Checking Your Facts

Way back when I first got married, my wife and I were both curious about religion, and thought more information would be helpful. So we signed up to a course run by a local educational institute, covering the Bible - what was in it, who wrote it, etc. The instructor turned out to be very much a believer in the literal truth of the Bible, but for all that taught a fairly informative and non-denominational course. It took most of the ten weeks, for example, for one of the students to realize that he was not a Trinitarian, and take exception.

A fair way through, the question arose of why the Bible should be considered reliable. One of the instructor's arguments was the number of fulfilled prophecies in it. Immediately, I asked him to name one, and the first one that sprang into his head was the destruction of Tyre. Ezekiel chapter 26 contains a prophecy that Tyre would be destroyed and cast into the sea, and never rebuilt. Sure enough, Alexander had besieged Tyre; built a causeway out into the sea to their last redoubt using the ruins of the old city as materials; and destroyed it. And it has never been rebuilt, our instructor told us, despite the presence of a plentiful freshwater spring there.

I was immediately suspicious. There had been a lot of conflict in Lebanon over the years, as there is now. And one of the phrases I frequently heard on the news to describe the location of that conflict was... "the port city of Tyre". I tasked him with this, and he told me that modern Tyre was built on a different site.

Some quick research showed that Tyre the island was indeed built on, and a websearch showed me this site, with buildings on the causeway as well. Surely that was a rebuilt Tyre? No, our instructor said - Tyre was the part on the mainland. The island was just a fortress, and it didn't count. I found more sources that showed pretty clearly (I thought) that Tyre was principally the island, with some settlements on the mainland (Ezekiel, for one, says of it "Thy borders are in the midst of the seas"). Instructor was not convinced, and there the matter rested.

Recently it occurred to me that I had a chance to get more information. Thanks to Google Earth, I have ready access to suprisingly detailed satellite images of a great many places. Perhaps Tyre was one? Sure enough - here it is. It's really easy to spot; on the south Lebanese coast, it sticks out like a sore thumb. Good enough resolution to count the cars, if you zoom in. Take a minute to look around - I'll wait.

So what do we have? Our satellite pictures show the old island well inhabited (some ruins on it - but they are Roman ruins, and only take up part of the island). Alexander's causeway is covered in buildings, built literally on the ruins of what my instructor claimed was the real Tyre. And the mainland has more buildings on it, stretching well back from the shore. So no matter where you think Tyre was, it's been rebuilt, in direct contradiction to prophecy.

There are a number of explanations for this. If you search the web for Tyre and Ezekiel, you'll find a great many people who claim it's down the coast from the original, with no actual evidence that I can see. I believe this is just uncritical repetition of Josh Macdowell's "Evidence That Demands A Verdict", and the satellite photos eliminate this handily. At least one claims the "never be rebuilt" words are basically just trash talk; you'll forgive me, I hope, if I fail to build my religious beliefs around that. And some say that it's been rebuilt, but hasn't regained its original prominence. Fair to say that none of the major cities of the ancient world is as important now as it was then.

Of course, since the original prophecy is quite vague about when Tyre would be destroyed (you have to do some minor language bending to get the original prophecy away from predicting that Nebuchadrezzar would do all of it), it might still be destroyed. Maybe it will happen tomorrow. I haven't seen this excuse used, thankfully.

To be brutally honest, the entire thing illustrates nicely one of my big problems with religion: the evidence provided for it requires you to check your brain at the door, and it is so easy to find large numbers of people who are perfectly happy to. A sane religion would keep the whole episode quiet and chalk it up to experience; Christianity talks it up as if it were a victory. What am I to conclude about its practitioner's ability to find the truth?