The facsmile on the right is a paragraph from Awake! magazine, Oct 8, 1968, page 15. This is the companion magazine of the Watchtower, distributed worldwide by the Jehovah's Witnesses. The magazine was published quite exactly when I was born, a son of two Jehovah's Witnesses, and it told about the impending doom, the total collapse of this world into chaos, and the actual end of the world, by the year 1975.
I started primary school in 1975. I completed high school in 1987, and left the Jehovah's Witnesses in 1994/95, after having learned about its past apocalyptic and prophetic failures.
You will notice in the quotation on the right that this apocalyptic sect had no real problem finding secular support for their doom and gloom predictions. In this case, the Paddock brothers, who in 1967 published a book called Famine - 1975!
Their prediction failed spectacularly on every count, as is well known. They probably sold better thanks to their alarmist book title, but the well-deserved ridicule hit correspondingly hard when the food shortage never materialised (in fact, increases in food production outperformed population increase then, as it does now).
Perhaps it is no surprise that I have remained thoroughly unconvinced by all forms of apocalyptics since, and this includes the secular form, also from those with impeccable scientific creditentials. For example, I find myself a total skeptic on the alleged disastrous effect of global warming, and I doubt that human activity plays any significant role in climate change. I am one of those who do remember when climate experts warned about a global drop in the temperature and the coming ice age, after all.
Environmentalists have been a never-tiring source of alarmist predictions. If you look at environmentalist warnings a few decades back, you simply cannot help being astonished at their terrible track record. Remember acid rain? The forest death in central Europe? I do. Most people, I suspect, no longer do. Even the consequences of real disasters, like oil spills and volcanoes, are practically always exaggarated. Remember Exxon Valdez?
I do not say there are no problems. On the contrary, I agree that there are many challenges - environment, population control, and in particular disease - but I do not believe it is correct to exaggarate dangers to alert the public. People may have short memories, but the doomsayers will lose credibility, and a "doom fatigue" will make people ignore even the credible warnings about real dangers.
This entry was first added to my blog on Jan 30, 2003.
