*insert witty title response here*

Cory,


I hope you understand that my aim wasn't to make a set of terms that can't possibly be met by any form of prophecy.  My aim is to set a rigorous bar that would hopefully weed out all false prophecies and prophets. Of course this means that "true" prophecies don't make the cut. Unfortunately, I don't know how to lower the standards and keep it from including non-true prophecies.


I hate to just formally discount what you're saying, or who you believe, but 5 men attesting that Joseph Smith made the prophecy when he did is no more proof that he made the prophecy when he did then the book telling me he came up with it when he said he did.  I could tell you that ten years ago I predicted who won last years superbowl, and I could probably get 5 people to say they saw me do it. That doesn't mean I did.  Modern day "psychics" do this type of scam all the time.


If his prophecy had in fact been published in 1932, then I would believe he made the prediction in 1932.  But the fact is: the earliest verifiable proof that I can find puts the prediction at 1851.  He may very well have made the prediction earlier.  But it can't be proven that he did until 1851. And if you consider D&C 130 as proof of D&C 87, then it's dated to 1842.


I'm not trying to question Joseph Smith's character, or the character of those who verify his claims.  I would rather look at the situation objectively.  If it was anyone else in this type of situation, you would have to ask yourself which is more likely: Are they actually receiving communication from God, or are they tricking you? I know enough about stage magic, confidence scams, and mentalist tricks to know it's far easier to trick someone than to find out information through psychic powers.


This really falls under section h in my earlier post on this subject.  Of course knowing we are discussing this, I would probably amend my list and add another section j: The prophecy must have verification of being given before the event and before the prophet would have any prior knowledge of the event they are predicting about.


But I think you're right.  We can probably go back and forth on D&C 87 for a while, but I don't know if we'll make any headway.  That's probably true for most prophecies and most prophets.


The end of your last post really hit upon the "intelligent design" argument.  It's actually called a "Teleological argument". I tried to cover this argument in my very first post "Atheism: Why I don't believe in the existence of god" section 6.  I'll see if I can make things a little more clear.


I understand your analogy of the universe being like a building, and that because a building has a designer, then the universe must.  Unfortunately, this is a false analogy.  I could just as easily make the analogy that the universe is like the Grand Canyon, which is amazing and complex, and happened to form because of natural means. Because the Grand Canyon doesn't have a designer, then the universe doesn't either. 


One glaring flaw I see in the "building" analogy is that there is purpose do why it is built the way it is.  A building designer doesn't route the wires from the light switch to the lamp going down the wall, out the door to the garage, back to the wall and then to the lamp.  And yet this type of "design" is common in biology.  Humans have spines that are much more conductive to animals that walk on 4 limbs. We have knee problems. Our hips are not conductive to child birth. Etc... One would think that if our universe were designed, or even if it was just that humans were modeled after the "perfect" being, our biology would show that.  But it's just the opposite.  These problems can easily be explained through evolution, which doesn't need any sort of intelligent design to function.


Another common criticism of intelligent design is that it begs the question: If the designer created the universe, then who created the designer?  And who created the designer's designer (ad infinitum)?


Well, I look forward to hearing back!


-Mike