Nostradamus and pope-based predictions

KCF

Considering the fact that the demise of the pope will almost inevitably lead to the flowering of doomsday predictions, I would be interested to know if anybody here is informed enough to cast a skeptical eye over this phenomenon. I recall a documentary a few years back which claimed high accuracy for Nostradamus's predictions and also claimed that the next pope will be the last one before judgement day.

Are we at the end of days? Was Nostradamus a seer or was he just a chancer? Are there any signs of the anti-christ in the vatican?

robindch

> Considering the fact that the demise of the pope will almost
> inevitably lead to the flowering of doomsday predictions, I
> would be interested to know if anybody here is informed
> enough to cast a skeptical eye over this phenomenon.

Prediction, divination, revelation, and the suspicious-sounding eschatology are about as useful as you believe them to be. Which is to say that as a believer, you'll find them endlessly absorbing, as you try to make your way through dense thickets of metaphor, allusion, reference, long-lost jokes, mistranslation, misspelling, deliberate obfuscation and all the rest, to come to one sphincter-tightening conclusion or another, usually what you were looking for in the first place (cf: creationism).

On a more even-keel, they are frequently very funny, betokening minds which have long since abandoned thinking in straight lines, in favour of seeing through the mists of time, around corners, down drains, up godly trouser-legs and so on. One random websearch throws up this guy who's clearly expecting something soon and has got his PC set up to send emails to all his unbelieving friends, post-apocalypse, to inform them of where he's gone and how they can get there too. Continuing, one finds this chap who, in addition to his obsession with death and the end of the world, put on his thinking hat and deduced that Jesus would have voted Republican, were he still around and in posession of a US voting card.

In fact, it's worth doing a few google searches, just to see what's current in the world of prediction and doom-saying: some useful keywords I can recommend are are 'rapture', 'pre-tribulation' (pretrib, pretribbies), 'post-tribulation' (posttrib, posttribbies), 'end-times', 'revelation', 'gog', 'magog', etc, just to see the fruity range of *extremely* weird ideas on offer. Public forums, such as this one, are usually the best place to look for the most hilarious stuff.

> I recall a documentary a few years back which claimed
> high accuracy for Nostradamus's predictions and also
> claimed that the next pope will be the last one before
> judgement day.

I've no idea what Nostradamus had to say on the topic, though I've no doubt it was obscure, whatever it was. However, if you refer to our own homegrown St Malachy (hurrah for the Irish getting their oar in a few hundred years before the continentals did!), you can see that the next will apparently be the second last one, not the last. See this article which appeared today on NewsMax, one of the US republican party's more bouncy, noisy + unfailingly biassed outlets.

> Are we at the end of days? Was Nostradamus a seer
> or was he just a chancer?

I think you probably need to read what people 'skilled in the art' of prophecy are saying and make your own decision! Do the websearch above, see what you find and post your results.

From skeptical point-of-view, this article which was referenced from B+W last week and appeared in Harpers a just before Paddy's day is worth reading to get a feel for the currency of doomsdayology in the US and its links with popular culture.

> Are there any signs of the anti-christ in the vatican?

Been there for years and only died last saturday. Haven't you been listening to Ian Paisley all this time?

- robin.

Keyzer

I had a spot on my nose once...
It was predicted 400 years ago by nostril-damus....

robindch

...while I'm at it, just when you think that mainstream telly, USA-side, can't get any more forehead-slappingly awful, up pulls the following:

http://www.nbc.com/nbc/Revelations/video/

...no doubt the video from LaHaye's wildly successful, jesus-meets-terminator-meets-barbara-cartland end-of-world-tomorrow-and-i-hope-youre-all-bloody-ready scribblings.

I can't help but occasionally think that the Golgafrinchams might somehow be behind all of this. Or maybe the mice.

- robin.

Obni

As St. Malachy has named the next (and penultimate) pope the "Glory of the Olive" (GLORIA OLIVAE).

A quick google for "olive" and "pope" revealed the following chilling prediction, its source was not given but it may well be Nostrodamus!

What happened to the Pope when he went to Mount Olive?
Popeye beat the $#@% out of him.

If a nautical gentlemen is involved in an assault on the new pope in the coming months, then some of the other signs of the end of days on that web-site may also occur; they mainly involve a priest, a rabbi, and a gynecologist walking into a bar...

ISAW

KCF wrote:

Considering the fact that the demise of the pope will almost inevitably lead to the flowering of doomsday predictions, I would be interested to know if anybody here is informed enough to cast a skeptical eye over this phenomenon.

On Nostrasdamus: he is vague even if you could read him in the original Medieval French. None of the doomsayer so called followers of him that make claims about him CAN read him in the original AFAIK.

On the endtimes and why people continue to believe in them I believe Leo Fessinger is a good reference on this. Psychologists in Europe use the term "cognitive conflict" Fessinger in the US AFAIK coined the term
with "dissonence" in place of "conflict"

Dbones

would you like to see the pope on the end of a rope?

[image removed]

davros

No, and you're out of here.