WinAce

Greetings. It has recently come to my attention that 19th century authors had access to privileged information they could not possess without some supernatural aid. They made uncanny predictions about what modern science would discover, but this strange phenomenon has gone unnoticed--until now.

To demonstrate how writers living back then were gifted with such prophetic abilities, here are a few choice excerpts of their writings, compared with the discoveries of modern science.

"IT WAS the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us..."

With this cryptic opening paragraph from A Tale of Two Cities, Dickens implies that at least two contradictory versions of reality exist. Until the 1950s, this was merely considered an interesting literary device called parallelism, but in actuality it hid a deeper meaning...

Schrodinger's cat, a feline neither alive or dead but both at the same time, immediately springs to mind, as do other phenomena like quantum interference. There can only be one possible explanation--Charles Dickens predicted quantum mechanics! How could he have possibly done that when physics didn't yet exist?!

Example 2:

"But, tell me, Watson, what do you make of our visitor's stick? Since we have been so unfortunate as to miss him and have no notion of his errand, this accidental souvenir becomes of importance. Let me hear you reconstruct the man by an examination of it." - Sherlock Holmes, ch.1 of The Hound of the Baskervilles

This is obviously a prediction of DNA testing, since things like walking sticks can contain skin flakes, hair, etc. and offer us incredibly useful help in reconstructing who did the crime! To hell with context and the authors' intention, it's obviously intended as a prophecy of future science by Gawd!

Example 3:

"And it was the mournful influence of the unperceived shadow that caused him to feel, although he neither saw nor heard, to feel the presence of my head within the room." - Edgar Allan Poe, The Tell Tale Heart

What phenomena can neither be seen nor heard, but felt, and can be used to detect human activity? Why, infrared rays, of course! Amazing!

And let's not forget how the prophet Mary Shelley (pbuh) predicted organ transplantation almost two centuries before it was successfully performed... I could go on and on, but I think this will suffice for now.

The moral of this story? Well, there are several:

1. Vague, out-of-context verses that superficially resemble some new development do not a prediction make.
2. Humans are extremely good at retroactive shoehorning, which explains the prevalence of belief in Nostradamus and other frauds but not our ability to predict the future.
3. Said shoehorning can produce "foreknowledge" in the Bible, Quran, Hindu Vedas, or Moby Dick; a few selected statements out of thick tomes are SURE to match up, at least superficially, with some of the mountains of scientific knowledge we've uncovered.
4. One must ask why the scientific developments are never actually inspired by the book, but always conveniently "realized" after scientists infer them from the empirical evidence.
5. IMHO, the ones who originate these type of arguments are dumb as rocks and should do humanity a favor by not reproducing*.

*The above refers to the professional scam artists who con those lacking critical thinking into using these arguments on random web forums, not the unwitting victims themselves. "Hate the scammer, not the scammed" is an appropriate adage.

River

Interesting. These scammers, should be made aware of this . Your post serves as a valuable lesson to all.

echidna

If I'm not mistaken, "scammers" includes those who try to extract similar tenuous messages & suspect interpretations from religious texts including the Qu'ran.

River

These scammers should obviously be barred from the forums. Only people knowledgeable about the topics at hand should be allowed to persist.

echidna

And what about knowledgeable scammers ?

River, you are not so silly as to realise that the morals 1,2,3,4 (I'll leave out 5) are entirely applicable to your "shoehorning" of various selective interpretations of the Qu'ran.

River

shoehorning requires tremendous guile and craftiness. I do not possess these characteristics.

Arken

That's nothing! Did you know that the common parking garage is a perfect illustration of the famous double-slit experiment which demonstrates wave/particle duality?

echidna

Dammit, that explains that "how the hell did I get here" feeling which I get after exiting one of those multi-level carparks.

Although on a more serious note, particle-wave duality is commonly symbolised by the Yin-Yang symbol, a concept originating around 1200 BC with the symbol itself dating to around 200 BC, but both of them well pre-dating the Qu'ran. So the question is River, was the symbol selected because of its coincidental appropriateness to a modern discovery, or was it in itself predictive of the modern discovery of particle-wave duality ?

Because ultimately that is what your "proofs" of Qu'ran Truth are doing. They are shoehorning a modern known fact to appear as though it was predicted. Nostradamus is a good example from WinAce. For one to believe in the "predictions" from the Qu'ran, one would also need to believe the equally contrived "predictions" from Nostradamus.

Lobstrosity

It most certainly does not. It simply requires remarkable lack of critical thinking skills often coupled with a tendency to copy and paste large unanalyzed quantities of meaningless text from other uncited sources. All that's needed is someone who sees the word "expand" somewhere and is willing to assert "look, proof the author knew of the Big Bang eons before science discovered it!" That's not craftiness, that's just stupidity.

velvetfinger

:notworthy

Quite brilliant, WinAce.