Deuteronomy XVIII, 15-22 A prophet will the Lord thy God raise up unto thee, from the midst of thee, of they brethren, like unto me; unto him ye shall hearken; According to all that thou didst desire of the Lord thy God in Horeb in the day of the assembly, saying: `Let me not hear again the voice of the Lord my God, neither let me see this great fire any more, that I die not.' And the Lord said unto me: `They have well said that which they have spoken. I will raise them up a prophet from among their brethren, like unto thee; and I will put My words in his mouth, and he shall speak unto them all that I shall command him. And it shall come to pass, that whosoever will not hearken unto My words which he shall speak in My name, I will require it of him. But the prophet, that shall speak a word presumptuously in My name, which I have not commanded him to speak, or that shall speak in the name of other gods, that same prophet shall die.' And if thou say in thy heart: `How shall we know the word which the Lord hath not spoken?' When a prophet speaketh in the name of the Lord, if the thing follow not, nor come to pass, that is the thing which the Lord hath not spoken; the prophet hath spoken it presumptuously, thou shalt not be afraid of him. page 1 /mediabk propht8m/October 31, 1996 CHAPTER 8 WHY DO WE HEAR PROPHECIES OF DOOM FROM EVERY SIDE? "The problems are enormous and none of the solutions simple. But most are conscious that unless there's action, the planet may solve the problem -- by simply making it impossible for people to live on it." -- CNN reporter Lucia Newman on Agenda Earth, June 3, 1992 ("Notable Quotables," 6-22-92, p. 1) The trouble with our times is that the future is not what it used to be. (Attributed to Paul Valery) Another internal mechanism that affects what people believe about the past and future is the human predisposition to be attracted by prophecies of doom - and in the case of some, the propensity to make such prophecies. This chapter discusses these predispositions historically. * * * David Koresh and his Branch Davidians engaged in pitched gun battles with the U.S. government in 1993, leaving more than fifty men, women, and children dead as a result of apocalyptic religion. The parent Davidians religious group prophesies an end of the world in the foreseeable future. Indeed, the Seventh Day Adventist church, from which the Davidians split in 1934, was founded in 1863 on end-of-the-world prophecy (The Washington Post, March 21, 1993, A18). The history goes much further back, too. The book of Revelation in the New Testament vividly warns of impending doom. And many of the Hebrew prophets forecast apocalypse. But it is not just religious visionaries who forecast doom. Even scientific discoveries are sometimes interpreted, even by non-religious institutions, as harbingers of doom. Only three months before the Branch Davidians disaster, Newsweek's cover headlined "DOOMSDAY SCIENCE: New Theories About Comets, Asteroids and How the World Might End" (November 23, 1992). Every scientific discovery gets interpreted by some people as a harbinger of doom. "CHAOS THEORY SEEPS INTO ECOLOGY DEBATE...DISRUPTS HUMANISTIC NOTIONS OF ORDER AND PROGRESS", is the Wall Street Journal headline of a page 1 story (July 11, 1994, A1, A8). A quote by Irving Kristol is dragged in: "[W]e are at a unique moment in Western culture, the collapse of secu- lar, rationalist humanism" in which "[p]rogress is the premise". An interesting purely-mathematical discovery has turned into grounds for fear of natural and social catastrophes. The apocalyptic prophetic impulse sometimes leads to serious violence. Theodore J. Kaczynski, the "Unabomber" who killed and maimed with mail bombs in the U.S. for many years, murdered in the name of ecological causes, stating his arguments in an anti- technology screed (Washington Post, April 9, 1996, A1, A7). His case startled the public because of Kaczynski's earlier academic brilliance as a mathematician. But learning and mental agility have never prevented this kind of thinking, especially in connection with technology. Books by professors with titles like The Surrender of Culture to Technology (by Neal Postman, Alfred A. Knopf, 1992) have been common fare through the decades. Almost every event is seen by someone as an actual or potential cause of moral and cultural decay, as in the story about Palestinian leaders headlined "Leaders Warn of Moral Decline, But Lifted Curfew Elates Gaza" (Washington Post, June 5, 1994, p. A30), Though their prophecies are less dramatic, not a week goes by that one's eye does not light on a book or article by an environmental doomsayer warning that (say) "our existing world is crumbling" (Rifkin, 1989, front cover). The environmental apocalypses are more gradual than the religious versions. But environmental breakdown is more widely believed - by more than half of the U.S. public, the polls tell us (see Chapter 00), and by many of the leaders in every walk of life. The prophecies of environmental doom therefore deserve our attention. Why do prophets utter their bleak prophecies? Why do their hearers believe the bleak prophecies and act upon them? The explanation for the believers is more broad-ranging than the explanation of the prophets, however, so I'll focus on the prophets. THE HISTORICAL PERSISTENCE OF PROPHECY It is striking how similar sorts of forecasts of doom, together with assertions that previous times were the "good old days", have been heard in all ages. This was said to have been found on an Assyrian tablet, and it is good fun even if just a hoax: Our earth is degenerate in these latter days; bribery and corruption are common; children no longer obey their parents; every man wants to write a book, and the end of the world is evidently approaching. (Homer, 1963, front note; no further citation given there, which makes the quotation questionable). Referring to the good old days enables the prophet to sug- gest by comparison that things can be made better than they now are. Salo Baron found the good-old-days idea in the Biblical prophets: The historian of the tenth or ninth century, the "Yahwist," as well as his successor, the "Elohist," were both men of great culture, and both were prone at least partially to accept the view, so vivid in prophetic, Nazirite and Rechabite circles, that the civilization of their own day was merely a sinful degeneration from the good old times of unspoiled primitive life. (Baron, 1952, p. 42) This idealization of the past was a general character- istic of the age. (Baron, 1952, pp. 99). Most of us have been raised to revere Biblical prophets. The ancient prophets' style of discourse is so elevated, and their message of moral reform so stirring, that we consider them special people, different from ordinary mortals. It may be shocking to analyze them as we analyze our contemporaries. Yet their mode of thinking was much the same as doomsaying environmentalists today. Here is the message of a contemporary prophet, an ex-student of mine and a former bank president who, after a lunch meeting at which he announced his prophecy, wrote me as follows: The message is true; about January of next year the beginning; and the vast majority stand unaware. Unless I can articulate myself better than with you, they will certainly remain in that harmful condition. There is no logical explanation; no series of economic data to extend or interpolate; no natural outcome of specific societal imbalance. It is fright- eningly simple: God's patience has run out. He now raises His hand for harm and no longer for good. The charge against us is irrefutable. We have forgotten who He is. We don't look to Him for our ways, cry out to Him for our woes, or base our laws on His. As a matter of fact, as a society and a govern- ment, as a nation and a people, we simply don't care about Him anymore. He's not relevant to an affluent and secure society with all the answers. We don't try to understand Him, to seek Him, to confront Him. Oh, we still meddle with the "short cut", the business of religion and its never ending divisions and squabble; but that just drives us further from Him. Yet as for Him, the Creator of all, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, of all Israel, no one really seems to give a damn. Well, in less than a year, and logic aside, all will start the painful process of remembering, and after about a decade, those left will not forget again. Why are [we] willing to say that experience is not a guide in the matter, when [we] would not say that in almost any other similar circumstance - many of the persons being professional scientists for whom the evidence of experience is the absolute bedrock of their professional work and commitment? The psychologists do not seem to have offered any explanation. (Letter dated February 6, 1992 from William Toel, 1576 Birnam Drive, Charlottesville, VA 22901, to Julian Simon.) The following expensive full-page advertisement appeared in The Washington Post (and perhaps elsewhere) in 1992 (April 16, 1992, p. A37). URGENT ANNOUNCEMENT In the Name of God the Father, and of the Son, and of the Spirit, you are urged to read this announcement. The Lord Jesus Christ is very soon to take believers in Him out of this world; and then trouble, such as this world has never known, is to occur, especially in the Western World and in Israel. After about three-and-a-half years Christ shall intervene with force and cast Satan into the bottomless pit, and the Beast (the future political head of Europe) and the Antichrist (the false prophet) alive into hell, and then establish His Kingdom in this world for a thousand years (the millennium). After the millennium is over, Satan will be released from the bottomless pit, and shortly afterwards he will also be cast into hell. Then that scene depicted in Revelation, chapter 20, verses 11 to 15, will occur: "And I saw a great white throne, and him that sat on it, ... And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; ... And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire." For the past nearly two thousand years God has, through the apostle Paul and others, commanded men to repent and believe in His glad tidings; and He now commands you (if you have not already done so) to acknowledge your sinnership to Him. If you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and His work, God will immedi- ately and fully forgive you and you will be blessed with His Son eternally. There is absolutely no other way to be saved... Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved. Inserted by: This is the opinion of: Ernest W. Pudney Deryck Noakes Tel. # 011-2721-686-9330 Port Elizabeth Fax # 011-2721-797-5760 South Africa and Alan H. Paynter Tel. # 011-2741-345128 Fax # 011-2741-336873 In both the above announcements we find the defining element of prophecy: The prophet says (and apparently believes) that God is speaking through him. HISTORICAL ANALYSIS OF APOCALYPTIC THINKING Historian Norman Cohn gave us some insight into the nature and the cause of apocalyptic, millenarian thinking. Already [in the second century BCE, among the Jews] one can recognize the paradigm of what was to become and to remain the central phantasy of revolutionary eschatolo- gy. The world is dominated by an evil, tyrannous power of boundless destructiveness - a power moreover which is imagined not as simply human but as demonic. The tyranny of that power will become more and more outra- geous, the sufferings of its victims more and more intolerable - until suddenly the hour will strike when the Saints of God are able to rise up and overthrow it. Then the Saints themselves, the chosen, holy people who hitherto have groaned under the oppressor's heel, shall in their turn inherit dominion over the whole earth. This will be the culmination of history; the Kingdom of the Saints will not only surpass in glory all previous kingdoms, it will have no successors. It was thanks to this phantasy that Jewish apocalyptic exercised, through its derivatives, such a fascination upon the discontented and frustrated of later ages - and contin- ued to do so long after the Jews themselves had forgot- ten its very existence. (1970, p. 21) This paradigm fits Michael Wigglesworth, whose 1662 best- seller The Day of Doom triggered the Salem witchcraft trials (Starkey, 1949). Here are a few verses: Wallowing in all kind of sin, vile wretches lay secure: The best of men had scarcely then their Lamps kept in good ure. Virgins unwise, who through disguise amongst the best were number'd, Had clos'd their eyes; yea, and the wise through sloth and frailty slumber'd. Like as of old, when Men grow bold Gods' threatnings to contemn, Who stopt their Ear, and would not hear, when Mercy warned them: But took their course, without remorse, till God began to powre Destruction the World upon in a tempestuous showre. They put away the evil day, And drown'd their care and fears, Till drown'd were they, and swept away by vengeance unawares: So at the last, whilst Men sleep fast in their security, Surpriz'd they are in such a snare as cometh suddenly. For at midnight brake forth a Light, which turn'd the night to day, And speedily an hideous cry did all the world dismay. Sinners awake, their hearts do ake, trembling their loynes surprizeth; Amaz'd with fear, by what they hear, each one of them ariseth.(pp. 9, 10) Jacob Talmon considers political messianism in the 18th century to be the origins of what he calls "totalitarian democracy". Talmon deserves lengthy quotation: ... in the eighteenth century [a] peculiar state of mind ... achieved dominance in the second part of the century. Men were gripped by the idea that the conditions, a product of faith, time and custom, in which they and their forefathers had been living, were unnatural and had all to be replaced by deliberately planned uniform patterns, which would be natural and rational... (p. 3) ... [There was] intense preoccupation with the idea of virtue, which [meant] conformity to the hoped-for pattern of social harmony. They refused to envisage the conflict between liberty and virtue as inevitable. On the contrary, the inevitable equation of liberty with virtue and reason was the most cherished article of their faith. When the eighteenth-century secular religion came face to face with this conflict, the result was the great schism. Liberal democracy flinched from the spectre of force, and fell back upon the trial-and-error philosophy. Totalitarian Messianism hardened into an exclusive doctrine represented by a vanguard of the enlightened, who justified themselves in the use of coercion against those who refused to be free and virtuous... (pp. 4,5) Modern totalitarian democracy is a dictatorship resting on popular enthusiasm, and is thus completely different from absolute power wielded by a divine-right King, or by a usurping tyrant. In so far as it is a dictatorship based on ideology and the enthusiasm of the masses, it is the outcome...of the synthesis be- tween the eighteenth-century idea of the natural order and the Rousseauist idea of popular fulfilment and self-expression. By means of this synthesis rationalism was made into a passionate faith. Rousseau's "general will"...became the driving force of totalitarian democ- racy, and the source of all its contradictions and antinomies... (p. 6) The Right teaches the necessity of force as a permanent way of maintaining order among poor and unruly crea- tures, and training them to act in a manner alien to their mediocre nature. Totalitarianism of the Left, when resorting to force, does so in the conviction that force is used only in order to quicken the pace of man's progress to perfection and social harmony... (p. 7) Talmon also notes the role of the good-old-days myth: The strongest influence on the fathers of totalitarian democracy was that of antiquity, interpreted in their own way. Their myth of antiquity was the image of liberty equated with virtue. The citizen of Sparta or Rome was proudly free, yet a marvel of ascetic disci- pline. He was an equal member of the sovereign nation, and at the same time had no life or interests outside the collective tissue. (p. 11) The foregoing quotations show that religious and environmental prophets through the centuries issue grim warnings of the future - hell on earth, or hell in hell - to scare people into changing how they live. The Biblical prophets sought (and seek) to change sexual behavior, moral behavior with regard to treatment of the poor, and government corruption; they aim to change both individuals and government. The environmental prophets seek to change consumption behavior - get people to use less natural resources, live simpler lives, refrain from policies of economic growth; they, too, seek to change both individuals and government. SOME CHARACTERISTICS OF BIBLICAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL PROPHECIES 1. The prophetic mind-set sees "dark forces" at work every- where. Consider an advertisement (in The Washington Post, April 22, 1992, p. A18, and probably elsewhere) headlined: "SABOTAGE! of America's Health, Food Safety and Environmental Laws". The sponsoring organizations include the Citizens Trade Watch Campaign and its parent Public Citizen, along with Sierra Club, American SPCA, Friends of the Earth, and many others among the environmental organizations. The subject of the advertisement was the GATT international trade rules which -- though one may find respectable reasons to oppose them -- would hardly seem the product of a world cabal to destroy the environment. Yet the advertisement says that "While we've been dozing...new international trade rules that give a secretive foreign bureaucracy vast new powers to threaten American laws that protect your food, your health, your wilderness and wildlife, and your job. It's part of the hidden agenda in the new GATT agreement..." (italics added). The advertisement refers to a "Sneak Attack on Democracy" and says, "We hesitate to speak of `conspiracy'. But if ever it applied, the time is now". This fear of conspiracy is common to prophetical movements. 2. Biblical prophets differed in their messages depending upon whether times were good or bad, economically and politically. In good times, they warned of punishment for present bad behavior - trouble in the future, and a fall from grace. In bad times they said that the people's misery in the present was punishment for the sins of not yet living pure ways in the past and present. Environmental prophets now use both these messages - some saying that we are already in big trouble, others saying that we are now living high off the hog with the trouble yet to come. In both good and bad times there is found the motif that people must "pay" - that is, suffer - for what they are doing. In bad times, people must suffer because the current misery shows that we have sinned. In objectively good times like these - clearly the best times ever for the world - we must suffer be- cause we are enjoying too well our good fortune. (Of course if you try to tell people that things now are good, they may either a) deny it, b) say we must pay eventually.)<1> Perhaps Christian religious leaders mostly eschewed the dark element of prophecy because Jesus' message was mainly to those people who were pained and suffering and who presumably would not benefit from additional fright. In contrast, the Jewish prophets addressed what they considered to be the "stiff necked people" (that is, the arrogant and self-satisfied ones) and who they thought needed to be more imbued with fear - at least the fear of God. 3. Environmental prophecy does not call for us to sell our homes, stop farming, or meet on top of a mountain at a given hour to leave this place and condition for another. In this sense it is less apocalyptic than much religious prophecy, and the label "Apocalyptic environmentalism" is not very appropriate. Environmental prophecy is very much like Biblical prophecy, however, in its involvement with politics. Isaiah was typical in his concern about world and national affairs. "Isaiah dramatized his insistency [on the futility of an alliance with Egypt] by going about barefoot and naked for three years as a symbol of the fate that would overtake Egypt and its ally Ethiopia at the hands of the Assyrians" (Jewish Encyclopeda, "Isaiah", p. 46). 4. Some have likened environmentalism to a religion. Envi- ronmental rhetoric is indeed like religion in not being the same sort of cool thinking one applies to decisions about whether or not to paint the house this year. One can see the non-business- as-usual attitude in this quote: Compromise will end in death. Two billion people living in poverty ... are hostage to our greed, to our waste of energy." (Agronomist Rene DuMont, quoted in Access To Energy, January, 1990, Vol. 17. In the environmental movement there often is religious excitement, according to Cohn (1970) the crucial element in ancient prophecy. Unlike organized religion, however, the envi- ronmental movement has no church, no service, and no priestly group. An environmentalist might say that nature "speaks" to us, rather than that God does. 5. Environmental prophecy seldom forecasts the world ending on some specified date, unlike much religious prophecy which derives dated predictions from particular readings of Scripture. But like religious prophecy, environmental prophecy tends to see the present age as a new phenomenon, a break with all history. 6. Sin plays a role in all types of prophecy. Environmentalists seize on every calamity - for example, the Exxon Valdez fouling of Prince William Bay - as proof of our sinful ways. The Biblical prophets did so, too: Extreme punishment always appeared to the prophets to be impending, and finally they saw it come in the succession of national catastrophes. (Baron, 1952, p. 90) Environmental prophets concur with religious prophets in accusing us of an excess of worldliness, and especially of enjoying the benefits of wealth. Consider, for example, the oft- heard statement that we are now in a state of "overconsumption" - that is, too much consumption. Too much relative to what? The only sensible interpretation is that the amount of present consumption is somehow sinful. Fidel Castro at the Rio Earth Summit conference in 1992 accused the "wealthy countries" of "excessive consumption of natural resources", and he said that "the consumer societies of the developed world are totally responsible for degradation of the global environment. `Pay the ecological debt, not the foreign debt', he said." (The Washington Post, June 14, 92, A26). Whether this charge is sincere or cynical on the part of Castro does not matter; what does matter is that he expects (undoubtedly correctly) that the charge will resonate with many listeners. Why do people feel in the presence of sin (and I purposely use the word "feel" rather than "think")? I interpret this as a sign of guilt that we have it so good. However, environmentalists do not charge us with sexual immorality, for the most part. 7. Many have said that environmentalism is socialism under another label. True, it shares with socialism the aim of putting some resources - the ocean, forests, and the arctic - under public ownership. But environmentalism does not call for govern- ment administration of steel mills, railroads, and retailing. It does not even talk about "distributive justice", which is not a theoretical part of socialism but has come to be its main element for many who have come to see the folly of government management of production facilities. Perhaps the issues become confused because many environmentalists in the U.S. are also socialists. 8. Both environmental and religious prophecy differ from worldly thinking in their imperviousness to counter-evidence. But whereas religious prophecy is willing to be insouciant about such evidence - as seen in the Toel letter above - the environ- mental prophets at least pay lip-service to the evidence. They simply shut their eyes to long-run trends in the evidence that contradict their prophecies, and they assert that the "theory" is to be believed rather than the evidence which has so far conflicted with it. In the service of their preaching, the enviro-prophets employ many appealing concepts that seem rational and even scientific, such as exponential growth and diminishing returns. But this is only a facade of pseudo-science; the prophets refuse to engage in true scientific discussion of the validity of their forecasts. In fact, the current crop of prophets will not even bet with me (winnings to charity) that their forecasts will come about. What should one think of a person who tells you to bet your farm that the sky will be clear tomorrow, but who is afraid to bet his/her farm or even to put out the wash based on his/her own forecast? The environmental prophets of today differ from Biblical prophets in that the prophets of today do not stake their lives or livings on their prophecies. The Biblical prophets raised their hands against their rulers usually at great risk; today's crop are part of the establishment. 9. Organized lobby groups such as one finds in the environmental movement are very much in the Biblical tradition. In Biblical days there were groups of "disciples of the prophets" whose "number [was] at times in the hundreds" (Jewish Encyclopedia, "Prophets and Prophecy", p. 1156). And the head prophets then, as now, were sometimes well paid - "as much as 40 camels bearing the treasures of Aram" (ibid, p. 1157), just as the leaders of the environmental movement (especially in Washington) are paid comparably with heads of other lobby groups. ARE ALL PROPHETS FALSE? If the concept of prophecy has any meaning, if must refer to some form of supposed knowledge different from the ordinary practices of science and rational decision-making that we may call "worldly thinking". But if the process of science is a "true" method, then any system of thinking and forecasting that departs from the practices of worldly thinking must by definition be a false method, though in individual cases the prophets' forecasts may turn out to be correct. And indeed, to my knowledge prophets have never claimed that theirs is a reliable process of worldly knowledge, but only that particular forecasts are correct. Hence it is reasonable to conclude that the method of prophecy is false with respect to worldly forecasts. (I apply the label "false" not as logic-chopping but as a way of distin- guishing one method from another for practical purposes.) The question of the truth or falsity of prophets has the nature of a Russell-and-Whitehead paradox, of the all-Cretans-are liars sort. Salo Baron has written somewhere that those who forecast good tidings were automatically regarded as false prophets. This means that if good times really are in the offing, a true prophecy implies that the maker is a false prophet. To avoid being a false prophet, the person must make the false prophecy that the tidings are bad. So unless the tidings always are bad, prophecy can hardly meet the test of ordinary science and ordinary truth. The environmentalism movement takes this notion to the limit: It gives voice to false prophecies - because they are unfounded - uttered by false prophets - who are false in this case because their statements are false. These sayers of doom forecast that because our ways are evil, our environment will deteriorate - that it will become less healthy and less clean. And based on these prophecies, many citizens and politicians then call for strong remedies that could cause more damage than good. How may one judge the forecasts? We cannot be certain what the future holds. But we do know the results of similar prophe- cies in the past. The doomsaying prophets of the 1960s and 1970s - the same people who are the false prophets of today - were wrong across the board. And prophets in previous eras also have a very poor record. We also have irrefutable evidence that the assertions of fact on which the doomsters supposedly base their prophecies are false. They say that our air and our water have been getting dirtier in recent decades, and that natural resources have been becoming more scarce in past decades and centuries. These propositions are demonstrably, indubitably, wrong.<2> There is every reason to believe that the prophecy of doom is wrong. Given that the supposed evidence for the prophecies is false, it is reasonable to say that the prophecies built upon them are false prophecy, even if by chance one or more of them might come about. And if the prophecy is indeed wrong, the proph- ets are dangerous. That's my message in a nutshell. WHY DO PROPHETS GET IT SO WRONG? [Why do people hold beliefs contrary to all of human experience for thousands of years, such as that raw materials will become more scarce and their prices will rise? One can say that people are under the sway of a convincing theory - that the supply ultimately is limited. But why do people hold onto such a theory even when, as they admit, it is contradicted by the evidence?] [Again and again over the past quarter century, after people see the data showing that all trends pertaining to human welfare have been improving rather than deteriorating - health, wealth, education, leisure, availability of natural resources, cleanliness of our air and water, you name it - the question arises: Why, then, do our media and our political leaders tell us the opposite - that life is more dangerous, our planet is "plundered" and "in crisis", we are running our of resources, pollution is increasing - that is, that things are getting worse when they are really getting better? Why do we hear that there is need to "save the planet"?] [There are many strands in an explanation of why so many people hold these beliefs against all available evidence. These include institutional and economic influences such as 1) advocacy groups making statements that are proven money-getters in fund- raising letters, and 2) scientists "discovering" problems that will elicit funding for research to mitigate the problem. There are also intellectual-cognitive causes of error, a complex sub- ject that I treat at length elsewhere (1990, selection 52); among our many human limitations on clear thinking I'll mention only a) the zero-sum mentality, b) the belief in finiteness as a starting point for reasoning, which leads to the belief that eventually there must be exhaustion, c) lack of understanding of the process of building wealth and resources, and d) the belief that even if they are wrong in their admonitions to people to change their behavior, the results cannot be harmful because the ensuing behavior will be more moral, whether that be more modest dress for the women that the Biblical prophets scolded or the less resource-using economic activities that environmental prophets advocate; this logic of there being no harm even if wrong is embodied in Paul Ehrlich's version of Pascal's wager, which calls for population reduction, fewer people having no negative value of any kind in his value system.] False prophecy is certainly not the only example of ingrained belief that runs against the available evidence. One might also ask: a) Why do people hold beliefs about sports behavior and the stock market even after they have been informed that the beliefs have been demonstrated to be false? b) Why do people believe in ESP in connection with dreams about a death or a chance meeting that actually took place later? Yes, one can argue that the probability theory of coincidences is by no means obvious. But even after the holders of such believes are pre- sented with such "rational" explanations of the coincidence, they often continue to hold on the belief in ESP. And c) how can believers in a doomsday continue to believe after the date has passed? But for the prophets themselves I think there is a third and dominating element that defies simple cost-benefit rational explanation: 3) There seems to be a built-in age-old psychologi- cal propensity to hark back to the "good old days" and warn of impending doom in some people that we might call the urge to prophesy; this need may be connected with many emotions. One sees the good-old-days syndrome even in the most level- headed of people, even in the fields they know well.<3> David Hume had this to say on the subject: The humour of blaming the present, and admiring the past, is strongly rooted in human nature, and has an influence even on persons endued with the profoundest judgment and most extensive learning. ("Of the Popu- lousness of Ancient Nations", in Essays 1777/1987, p. 464) This suggests that we should not seek a "rational" explana- tion for prophecies of doom - that is, an explanation that "makes sense" in terms of the elements of the situation of which the prophet is aware - at least at this stage of knowledge of human psychology. After all, can we explain why so many people - in- cluding this writer - "knock on wood" when someone comments that things are going well, for fear that the good fortune will not continue? Can we explain why many people wear amulets of shapes that are thought to keep away the evil eye? Or patronize fortune tellers? Or consult the horoscope section of the newspaper, one of the best-read features in the daily press? Yes, one can say that people "feel a need" to make sense of a world which is unknown in its uncertainty, but why do people feel such a need? If we observe the same sort of thought and action in all times and places, it is reasonable to assume that there is something inborn about it. And we have seen earlier that prophecies of doom have always been with us. Perhaps a spoof - done in an earlier century, too - will make this point. Of all the arts of distress found out by man for his own torment, perhaps, that of philosophic misery is most truly ridiculous, a passion nowhere carried to so extravagant an excess as in the country where I now reside. It is not enough to engage all the compassion of a philosopher here, that his own globe is harassed with wars, pestilence, or barbarity, he shall grieve for the inhabitants of the moon, if the situation of her imaginary mountains happen to alter; and dread the extinction of the sun, if the spots on his surface happen to increase. . . . My landlady some days ago brought me the diary of a philosopher of this desponding sort, who had lodged in the apartment before me. It contains the history of a life which seems to be one continued tissue of sorrow, apprehension, and distress. A single week will serve as a specimen of the whole. Monday. In what a transient decaying situation are we placed, and what various reasons does philosophy fur- nish to make mankind unhappy! A single grain of mustard shall continue to produce its similitude through numberless successions; yet what has been granted to this little seed has been denied to our planetary system; the mustard-seed is still unaltered, but the system is growing old, and must quickly fall to decay. How terrible will it be, when the motions of all the planets have at last become so irregular as to need repairing, when the moon shall fall into frightful paroxysms of alteration, when the earth, deviating from its ancient track, and with every other planet forget- ting its circular revolutions, shall become so eccen- tric, that unconfined by the laws of system, it shall fly off into boundless space, to knock against some distant world, or fall in upon the sun, either extin- guishing his light, or burned up by his flames in a moment. Perhaps while I write, this dreadful change is begun. Shield me from universal ruin! Yet idiot man laughs, sings, and rejoices in the very face of the sun, and seems no way touched with his situation. (Oliver Goldsmith, The Citizen of the World: Letters Selected and Edited by J. C. Dent) The best we can do, I think, is to agree with David Hume and Friedrich Hayek that during the course of physical and social evolution we have acquired many instincts that do not accord with what we call reason, though the instinctual actions may have had some usefulness in some situations along the way. One such instinct is the propensity to prophesy doom. This instinct may be related to inborn propensities to experience anxiety and the sense of sin, in connection with the sense that there must be retribution for sin. The notion that one is the lucky beneficiary of society's wealth seems to stir anxiety that eventually we must pay. Consider for example the prophetic outlook in Cadillac Desert, a book about U.S. water policy in the West, by Marc Reisner (New York: Penguin, 1986). Reisner appreciates the eco- nomic benefits that great water projects bring, and he admires the imaginations and efforts of the people who built them. But he believes that eventually there will be retribution. He quotes Kazmann with approval: The forces involved...are comparable to those met by a boy who builds a castle on the sandy ocean beach, next to the water, at low tide...[I]t is not pessimism, merely an objective evaluation,m to predict the destruction of the castle...(Raphael Kazmann, Modern Hydrology, cited in Reisner, p. 494). And Reisner entitles his last chapter, "A Civilization, If You Can Keep It". The book is full of phrases about "insidious forces" salting up of the land, (p. 498), "now the desert is en- croaching on the islands of green" (p. 499), "infrastructure in varying stages of collapse" (p. 499), "water development that, though amazingly fruitful in the short run, leaves everyone and everything more vulnerable in the end" (p. 499), "the big main- stem reservoirs, which will end up being choked by silt" (p. 499). "The cost of all this...was a vandalization of both our natural heritage and our economic future, and the reckoning has not even begun" (p. 503), "a monstrous travesty against nature" (p. 504), "a precarious foothold against the forces of nature". Reisner is sure that "somewhere down the line our descend- ants are going to inherit a bill for all this vaunted success" (p. 504), and "they may find themselves wishing that we had left things pretty much as they were" (p. 505; though if "we" had, there would be not basis for the lives of "they")...He writes that "Like so many great and extravagant achievements, from the fountains of Rome to the federal deficit, the immense national dam-construction program that allowed civilization to flourish in the deserts of the West contains the seeds of disintegration" (p. 498). He expects us to share "the hoary [sic] fate of almost every irrigated civilization" (p. 505). In brief, the Empire of Nature must strike back. Construction now means destruction in the future. We must pay the piper's price sometime, because we've overdrawn our account with nature, in this view. The only sound course is to mend our evil ways, to pull in our horns and live ascetically. Such has been the voice of prophecy in all times. THE IMPORTANCE OF FALSE PROPHECY Doomsaying may seem harmless in the short run. It is common to hear that wrong prophecy can have a positive effect in fore- stalling complacency. But false prophecy can cause huge long-run disaster. One possible evil of false prophecy is social disruption. Examples include the Shabtai Zevi episode that devastated Euro- pean Jewry in Middle Ages, and the recent David Koresh and Jones- town incidents. Another possible evil is the totalitarianism messianism that Talmon wrote about. The roots of the Salem witchcraft trials have been shown to lie in Michael Wigglesworth's The Day of Doom (Starkey, 1949), an instant best-seller published in 1662; one copy was quickly sold for every twenty people in New England; that was followed by four more American editions and eight in London (Murdock, 1966). The parallel between Day of Doom and Rachel Carson's Silent Spring has been mentioned by several scholars. False prophecy can also exact resource losses. The false crises of oil and other natural resources in the 1970s were very costly for Japan, the U.S. airplane makers, and many others. For individuals, doomsday predictions result in families quitting their jobs and selling their household possessions, as happened to the Davidians in 1959 when founder Victor Houteff's widow proclaimed that on Easter the Kingdom of God would arrive (Newsweek, March 15, 1993, p. 57). In former times, farmers stopped tending their fields. Lately, the owner of 38 radio stations says that after earthquakes and other troubles, Jesus Christ will return in glory between September 15 and September 27, 1994; between his radio stations and the 40,000 copies of his book, who knows how many people will disrupt their lives? (The Washington Post, Mar 4, 1993, p. A1). WHAT IS THE FUTURE OF PROPHECY? Will there be less or more of religious and environmental prophecy in the future? There is little basis for a prediction. Maybe we should ask: What constrains the amount of false prophecy from increasing wildly? I believe that only the demands of the everyday necessity to make a living constrain the flights of fantasy and the excitement of prophecies made and believed. And as society becomes richer, fewer people and groups are pre- vented by this necessity from indulging themselves in these emotional orgies. Maybe only some big challenge - hopefully something positive, such as exploration of space, though it could be from a catastrophe of war or disease - can act as a bulwark. But at this point of speculation, the discussion must come to a close. page 2 /mediabk propht8m/October 31, 1996 NOTES **ENDNOTES** <1>: Here we might note a confusion in the term "prophecy" between the Jewish and Christian literatures, but which the reader may decide argues against my general interpretation of the concept. For Christians, unlike the concept of prophecy discussed until now, the term refers mainly to forecasts of the life of Jesus that they read in the Old Testament. The "Prophecy Edition of the New Testament" says in its introduction: The New Testament is saturated with Old Testament references and quotations. It also records the fulfillment of scores of Old Testament prophecies regarding the coming of the promised Messiah, the Hope of Israel. The listing begins as follows: OLD TESTAMENT PROPHECIES OF THE MESSIAH FULFILLED IN THE NEW TESTAMENT I. MESSIAH WAS TO BE BORN IN BETHLEHEM OLD TESTAMENT PROPHECY: But thou, Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel; whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting. Micah 5:2 NEW TESTAMENT FULFILLMENT: See Matthew 2:1-6; Luke 2:1-20 <2>: Every agricultural economist knows that the world's population has been eating ever-better since World War II. Every resource economist knows that all natural resources have been getting more available rather than more scarce, as shown by their falling prices over the decades and centuries. Every demographer knows that the death rate has been falling all over the world - life expectancy almost tripling in the rich countries in the past two centuries, and almost doubling in the poor countries in just the past four decades. And even the Environmental Protection Agency, which has a stake in continuing problems, acknowledges that our air and our water have been getting cleaner rather than dirtier in the past few decades. <3>:Consider the case of the great British constitutional lawyer A. V. Dicey: DECLINE IN REVERENCE FOR RULE OF LAW The ancient veneration for the rule of law has in England suffered during the last thirty years a marked decline. The truth of this assertion is proved by actual legislation, by the existence among some classes of a certain distrust both of the law and of the judges, and by a marked tendency towards the use of lawless methods for the attainment of social or politi- cal ends. ... (Dicey, 1915/1984, p. lv) Within the last thirty years, however, there has grown up in England, and indeed in many other civilised countries, a new doctrine as to lawlessness. This novel phenomenon, which perplexes moralists and states- men, is that large classes of otherwise respectable persons now hold the belief and act on the conviction that it is not only allowable, but even highly praise- worthy, to break the law of the land if the law-breaker is pursuing some end which to him or to her seems to be just and desirable. This view is not confined to any one class. Many of the English clergy (a class of men well entitled to respect) have themselves shown no great hesitation in thwarting and breaking laws which they held to be opposed to the law of the Church. Passive resisters do not scruple to resist taxes im- posed for some object which they condemn. Conscien- tious objectors are doing a good deal to render inef- fective the vaccination laws. The militant suffra- gettes glorify lawlessness; the nobleness of their aim justifies in their eyes the hopeless and perverse illegality of the means by which they hope to obtain votes for women. Whence arises this zeal for lawlessness? (Dicey, 1984, p. lix) page 3 /mediabk propht8m/October 31, 1996