Well, this still doesn't make sense to me. Maybe somebody could elucidate me on what your point really is.
I thought of posting the infidels.org article, which IMO contains numerous inaccuracies...
I don't claim that that article is absolutely accurate and neither does the author. However, this is not the only article that addresses this topic, there are many more. Most of them show that these so called prophecies could also have other explanations. So there is no reason to assume that everything happened exactly as it is described in the bible. Especially if we consider the fact that the further we go back in time, myths and legends become more and more common.
So it is only natural to assume that many (but not all) details in bible were invented and did not really happen. Even if there are some details of which we have evidence of, like the names of ancient cities, tribes or places of important battles, doesn't mean that the rest is also true.
Of course, if you say that the bible is true because the bible says so, you don't have these problems any more but in my opinion this isn't a valid argument.
Well, this still doesn't make sense to me. Maybe somebody could elucidate me on what your point really is.
I'll take a stab at it (trusting that Diamond will correct me if I muff it) - I think you aren't that far away from him. It seems as though he's saying that you can't be sure that your skepticism is entirely justified. Somewhere out there might be evidence that would convince you of the truth of a particular thing. Because your insight and your knowledge is necessarily limited (you aren't omniscient, after all), you may not (and probably don't) have access to all the facts of the situation.
Of course it's true, but I'm not entirely sure what you're supposed to do about it - like you said, we can only operate on the evidence before us. If there's something out there we don't know about, then...well, we don't know about it, do we? And it seems just as likely that out there is evidence that would convince you of the falsity of whatever it is, but you don't know about it either ;)