OOP: The Prophecy was a Decoy

[David]

No: HPFGUIDX 65533

lhunneb wrote:
>  Just because the prophesy says that there is 
> someone  with the POWER to defeat Voldemort doesn't mean 
> that this person will  be successful.  After all, the prophesy 
also 
> says that one must be  killed by the hand of the other.  That 
> means that there is a  possibility that it would be Voldemort who 
> kills Harry.<<

Pippin replied:
> 
> Dumbledore says it's a "genuine prediction." That is,  he 
> believes it contains verifiable knowledge of the future. 

I do not believe this argument is logical.  Even if we assume 
that 'genuine' means 'factually accurate'  that doesn't mean 
verifiable in the sense that an experiment must be conducted to know 
it.

To say that Harry has the power to vanquish the Dark Lord can be 
true without being put to the test of experiment.  It is like saying 
that Pete Sampras in his prime was a better tennis player than Bjorn 
Borg was in his prime.  It's something you can have a go at deciding 
if it's true or false by a non-experimental methodology.

I take it Dumbledore's methodology for verifying the genuineness of 
predictions does not require practical experiment, and so we (and 
he) can't know events will culminate in Voldemort's defeat by Harry.

After all, if Voldemort defeats Harry, that doesn't falsify the 
prophecy either, just as two tennis players *can* beat each other.  
Venus has the power to vanquish Serena;  Serena has the power to 
vanquish Venus.

David