I have previously presented to this discussion group a rational method for
identifying supernatural intervention. It is explained
http://members.aol.com/SHinrichs9/spntid.htm and will be referred to in this
note as SPNTID.
SPNTID explains that proof by elimination (PE) is a key principle for
developing a logical argument for any reality whether natural or
supernatural. According to PE to logically substantiate supernatural for a
certain event all possible purely natural hypothesis for that event need to
be ruled out by either indeterministic or deterministic principles or natural
intelligence. In the following URL I have already presented a summary of
arguments for this method. If one wants to debate the methodology then they
should do so in these discussion.
http://www.arn.org/ubb/Forum1/HTML/000534.html
http://www.arn.org/ubb/Forum1/HTML/000412.html
This note is intended to present the application of this method to a
messianic prophecy in the Old Testament. So discussion in this note should be
limited to debating the application of the method to this prophecy. Below is
listed the URL of the article that explains the prophecy and the analysis of
it using the SPNTID method. The article is briefly summarized below.
CRITIC7 = http://members.aol.com/SHinrichs9/critic7.htm
DANIEL'S MESSIAH IN THE CRITIC'S DEN
1.INTRODUCTION
2.RATIONAL METHOD FOR IDENTIFYING SUPERNATURAL CAUSE
3.INTERPETATION AND JUSTIFICATION
4.CONSERVATIVE ESTIMATE OF PROBABILITY OF SUCCESS
5.ANALOGY
6.CRITICISM AND REBUTTALS
7.CONCLUSION
8.HINRICHS REFERENCES:
The analysis in CRITIC7 proposes to rule out all possible natural hypothesis.
The key points from CRITIC7 are listed below.
There is no natural deterministic phenomenon the produces prophecy
fulfillment; thus, the two natural possibilities for prophecy fulfillment are
by chance (indeterministic natural principle) or by natural intelligence.
Both the traditional and critical authorship dates are far enough away from
the time of Jesus to justify the claim that the author of Daniel would not
have any natural intelligence to suspect that the best candidate for the
Messiah would live at the time of Jesus.
None of the Gospel writers mention this most remarkable prophecy but they do
mention many other prophecies that are much less impressive. If they were
using this Daniel 9:25 prophecy to promote the early Christian Church them it
would most likely be included in the Gospels; therefore, most likely it was
not used by the early Christian Church which wrote the Gospels. If Jesus
thought he was the Messiah because as an ordinary human he read this passage
then it is highly probable he would of publicly stated quite often that this
passage pointed to him as the Messiah. It is highly probable that this
information would have been passed to the early Christian Church which wrote
the Gospels. Thus, there is a strong basis for claiming that ordinary humans
(including Jesus if he was an ordinary human) involved with this prophecy and
it's fulfillment did not intentionally cause the success of this fulfilled
prophecy. Also, if Jesus was ordinary human then most likely he would not
have been able to determine the date for the prophecy starting point when the
decree was issued for the rebuilding of Jerusalem. Thus, it appears that the
only plausible explanation left for this prophecy fulfillment is by chance.
There are several reasonable interpretations of the Daniel 9:25 prophecy that
are successful predictions for pointing to Jesus as the Messiah. Since it is
not know whether the crucifixion of Jesus occurred in 30AD or 33 AD, in order
to be conservative, the highest probability reported by Section 4.1 or 4.2
which is 0.0071 will be considered as the conservative estimate for the
probability of the Daniel 9:25 prophecy occurring. Within these unknowns is
the possibility that the prediction was essentially exact because one
comparison matches to the day.
As for as I am aware (see Section 5 of Ref. 17), this probability is the
lowest associated with any major religious claims that there is a
supernatural intelligence that has intervened with a purpose for humans.
Thus, as far as I am aware, this evidence qualifies as extraordinary evidence
for an extraordinary claim.
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