To be sure of hitting the target, shoot first and call whatever you hit the target. – Ashleigh Brilliant

Christians are easily impressed by the supposed prophecies of the Bible. They maintain that what makes biblical prophecies unique is that none have failed, and those that have not been fulfilled yet, will be one day. For those reasons, we know that the Bible is inspired by an all-knowing God.

However, many of these prophecies have failed. For example, in Isaiah 17:1, the prophet boldly claimed that the destruction of Syria’s capital, Damascus, would soon occur. However, to this day, Damascus still exists.

More importantly, the most important prophecy in the history of Christianity has been an obvious failure. Christ promised that he would return to Earth and usher in the end times during the lifetimes of many of his followers. He made statements like “let the dead bury the dead,” “give no care for the morrow,” and so forth. Yet 2,000 years later, gullible Christians are still waiting.

Biblical prophecies are like all other supposed religious prophecies in that they usually have no specificity and no details. They are vague statements that are ideally suited for retrofitting, or cleverly fitting events to the prophecy after certain situations occur.

One of the best examples is the most well-known one. The Bible says that shortly before Christ returns, there will be wars and rumors of wars. Obviously, there have always been wars and/or rumors of wars. However, clever Christians have said that at certain times, there were more wars and rumors of wars than at other times. This is what the Jehovah’s Witnesses said during World War I. They just knew then that Jesus would return then. During the 1970s, Christians such as those belonging to the Worldwide Church of God thought that Christ would return then, given the cold war between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, the possibility and threat of nuclear war, and so on.

Today many Christians still say that there are more wars and rumors of wars than at any other time in history. However, Steven Pinker impressively demonstrated in his book The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined, that historically speaking, there are very few wars these days. Indeed, one would be hard-pressed to name more than a handful of wars going on today. Outside of the “Middle East,” and a few nations in Africa (in which there are 54 nations) it seems that there are no wars to speak of. And the Middle East has far fewer wars than it used to have. Yet many Christians still claim that Jesus will return “soon.”

Every serious biblical scholar admits that there are anachronisms and interpretations in the Bible. (This, of course, should be considered strong evidence against the extraordinary claim that the Bible is inspired by a perfect God.)

For example, at The Church of Truth we read:

. . . the account of Joshua’s conquest of Canaan is inconsistent with the archaeological evidence. Cities supposedly conquered by Joshua in the 14th century [BCE] were destroyed long before he came on the scene. Some, such as Ai and Arad, had been ruins for . . . 1000 years.

Here is a list of 22 interpolations in the New Testament. With problems such as these, why should anyone take claims of biblical prophecy seriously?

There are many other problems with claims of biblical prophecy. For example, the most important event in Jewish history must have been the Holocaust. Then why was it not clearly foretold in the Bible? How could an omniscient God have missed something as important as that?

Why do so many theists disagree about something as important as biblical prophecy? Believers from the aforementioned Worldwide Church of God believed that the U.S. and Britain’s roles in world affairs were foretold in the Bible. (Yet the omniscient God did not mention either one of these nations by name in the Bible.) The Nation of Islam teaches that the enslavement and suffering of Black people in the U.S. was foretold in the Bible. (Yet the omniscient God mentioned neither the U.S. nor African Americans in the Bible.) Some African American Christians insist that the election of ex-President Obama was foretold in the Bible. (Yet again, there was no mention of the U.S. Obama, the White House, and so on, in the Bible.)

Atheist Dan Barker once said that “a prophecy should be a prophecy.” Moreover, theists need to raise the bar for what counts as a genuine prophecy. It must show evidence, not just of predictive power, but of omniscience. All we see in the Bible is a complete waste of omniscience if the Bible is truly inspired by God.

How’s this for a prophecy? God could select a team of 90-year-old women from Bangladesh who had never played soccer a day in their lives. He could have them compete in the World Cup of soccer and guarantee that they would defeat the top soccer teams in the world by a score of 10-0. After each goal, he would guarantee that all of them would do back flips in celebration. After the tournament, he would guarantee that all of them would be slowly raptured to Heaven never to be seen on Earth again.

If all of that happened, that would be a prophecy! Yet the all-powerful, all-knowing God never allows for anything like that to occur. He is content to waste his omniscience rather than bring all human beings into his fold with strong evidence of his existence.