Evidence for God from Science

Hey There, I have been reading a lot of the prophecies in the Old Testament. One of my favorites is in Isaiah 53 where there was a beautiful prediction of the coming Messiah. One thing a debating atheist told me is that the earliest Old Testament copy we have is after Christ and that all the prophecies were put into the Old Testament later to make the Bible more believable. Is this even a plausible debate? Is it even remotely possible that all these prophecies were put into the Old Testament after the fact?

No, they were there BEFORE the NT was written ( we know this for a fact by the way).
They were, however, interpreted in the NT via the experience of what the apostles SAW with Christ and by how the HS opened their eyes to the OT prophecies.
We have samples of them from the Dead Sea scrolls for example, dated before the NT.

wpthird wrote:Hey There, I have been reading a lot of the prophecies in the Old Testament. One of my favorites is in Isaiah 53 where there was a beautiful prediction of the coming Messiah. One thing a debating atheist told me is that the earliest Old Testament copy we have is after Christ and that all the prophecies were put into the Old Testament later to make the Bible more believable. Is this even a plausible debate? Is it even remotely possible that all these prophecies were put into the Old Testament after the fact?

Atheists like to explain away evidence the bible is true and depending on how far into atheism they are they have talking points they have convinced themselves refutes all of the arguments,evidence and reasons to believe in God.So that once a Christian points to some kind of evidence they have a talking point that they think refutes it that they use against it.

abelcainsbrother wrote:

wpthird wrote:Hey There, I have been reading a lot of the prophecies in the Old Testament. One of my favorites is in Isaiah 53 where there was a beautiful prediction of the coming Messiah. One thing a debating atheist told me is that the earliest Old Testament copy we have is after Christ and that all the prophecies were put into the Old Testament later to make the Bible more believable. Is this even a plausible debate? Is it even remotely possible that all these prophecies were put into the Old Testament after the fact?

Atheists like to explain away evidence the bible is true and depending on how far into atheism they are they have talking points they have convinced themselves refutes all of the arguments,evidence and reasons to believe in God.So that once a Christian points to some kind of evidence they have a talking point that they think refutes it that they use against it.

If only people would debate atheism with Gap Theory. That would destroy atheism.

wpthird wrote:Hey There, I have been reading a lot of the prophecies in the Old Testament. One of my favorites is in Isaiah 53 where there was a beautiful prediction of the coming Messiah. One thing a debating atheist told me is that the earliest Old Testament copy we have is after Christ and that all the prophecies were put into the Old Testament later to make the Bible more believable. Is this even a plausible debate? Is it even remotely possible that all these prophecies were put into the Old Testament after the fact?

Such shows me you're dealing with really a lay Atheist who really hasn't yet thought about or developed a response to Messianic prophecies. It seems like a response made off the cuff, built upon presumptions without any real knowledge. You should just tell him to do a bit more investigating into dates of books that comprise the OT. If he's not interested, then well, he's not interested. Just move on.

Unfortunately, it seems that evidences from prophecy are not spoken of much around here, not nearly as much as they should be. I don't know that much about the distant history of the site - perhaps it was discussed a lot in the past?