Is Nostradamus an elaborate hoax?

[TommyVercetti]

Did this guy really exist and could he actually see the future? I personally believe he is a hoax created by someone and tabloids just keep making up lies.

 

[amcdonald]

hoax... obviously

 

[IEatChildren]

Historic records prove his existence. As for the predictions he made, the ones that we know about have all come true.
Who knows, maybe someone just decided that they'd scam the population of the planet for centuries and conceived a plan to do so over a long period of time.

 

[Trezza]

Originally posted by: TommyVercetti
Did this guy really exist and could he actually see the future? I personally believe he is a hoax created by someone and tabloids just keep making up lies.

you know he predicted you would say that.

Linked

 

[AreaCode707]

Originally posted by: TommyVercetti
Did this guy really exist and could he actually see the future? I personally believe he is a hoax created by someone and tabloids just keep making up lies.

Trezza, that link threw me for a loop.

 

[datalink7]

Originally posted by: IEatChildren
Historic records prove his existence. As for the predictions he made, the ones that we know about have all come true.
Who knows, maybe someone just decided that they'd scam the population of the planet for centuries and conceived a plan to do so over a long period of time.

All come true? Where do you get that information?

 

[Syringer]

He predicted I'd say this.

 

[Schadenfreude]

Does it matter?

 

[Skyclad1uhm1]

He made very vague predictions, which (just like a lot of the less idiotic predictions from the Bible) are very much open to interpretation. You can fit them to millions of events, which means that they all seem to get fullfilled.

 

[dragonballgtz]

Nostradamus predictions.

 

[Skyclad1uhm1]

Brief description of his life:

Edit: Terrible English there... looking for different version
Edit 2: Apparently this was on the original booklet, all the lyrics sites have this version

 

[Jhill]

Originally posted by: Skyclad1uhm1
He made very vague predictions, which (just like a lot of the less idiotic predictions from the Bible) are very much open to interpretation. You can fit them to millions of events, which means that they all seem to get fullfilled.

Exactly

I predict that in the future something bad will happen on the west coast sometime.

 

[digitalsm]

Its real, however all his predictions are so vague you can interpet anything from them.

 

[dafatha00]

Originally posted by: TommyVercetti
Did this guy really exist and could he actually see the future? I personally believe he is a hoax created by someone and tabloids just keep making up lies.

 

[Judgement]

Originally posted by: TommyVercetti
Did this guy really exist and could he actually see the future? I personally believe he is a hoax created by someone and tabloids just keep making up lies.

No, he was a real person. Yes tabloids probably exploit is prophecies to make up stories. Yes, a lot of what he said has come true. Yes he is vague, but its definately not as vague as the people who've posted so far make it out to be. Some of the accuracy can be scarey if you at all believe in that sort of thing.

 

[Skyclad1uhm1]

Originally posted by: dafatha00

Originally posted by: TommyVercetti
Did this guy really exist and could he actually see the future? I personally believe he is a hoax created by someone and tabloids just keep making up lies.

There is more historical evidence to support the existance of Nostradamus than there is to support the existance of Jesus or a god.

 

[esun]

HowStuffWorks - How Nostradamus Works

Basically this states that Nostradamus existed, but that we know little of his life, and what we do know may be of questionable accuracy. His predictions can be interpreted as having "come true," but skeptics feel that they were actual just vague statements that have been twisted into fitting certain historical events. Personally, I fall into the group of skeptics, especially after reading this (regarding 9/11):

A lot of this interest was fueled by a series of e-mail messages. One anonymous message, widely circulated in the United States, claimed that Nostradamus foretold the destruction in some detail. The message included this quatrain:

In the City of God there will be a great thunder,
Two Brothers torn apart by Chaos,
While the fortress endures, the great leader will succumb.
The third big war will begin when the big city is burning.

Ostensibly, the "two brothers" refers to the twin towers, the "fortress" refers to the Pentagon, the "great leader" refers to President Bush and "the big city" refers to New York. In fact, this quatrain is not the work of Nostradamus -- it is a complete fabrication.

According to Snopes.com, an urban legend information site, the first three lines were taken from an essay written a few years ago by Neil Marshall, then a student at Brock University in Canada. Supposedly, Marshall included the lines in the essay to demonstrate how Nostradamus pieced together general, vague images that could fit with a wide range of events. Apparently, someone picked up the verses from the Web, added an extra line and distributed the quatrain over the Internet. If these lines were written a few years ago, Nostradamus critics say, they support the case that Nostradamus had no special talent -- any vague prediction, even by a disbeliever like Marshall, has a good chance of connecting with later events.

 

[IGBT]

Similar to the bible...

 

[AnyMal]

Yes he was the real person. Real name - Michelle DeNotredame, a doctor by trade. He took on the name Nostradamus after publishing his first set of Centuries. Was he a visionary? No, he was not. He was only a poet. I made it a point and borrowed couple of books of his work from library and read the whole thing. Only people with wild imagination and ability to turn fantasy into reality would interepert his writing as "predictions".

 

[Whitecloak]

no

 

[h8red]

Originally posted by: dragonballgtz
Nostradamus predictions.

Did you read this? They cited Time Life and Reader's Digest LOL

 

[Cerb]

Hoax: Yes and no.
Real: Yes.
Why yes and no? Look at the things the man wrote! They can be made to look like almost any disaster after it happens. Agnes Nutter did a much better job .

 

[Zenmervolt]

Originally posted by: Judgement

Originally posted by: TommyVercetti
Did this guy really exist and could he actually see the future? I personally believe he is a hoax created by someone and tabloids just keep making up lies.

No, he was a real person. Yes tabloids probably exploit is prophecies to make up stories. Yes, a lot of what he said has come true. Yes he is vague, but its definately not as vague as the people who've posted so far make it out to be. Some of the accuracy can be scarey if you at all believe in that sort of thing.

No, it's all as vague as we make it out to be, it's just that humans seek out similarities rather than differences. When an actual event fits into a very vague prediction we tend to interpret the prediction in a way that makes it seem highly accurate.

ZV

 

[Derango]

Originally posted by: h8red

Originally posted by: dragonballgtz
Nostradamus predictions.

Did you read this? They cited Time Life and Reader's Digest LOL

Yea, I was thinking that too Everyone knows readers digest is the most reliable source of information in the world!!

 

[kami]

I call BS!