Historical Verification of the Torah - Part 3 - Rabbi Dr. David Gottlieb

okay let's pick up where we were and try to try to push on we have agreed unless you tell me there's something happened over the weekend and you don't agree now we've agreed that we're looking for adequate evidence we're not looking for proofs we're not ruling out alternative possibilities we're looking at where the evidence is strongest and we looked at the evidence in particular in terms of the national experience of traditions and we said there are no known failures of such traditions and there are no known failures that means that when nations all over the world had traditions like that is enormous evidence that they are correct even if you have when they can't be checked otherwise the very fact that it is a national experience resolution is evidence that it is true now I said at the end last time that a critic could say all the examples of national experiential traditions that we are aware of and that you use as your evidence base our traditions about natural events you want to use this to support a tradition about a supernatural event isn't there a gap there isn't there a jump there and I agree that there is and I said what we have to think very carefully about number one how much opposition to supernatural events is reasonable and then once we have a picture of how much resistance is reasonable then we can ask whether the amount of testimony that we have is enough to overcome that resistance I'm not disqualifying this this objection I'm not as qualified okay there is something to it even though I'm engaged now in frustrating email correspondence with somebody who persists in misunderstanding it at any rate the first point that I made was a person who resists the supernatural in principle is a person who's in trouble because what supernatural means to any person at any time history means something that violates what his science and his culture takes as natural the person says I'm against supernatural and by that he's got a mean violates what today is held to be natural what else does he have to go on then he'll never learn that today's picture what's natural it's wrong where you learned that it's wrong is that something happens which violates it and you think you think it and improve it but if you're never going to hear that you're going to oppose it in principle then you're never going to learn that where you are is inadequate and then you know try to make progress the science that's not a good position to be in so there has to be something that tempers one's resistance what tempers it is maybe the normal level of verification the normal level of testimony isn't good enough a single observation by single person wouldn't be good enough but there are levels of observation which certainly are good enough I gave the example of someone from Greece visiting China in Greece the official philosophy was that the heavens never change the heavens are eternal and they never change that was their philosophy that was their science that was their picture of the world they weren't stupid to Greece they were very smart and that they proved fundamental theorems that stand until today Asli did a tremendous work stargazing wasn't one of their specialties then devote a great deal of societal resources to stargazing the Chinese did Chinese made very detailed star maps so this fellow from Greece is China and they tell him the reason there's at that on the paper that isn't in the skies because one of the stars disappeared the Greek now has to make a choice my whole society my whole culture our science our philosophy well tell me the heavens never change and these fellows tell me they have its to change I don't think it's impossible for him to say well look they have professional stargazers they make these maps that Maps a very detailed they care about this we're not so concerned with it and they say they saw a change maybe we're all and maybe we'll have to revise where we say the world works I think that's quite reasonable so I think that when you have careful observers careful testimony from people who generally earn your respect that's good enough to lead you to change your picture of how the world works another example that I like to use this is also just fanciful imagine people who live about three days journey from the seashore people 2,000 years ago every three years they come to the seashore for religious festival and then go back to the interior one time one of these pilgrimages a seashore they arrive at the seashore and the people there say what's good you didn't come last month oh sorry six months why not go six months ago the sea rose up a hundred feet in the air and smashed into the shore so the guys from the interior say um what have you been drinking or inhaling or injecting I mean the sea rose up 100 feet in the air that's impossible if there happens just impossible people at the shore say we know what you're thinking and we also found it very spicy we were totally unprepared for it the day was come there's no wind nothing that's wait tsunamis are right there caused by an earthquake 4000 miles away yeah you know I think about that too a thousand years ago but they say it happened this is well where all the broken trees this is the tropics man they grew back in two months there's no evidence now could the people from inland come to accept this so that we know these people these people are serious people they catch fish they build huts they have a social organisations over the Sun if they say it happened even though we have no memory of it there's no memory of it have no explanation for it whatsoever maybe they're right maybe you really get the fact that something challenged your picture of how the world works doesn't automatically mean that you simply rejected it depends upon how reliable the testimony is now what are you is a modern example which is not exactly the same but it's but so close I think to make the to make the point Madame Curie it's reported an experience that she had she was investigating pitchblende in which there was radium and she says she put it on a desk and in the drawer of the desk there was a photographic plate which is in a cover and on top of the photographic plate was a key and a metal key and after a while she took out the photographic plate and surprise of surprises the whole photographic plate was exposed that is to say it was black because I've been hit by light except for the key and where the key was it was no exposure she said the reason is because the radium sends out invisible rays is right this you know is there's an invisible race and visible rays go through the wood of the desk and they go through the cover on the photographic plate but they don't go through metal that's why they exposed the photographic plate except where the key was should we be skeptical I think we should say were you checking that you're very careful you maybe somebody just switched plates on you play joke why should I think they're invisible Ray's going through a wood and recover and that's where the much simpler to say somebody played a joke on her or some other jobs I mother mistake like that no but she was a respected scientist I think very least people said well if she reports it let's try it again there are hundreds of reports every year what individuals observe and decide that the community just rejects them dismisses them ridiculous you mean you made a mistake when you're making it up this they didn't reject why because she's a respected observer that being the case they took it very seriously something that's going to change your picture of how the world works is not out of bounds it's not beyond belief and depends upon what kind of testimony yeah now I suggest that we are talking about national experiencial traditions for which there is not a single known failure that's a very strong type of testable the president says well I wasn't inclined to believe in C splitting I wasn't inclined to believe in Revelations from heaven I wasn't inclined to believe in plagues of a kind at the third ascribes but I have a type of testimony which has never been shown to be false maybe I have to change my picture of how the world works I think that's quite reasonable that being the case I don't think we are without means to overcome the resistance resistance is reasonable resistance I think we can overcome point out to you you're not describing the evidence correctly thousands of cases of up sightings of unexplained lights that's what you have thousands of sightings of unexplained lights and sky do not have thousands of cases a little green men okay so now what we have to talk about is unexplained lights in the sky and what exhaustive investigations have been done and of the thousands at least 90% have been explained so now what do we see we see that there are lots and lots of people who make reports of lights in the sky and in the end nine out of ten we've been able to explain now does that mean that the other 10% are real UFOs maybe they're just more lights which we need more research to be able to explain so at that point on the basis of even airline pilots they didn't know that the military was testing missiles in that area because it was a secret and their land price saw the light it really saw the light it's just was a secret army missile alright so when you know that you think ok ok I know these reports come from I know the kind of that's saying if they make them up but that's an enormous amount of explanation that's been done so it doesn't care doesn't okay now as was asked last time and as I as I was happy for the question I'm emphasizing the revelation at Sinai because the whole religion rests on that without that nothing but it is true that there's a long series of such events the plagues in Egypt and the splitting of the Red Sea and the pillar of cloud and fire which led them through the wilderness which in the end did so for 40 years and the manner that they ate is we're all publicly nationally observed so it's not as if this is a single event this was all string of events that took place to this people at this time what about the thousands of other miraculous reports that we have in our tradition that aren't national I can't use this argument directly anyway to back up reports of miracles that were individual we are reports of prophets doing miracles which will have developed all's been to her tummy in terms of singularity is no different from Achilles going up on the mountain and talk with Pallas Athene II so we here live though that Elijah resurrected one person and he she learns like the two people does this both private events do we have anything that could support the records of miracles like this I think there are two points to be made here number one the verification of the public miracles has an effect it has an effect it's not direct that's what i put in the word directive moment ago but it has an effect because you imagine a person who says i have a worldview i have a way of looking at the world i certain categories and here's how i Terp with the world and miracles just isn't one of them it just isn't one of them sorry i don't have that is one of the categories for my world okay now to say i have good evidence strong evidence that there are miracles are a certain type national miracles as well i'm hoping right enough to listen to you but i'm telling you i'm skeptical you know you're not gonna push me over with a read I want good stuff here and you give him the evidence that we have and he says well I guess I'm gonna have to revise I'm going to have to rethink maybe I should add a new category called miracles to my worldview when you do that you lower the threshold for other miracles even if they aren't national once you have added the new category you lower the threshold for the for something like that I'll give you an example the kind of thing that I mean and this things at which moderns a psychologist I'm actually observed in a tree blowing in the breeze can a person glance at the tree and tell you the exact number of leaves just glance you know I'm in trouble you would be your normal human beings you have contact with people and you you know what you can do what you can't do you know very smart people can do it can't do artists can't do it can't do I think on the basis of our own natural experience we say it's just you know the way you know how many leaves I stopped the thing for moving it count them or take them take a snapshot you know really fast snapshot don't blur I count them there are people who can do that it's astonishing but they can do it big lancet the tree and tell me I could spill beans on the floor take a look hundred seventy eight so how do you do this I'll tell you one hundred seventy eight looks different for 177 you can see this image be blue and red I could see there was one hundred seventy eight nine sorry sir but you test them and they can do it I don't know if anybody knows how they do it but it's been tested okay it's been tested we find out we say wow I never would have dreamed that people could do that but we find people doing it Oliver Sacks was a famous neurologist actually a wonderful person he he worked with serious neurological deficits and he was in a home for people who were dysfunctional because the neurological deficits know a couple of twins there who were autistic he was visiting the home and he noticed them standing in the corner whispering to one another she walked up behind it and the whispering one says something and the other sort of looks against a smile on his face the other says something this one smiles you know very good so he sneaks up behind them and hears them whispering numbers numbers six digit numbers number smile oh the number it's a smile what's going on so he stands there for a while they don't notice him he's writing down the numbers goes home they're all primes they're all primes oh really primes mm-hmm guess these guys there's such a things what's called an idiot savant has no normal social capabilities but has certain kind of genius so he decides that he's going to join their gang he gets a book of primes up to twelve digits and he comes up to them one day they're doing this game with the numbers and he throws money they turned to him a little bit surprised they smile said he says and he says and Sachs sneaked him to look at his book you know says another one and no okay smell the money another game after a while he ups the ante goes up to seven digits they look at him with a gleam they start producing seven digits he goes up to eight digits they start producing eight digits eight digits takes a little longer 15 seconds to figure out whether an eight digit number is a prime that means is divisible only by the number and one no divisors in between he got them up to twelve digits they just stuck to my half a minute how could a person take a 12-digit number and determine and half a minute whether it has any divisors I don't know I would have bet almost anything to tell you 12 digit numbers nobody could do that they did it however sax is it was respected scientist his testimony alone is enough for President to say if sax reports it then it must be true we don't have explain it but we'll have to understand that you were beings could do things we didn't think they could do and rethink our position about this so forcing me to change my picture is something which good enough testimony can do and that I think is true about the division between the National supernatural now as I said private miracles then the threshold goes down if now somebody tells me he met somebody who can identify 10-digit primes in his head so I say ok so this guy's number 3 I will require a verified scientist of it to report that once I know that there is such an ability and there's another person who has the ability is much easier to accept that when you want to get me to expand my picture of the world so then you need a good solid piece of testimony once my picture the world has expanded and you want other cases is much easier to accept it so I think that the verification we have of National miracles lowers the threshold for other miracles that effect it it does happen it comes in contact with like other forms but it's so lightly how old the world is for example like it was like carbon dating and you can take like a chunk of ice and based on the layers tell like how old it is so what about where there's like an experience that comes I contacted like well I don't see a direct contact here no one claims that he experienced the creation of the world it was a whole nation that experienced the creation of the world five thousand seven and seven five years ago that was not a national experience at all okay but I'm just pointing out that it's a good question and there for our belief system there's an almost unlimited number of questions like that but but it's not a conflict between the the national spiritual tradition verification on the one hand and some secular Everest which would say for example the experience didn't happen that would be an interesting kind of thing to to adjudicate but then you would you would come up against what I tell you from my research that there are no known entities that we know are false that would be okay we have a national tradition of that type and then you have evidence against it and you would say well the national traditions is a mistake that would be very very interesting people have been trying for a decade to find some and every one that they sent to me as an example turns out not to be correct so I'm fairly confident that there aren't any if it's if it occurred then it would be something that's that's worthwhile talking about now I want to move to another type of evidence for the tradition direct piece of evidence of the tradition the gold standard in evidence for an idea is it should make a prediction it makes a prediction and it comes true that's considered to be direct important evidence that's how you test scientific theories I think we have now I just want to introduce a little bit of understanding how it's done in science and then we'll take a look at the one that I have directly you have a scientific theory makes a prediction you test the prediction that the person comes out true say it's evidence for the theory well a little more has to be said you are looking for evidence for a theory usually that's because that's not the only theory in the field there two or three or four theories in the field and you're trying to figure out which one is a better theory so when one theory makes a prediction you need to check that the other theories will reject it let's suppose I have two theories a be a says when you eat this stuff up it'll turn orange and B says when you eat this stuff up it'll turn orange so you heat it up turns orange and you're where you were before that's not going to help you decide between a and B and they says it'll turn orange and B says it'll turn purple now you have a test that's called a critical a crucial test and that's something which scientists search for so you'll be able to tell which theory is the better theory first they think one says they'll be aren't as a purple and it turns green that's not useless either then you have evidence against both of it maybe some third thing has to be right but if it turned and they both say it turns orange and it turns orange then you've gotten nowhere so when someone is offering evidence for a theory you have to ask yourself what do the others say and what you want to observe is that they say the theory says it will happen the other say won't happen and D when it happens then you have evidence for the theory against its competitors okay if you look at Deuteronomy chapter 28 through 30 this is what you'll find as a prediction there if the Jewish people fails living up to the Torah badly enough that's gonna be a disaster disaster will take the following form they'll be conquered by a nation that is vicious and cruel at least in the and the attack on them they will slaughter the population men women and children indiscriminately it will destroy the means of production agriculture industry they will exile the population the conqueror will speak a language that the Jews don't understand the result of the Exile will be scattered all over the world Jewish people will survive this and ultimately come back to the point of origin now that's what the text predicts its famous that this happened the Romans conquered us the Romans spoke Latin there was no Latin culture in Palestine in Israel at the time none whatsoever Romans the third time they beat their armies and they were very angry slaughtered the population wantonly and they destroyed agriculture and Industry and we ended up in exile we ended up scattered over the world we survived famously and I've come back what I want to point out is that this counts for us and against our competitors because every element in this prediction is very unlikely to come true very unlikely from anyone else's point of view to come true of course accepting being conquered everybody gets conquered sooner or later don't tell that to the Americans that does happen sooner or later so that's that's a giveaway that's counts for nothing because it's very safe everybody gets conquered sooner or later but to be conquered by a nation whose language you don't understand why would that be you're a conquered by a neighbor that would come out false France and Germany fought three major Wars if either one had succeeded in conquering the other prediction like that would have come out false the French understood German the German understood French largely not every French person understood German but you couldn't say it was an unknown language to the nation if we had been conquered by a neighbor the person who had been false we've been conquered by a Greek city-state we're in false because Greek was the international language of those times there was a Greek culture in the Land of Israel it's documented we even have a translation of the Passover Haggadah into Greek like the Maxwell House of those people who can read Hebrew anymore and needed a translation if it had been a neighbor or a Greek state and it conquered us the prediction would have come out false as it was was the Romans who spoke Latin we had no Latin culture at that time brutal slaughter of the population the purpose of conquest in the ancient world and down to the modern world the Buddhist purpose of it is to tax the beaten population if you slaughter healthy workers you cut down your tax base no one does that it's dumb the Romans who ran all of Europe and North Africa for 300 years did it only twice they did it to us and to Carthage every other place they defeated the army and tax the population and so it wasn't the ancient world as well someone when I gave these lectures said to us Syria had a policy of displacing populations so I looked it up in the history books turns out the Syrian policy was this you conquered the army but if you leave the local leaders that's going to lead them to rebellion so they took off the top 10% the priests the political leaders the very rich people who could be counted on to spark a rebellion but the 90% they left where they were so you couldn't tax them because an army has an empire has to run on money and you raise the money by taxing the people whose army that you could you be so because destroying the means of production agriculture exile exile creates a population of dependence beggars vagabonds you get nothing out of people who are going to exile leave where they are and tax them that's why it didn't happen it almost didn't happen at all and if the predicted it to predict something that anybody else would say it's not going to happen it's too improbable to happen now you're exiled why would you end up all over the world surely your desire would be to stay as close to home as possible after all you know the agriculture you know the the seasons you know the politics of the area you know the economy of the area would you volunteer to go to Madagascar to Alaska to Nigeria why would you do that why would you predict that it's not something which normally is going to happen and then survive 1900 years as tiny minorities scattered all over the world gonna survive that how could you predict that that's something that hasn't happened to any population on the earth ever and then come back to the point of origin that also has never happened in the entire history of the earth so you're talking about a prediction here where from any other point of view any other religion or a secular point of view the picture would be one of utter unlikely that's good that's what we want we want where we make a prediction everybody else says it's baloney it won't happen because it's too unlikely so now that it happened something which counts in our favor against other alternatives now I'm only two qualifiers so I'm not qualified but responses to worries and then we can talk about for the rest of today one is this someone said to me you're talking about the survival of the Jewish people over the last 1,900 years and you think that's unique you think that's never happened to anybody else before don't you know about the gypsies the Romani peoples well the fella wrote to me about this about eight years ago I was not aware of their history they exist all over the Western world and they have their own physical features and they had their own dialect I mean a certain common ideas and they've been scattered minorities for a thousand years so he said to me the gypsies have in history something like you're it's okay this 1,000 you guys 2,000 let's not play with the factor of two it's a thousand years of scattered minorities and they've maintained their identity so why do you think that you're special Sohrab I thank you for the letter and I did a little research research I did it on their websites the Romani peoples all over the world have no record of their history I don't know who they aren't they don't know where they came from historians have a hypothesis that they came from north and northern India thousand years ago finding as mercenaries in armies and in battles and in that way followed the battles and scattered they say that because their dialect is something similar to what people in northern India they think they spoke 1000 years ago but they have no record of their history at all number two take a look at modern gypsies Romani's there are Roman Catholic Romani's Eastern Orthodox Romani's pastor Romani's and Muslim Romani's they tend to take the religion of the lands of which they and which they live in terms of the basic values there are sharp divides there's some Romani groups that are against literacy they don't want to learn to read and write and there are others that are in favor of literacy what do they have in common they have certain physical features in college because they marry within their own I have this dialect they speak and some what the websites a common superstitions that's all which means that if you'll think of the culture they had when they left India a thousand years ago if that's true almost all of that is gone their whole history their whole identity their their basic value structure is cool their religious identification is gone I think that's a very good example it's a very good comparison the Gypsy history teaches us what you would expect of a group of people that are exiled and scattered as minorities that's gonna go it's just going to go and the exact opposite happened to us 1,900 years we have the same religion the same holidays the same calendar same basic texts from that period of time it's all been preserved did we lose some things yes so if I just make up a number we've preserved 90% they lost 90% that means that as a one playing off the other what happened to us was utterly unnatural not something that happened to anybody else in the history of the world so that being the case the Torah makes a prediction prediction came true and a prediction came true against all odds that is a piece of positive evidence that what the Torah says is true now two remarks first of all this prediction as I told you was in Deuteronomy 28 through 30 in the end of the Book of Leviticus is another prediction of conquest and destruction and exile we had two conquests where the Babylonian conquest and the Roman conquest the details at the end of Leviticus tally with the Babylonian conquest the details at the end of Deuteronomy tally with the Roman conquest mass monetise at the end of Leviticus has a long commentary there go through detail by detail and verifies so people ask me why don't you use the one in the end Leviticus also and here's the problem that the Babylonian Congress took place about 2,500 years ago the critic will say yeah Babylonians did destroy you and yes your text at the end of Leviticus does describe it in with the right details but that text is after the Congress it was written after the conquest and was inserted into the books twenty-four hundred years ago can I prove that's not true I don't have to do it maybe other people are better at this than I am I don't know how to show that it wasn't written after the event and put it to the books has a kind of retrospective written as if it were a prediction but not really so I can't use that but no one thinks that the description of the Roman conquest was put into the books after the Roman conquest after all after the Roman conquest you have a major Jewish population in Babylon if a major Jewish population Alexandria Egypt you have to choose who are scattered now North Africa they're Jews in Rome they all have texts we're supposed to imagine a major alteration of those texts all over the world identical but nobody knows nobody raising a protest no meaning of rabbis to the side should be or shouldn't we how could we prophecy is dead how do we do this nothing a silent historical record and that's why you know critic even suggests that this was written into the books after the events no one dares to say anything like that that would be harder to believe into believing in God so no one bothers to to to raise that kind of critique but there is a critique which some people have found popular those who are fully with the ID Wars the intelligent design dwarfs and so on the so on let's go back to the way I put it what is the prediction say wasn't there a little bit of vagueness in the way I put it if we fail badly enough they're badly enough it's going to be a disaster exactly how bad these badly enough and how do you quantify that and how many units of badness doesn't have to be sixty seven hundred and forty one and if you don't quantify it are you really making a prediction look the critic will say suppose it never happens are you going to give up and say you made a mistake no you'll just say it wasn't bad enough so if there's nothing that could make you give up there's nothing that can make you admit a mistake that's not really a prediction a prediction of something you have to be able to test test means you can run some kind of observation or some kind of scenario where if things don't work out well you'll admit that it was wrong no you're protected yourself you'll never admit that it was wrong so then it's not really a prediction it's not factual it's not valid it's not objective it's just nonsense there are many people who think that and we think they figure on the basis of philosophy and hard-headed critical thinking it's nonsense it's absolute nonsense and when I was going to graduate school a hundred years ago this was already thrown out that but it just hasn't percolated out to the general population let me show you why it's nonsense and then let's link to you where the fault is you've heard of the Big Bang well there are lots of big bangs there lots of theories about how it happened and for one purpose they grouped them into two groups and they say according to this group of theories the Big Bang produced a certain type of particle did a group of theories too didn't pronounce it we like to find out which group is correct so they're looking for this particle they're looking for a set of experiments if the particle goes through it wait for it so I could say hey we found one and we'll know that this group is correct this group is incorrect they're looking for it's called the magnetic monopole you want to look this up you know that magnets F two poles the North Pole South Pole yeah but this one is a 1 polled particle it's like one pole all by itself don't ask me how that could be I'm like good to tell you they're looking for the matter a magnetic monopole so these experiments are set up and they're waiting for results now let's see what could happen what could happen is someday one of the experiments will regular click and say we found one then they'll say aha we found one so we know they exist since they exist this group of theories is right this group of three or one of them and this group of theories is that suppose the experiments remain silent does it remain silent what do we know then well we don't know anything maybe they're out there we haven't found them or maybe there aren't any silent experiments don't tell you there aren't any so here's this hypothesis there are magnetic monopoles what would lead us to give that up what would lead us to say all we now know we made a mistake there's nothing in the experiments that could do that no matter how long you run it could always be that they're out there you haven't found them but this is real science boys and girls this is the realest stuff this is going on many thousands of dollars going into these experiments and they're running today someone who says that in order to have a real scientific idea it's got to be that you can create a test which will show that it's wrong is making a mistake science doesn't work that way it's enough that science or experiment observation could settle it either way maybe the observation you can't settle that it's wrong because some that's right that's worth testing that's worth taking seriously doesn't have to me that it could some prove it wrong maybe nothing to prove it wrong but something could prove it right that's exactly what we have we have a prediction about a sequence of events you're right you're right and I'm going to take this back in a minute but you're right we could always say we didn't feel badly enough so nothing happens nothing ever happens we can always say that doesn't prove I'm wrong because I could always say we didn't fail badly adapt you I don't think that's right either I suppose it were true but if it happens if it really happens then we have every reason to think that it is correct because what it predicts is something that shouldn't happen what a brilliant is something's very very unlikely to happen so this idea that since you couldn't show it wrong it's not really a prediction it's a mistake it's a mistake I said it's a well-known mistake the fact that you can't show it wrong doesn't deprive it of its validity if it's some way you could show it right and it happens I'll give you a very simple example I have a cousin Fred and fred has an ability which is really very useful he could predict the closed closing Dow Jones Industrials to exam do you say you must be joking okay watch I'll get him to write it up for you put it in a sealed envelope you keep it you keep it at 2:00 Eastern now open it up and see if you get it right suppose this happens six times in a row are you going to say was an accident down to the hundredths I think would be utterly irrational to say was an accident you can't imagine how it will be so now maybe he's a trillionaire and he's manipulating the market to make it happen maybe so but then he knows what's going to happen doesn't he he knows because he's manipulating it to make it so so at a certain point you're going to say well this shouldn't happen Backson this shouldn't happen by accident so then I'm going to give it credit now let's suppose I say that he gets it right when he concentrates hard enough doesn't always get it right he gets it right when he concentrates hard enough so you get the paper and it fails the paper again and it fails I say that's just because he wasn't concentrating or you say oh look at that god-wave you have a way out you have an escape hatch every time he fails you're gonna say because it wasn't graduating hard enough that's true that's what I'm gonna say but if he NIM gets four in a row I think you're gonna say wow that needs some explanation that's not happening but you so again even though you can't show it's wrong if it comes out right you have definite evidence that something special is going on that's where we are we have a prediction and the prediction is one that is unprimed happen if it never happens that doesn't show it's wrong but if it happens we have every good reason to say that's prediction was right now if you have the book that predicts future events and it turned out to be correct then the source of information either has to know the future because it knows or maybe it knows because it makes it happen like my trillionaire who's manipulating the market obviously something more than the ordinarily natural is going on and there I think you have a direct example of it in Deuteronomy 28 through 30 so what we have so far is the public miracles which include the whole of the Exodus plus revelation Sinai and we have this prediction of the Congress in exile survival the return of the Jewish people and the next three days well pick up some more pieces of evidence we'll start with this again tomorrow if something comes up in your minds we got to talk about you