Prophecies

First(Sorry, you asked for it), an explanation on fulfilled prophecies with the help of David Hume and Nostradamus.

My part of the explanation goes like this. If a thousand people wrote a thousand different stories, each with a vague writing style, and these stories were compiled in a book; after a thousand years, would it be easy to fit any of these stories to an occurrence in history? History, of coarse, is written by the victors, so history can be vague and one sided as well.

That explanation may not have made sense, but consider this;
I once believed the world was going to end in 2012, because of the predictions that Nostradamus made that actually came true(Hitler's rise to power among many others).

Before I allowed myself to fall into the trap of belief without evidence, I read through all opinions on Nostradamus' work. I even read the translated prophecies. It surprised me that about 50% of his prophecies could be related to something that had happened. And they were were VERY vague. One had scrutinize every symbol to get some sort of meaning behind the images and words. What this meant was that prophecies were sort of like horoscopes. They're always vague, but people tend to believe them by fitting them into a situation even if there isn't any concrete evidence.

That was not the reason I stopped believing the world would end in 2012. It was months later when I read Neil Gaiman's Sandman. There was a comic involving the same bar being visited every century from the middle ages till the year 2000. In the first strip(the year 1500), there's a few people saying that it seems as if the world is coming to end the way things are going. Then in the last strip(the year 2000), there are people having the same exact conversation. That comic strip was enough to change my mind entirely.

It showed me that men are subconsciously aware and afraid of their inescapable doom. It is true the world will end; but just for them. Once you die, your world ends. People are generally afraid of losing. Death, being the worst way of losing, brings out the 'bad loser' attitude in people. "If I'm going to die, then so is the rest of the world."

Whether or not the world ends in 2012, it is stupid and wasteful to cling on to prophecies like that.

David Hume's explanation on miracles(which are related to prophecies, since most consider the fulfillment of prophecies to be miracles):

• People often lie, and they have good reasons to lie about miracles occurring either because they believe they are doing so for the benefit of their religion or because of the fame that results.
• People by nature enjoy relating miracles they have heard without caring for their veracity and thus miracles are easily transmitted even where false.
• Hume notes that miracles seem to occur mostly in "ignorant" and "barbarous" nations and times, and the reason they don't occur in the "civilized" societies is such societies aren't awed by what they know to be natural events.
• The miracles of each religion argue against all other religions and their miracles, and so even if a proportion of all reported miracles across the world fit Hume's requirement for belief, the miracles of each religion make the other less likely.

Let's keep in mind that religions aren't as constant as they seem. Islam for instance was not represented by the crescent moon and star until the year 1453(hundreds of years after the founding of Islam) when the Turks conquered Constantinople. The crescent moon and star were, in fact, ancient Sumerian symbols of night, so prophecies and histories may be altered and kept sacred so that they seem like fact. Think about it, you're not allowed to question so many aspects of religion. What have they got to hide? And if you bring this up, religious people get angry.


That is all I have to say about prophecies.