Prophecies

In his book, The Big Short, Michael Lewis talks about a fund manager named Steve Eisman who, as a young man, decided to study the Jewish holy book, the Talmud. Why?
“Not because he had the slightest interest in God but because he was curious about its internal contradictions.”
I didn’t read religious stuff with that aim; but I did start to notice the contradictions as I went along.

Take prophecies, for instance. Almost every religion has them. A prophecy implies that the future is pre-determined. So does that mean there’s no free will? And if it’s true that there’s no such thing as free will, then it is illogical to claim that heaven, hell, rebirth or nirvana are based on your actions, right?

Take Kamsa. After hearing the prophecy that he’d be killed by Devaki’s 8th born, if he had turned over a new leaf, would he still have been killed? A la Angulimala? Or would he have been spared, in which case all future celestial prophecies would have been considered non-binding!

I’ve never heard of a satisfying answer to these questions.

Of course, regardless of the contradictions, prophecies do make for good, even great fiction. Like the Harry Potter series. When the evil Lord Voldemort hears the prophecy as to who would kill him, it’s ambiguous: it could mean one of two boys. Voldemort decides to go after Harry Potter. And so, says Dumbledore:
“Harry, never forget that what the prophecy says is only significant because Voldemort made it so…Voldemort singled you out as the person who would be most dangerous to him — and in doing so, he made you the person who would be most dangerous to him!”
When Harry protests, Dumbledore responds:
“If Voldemort had never heard of the prophecy, would it have been fulfilled? Would it have meant anything? Of course not!”
Or as JK Rowling herself put it in her website:
“The prophecy (like the one the witches make to Macbeth, if anyone has read the play of the same name) becomes the catalyst for a situation that would never have occurred if it had not been made.”

I guess that’s what the character named Wilhelm Wexler meant when he said in the movie, The International:
“Sometimes a man can meet his destiny on the road he took to avoid it.”

Comments

  1. Ramiah KumarFebruary 23, 2018 at 8:50 PM

    A point mentioned in this blog is, "A prophecy implies that the future is pre-determined". As far as pre-determination issue goes there are some other contenders too, apart from prophesy. Fate is one of them, where no meaning is sought too. A stock interpretation of karma ideas in which 'bound to happen karma-effect' having the name 'prarabdha' is used freely as if it is the same as pre-determined is due to poor understanding of the complexity of the ways of karma. And, of course, your prophesy idea too. There could be some other packages of this kind too.

    Strangely, even physics seems to have dilly-dallied on this matter. If we know the status of the infinity of details of the mechanics of the universe and by applying the laws of physics theoretically the future should fall according to the applied laws. Nobody can do it ever of course, but it is anyway a valid scientific proposal. Descartes too was a protagonist of this idea. This definite idea of determinism in physics was shattered with the entry of quantum mechanics into the arena.

    Biology is firm and clear - even the so direction-going-like phenomenon called evolution is not predetermined and is 100% probability even if based on evolution principles and laws.

    I am inclined to believe that we human beings want desperately to believe in fate and determinism. As long as such desire is strong, like all belief systems, fate ideas would also survive.

    Man man be mortal but man is spirited when alive! Our spirit can whip up almost anything and keep it going! Some kind of 'meme' the Dawkins coinage, I suppose :-)

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