Prophetic Texts
December 18, 2007 · Filed Under Religion
I want to put some thoughts down on the concept of prophecy in the sense of predictions made about future events. I had written several paragraphs before I discovered the term ‘postdiction’ and its accompanying Wikipedia entry. It sums up well the concepts I had previously written so I’ve integrated its content into my article.
The problems I have with the candidates that I have seen put forward as examples of ‘prophecy’ can be summarised as:
- Vagueness: The predictions contain language that is vague, meaning that reasonable people can come to divergent conclusions on whether the prophecy has come true. Independent observers should be able to agree in advance what constitutes the fulfilment of the prophecy. The most important elements I can think of are time and place.
- Unlikelihood: The predictions describe events that, when fully considered, are not as unlikely as they seem. The fall of a city in a time and place where war is common is one example.
- Hit-to-miss ratio: A text that is said to be prophetic should successfully predict future events at a greater rate than other non-prophetic documents. This requires that predictions and non-predictions be clearly identified and their success or failure readily determined at the time of assessment.
The Wikipedia article adds several other frequent features of prophetic statements. They are: open ended, recycled, catch-all, shotgunning, unfalsifiable, unavailable until after the fact, allegory and moving the goalposts.
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