Nostradamus or Nostrildamus?

Dr. Archontis Pantsios apantsio at ac.anatolia.edu.gr
Thu Sep 13 15:00:29 CEST 2001


BFOSTERLA wrote:

> >From my brother...
>
> Hi,
> I just received this and thought I should pass it on without comment:
>
> Are you guys familiar with Nostradamus? This is a quote from one of his
> predictions:
>
>  "In the year of the new century and nine months,
>   From the sky will come a great King of Terror...
>   The sky will burn at forty-five degrees.
>   Fire approaches the great new city..."
>
>  "In the city of York there will be great collapse,
>   twin brothers torn apart by chaos while the fortress fall,
>   the great leader will succumb,
>   the third big war will come when the big city is
>   burning..."
>
> 2001 is the first year of the new century and this is the 9th month. New
York
> is located at the 41st degree Latitude.
>
> He also said that this will be the third World War  and it would be bigger
> than the last two wars.  I hope he is wrong, but judging from his
predictions
> of Hitler, Napoleon, and Pearl Harbor, this is shocking............

Boy, I understand we're getting way off-topic, but I can't resist the
temptation to reply to the above.

First off, the above quote attributed to Nostradamus is a hoax. He never
actually wrote such a prediction. For more, consult the following url:
www.snopes2.com/inboxer/hoaxes/predict.htm
So, before we start panicking and looking for shelter, let's try to use some
good ol' sense...

But more importantly, let's ask ourselves, how can someone (anyone except
God) know the future? Accepting that only God is beyond time, then only He
(whatever God may mean) knows the future events.

How about that Nostradamus guy? Many have said that he predicted many events
in the past half a millennium. I'm no expert on him, but from the few
"predictions" I've read it seems that one can fit many disasters and
catastrophes to his extremely vague descriptions as he writes in metaphors
and such. What I have seen so far, is people trying to fit events *after*
the fact, never before--well, actually, many times predicting a million
things for one of his "predictions".

Much of what happens in the universe in which we live is determined by
physical and natural forces and we take such forces as given, even if
recently we've been trying to meddle with them. Part of what happens to our
lives is due to random chance (like those people that happened to board the
ill-fated planes that crashed the Twin Towers or the people that happened to
work in there) and part is due to individual and collective decisions (like
those people deliberately deciding to slam the planes on the Towers). The
world advances due to the combined forces of determinism and chance. I can't
see how any Nostradamus can predict with any degree of reasonable precision
the result of such forces 5 centuries in advance...

In closing, to make this posting as least somewhat topical, let me mention 2
very entertaining Nostradamus-related comics stories: (a) Don Rosa's
"Nostrildamus" one and (b) "Il ritorno al passato", TL #1672, 1987,
Marconi/M. De Vita, where we learn (spoiler), that Nostradamus was able to
make whatever "predictions" he made by travelling forward in time as a kid
with the help of the famous time-machine and taking back with him when
leaving only torn pages from history books! An excellent story!

My sincerest, heart-felt condolences to the grieving American people with
the hope that their leadership will re-act with a cool head and a firm hand.

Best,

Archontis



----------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----------
Archontis L. Pantsios, Ph.D.
Assistant Academic Dean & Associate Professor of Economics
The American College of Thessaloniki
Thessaloniki, GREECE
tel.: +30 31 398 228





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