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Prediction Watch!
Here's where we track predictions with a date, whether psychic, religious, other supernatural, or pseudoscientific.
I'm only tracking the trackable. As an example, The Imminent Demise of Evolution: The Longest Running Falsehood in Creationism is an excellent resource compiling nearly two centuries of claims about the coming death of Darwin's theory of evolution. Most soothsayers only went as far as to say "Darwinism is dying" or "Darwinism will die", without saying when the deed would be done. But a few gazers into Creationism's crystal ball did oblige with a date. Theirs are the predictions I'll track here.
Not all of the predictions need to be completely looney, or even no-fun things like the end of the world. A guess at the discovery of ETs via SETI, within 25 years? I like the sound of that, even if the basis for the prognostication doesn't please all thinking critics. Plausible or not, it's interesting, it has a deadline, let's track it!
Here we go: A look at what didn't come true – as well as what still might!
The Dead Zone: Predictions that fizzled
WHAT? How could psychics, God's Biblical code crackers, and Atlantean spirits have made a mistake? Astral interference! Insufficient faith! Disturbance in the ether! Fortunately, nobody tracks these failures... right?
D. James Kennedy, on "The John Ankerberg Show" in 1987, didn't talk prophecy; he purported to describe the now:
Evolution is in absolute chaos today and has been especially for this decade of the ’80′s. The ’80′s has been extremely bad for Evolution. Every major pillar of Evolution has crumbled in the decade of the ’80′s.
It's easy to handle that as a prophecy, though. Just chalk the fellow's cry of "it's already happened!" to overexcitement and a missed nap, and generously award him until the end of the 80s for those pillars to crumble.
Hmm, that still didn't help his failed case. Maybe it was just a slip of the tongue; "evolution" was supposed to be "big hair" or "wine coolers"?
In an online chat of the International Society for Complexity, Information and Design (ISCID), on 8 August 2002, ISCID Fellow and Discovery Institute guy Paul Nelson lays down the smack on universal common descent (CD):
Here's a prediction. Universal CD will be gasping for breath in two or three years, if not sooner.
Naturally, we generously grant the full three years. Which still doesn't help...
From autumn of 2008:
...Pharyngula, Panda’s Thumb, EvC, RichardDawkins.net and Uncommon Descent will all have so completely degenerated as to become nothing but embarrassing footnotes in the history of internet communication. I also predict that P.Z. Myers and Richard Dawkins will have so embarrassed their home institutions that overt attempts will have been initiated to have their tenures revoked on the grounds of moral turpitude and seeking to overthrow the government... Fortunately for them, by that date, February 9, 2009, the physical destruction of our civilization will have proceeded to such a degree that thinking people will no longer be concerned about intellectual trash like Richard Dawkins and P.Z. Myers.
This fellow really should have been more generous with the deadline he gave himself!
In 2004, Creationist William Dembski gives "molecular Darwinism" five years to live.
Convoluted Biblical numerology points to Judgment Day and Christ's return on May 21, 2011. So go for broke: sin all you like, "embrace Christ" on May 20, and you're covered no matter what happens!
Convoluted Biblical numerology gives you until October 21, 2011 to enjoy the world. Then God destroys it.
Still Living: Predictions that could come true!
The expiration date still looms ahead for these visions of the future. Mark your calendars, ready your barbecues (or whatever one does in preparation for the Rapture), and stay tuned to this site as the silver countdown ball slowly descends.
In a 2004 magazine interview, Creationist William Dembski predicts the "Taliban-style" (?) collapse of Darwinism within 10 years.
The original Kentucky.com page with the Dembski quotes is out of action, but the gist remains repeated on many sites:
LOUISVILLE - To William Dembski, all the debate in this country over evolution won't matter in a decade.
By then, he says, the theory of evolution put forth by Charles Darwin 150 years ago will be dead.
The mathematician turned Darwin critic says there is much to be learned about how life evolved on this planet. And he thinks the model of evolution accepted by the scientific community won't be able to supply the answers.
"I see this all disintegrating very quickly," he said.
The article is from 02 April 2006, so we can nicely place a 10-year expiration date on it. (I welcome correction if second-hand reports of the original article misrepresent Dembski's words.)
Reverse-engineering the human brain so we can simulate it using computers may be only a decade away, says Ray Kurzweil, artificial intelligence expert and author of the best-selling book The Singularity is Near.
Sound likely? Not if you understand anything how the brain works, says PZ Myers.
We'll graciously give Ray until the end of 2020.
From the Christian World Magazine of 03 April 2004 comes this prediction for the world of 2025:
Methodological naturalism used to be a regulative principle for science and for all serious academic thought. Not any longer. It is now (in 2025) an outdated dogma, and the Scopes trial stereotype, as depicted in the movie Inherit the Wind, is now effectively dead...
The collapse of the Soviet Union put an end to the Soviet myth, just as the scientific collapse of Darwinism, preceded as it was by the discrediting of Marxism and Freudianism, prepared the way for the culture to turn aside from the mythology of naturalism to rediscover the buried treasure that the mythology had been concealing.
Unfortunately, the full article is behind a paywall, so I don't know whether this rediscovered "buried treasure" gets identified or remains coyly hidden from the reader. (Hmm, does the treasure's name perhaps rhyme with "tease us"?)
From the Christian World Magazine of 03 April 2004 comes this prediction for the world of 2025:
Intelligent design has now (in 2025) become a thriving scientific research program and replaced materialistic accounts of biological evolution (in particular, Darwinism). ID theory led to new understanding of embryo development and the importance of "junk DNA"...
Darwinian evolution is little more than a historical footnote in biology textbooks. Just as students learn that scientists used to believe that the Sun moves around the Earth and maggots are spontaneously generated in rotting meat, so students also learn that scientists used to believe that human beings evolved through random mutations and natural selection. How could a belief that was so influential in 2000 become so obsolete by 2025? Whatever happened to evolutionary theory?
It's a pretty vivid picture, and it has a clear due date... so let's sit back and watch!
Seth Shostak, senior astronomer at the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute in Mountain View, California, says "I actually think the chances that we'll find ET are pretty good", offering a 25-year window of likelihood based on the famous Drake Equation.
Time to stock up on Reese's Pieces? Well, not if the Drake Equation is essentially nonsense as a means of predicting the likelihood of detectable alien life out there.
In any case, Mr Shostak's statement, what with its "chances... are pretty good" non-claim, barely qualifies as a prediction; I won't be pointing my (arthritic) finger in 2035 should he unfortunately prove wrong. But it's a fun one, so let's take note and give it a generous end-of-2035 deadline.
From "How to Sink a Battleship", in Mere Creation, ed. by William A. Dembski, 1998:
I believe that at some time well before 2059, the bicentennial year of Darwins Origin of Species, perhaps as early as 2009 or 2019, there will be another celebration that will mark the demise of the Darwinist ideology that was so triumphant in 1959.
Fairness dictates that we go with the furthest date given, i.e., the end of 2058. Until then, keep an eye out for those celebrations...
NOTE: At this time, some bug in my site software insists on displaying the entered 31 Dec 2058 as a different date in 2038. Hmm, did no one predict a Y2K38 software bug? Anyway, please read it as the end of 2058.)
And then...?
What other prognostications do you see out there that need to be tracked? Please leave a comment or send a message!
Don't forget the Mayan date of Dec 2012....supposedly they knew Jesus would be back before he was even born ;-)
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