By: Austin Folger

A few weeks ago, on September 28^th, the astronomical phenomena known as a blood moon occurred.  It was the last of the four blood moons that were to occur over a period of time. Two pastors predicted that this final blood moon was the signal of the return of Jesus Christ, which would be followed by powerful earthquakes that would destroy the planet (Austin, 2015). This is only one of the many doomsday prophecies that have been created over time, the most recent being the end of the Mayan calendar, predicting the end of the world in 2012. Why do these doomsday prophecies keep appearing, even though they are proven to be wrong time after time? Are these individuals hoping that they will get it right eventually? Are they trying to just to gain attention? The motive of these individuals do not necessarily matter; we need to understand why individuals fall into the beliefs of these prophecies. The principles of Pseudoscience has the answer to some of this problem in the form of logical fallacies.

The belief that the blood moon would signal the end of the world came about, because previous blood moons have coincided with significant events, such as biblical events. Therefore, the blood moon is the cause of these events, and it will also signal the end of the world (Austin, 2015).  I’m sold. Who wouldn’t this make sense too? Sarcasm aside, it actually does make sense to most people. Our brain is known to use shortcuts to help us make decisions, which may lead us to illogical ways of thinking in some situations. The logical fallacy that this situation fall into, is the post-hoc fallacy, which is when we believe that since one event came before another event, the first event caused the second. However, these events are most likely completely unrelated (Livio, 2012). The fact that I forgot to brush my teeth before an exam probably would not cause me to fail an exam; even though brushing my teeth came before the exam. Yet, we still fall victim to this illogical way of thinking.

A major problem is that if I tried to prove that a doomsday prophecy is wrong to a believer of the prophecy, I would be wasting my time. I would have a better chance running a presidential election for my dog and winning than doing so. We are programmed to select information that only supports our views, not disprove them, which is known as confirmation bias (Braithwaite, 2006). Therefore, these individuals are selecting the times that blood moons have coincided with significant events and ignoring the times nothing deemed exciting happened. Also, most likely, some important event will most likely occur every day, so of course they will most likely find something. If I would confront a doomsday believer with evidence against the prophecy, they would simply ignore it or come up with a way around the evidence.

The blood moon has come and passed, yet no earthquake has destroyed civilization. However, I’m sure some individual is concocting the next Armageddon and will once again be severely disappointed when the Earth still spins. Trying to fight these logical fallacies is probably a pointless war, but maybe someday actual science will prevail, but that may be me being too optimistic. When will these doomsday prophecies finally end? The most logical answer is: as long as we are human.

References

Austin, J. (2015, September 27) Rare “blood moon” overnight will bring huge earth-destroying earthquakes. Express. Retrieved from http://www.express.co.uk/news/weird/584602/Rare-Blood-Moon-September-huge-earth-destroying-earthquakes-prophets-warn-USA-pope

Braithwaite, J. J. (2006) Seven fallacies of thought and reason: Common errors in reasoning and argument from pseudoscience. Retrieved from https://www.academia.edu/316243/Seven_Fallacies_of_Thought_and_Reason_Common_Errors_in_Reasoning_and_Argument_from_Pseudoscience

Livio, M. (2012, October 9) The dangerous world of logical fallacies. The Huffington Post. Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mario-livio/logical-fallacies_b_1932906.html