Prophecies and Psychics

We now live in the 21^st century; a century that will be recognized for breakthroughs in medicine, technology, and understanding. By understanding I mean an understanding in our surrounding, physical phenomena, and more generally, Nature. With all this new knowledge, it appals to hear of people believing in nonsense such as faith healing, psychics, and prophecies. I will touch on faith healing in another post, but the main focus of this post will be prophecies and psychics.

I think it’s human nature to be drawn into the mysterious world of prophecies. What’s better than someone being able to tell the future?

Some of the more talked about prophecies come from holy books, such as the Bible, Torah and the Quran. Religious scholars pour over such books trying to see the future from the hidden meanings of the passages. The scholars try to match recent events with events mentioned in those holy books, claiming that he books contain hints on what will happen in the future.

A simple Google search reveals a large number of websites dedicated to deciphering the bible, and relating to “hidden codes” within the holy book. Why can’t people just take these holy books for what they’re intended to be used for? I see holy books as guides to those who want to pursue a certain religion, not as psychic material. What especially bothers me, is when people speak of a recent scientific findings, later adding that it was prophesised in verse x of chapter y. To those who believe that their holy book contains science facts, I ask:

If there is so much undiscovered knowledge in your holy book then why don’t you find it before scientists do?

It’s very clear that only after science proves a certain fact, that religious scholars come along and claim that the discovery was lurking in a 2000 year old book. Perhaps those scholars should work a little bit harder, and accelerate their findings to the point where they can work side by side with scientists.

Other than religious men, there are others who believe they have special psychic powers. I saw a program on those “gifted” people a while ago, and one thing that caught my attention was the atmosphere they all created for themselves, in order for them to start seeing the future. Dark, candle lit rooms, with smoke randomly floating around, and some sort of freakish type of music playing in the background seem to be the ingredients for future telling. The psychic murmurs, makes odd hand movements, in an attempt to get in touch with some “hyper space plane” where “universal energy” in “channelled” through giving him his/her insight on future events.

If anything, the similarity between the settings created by these psychics should give a warning bell about the authenticity of their findings. I find it similar to how Aliens are always depicted as humans with big heads and enormous eyes. What’s I’m trying to say here, is that these psychics are trying to follow a stereotype in order to make themselves credible. After all going to see a psychic, in a well lit room, with a desk and a computer and nice big paintings on the walls, wouldn’t seem all that mysterious.

It is interesting to note that researchers contacted a few of those so-called psychics and tested their abilities. The researcher would look at a picture card, and ask the psychic to identify what the picture depicts. The correct guesses showed no statistical significance. That is, by pure chance any average Joe can get the same number of correct guesses.

How long will we keep buying this nonsense? How many of the readers believe that prophecy is an ability that some humans posses? What are your thoughts?

Technorati Tags: Prophecy, Prophecies, Psychic, Holy Book, Pseudoscience