach but your friend disagrees. Then the initiative passes, the weasels are released, and the environmental catastrophe (and untouched rabbit population) plays out like you predicted. When you confront your friend with this, he agrees that it was a disastrous project (or maybe not) but denies specifics of both his prior position and your prediction.

The answer is for you to write a shared Public Declaration. This is a short statement summarizing the facts that clearly states what one of you think will or won’t happen and the time frame. It should be unambiguous so that an objective third party could determine who was right. (Of course, you could both be partly right. Or partly wrong.)

Let’s go back to the rabbit overpopulation argument and imagine that it ended with your writing this:

Sigmund Freud and I disagree on the best approach to the rabbit overpopulation problem. Sigmund advocates the mutant weasels proposal in Initiative 7 on the November, 2021 ballot. I think it will be a terrible idea.

Prediction: I predict that the weasels will (1) have little impact on the rabbit population and (2) have the side effect of endangering the populations of other animals like birds. This is the position of the Natural Resources Defense Council, which has come out against Initiative 7. Their “Weasels Primeval” white paper goes into more specifics, and it represents my position.

Test: If the proposal is implemented, check with the NRDC one year afterwards to see if things turned out as predicted.

(signed) Friedrich Nietzsche

What does this do?

Here’s what’s good about this statement.

  • It’s specific about the claim: you referred to Initiative 7 on the November ballot, and your prediction is specific. There’s no need to also summarize your opponent’s position because he simply thinks that you’re wrong.
  • It’s clear on the time frame: judgment day is “one year after the proposal has been implemented.”
  • It defines an objective test: use the NRDC’s analysis after the proposal has had time to work. This could be a weakness of this public declaration if the NRDC is seen as biased. Another option might be to predict an editorial confirming your position. It works as long as your opponent agrees on the test. It’s tempting to imagine that “everyone” on this future date will just know who was right, but the lack of a clear test with specific measurements would weaken such a statement.
  • It’s a shared statement. This project works best when you work on it and sign it together. It shouldn’t matter which party writes it.
  • Recording your position for posterity is satisfying, which might give more closure than just walking away frustrated and angry.

Be as specific as possible. Things that are clear and obvious in your mind now could be forgotten by the time the prediction must be evaluated. (Contrast this with the vague and unspecific claims made by biblical prophecies.) Imagine the future judgment day and give yourself a clear and unambiguous statement to work with.

Rapoport’s Rule

By writing the statement together, each party should be proud, rather than reluctant, to sign and agree to it. If the writing of the statement is difficult, that’s a clue that you don’t understand each other’s positions correctly. If you thoroughly understand your opponent’s position, you should be able to painlessly state it.

This is an important aside, because arguing against not-your-opponent’s-argument is a common and usually inadvertent waste of time. The solution is for you to correctly state their position, and vice versa. This has been formalized as Rapoport’s Rule of debate, the most important step of which is to state your opponent’s position to their complete satisfaction.

Note how this sidesteps the frequent debate impasse of, “No, it isn’t!” and “Yes, it is!” When you state your opponent’s position, you are no longer equals. They are the final judge of their position, and if they say you got it wrong, then you got it wrong. Get more information and try again. Arguments dissolve away once the combatants realize they have been arguing past each other, and the sooner you attempt to restate your opponent’s position, the better.

Let’s assume that misunderstandings have been resolved, there still is an important difference of opinion, and you’ve written your summary of the issues.

How can someone forget so important a position?

While you’re arguing with someone, the argument and your position are very, very clear in your mind. (Again, let’s assume you’re beyond the mutual restatement of positions.)

While the declaration could prevent your antagonist from lying about their former position once it’s been proven wrong, I think simple forgetfulness is the bigger issue. The Challenger memory experiment makes clear the difference between vivid and accurate memories—just because you have a clear memory of a past incident doesn’t mean that memory is correct.

Implementation

The idea could play out in different ways. This could be as casual as notes on the back of a napkin or drinks coaster. It could wind up on a Facebook post (use a consistent phrase, like “public declaration,” so that you can search for it on judgment day). Or maybe there’s a single site, PublicDeclarations.com, that could give a simple template for those who want to boldly plant their flag.

This could work for several kinds of claims.

  • If-then claims such as, “If same-sex marriage is legalized in the U.S., then X will happen” or “If Joe Biden is elected, then X will happen.”
  • An even simpler claim is, “X will happen,” such as the predictions about the end of the world by John Hagee, Hal Lindsey, and Harold Camping. Another example: “Biologists will realize that evolution doesn’t explain life.” (More on fundamentalists’ decades-long claim that evolution will collapse any day now here.)

Since arguments usually distill down to a simple “Yes, it will” versus “No, it won’t” dichotomy, public declarations could have wide applicability.

What do you think?

We survive by virtue of people extending themselves,
welcoming the young, showing sympathy for the suffering,
taking pleasure in each other’s good fortune.
We are here for a brief time.
We would like our stay to mean something.
Do the right thing.
Travel light.
Be sweet.
– Garrison Keillor

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(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 10/17/16.)

Image from Jonathan Baker-Bates (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Image credit:, flickr, CC

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8 Tests for Accurate Prophecy and Why Bible “Prophecies” Aren’t

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What makes a good prophecy?

Bible prophecies don’t get special treatment. Prophecies from an all-knowing God should easily pass the highest standards, and if they don’t, the religion behind those claims should be rejected.

We’ve just finished a look at 13 Bible prophecies from Hugh Ross of the Reasons to Believe ministry. He said that 2000 Bible prophecies have already been “fulfilled to the letter—no errors.” In fact, the 13 prophecies that he gave were laughable failures—see for yourself. (Maybe he read his list wrong and gave us the bottom rather than the top 13?)

Judging bad prophecies

Most of us can easily spot bad prophecies—tabloid predictions by psychics such as Jeane Dixon or Sylvia Browne, for example. And not even many Christians are sucked into the end-of-the-world predictions by such “prophets” as Harold Camping.

There’s a great infographic of Christianity’s many end-of-the-world predictions here, and I write about Harold Camping’s ill-advised venture into prophecy in 2011 here and here. Ronald Weinland assured us that Jesus would return on May 19, 2013. John Hagee imagined that lunar eclipses predict something (he wasn’t quite sure what), and Ray Comfort just imagines things.

Another interesting category are the claims of fulfilled biblical prophecies. (I’ve responded to some of those claims here, here, here, and here.) The claims are so weak that I wonder: don’t we have a common idea of what fulfilled prophecy actually looks like? Don’t we critique prophecy claims like those made by Sylvia Browne or Jeane Dixon the same way? Let’s take a step back and agree on what makes a good prophecy.

1. The prophecy must be startling, not mundane.

“The [fill in political party] will gain control of [fill in branch of government] in the next election” isn’t very startling. “There will be no legislature because of a coup” would be startling.

We regularly find big surprises in the news—earthquakes, wars, medical breakthroughs, and so on. These startling events are what make useful prophecies.

2. The prophecy must be precise, not vague.

“Expect exciting and surprising gold medals for the U.S. Olympic team!” is not precise. “A major earthquake will devastate Port-au-Prince, Haiti on January 12, 2010” is precise.

When Xerxes of Persia invaded Greece in 480 BC, the Athenians consulted the Oracle at Delphi. The prophecy: “The wooden wall only shall not fail.” But what does that mean? A literal wooden wall? Or maybe the thorn bushes around the Acropolis. They finally decided that it meant their wooden ships. The navy saved Greece, but this prophecy was so ambiguous that it was no prophecy at all. A cryptic prophecy makes a good story, but this is not an indication of an omniscient source.

Nostradamus is another example of “prophecies” that were so vague that they can be imagined to mean lots of things. Similarly, the hundreds of supposed Bible prophecies are simply quote mining. You could also apply the identical process to War and Peace or The Collected Works of Shakespeare to find parallels to the gospel story, but so what?

3. The prophecy must be accurate.

We should have high expectations for a divine divinator. American clairvoyant Edgar Cayce could perhaps be excused if he was a little off (in fact, he showed no particular gift at all), but prophecy from the omniscient Creator should be perfect.

4. The prophecy must predict, not retrodict.

The writings of Nostradamus predicted London’s Great Fire of 1666 and the rise of Napoleon and Hitler . . . but of course these “predictions” were so unclear in his writings that the connection had to be inferred afterwards. This is also the failing of the Bible Code—the idea that the Hebrew Bible holds hidden acrostics of future events. And maybe it does—but the same logic could find these after-the-fact connections in any large book.

5. The prophecy can’t be self-fulfilling.

The prediction that a bank will soon become insolvent may provoke its customers to remove all their money . . . and make the bank insolvent. The prediction that a store will soon go out of business may drive away customers. The Greek god Kronos heard that one of his children would kill him, so he ate them, but if he hadn’t been so violent, Zeus might not have killed him.

Self-fulfilling prophecies are cheating.

6. The prophecy and the fulfillment must be verifiable.

The prophecy and sometimes the fulfillment can come from centuries past, and we must be confident that they are accurate history. We must have higher standards than that they were written down.

7. The fulfillment must come after the prophecy.

Kind of obvious, right? But some Old Testament prophecies fail on this point.

Isaiah 45:1 names Cyrus the Great of Persia as the anointed one (Messiah) who will end the Babylonian exile (587–538 BCE) of the Israelites. That might be impressive if it predicted the events, but this part of Isaiah (Deutero-Isaiah) was probably written during the time of Cyrus.

Or take Daniel. Daniel the man might have been taken to Babylon during the exile, but Daniel the book was written centuries later in roughly 165 BCE. Its “prophecies” about events before that date are pretty good, but it fails afterwards. There’s even a term for this, vaticinia ex eventu—prophecies after the event.

8. The fulfillment must be honest.

The author of the fulfillment can’t simply look in the back of the book, parrot the answers found there, and then declare victory. We need strong evidence that this didn’t happen.

But we see this when Mark records Jesus’s last words as exactly those words from Psalm 22. Did it really happened that way, or was Jesus was deliberately quoting from the psalm as he died, or (my choice) Mark knew the psalm and put those words into his gospel?

I think that any of us would find this a fairly obvious list of the ways that predictions can fail. We’d quickly spot these errors in a supermarket tabloid or in some other guy’s nutty religion. But the Jesus prophecies are rejected by this skeptical net as well. Consider Matthew: this gospel says that Jesus was born of a virgin (1:18–25), was born in Bethlehem (2:1), and that he rode humbly on two donkeys (21:1–7). It says that Jesus predicted that he would rise, Jonah-like, after three days (12:40) and that the temple would fall (24:1–2). It says that he was betrayed for 30 pieces of silver (26:15), that men gambling for his clothes (27:35), and it records his last words (27:46).

Are these the records of fulfilled prophecy? Maybe all these claims in Matthew actually did happen, but if so, we have no grounds for saying so. Because they fail these tests (primarily #8), we must reject these claims of fulfilled prophecy. The non-supernatural explanation is far more plausible.

Should we have separate standards for biblical prophecies? Yes, we should judge a perfect God and a flawless Bible with much, much higher standards.

See also: Make Your Very Own Prophecy (That Actually Comes True!)

Risky predictions have been successfully made
thousands of times in science,
not once in religion.
— Vic Stenger

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(This is an update of a post from 3/28/15.)

Image from Dawn Endico (license CC BY-SA 2.0)
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Bible Prophecies: a Miracle Victory and Priestly Justice

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Hugh Ross of Reasons to Believe (an old-earth Creationist ministry) claims that the Bible has thousands of fulfilled prophecies, and he gives us his top 13. These last two “prophecies” will conclude our critique (part 1 here).

12. Jehoshaphat wins a battle

“Jahaziel prophesied that King Jehoshaphat and a tiny band of men would defeat an enormous, well-equipped, well-trained army without even having to fight. Just as predicted, the King and his troops stood looking on as their foes were supernaturally destroyed to the last man.”

2 Chronicles 20 tells of a great army approaching Judah. King Jehoshaphat prayed to God, and the prophet Jahaziel reported that God would deliver them. The next day, God caused the individual tribes within the opposing alliance to fight each other until they were all dead.

What is there to say except that it’s a fanciful story? Just like #11, this is a self-contained story with a prophecy. The dating problem is also similar: King Jehoshaphat reigned in the 9th century BCE, while the books of Chronicles document events up to Cyrus the Great allowing the Jews to return after his conquest of Babylon 539 BCE. They were probably written later still, in the 4th century BCE. Not only would we doubt the original oral story, we’d question whether it was recorded correctly.

Half a millennium passes from event to documentation, and Ross wants us to credulously accept the story as true?

13. When priests back the wrong horse

“King Jeroboam of Israel (922–901 BCE) encouraged worship of deities other than Yahweh. A prophet told him that a future King Josiah of Judah (641–609 BCE) would burn the bones of Jeroboam’s wayward priests on their own altar. And that’s indeed what happened.”

The prophecy is in 1 Kings 13:2, and the fulfillment is in 2 Kings 23:15–18. Here Ross makes the same mistake: the two books of Kings were originally one book. It documents events up to the year 560 BCE, and it received its final editing at about that time. There is no credible prophecy if an editor tweaked the prophecy and the fulfillment at the same time.

Hugh Ross’s probability conclusion

Since the probabilities were stated without justification, I haven’t been critiquing them, but Ross has attached one to each prophecy, from one chance in 105 to one in 1020. They’re outlandish figures, since none are fulfilled prophecies and all have obvious natural explanations, but that doesn’t stop Ross from computing the final probability.

Since these thirteen prophecies cover mostly separate and independent events, the probability of chance occurrence for all thirteen is about 1 in 10138.

Then he talks about how unlikely “the second law of thermodynamics will be reversed in a given situation” and concludes,

Stating it simply, based on these thirteen prophecies alone, the Bible record may be said to be vastly more reliable than the second law of thermodynamics.

The Christian who wants to accept this as true has their sound bite, though a brittle one. As these posts have shown, each of these prophecy claims crumble with a little investigation.

Each reader should feel free to make his own reasonable estimates of probability for the chance fulfillment of the prophecies cited here.

There is no “chance fulfillment of the prophecies” when there was no prophecy and the natural explanation works fine, but I accept your challenge. 1×1×1×1×1×1×1×1×1×1×1×1×1 = 1 (no, not 1 in 10138).

Ross wraps up by saying that, given that the Bible is so fabulously correct, the Bible’s 500 upcoming prophecies “will be fulfilled to the last letter.” Who can risk ignoring these upcoming events, missing out on the blessings of Jesus, and blah blah blah?

Conclusion

As I’ve researched each of Ross’s claims, I’ve been amazed at how elementary these mistakes are, and this is from a guy with a doctorate in physics. But perhaps I should be more accustomed to this. We see many credentialed scholars who ineptly step in to help out their powerless Jesus. William Lane Craig has two doctorates, and John Lennox and John Warwick Montgomery have three.

You say the Bible has a prophecy from God? First make sure that it avoids the childish mistakes that Ross made in these 13 claims. Next, make sure that the prophecy meets the straightforward criteria I explore here—criteria that you’d instinctively demand from any foreign religion or supernatural claim.

Thirteen certainly hasn’t been Hugh Ross’s lucky number. That he had to cite this many rather than offering just one compelling prophecy is a clue that even he thinks they aren’t convincing.

These 13 claimed prophecies have been a useful exercise in seeing what prophecies from a perfect holy book would not look like.

I won’t insult your intelligence
by suggesting you believe what you just said.
— William F. Buckley

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(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 10/3/16.)

Image from Wikimedia (GNU Free Documentation License)

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Bible Prophecies: Jerusalem Suburbs and Conquest

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Hugh Ross of Reasons to Believe (an old-earth Creationist ministry) claims that the Bible has thousands of fulfilled prophecies, and he gives us his top 13. I find claims of prophecy particularly interesting as arguments for the truth of the Bible. Apologists often make bold prophecy claims, but they’re rarely backed up with an argument. And the argument here isn’t from an incoherent sign-carrying wacko but from the founder of a ministry that takes in $7 million per year.

Let’s continue our critique with arguments 7 and 8 (part 1 here).

7. “The exact location and construction sequence of Jerusalem’s nine suburbs was predicted by Jeremiah about 2600 years ago.”

After Israel became a modern state in 1948, “the construction of the nine suburbs has gone forward precisely in the locations and in the sequence predicted.”

Ross points to Jeremiah 31:38–40 for this precise layout of future Jerusalem (helpful interpretations of this unclear passage are here and here). One immediate problem is that modern scholars don’t agree on the location of most of the landmarks referred to in this passage—the Tower of Hananel, the Hill of Gareb, Goah, and so on. There goes Ross’s claim from his introduction that “there is no room for error.”

A second problem is that when you map out Jeremiah’s expanded Jerusalem, it extends the ancient walled city to the west and south, and maybe a bit to the southeast. But five of Jerusalem’s new suburbs are north of the ancient city. No, there is no connection between what Jeremiah imagined God predicting for Jerusalem and how it actually expanded.

8. Both the Old Testament and the New predict conquest and enslavement.

“The prophet Moses foretold (with some additions by Jeremiah and Jesus) that the ancient Jewish nation would be conquered twice and that the people would be carried off as slaves each time, first by the Babylonians (for a period of 70 years), and then by a fourth world kingdom (which we know as Rome). The second conqueror, Moses said, would take the Jews captive to Egypt in ships, selling them or giving them away as slaves to all parts of the world. Both of these predictions were fulfilled to the letter, the first in 607 BC and the second in AD 70. God’s spokesmen said, further, that the Jews would remain scattered throughout the entire world for many generations, but without becoming assimilated by the peoples or of other nations, and that the Jews would one day return to the land of Palestine to re-establish for a second time their nation.”

Fire from the sky to punish the unfaithful + Babylonian conquest

Ross cites five passages for support. First, Deuteronomy 29 has Moses cautioning the Israelites to not tolerate anyone within their ranks who worships the gods of other nations. “The Lord will single them out from all the tribes of Israel for disaster” (29:21). As with prophecy #6, this disaster is of the Sodom and Gomorrah type: “The whole land will be a burning waste of salt and sulfur—nothing planted, nothing sprouting, no vegetation growing on it” (29:22–3). Both the singling out of just the backsliders and the fire-and-brimstone punishment conflict with Ross’s view that this describes a conquest by either Babylonians or Romans.

Not only does this not fit Ross’s conquest hypothesis, but the dates don’t work out, either. The Babylonian conquest happened in 605 BCE, with enslavement happening in stages from 597–581. Moses supposedly lived long before that, but Deuteronomy was “discovered” (or planted) by King Josiah in 622*, and then it was edited over the next century. Chapter 29 (and more) were added after the end of the exile in 539 BCE. There’s not much of a prophecy when a document written after 539 BCE is accurate about something that happened decades earlier in 605 BCE.

Gathering of the tribes

Second: Isaiah 11 says that a descendant of King David will usher in a time of peace in which “the wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat, the calf and the lion and the yearling together; and a little child will lead them.” It won’t be so peaceful for the countries that Israel conquers, however.

Ross cites 11:11–13, which says that, as part of reuniting Israel, God gathers in scattered people from the twelve tribes. Modern Israel does exist, but neither the prophesied supernatural peace nor Israel conquering Edom, Moab, and Ammon (roughly modern Jordan) has happened. Many Jews have indeed returned to Israel, but less than half of Jews worldwide live there.

70 years of captivity

Third: Jeremiah 25:11 says, “This whole country will become a desolate wasteland, and these nations will serve the king of Babylon seventy years.”

Let’s check some dates: Jeremiah was written in 627–586 BCE. The first captives were sent to Babylon in 597, and Cyrus freed them in 539 BCE, which is a captivity of 58 years. If we round it up to the pleasing 70 (seven is the number of completion) by saying that people returned to Judah in stages, have we finally found a prophecy that is sort of correct? Not really, since Jeremiah may have been edited after the exile.

Fourth: Hosea 3:4–5 talks about Israel enduring a long period “without king or prince, without sacrifice or sacred stones, without [sacred garments] or household gods.” After this, they will return, trembling, to God.

But the exile that this anticipates is that due to the Assyrians, which completed their conquest of Israel in 722 BCE. Ross, you’ll remember, was instead referring to the Babylonians.

(The positive reference to “household gods” may be startling, especially since the Deuteronomy passage cautioned against worshipping the gods of other nations. It’s possible that at this early stage of Judaism, not only were other gods acknowledged, but some gods of limited power could be worshipped along with Yahweh the supreme god. More about Hebrew polytheism here.)

Ross’s final citation is Luke 21:23–4, which talks about the destruction of Jerusalem, but where’s the prophecy? The First Jewish-Roman War ended in 73 CE, and Luke is thought to have been written in 80 CE or later.

Ross really needs to avoid bold claims like “fulfilled to the letter.” Go back to 1 here and reread all that Ross says these passages clearly prophesy to see how badly wrong he got it.

Continue in part 4.

I prayed for freedom for twenty years,
but received no answer until I prayed with my legs.
— Frederick Douglass

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*Richard Friedman, Who Wrote the Bible? p. 116–17.

(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 9/26/16.)

Image from National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, public domain

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