Cav's Place

Even though, as a recent BBC Future article quite nicely put it, there are “a lot of people who don’t just think the world revolves around them, they think it stops around them too”, seeing as one in seven worldwide and one in four in the United States believe that the world will end during their lifetime, announced apocalypses have this amusing tendency of coming and going all the time. Somewhat curiously, though hardly unexpectedly, while the particularly foolish believers are sometimes left stunned and directionless, the individuals and groups that make such predictions usually move on easily enough, often with a fair bit more in their pockets and accounts than they had before.

I do have to wonder how come there are still so many gullible believers in such stories. A newspaper from here was quoting a historian who, referring to a previous non-event of this same type, stated that he found historical records of no less than 476 other announced ends of the world, which number definitely sounds not only plausible but also most probably far lower than the real figure, seeing as records of many other similar announcements were most probably not preserved. In addition, if it may be argued that people rarely learn from history and inconvenient memories are easily ignored, there have been several such failed predictions even very recently, and yet many are still undeterred.
I’m not even referring to the members of this or that more or less obscure cult, as those may be expected to stand by their beliefs for reasons that are probably beyond the scope of this post, but to the many who keep thinking that this time it may be different, that the next one may actually be true, or that even if it won’t be quite the end then something major, and usually catastrophic, is far more likely to happen on a date that’s announced as the end of the world. I’m talking of the people who eat up the nonsense about certain spots being safe regardless of what may happen with the world as a whole, or about human DNA changing, as that would in fact represent an end of humanity as it is now, or about the entire planet being left without electricity by either a planetary alignment known to be a lie and which couldn’t have any effect even if it wasn’t, or cataclysmic solar flares supposedly known far ahead of time to happen on very specific dates. I’m talking about those who find themselves stockpiling some supplies each time, just in case, or checking for zombies before leaving home on a day announced as the end, or simply being unusually anxious at such a time, despite noticing no obvious signs of impending doom.
Why is there any weight whatsoever, even at a subconscious level, being placed on such prophecies? Why does NASA frequently have to put up pages to debunk myths which shouldn’t get any reaction out of anyone other than, at most, some mild amusement? Shouldn’t the fact that we’re well into the information age prevent these things from happening? Shouldn’t most people make use of the wealth of information that’s so readily available these days in order to check facts before even entertaining such absurd notions? In fact, shouldn’t anyone with an IQ above, say, 80 know how absurd they are even without checking anything? I mean, wasn’t the rule that anything should be believable given sufficient evidence, but extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence? Therefore, shouldn’t those who make such extraordinary claims be required to produce equally extraordinary evidence before anyone as much as glances in their general direction?

Of course, based on the above, I shouldn’t be writing this now either, and I definitely wouldn’t be if I had something else that I’d really want to write about at the moment. After all, I have largely ignored the issue so far, only poking a little fun or, in a couple of situations, openly laughing at those who fell for it, so there was little reason to make a point of the world yet again failing to end according to somebody’s schedule after the day in question passed. However, I did need a topic and you can’t say that this doesn’t provide a very good opportunity to say a few things that unfortunately seem to still need to be said… Not that there’s much of a chance of the gullible ones learning something now when they obviously haven’t before, but this was indeed one of the most notable such announced apocalypses, with rumors about it abounding for a long time, so there may be at least a few who’ll learn to stop falling for such hoaxes in the future as a result.

Now I’m not one to trust nothing but proven science, nor do I advocate such a mindset. I believe that a world that would stop believing in anything magical, mystical, spiritual or otherwise beyond this material plane of existence would be a very sad and hopeless place, far more so than it is now. However, science relies on evidence while belief does not, so belief has its place in the areas that science didn’t yet thoroughly analyze and undeniably prove one way or the other. There are still many such areas, and many of them will continue to exist for a long time, some beliefs being unlikely to ever be undeniably proven wrong. However, when a belief clashes with perfectly clear scientific evidence, anyone learning of both sides should immediately know that the belief can’t be right and even those who had until then been convinced that it was should accept this and renounce their obviously mistaken belief.
It’s a matter of scientific literacy and of applying such a mindset in all areas of life. If, and only if, something is undeniably proven to be either true or false, this conclusion should be accepted by all. Otherwise, of course, anything not proven false may be true and anything not proven true may be false, so each person may pick a side and see where it leads them, but even such hypotheses should be based on something, follow a certain procedure and, in the end, make sense. Such apocalyptic prophecies do not. They’re built on questionable foundations and have a structure that couldn’t bear even a fraction of their weight, crumbling at the slightest hint of scrutiny, so what does the fact that they still find such fertile ground say about humanity?