Do you think any of today's prophets be remembered seventy to even four hundred years from now?
Ok, 2013 is just weeks from closing now and I got to thinking about all the hype on the "Mayan calendar predicting the end of the world" (and how many times going into last December did I have to post that whole explanation about the interpretation of predictions and the reason the calendar was ending), kinda laughing to myself about how we're still here despite what folks were claiming. But tat got me to thinking about all the "end of the world" predictions that have made the headlines in the past twenty years. These people have made something of a name for themselves in this day and age. Harold Camping predicted the world would end in September. 1994, October 1994, March 1995, May 2011, October 2011, obviously none of which came true. Then you had all the folks predictingY2K would be the "end of the modern world." As I've pointed out numerous times over the past several years, we watched as midnight, January 1, 2000 came to each time zone on New Years Eve, 1999 without seeing any sig of the predicted collapse. Ronald Weinland predicted September 2011, May 2012, and May 2013 would all see the end of the world. The Japanese cult and terrorist organization Aum Shinrikyo predicted a nuclear war fought between October and November 2003 would be the end of the world. Marshall Applewhite, leader of the Heaven's Gate Cut, predicted the world was going to end in 1997 but that a "spaceship in the tail of Comet Hale-Bopp" would take the faithful away as long as they committed suicide first (so he and 38 of his followers committed suicide in arch '97).
As I got to thinking about it my mind turned to someone who is perhaps one of the most famous prophets of all time, Nostradamus. This past July 2 marked the 447th anniversary of his death. The fact is that Nostradamus's "prediction" are written in such a vague way that they can be interpreted in different ways. I've pointed out time and again that the vast majority of the time people claim he supposedly predicted 9/11 they say the prediction was "a giant bird would crash into an enormous building." Only about 1% or 2% of the time do they say the building collapsed, just leaving I as a crash could also be interpreted as 7/28/45. On that date a B-25 crashed into the Empire State Building. Interpretation, interpret a prediction one way and one set of events mean it's come true, interpret it another and another set of events means it's come true. And for the past 447 years Nostradamus has been famed for his predictions because of how people have interpreted them.
We're still talking about Nostradamus today. And he's not the only famous prophet people are still talking about. Come January 3 it will be 69 years since Edgar Cayce passed on. Cayce supposedly predicted Black Tuesday, i.e. the stock market crash of 1929 that led to the Great Depression, just months before it happened. And a few years before September 1, 1939 Cayce predicted WWII. He also made predictions on such things as polar shift and blood as a diagnostic tool, some of his predictions supposedly either have or are coming true. But in his lifetime he's been said to have scoffed at the idea of being a prophet and making these prediction (he could have probably pointed out that the WWII and stock market crash predictions were just observations of someone living at that time).
So will any of these failed "prophets" of the end of the world be remembered seventy or even 400 years from today the same as Nostradamus and Cayce? And what about those who have made predictions whose dates haven't come yet, will they be remembered that far into the future? Keep in mind we do have historical examples to say prophets aren't all forgotten. But for every Nostradamus or Edgar Cayce there's at least 10 million forgotten prophets.
tuffy, it's funny you mention the Old Farmers Almanac as I so heavily used the 2000 edition when answering all those questions about the Mayan calendar meaning the end of the world. They had an article on how to become a prophet in six easy steps. As I pointed out in many of my answers, you only really needed really three steps. 1. Predict the past. Basically anything that has happened before is likely to happen again. So it's safe to predict things like earthquakes, the moon appearing red, car races, presidential elections, etc. as they'll probably happen again. 2. Avoid specifics. I loved using Y2K as an example of this one you get to specific on something you have no way out when it doesn't come to pass. But if you make your prediction vague it is then open to interpretation and you can then say "Did I actually say that was the meaning f my prediction?" 3. Predict what people want to hear. You got folks that are interested in politics, in celebrities, in sp
Paul Ehrlich died in 1915, how do any of his predictions fit as being made in the last 20 years? Unless you mean placing him like Nostradamus and Cayce as someone still talked about today, then I can understand that.