Titan's Tragedy Predates Titanic's

One rendition of the cover of Robertson's 1898 novel.

Here’s one for fans of prophetic writings. Today’s the birthday, in 1861, of Morgan Robertson, whose 1898 novel foretold in uncanny detail the sinking of the Titanic. In his book ~ originally titled Futility ~ the ocean liner was named the Titan.

• Both ships sink on an April night in the North Atlantic, each after striking an iceberg.
• Titan is 800 feet long, the Titanic was only 83 feet longer.
• Titan weighs 45,000 tons, Titanic 46,328.
• Both are filled with the cream of high society from either side of the Atlantic.
• Both carry too few lifeboats. And in each case, the loss of life is appalling.

According to Wired magazine:

Whatever fame or notoriety accrued to Robertson for his prescient novel, which was republished in the wake of Titanic’s sinking in April 1912 (and retitled The Wreck of the Titan), it apparently wasn’t enough to overcome his inner torment. Robertson is believed to have committed suicide in an Atlantic City, New Jersey, hotel room in 1915, although an accidental overdose of the dubious over-the-counter medication protiodide is occasionally given as the cause of death.

Robertson also demonstrated his knack for forecasting events in a collection of short stories published in 1914. The book includes “Beyond the Spectrum,” which describes a future war between the United States and Japan, which is ignited by a Japanese surprise attack on American shipping, but not Pearl Harbor.

Click here for the Wired article.

Fixed Future or Free Will?

The Crystal Ball by John Williams Waterhouse, 1902.

My wife Christine and I were driving along I-205 near Portland yesterday afternoon and I was muttering about psychics’s visions of the future, saying it seems most want it both ways ~ they say they see the future and in the next breath say we can change it.

So which is it, I wondered, a fixed future or a changeable one? If it is subject to change, then how can it be perceived with any certainty?

Then, last night, my email inbox contained Dr. Joseph Mercola’s daily newsletter, with an interview he recently conducted with Dr. Larry Dossey about his latest book, The Power of Premonition: How Knowing the Future Can Shape Our Lives.

Larry Dossey is a former chief of staff at Medical City Dallas Hospital and has lectured in medical schools and hospitals throughout the U.S. and abroad. He is author of the best-selling Healing Words, and The Power of Prayer and the Practice of Medicine.

Lo and behold, one of the questions Dr. Mercola asked Dr. Dossey was:

If I can see the future, doesn’t that mean it is already in place and is fixed? Don’t premonitions do away with free will and freedom of choice?

And here is Larry Dossey’s answer:

No. Just because you glimpse how the future is likely to unfold does not mean you can’t act to change it. When Amanda (from an earlier question) dreamed that the chandelier fell and crushed her sleeping infant, she removed the baby from the crib. The chandelier did fall, but the baby’s life was saved. She exercised her freedom of choice, and it made a life-and-death difference. There are thousands of similar examples.

Philosophers often argue against premonitions because they say premonitions destroy freedom of choice. But people who have premonitions usually don’t see it that way. Like Amanda, their personal experiences with premonitions say they do have a choice.

They can act, and they do, to change the future they’ve glimpsed.

I agree with the idea that the future is probable, not fixed. According to this view, the future is fluid and subject to change. So a premonition is not inevitable.

Probability varies, of course. This means that some futures may be easier to change than others. It was easier for Amanda to act on her premonition and remove her baby from danger than for an individual to prevent an earthquake she dreamed about. Some futures may be so probable they will happen; others, perhaps most, are malleable.

This line of reasoning is what many people believe has averted prophesied earth changes and similar apocalyptic visions of some soothsayers. The visions are experienced, then publicized, causing many people to pray they won't occur, and so they are averted.

If that's the case, it's good enough for me.

Click here for the complete interview.

Click here for The Power of Premonition on Amazon.com.

A Cure for Doomsday Anxieties

Believe me, I’m not obsessed with apocalyptic, end-of-the-world, doomsday, end-time prophecies. But it was just eight years ago next month when a lot of people were trembling with fear as one millennium was about to end and another begin. And even if the world didn’t actually explode or implode as we entered 2000, we were certain to suffer mightily due to the dreaded Y2K.

It’s starting again. Here and there, more and more, we see references to 2012, the year the Mayan calendar ends, coincident with a number of other events that are certain to spell doom. Stay tuned for the Rapture. Just pray you’re not Left Behind.

All of this is why I encourage you to visit this website:

A Brief History of the Apocalypse

“Chicken Littles have been crying doom since ancient times,” writes the site’s author, Chris Nelson, who says he started the site “to debunk end-time prophecy by listing hundreds of failed doomsday predictions, allay the fears spread by end-time preachers, and demonstrate that doomcrying is nothing new.”

It’s a fascinating read ~ beginning with the year 2800 BC and extending to the present ~ with page after page of well-documented prophecies, many of them rather bizarre.

There’s probably no better way to fend off the anxiety that’ll be mounting until December 21, 2012, than to review the hundreds of failed predictions.

You might want to bookmark A Brief History of the Apocalypse for future reference.