Template:Foreknowledge/doc

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Usage

Criteria

For the criteria:

{{foreknowledge
|1=Text
|2=TextAsAdjective}}

Gives:

For a statement to be TextAsAdjective foreknowledge, it must fit all of the five following criteria:

  1. It must be accurate. A statement cannot be TextAsAdjective foreknowledge if it is not accurate, because knowledge (and thus foreknowledge) excludes inaccurate statements. TLDR: It's true.
  2. It must be in the Text. A statement cannot be TextAsAdjective foreknowledge if it is not in the Text, because TextAsAdjective by definition foreknowledge can only come from the Text itself, rather than modern reinterpretations of the text. TLDR: It's in plain words in the Text.
  3. It must be precise and unambiguous. A statement cannot be TextAsAdjective foreknowledge if meaningless philosophical musings or multiple possible ideas could fulfill the foreknowledge, because ambiguity prevents one from knowing whether the foreknowledge was intentional rather than accidental. TLDR: Vague "predictions" don't count.
  4. It must be improbable. A statement cannot be TextAsAdjective foreknowledge if it reasonably could be the result of a pure guess, because foreknowledge requires a person to actually know something true, while a correct guess doesn't mean that the guesser knows anything. This also excludes contemporary beliefs that happened to be true, but were believed to be true without solid evidence. TLDR: Lucky guesses don't count.
  5. It must have been unknown. A statement cannot be TextAsAdjective foreknowledge if it reasonably could be the result of an educated guess based off contemporary knowledge, because foreknowledge requires a person to know a statement when it would have been impossible, outside of supernatural power, for that person to know it. TLDR: Ideas of the time don't count.

Checklist

For the checklist:

{{foreknowledge
|1=Text
|2=TextAsAdjective
|3=Claim
|4=ClaimTrue
|5=ClaimTextual
|6=ClaimUnambiguous
|7=ClaimImprobable
|8=ClaimUnknown
|9=ClaimForeknowledge}}

Gives:

Summary of claim: The Text accurately Claim, which would have been unknowable.
Does this statement meet all criteria necessary for TextAsAdjective foreknowledge?

  1. Is it accurate? ClaimAccurate
  2. Is it in the Text? ClaimTextual
  3. Is it precise and unambiguous? ClaimUnambiguous
  4. It must be improbable. A statement cannot be TextAsAdjective foreknowledge if it reasonably could be the result of a pure guess, because foreknowledge requires a person to actually know something true, while a correct guess doesn't mean that the guesser knows anything. This also excludes contemporary beliefs that happened to be true, but were believed to be true without solid evidence. TLDR: Lucky guesses don't count.
  5. Was it unknown? ClaimUnknown
    Thus, this statement ClaimForeknowledge an example of TextAsAdjective foreknowledge.

Problems

For the problems:

{{foreknowledge
|1=Text
|10=Filler}}

A few generic faults plague effectively all "foreknowledge" in sacred texts:

  • Scientific and historical knowledge necessarily must detail every process as accurately and precisely as possible. It is not scientific merely to make vague assertions, such as, "our bodies are made of the same stuff as the earth is," or "rain falls and waters our crops", because these claims are very ambiguous.
  • Very few religious texts actually aim to provide detailed knowledge about the world (in the way that science and historical analysis do). The vast majority of statements from the Text, and most other religious texts, are religious messages to followers, moral rules, or statements aimed at converting heathens.
  • Even if some of the claims of "foreknowledge" were true, there are a vastly greater number of statements in the Text with no basis whatsoever in fact. Even if every one of the claims presented here were correct (which they manifestly are not), they would still be vastly outnumbered by the absurdities.
  • It's also interesting that discoveries are very rarely "predicted" by the Text until after the discovery has already been made. One would imagine that a book so full of foreknowledge would be used to predict future discoveries, while it appears that the Text can only "predict" current knowledge.

See also