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wedrifid comments on Theism, Wednesday, and Not Being Adopted - Less Wrong
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Almost all prophesies do. (But 'understand' deserves quotation marks.)
Generally, I agree with you having dealt with various other groups that also have specific prophecies and trying to understand how something so obviously false is explained away.
In any case here is where the debate is:
"and the Southern States will call on other nations, even the nation of Great Britain, as it is called, and they shall also call upon other nations, in order to defend themselves against other nations; and then war shall be poured out upon all nations." D&C 87:3 (well not all of three just from the middle to the end)
The debate is if immediately after the South called on Great Britain to help break the Northern Navel blockade that Great Britain would then be attacked by yet other nations or if some time after this call for help that Great Britain would call for help in the case of the World Wars with the Civil War being the start of the Modern Warfare employed during those wars.
Take from it what you will.
There is a simple way a deity could avoid this sort of trouble. If anyone extreme deity wanted to make a prophecy that was unambiguous they wouldn't need to bother with this sort of claim. There's a really easy type of prophesy that would have been fine until just a few years ago. "The following 200 digit number is prime: _ " If any ancient scripture had that, it would convince almost everyone once we got the technology to verify it. Curiously, regardless of religion, they always seem to be vague prophecies, which are only clear after the fact, or are likely events. We wouldn't need to have discussion about whether a verse meant to apply to a specific war, or anything like that.
True. However, that isn't what God wants. He already knows that we will follow him if we have absolute proof on the subject, this because we didn't rebel with Lucifer. He wants to know, or rather for us to know, if we will follow him when we don't have such proof.
To try and bring this into terms more familiar with this site:
It is already know that we will behave properly when it is hard coded to do so. Now the test is to see if we will behave properly when we are free to choose our own morality and utility functions. If so then we become Friendly AI (gods) of our own worlds populated with our children. If not then depending on how badly we screw up will determine what we end up being useful for and if we screw up badly enough such that when the hard coded knowledge is returned we continue to behave badly then we get cast out as being unfit for anything. To assist in this God has placed the knowledge of what to do in such a way that it is accessible if we wish to use it. To not make it too easy He also placed the discarded potential AI's (e.g. the devil and his angels) in a position to interact with us. He has also provided methods such that if we use them parts of the knowledge can be restored to us.
Hopefully that is helpful and doesn't step on too many toes.