Prophecy, generally considered a divine revelation or a glimpse of future events, acquires, upon close examination, a function internal to religion. The last article on religions as epistemological machines didn't go far enough and merely described the mechanical foundations of a religion: how they are an extension of our animal nature. We are, in a way, caught in loops, Loops mental. Each of our thoughts and actions is associated with a neural circuit that is always strengthened when used: we call these neural circuits " Theories and the resulting actions of the ritual In this perspective, prophecy is a strategy for falsifying religious theories, allowing a new belief system to emerge. This article will explore this hypothesis by examining Jewish, Christian, and Muslim messianic expectations and analyzing how these prophecies could be seen as mechanisms of falsification. We will then conclude by discussing conversion as an individual mechanism for discovering the truths contained within a religion.
Falsifiability: scientific certification
To say that a theory, whether referring to a neural circuit or an interconnected set of statements, is falsifiable means that it allows for the possibility of being contradicted by experience or empirical observation. Thus, science sought to distinguish itself from religion with this precept. If a theory is unfalsifiable, then it is not scientific. For example, if I say "all geese are white," then I am putting forward a scientific theory because it is falsifiable: simply seeing a black goose is enough to falsify this theory (and this has indeed happened).[1]
Where science errs in distinguishing itself from the other epistemological constructs we call religions is in focusing on the conceptions of God held by religions, while neglecting the values, the network of symbols, and the prophecies themselves: as if religion were solely about God. This is because they confuse religion with theology. Indeed, a theology cannot be falsified, but it can be contradicted. We will see that this is the case between Christianity and Islam. These are instances where a new religion emerges without having fulfilled the prophecies of the previous one, while presenting itself as its continuation.
Jewish messianic expectations
Jews believe in a Messiah, a king anointed by God who will restore the kingdom of Israel and whose reign will be a golden age for that people. According to prophecy, the Messiah will be a descendant of David, and his coming will mark the beginning of a new era, where peace and prosperity will reign on Earth. "The Messiah, as king and priest, represents the ultimate fulfillment of God's promise to Abraham and his people, and the realization of the vision of universal peace and justice."[2] This expectation represents the falsifiability of the "Jewish religion" theory, where the Messiah establishes a new religion that replaces the previous one: the falsifiability of religion is what is called hope(Yes, the world sucks that much.)
However, it's important to understand that in the Book of Joshua, the prophecy has already been fulfilled: the Promised Land was given, then lost in exile, and finally recovered thanks to Cyrus, who was then seen as a messianic figure. The theory is flawed because the roots of the Jewish people lie in this promise of a land: as long as they do not possess the Promised Land, they will continue to invoke this prophecy in the texts. The prophecy has been fulfilled, but the Messiahs who came have not corrupted the Jewish religion; at least, only one has succeeded, and only partially. His name is Jesus.
Thus, we can see that the theory is falsifiable: it's just that we often have to look to the past to see how it has been falsified. The Tanakh is a self-sufficient text: the prophecies it contains are considered essential, and the rest could have happened without being noticed: so I consider the Book of the Tanakh closed and resolute for myself. Even the curse of God, who prophesied that the Israelites would eat their children if the covenant was not respected by them, came to pass (2 Kings 6:29), thus we can already consider the pact broken. This is because the Jewish religion, and we will see also the Christian religion, are both caught in a cyclical temporality where it is the neural circuits that keep them in a state of expectation. They expect, in a way, an eternal return, as Nietzsche would say (Thus Spake Zarathustra), himself a prophet: everything that happens is destined to happen again, and we are condemned to live the same lives over and over. Nietzsche made the only prophecy I want to invalidate. You can't blame them for wanting to maintain hope. I hope I can do something about it. In the meantime, let's see how Jesus led Israel out of its religion to create Judaism and Christianity.
How to “pull a Jesus” 101
The steps to follow are:
- We are fulfilling the prerequisites of the prophecies…
- …shattering all expectations…
- …in order to trigger a transvaluation of all values and of the world.
I won't go into the details, but broadly speaking, Jesus (re)fulfilled the prophecies of the Old Testament in a completely unexpected way, and the response led to the rift between Christian and Jewish beliefs. While the Israelites expected an epic and grandiose resolution to the promises of the Holy Scriptures, since they had already read about Joshua (the similarity of the names was not accidental), Jesus delivered them in a humble and symbolic way. Jesus is the prophet of symbolism.
The Israelites now had two choices: accept Jesus as the Messiah or reject him as a Jesus-but-no. Accepting him meant acknowledging that they had been wrong about God, the world, and their religion, and that everything had to be rethought, leaving no stone unturned "(as Hannah Arendt said of ideology). The debates raged, but hit a wall: it's a matter of faith after all. Many even thought Jesus was a troll and that it was all a staged event to mock their religion: that's how shattered their expectations were. So, as much as they were shocked by the broken expectations, they also doubted the sincerity of the other position."
And this other position, if we compare it to "ancient Judaism" (which is in truth the religion of Israel), reveals extraordinary innovations that Jesus himself did not theorize (he only alludes to something that could be a hell "where there is gnashing of teeth"... that's not Dante). The innovations of Christianity are: heaven, hell, and purgatory, and the soul as well, and suddenly, everyone's world was turned upside down. The first Christians discovered a new world and a new afterlife/heaven. As he prophesied: "This world and heaven will pass away, but my word will never pass away." Thus, the world in which we live is that of a religious genius: the secular nature of the state is his invention.[3]The individual and egalitarianism too[4]…it's as if for over two thousand years all our political debates have revolved around the details of the principles he established. Even philosophy, culminating with Hegel, sought to understand how he could contradict himself so much while still making sense.[5]
So we can understand our societies from end to end as being Christian to the core. OnlyFans? "This is my body, which is for you, my followers “…so having followers, being followed by others, as Jesus was followed, is a particularly Christian phenomenon. Just like the teenage crisis: Jesus said he came with a sword to separate parents from their children, and even today, Christian parents are so annoying that children have a teenage crisis. We are, it seems, truly in the Kingdom of Heaven: this is indeed the world that Jesus created. And yet, we still look to heaven, waiting for his return…”
Christian Messianic Expectations
Christians await the return of Jesus to establish the Kingdom of Heaven, a spiritual kingdom that will replace current earthly governments. According to Christian tradition, Jesus Christ is indeed the Messiah promised to the Jews and the Son of God, so why don't they consider what we have to be the promised Kingdom? His coming as Messiah destroyed the previous world, that of Israel, and the Kingdom of Heaven replaces the beliefs and traditions of Israel: we then have Judaism, which does not believe it is in the Kingdom of Heaven, and Christianity, which believed it in the past, but no longer does. We can read in a Catholic Gospel, a section on this belief: "Christ, as King of the Kingdom of Heaven, is the center of our faith and the hope of our salvation." This shows just how flawed this simulation is… When it's been 2000 years since the guy came back, it's safe move on.
Once again, the promise has already been fulfilled: Jesus falsified the religion of Israel, and he reunited a Church that was now bound only by family ties. What Christians are waiting for is a second act from Jesus Christ. They already have everything they need to establish the Kingdom of Heaven: trillions of dollars, liberal values, the masses, and individualism; all they would need is the will to do it. But Christians, instead of building the Kingdom as they themselves envision it, are waiting for Jesus to return, even though, in the Gospels, he has already returned: then he left again, and two unnamed men dressed in white said he would return. Well, I believe he has returned! It was Karl Marx[6] : with the formula to make this famous Kingdom where all workers are paid the same wage whether they work one hour or twelve hours a day (go back and read the parables, Jesus does indeed describe a Kingdom with a fairly generous communist wage system) and where everyone is fed, as if by magic.
All things considered, the Second Coming is not even a promise of Jesus, but of two strangers dressed in white, who nevertheless say: “Why stand here gazing into the sky? This Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you saw him go into heaven.” (Acts 1:10-11) In the same way they saw him… that is to say, in a small, select group of apostles, and not some kind of end-of-the-world show we might imagine. I repeat, “ Why stand there looking up at the sky? "So make it the Kingdom of Heaven! If you absolutely want a Jesus, I can be Jesus too[7] : The contact form is here.I'm playing Judge-Joy. We'll symbolically crucify the Pope on Madonna's disco cross to inaugurate, after my punk-Christianity, the religion of "disco-pop(e)".
Muslim messianic expectations
For Muslims, the Messiah has already come; they recognize him as Jesus, but instead of falsification, they proceed by contradiction: a purely theoretical method. It is the Christian belief system itself that is contradicted.[8] through a simple and effective conception of God. Christians say that the Father is God, the Holy Spirit is God, and Jesus is God, but the Father is not the Son, the Holy Spirit is not the Father, and so on. Islam makes this Trinity a mere symbol, a kind of idol that conceals the true God: thus Christianity fails this test of monotheism, and thus Muslims direct their religion toward a God who underlies the Holy Trinity: this is the true God. Just as Christians have elaborated on YHWH/Jehovah, Islam bets on a more fundamental God that reveals the Christian God as a symbol. Yet this religion is just as susceptible to distortion.
Therefore, Muslims await the coming of the Mahdi, an imam (guide) who will appear to revitalize Islam and establish justice and peace on Earth. According to Muslim tradition, the Mahdi is a descendant of the Prophet Muhammad, and his arrival will mark the end of times and the emergence of a new spiritual era. This expectation can also be seen as a prophecy of falsification, where the Mahdi establishes a new religion: true Islam, which replaces previous interpretations and practices. Mahdi means "convert." Thus, he is the imam, the spiritual guide who has converted to an Islam that no one practices (because it is the true Islam that was only discovered by the Mahdi, who comes to establish it for world peace).
Well, this Mahdi met the same fate as Jesus Christ. He is called the Bab, "the gate," and opened the gate to the successor of Islam: the Baha'i religion, which in this "Islamic" context would be the "true" Islam. Indeed, the majority of Muslims doubt the Bab, Baha'u'llah, and his Baha'i—who nevertheless heralded a new spiritual era, as promised by prophecy, in the middle of the 19th century.e century which was factually a turning point in our ways of being (Factually, too, the Ba hais (Bab, Baha'u'llah, Baha'i) are more of a running gag in Islam but I believe in them, just as I believe in Shabbetai Tzviand in all those who call themselves Prophets or Messiah: for if you falsify, I am.), but as with Christianity, something grandiose is expected. But in truth, the falsification of religions is a process that doesn't require this: there are some minimal conditions to fulfill, but since expectations can be demolished at such fundamental levels that the entire worldview is subjected to deconstruction and reconstruction, then if I can be Jesus-Too, I can absolutely also do the Mahdi Also, it means: he told me everything, I knew everything, everything, everything![9]
After all, if your prophecy is that the Mahdi will return to establish true Islam, it means that, deep down, you believe your current Islam isn't the real one. It shouldn't be that difficult to rally to the Cause if your belief system tells you that you don't have the right religion: if we believe in Islam, then we believe in the prophecy of the true Islam of the future and therefore, at the same time, in the inauthentic Islam of the present.[10] And me, I'm a Muslim, I believe. And I'm also a Christian, because "J†". Plus, I'm a Marxist, I believe. And I'm only procrastinating on going to the synagogue to formalize my Jewishness… because although I said that Joshua already fulfilled the prophecy of the Messiah of Israel, that doesn't mean I don't cut the cross: I run king in them and I crush in myself! I curse you all! If this is madness, well I'm Mahdi.[11] I take belief systems very seriously; I approach them like a surgeon approaches a patient's body. That doesn't stop me from operating on several patients in a single day, or from joking with colleagues. If I make jokes with puns, it's because all religious texts are full of puns (if you read them in the original language, of course), and these articles, while not intended to be sacred texts, are inspired by all those I've read so far.
The implications of the falsification of religions
But how can someone like me be so cynical in my approach to and study of the matter, and yet believe in it with all my heart? It's simply because the transvaluation of values and the world that is sought is a genuine quest on my part. We can see "societies" as a sounding board where vibrations culminate at a nerve center where an individual resides who, in order to survive so much noise and discordant waves, first undertakes this transvaluation himself. Once it has taken place, he can no longer go back. He has entered a new world, and he has only one option left, only one thing he can do: to let go of the old world.
“This world and this heaven will pass away, but my word will never pass away.” Jesus was able to make this prophecy because he knew very well what he was doing, and that either the prophecy would be lost after a while and no one would remember it, or it would be fulfilled. Thus, a prophet loses nothing by making this kind of prophecy. The falsification of religions by religious genius is a phenomenon that can be observed historically: study the case of Jesus more deeply, because Judaism is well documented, unlike Islam, about which we have little information regarding the polytheistic religions that preceded it. Moreover, Jesus fulfilled the prophecies of Judaism, which is not the case with the Prophet Muhammad, who arrived rather like a hurricane.
The prophecies that lead to the creation of a new faith, and which dramatically replace existing belief systems, are produced with the aim of stabilizing the existing system: a prophet doesn't want his work to be overturned by his sooner-arriving successor. However, these ancient religions are now obsolete. The falsification of a religion generally makes quite a stir, so much so that during the lifetime of Jesus' apostles, they spread the religion as far as Rome. On the Islamic side, the phenomenon of Muhammad managed to make thousands of converts during his lifetime and by his own efforts. Jesus didn't convert people: he healed the sick. It was his resurrection that allowed the apostles to transform his life into a new religion with material for conversion. Jewish, Christian, and Muslim messianic expectations clearly illustrate the dynamic of falsification where prophecies are used to establish new religions that replace old ones: even Islam has had micro-Jesus in the persons of the Bab and Baha'u'llah.
Conclusion
So what about the scientific validation that religion acquires through falsification? Well, whoever validates the new prophet passes from one world to another. In doing so, they acquire knowledge about human nature that is otherwise inaccessible, provided they truly understand what the transition from one religion to another entails. It is human behavior, which at first appears chaotic and lawless, that suddenly seems to make sense, as if the pieces of a puzzle have fallen into place.
I learned so much about humanity by studying the transition from Israel to Judaism and Christianity. And similarly, by adding Islam to my understanding and exploring how it differs from Christianity. And again with the Baha'i Faith. Conversion is never a negation of the past. Like when you convert a file on a computer, the original file remains: and that's incredibly enriching. So, even if I sound cynical, I've gained so much knowledge about humanity through religions (I should mention my background in humanities studies), that I can't help but believe in them as something real. Cynical doesn't mean you don't believe; it means you're an active participant, not just a passive observer.
I studied philosophy, where the term for Islamic tradition is falsafa. I believe that all languages are interconnected and that the falsification of a religion necessarily involves philosophy. Perhaps it's time to falsify religions to the point where it becomes the philosophization of religions. Once a religion has been thoroughly philosophized, it can be falsified into a new religion.
[1] You can read more about falsifiability in a book by Karl Popper. I'm not in an academic setting, so I won't bother looking up the reference for you.
[2] Jewish Cultural Institute, "The Messiah and the Redemption of the World" (All references were retrieved by artificial intelligence, hence their less-than-ideal quality, but I'm sure it can be improved)
[3] No religion gives so much to Caesar while also giving to God; religions go hand in hand with politics, so much so that we can say politics is an invention of Christianity. Without Christian influence, it is still the gods who clash among the people. Thus, Moses gave the law! The same for the Prophet Muhammad. Jesus, for his part, gave general principles, parables, etc. He handed legislation over to Caesar, a pagan elite that did not discriminate between the gods and that adopted the Athenians as its model and its academic language. We can still see religious courts in several countries: as in Lebanon, where everyone is judged according to the law of their faith. If the court is secular/liberal, it is because it is a Christian court. (To say "Catholic secularism" is like saying "going up high.")
[4] By breaking family ties and uniting believers in the body of Christ of which each is a member (yes, the term member comes from the body of Christ), there is the appearance of the individual on a vast scale: a person is no longer the representative of his family, he is a brother or sister of the Church where all are equal… before the priest… alas!
[5] I answered this question in a previous article: it's that The law of non-contradiction is not a true law of the cosmos. It's a weapon we use to invalidate one another. It's simply that with Jesus, we wanted to validate everything he said. When he said, "Whoever believes in me will live, even though they die," that's when we invented the soul and life after death. We wanted to validate him completely, and in doing so, we created a new world. All it takes is to stand behind an individual and relentlessly try to resolve the contradictions in what they say to recreate the world. That's what happened with Muhammad too: we can explain all the contradictions in the Quran because there's a long tradition of Islamic scholarship that has addressed these contradictions in the same way as with Jesus. When it comes to truth revealed by the divine, we structure our entire way of thinking around that revelation. This means we can very well live with certain contradictions. (Of course, there is a limit, and these are roughly the antilogies.)
[6] And with Karl-Marx-Christ, we also had Saint Paul-Lenin, who made the same Pharisaical translation of good principles into a dubious institution. This is the mode of Christian prophecy, which is analogous to the process of nourishment: there is always a hungry forerunner announcing, as an appetizer, an upcoming novelty of a higher nature (a Saint John the Baptist, an Elijah), the main course that satisfies the hunger (a Jesus), and a successor, most often a Pharisee figure, who comes as a digestif to tell us how to absorb what we have just read (a Saint Paul, an epistolary saint). There is something ironic about Jesus choosing a Pharisee as his successor; it is as if he were turning the other cheek. “Very well, you put me to death and I was raised. Now do the same with my teachings; they will rise again just as quickly when the next Jesus arrives.” And here I am! Don't get bogged down in the details; Jesus knew perfectly well what he was doing and knew that another like him would emerge from the new world he created. Being a Jesus is more of a role a person is called to play within a group dynamic, enabling it to move forward by anticipating the challenges the future holds and providing it with new neural pathways. Pentecost is the phenomenon that occurred while these neural pathways were being rewired to accommodate the new theoretical and ethical framework.
[7] I didn't adopt the pseudonym Messy Erzast for nothing. Moreover, my real name in Hebrew is Ysra'el Shaddaïk, which translates to Israel (God prevails) My-Your-Almighty-God.
[8] Literally: we say against.
[9] 🧸
[10] Religions are a sandbox for contradictions: those who can live with them have no limit other than heaven. And even there, like Jesus, heaven can pass through.
[11] Parallel to the ancestor, El said: "Mahdi doesn't wait for the Medina, but dines at noon, don't put the Ba'al there, no vow of the low Heil, it freaks El out. Not with hands raised high, it's not like the Umayyad, peace is chosen, but help. Books and then true unbinding: the read πϋρφαιτ the Pürphêtes Messy@iCRL, out of impious love. Ladies excuse the gay osmosis of the Mosque to two-Adams-mass-ass, those of Damascus: where prays on the couch of Jesus-Too, El-Yah and the Mahdi: let them appear and then diss Paris." "My pure El said: it's really not for the sheikh, but for el Shaddaïk the puromancer (pure magician, pure romancer, pure-roman-sir, b rahman sar)"
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