Biggest challenge to my denial of the supernatural yet

[charlou]

Baba Vanga, a little-known Romanian prophetess, predicted in 1980 that in August 1999 or 2000 Kursk would be under water (this is exactly how she phrased it, no possibility of reinterpretation here). Kursk is a Russian city that did not sink in either 1999 or 2000. However, in August 2000 a huge submarine named Kursk sank, killing more than 100 people.

[Tero]

>>she predicted that WW3 would start in November 2010,<<

Is it too late to start some orgies, just in case?

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Hey,

This is my first post on this site. I am wondering why there is no article on this site, or a discussion on this forum about Baba Vanga. Instead what we have - Santa Claus. While indeed whether to lie to children about Santa Claus is an interesting issue, I'd say that no.1 organisation in the buisness of debunking paranormal claims should take note when a psychic preditcs a World War 3 to a specific date, and on that date there erupts a dangerous conflict. It's quite extraordinary, by any standard. Then we here about her other supposed successes, Chernobyl, Kursk, Stalin's death and so on. And of course, when you read her predictions what would happen during and after the World War 3, some of the stuff is really ludicrous. And only by looking in Wikipedia I saw one of her predictions not coming true.

But she is a serious (if that word can apply to a psychic) deal, and she is becoming new Nostradamus on the internet. And justly so. Even, despite the strongness of her claims, when some psychic gains popularity, the EDUCATIONAL foundation must do a throughout debunking. Because THAT'S how you gain new skeptics. But there is no skeptic answer to her.

And I would except JREF to do what it was ONCE doing, before it became MOSTLY light-weight, a thing that was so wonderful, and what made me a skeptic in the first place. A throughout debunking. The context. The analysis of couple of her predictions to see what is their mechanism. The record of failures. And shedding some light on this most recent prediction, whether there is some story behind it. That is what JREF has been created for, wasn't it? The analysis of paranormal phenomenon. I'm looking forward to it.

P.S. I'm not reading about paranormal or supernatural anymore, I moved on. But after I saw the Baba Vanga stuff spreading all over, I said it's time to check Randi's site after some time, because it really got me interested. And when I went here, I recalled "Ahhh, yes, it's the new randi.org, so instead of reply to a new popular phenomenon, I will find posts about Santa Clause, "Delusion to the point of saturation" and Clint Eastwood movie review. The first things that I saw here (except for "Science-based medicine,which is a good series). In the old "Swift" I would be guaranteed to find it. Anyway, what I really want is just a careful analysis of it. For benefit of all doubters and potential future skeptics, because cases like that after debunking really open eyes, and for benefit of the foundation, because analysis of her might prove very popular and invite new-comers. And not just preach to the choir, like it is doing for some time now.

[Eriku]

Vanga talked about the future, although she did not like to. In her words, in 200 years man will make contact with brothers in mind from other worlds. She said that many aliens have been living on the earth for years. They came from the planet, which in their language is called Vamfim, and is the third planet from the Earth.

Taken from Wiki... So there's another planet with life in our solar system? Damn, she didn't mention any sophisticated cloaking technology or anything, so this one'll be hard to debunk!

Incidentally, it was fun going through her alleged list of predictions of our future from now on is a riveting read, btw... Artifical suns, specific year where the Muslims take over Europe, there's a specific year stated for when the distinguishing of Europeans and Asians is no longer possible... Somehow I doubt we'll ever get such a refined system of taxonomy that we could ever agree where a species/race/whatever ends and another begins ;P

[Eriku]

Screw it... it's such a fun read that everybody ought to have it imposed on them:

Vanga's Future Prophecies

2008: Baba Vanga speaks of conflicts in "Indonesia" leading to the upcoming WWIII, but some people say that Indonesia had been mistranslated and it's meant to read "India". This will also involve the attempted assassinations of 4 heads of state.
2010: World War 3 begins in November 2010. Starting as a regular war, it will progress to a nuclear and chemical war. Vanga says the war will be finished by October 2014.
2011: As a result of the war, radioactive showers will destroy almost all life in the Northern Hemisphere. The remaining Europeans will face an even further threat from the Muslims who will use chemical weapons to finish them off.
2014: As another result of the chemicals and nuclear weapons during the war, most of the world population will have skin cancer and other skin diseases.
2016: Extraterrestrials will make contact with Earth.
2018: China will become the new superpower. The exploiters will become the exploited.
2023: The Earth's orbit will change.
2025: Europe is still very underpopulated.
2028: A new energy source will be found. Hunger is overcome. A manned space flight will leave for Venus.
2033: The world water levels will rise as the polar ice caps melt.
2043: Economy is good. The Muslims will run Europe.
2046: All bodily organs can be reproduced, becoming the easiest and most popular method of treatment.
2066: The U.S. uses a new climate-changing weapon on Muslim controlled Rome.
2076: Communism takes over.
2084: Nature is reborn.(??)
2088: A new disease makes you grow old in seconds.
2097: The Fast-Aging Disease is cured.
2100: Man-made sun is lighting up the dark side of the planet.
2111: People become robots. Probably like androids.
2123: Wars between small countries. The big countries stay out of it.
2125: Signals from Space will be received in Hungary. (People will be reminded of Baba Vanga - probably due to her alien subjects)
2130: With the help of the aliens, civilizations will live underwater.
2164: Animals turn half-human.
2167: A new religion.
2170: Major drought.
2183: A colony on Mars will become a nuclear power and ask for independance from Earth. (Like the U.S. asked from England.)
2187: 2 large volcanic eruptions will be successfully stopped.
2195: The sea colonies will have energy and food.
2196: Asians and Europeans will be completely mixed.
2201: Temperatures drop as the sun's thermonuclear processes slow down.
2221: In the search for extra-terrestrial life, humans will come in contact with something terrible.
2256: A spaceship will bring a new disease to Earth.
2262: Planets will slowly change orbits. Mars will be threatened by a comet.
2271: Physics laws will be changed.
2273: White, black and yellow races will form 1 new race.
2279: Power will be obtained from nothing. (Possibly a vacuum or a black hole.)
2288: Possible time travel and alien contact.
2291: The sun grows cooler. Attempts will be made to make it hot again.
2296: Strong explosions in the sun. The forces of gravity will change. Old space stations and satellites will fall.
2299: In France, a resistance movement will rise against Islam.
2302: Important laws and secrets of the universe are revealed.
2304: Secrets of the Moon are also revealed.
2341: Something terrible will approach Earth from Space.
2354: An accident on the artificial sun will result in drought.
2371: World hunger.
2378: A new and fast-growing race.
2480: 2 artificial (man-made) suns will collide and leave the Earth in the dark.
3005: A war on Mars will change the trajectory of the planet.
3010: A comet will hit the moon. The Earth will be surrounded by a ring of rock and ash.
3797: By this time, everything on Earth will die. However, human civilization will be advanced enough to move to a new star system.


The following predections are collected from blogs and forums. These should not be perceived as fact, as they have not been posted with references. The origins of these predictions are unknown and are worded according to the users from whom they were written.

3803: A new planet is populated by little. Fewer contacts between people. Climate new planet affects the organisms of people - they mutate.
3805: The war between humans for resources. More than half of people dying out.
3815: The war is over.
3854: The development of civilization virtually stops. People live flocks as beasts.
3871: New prophet tells people about moral values, religion.
3874: New prophet receives support from all segments of the population. Organized a new church.
3878: along with the Church to re-train new people forgotten sciences.
4302: New cities are growing in the world. New Church encourages the development of new technology and science.
4302: The development of science. Scientists discovered in the overall impact of all diseases in organism behavior.
4304: Found a way to win any disease.
4308: Due to mutation people at last beginning to use their brains more than 34%. Completely lost the notion of evil and hatred.
4509: Getting to Know God. The man has finally been reached such a level of development that can communicate with God.
4599: People achieve immortality.
4674: The development of civilization has reached its peak. The number of people living on different planets is about 340 billion. Assimilation begins with aliens.
5076: A boundary universe. With it, no one knows.
5078: The decision to leave the boundaries of the universe. While about 40 percent of the population is against it.
5079: End of the World.

All the way up to 2079... I love the idea of us leaving the boundaries of the universe with forty per cent of the population saying "nay"

[Sælir]

I want to be alive in 4509 to be able to communicate with God but unfortunately we won´t achieve immortality ´till 90 years later :sighsm:

[Eriku]

I would've thought science would be set back a fair bit by "2271: Physics laws will be changed."?

[DRSB]

Vanga was not Romanian but Bulgarian, and they are crazy about her in Russia, 20 years after her death they still write books about her. She was blind and her specialty was not the future but helping locate missing people and things and correcting misdiagnoses, this is how she looked: http://www.google.ch/images?hl=de&biw=1 ... CFEQsAQwAw

She often got the future wrong, example, soccer world championship in US 1994: she predicted a final between two countries whose name start with the letter "B", that was after Bulgaria kicked out Germany at the quarter-final and played the semi-final against Sweden, boy, was Vanga wrong, Bulgaria lost against Sweden like 0:6 and so it was a final between Italy and Brazil which Italy won,

Psychology Today has currently several articles on psychic phenomenon:
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the ... -phenomena

[Eriku]

Vanga was not Romanian but Bulgarian, and they are crazy about her in Russia, 20 years after her death they still write books about her. She was blind and her specialty was not the future but helping locate missing people and things and correcting misdiagnoses, this is how she looked: http://www.google.ch/images?hl=de&biw=1 ... CFEQsAQwAw

She often got the future wrong, example, soccer world championship in US 1994: she predicted a final between two countries whose name start with the letter "B", that was after Bulgaria kicked out Germany at the quarter-final and played the semi-final against Sweden, boy, was Vanga wrong, Bulgaria lost against Sweden like 0:6 and so it was a final between Italy and Brazil which Italy won,

Psychology Today has currently several articles on psychic phenomenon:
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the ... -phenomena

Brazil won... Baggio with his magic pony tail missed the crucial penalty.

[DRSB]

Ah, yes, true! Brazil won.

[Deep Sea Isopod]

Hey,

This is my first post on this site.
(snip).

"Horror, horror! The American brethren will fall after being attacked by the steel birds. The wolves will be howling in a bush, and innocent blood will be gushing."
"Brethren" is believed to refer to the "Twin" Towers or the "Brothers". "Steel Birds" are obviously the jets. The part about the bush is believed to refer to President Bush.

Very dramatic!
This was predicted in 1989. "brethren" refers to the American people. If she meant towers, why not just say towers?
"Steel birds"? In 1989 we all knew what planes are. Why not just say "planes"?
"wolves will be howling in a bush". She clearly meant this as it is said. Why beat about the bush (excuse the pun)? It does not refer to "Dubya" Bush!

And now getting back to the Kursk. Why not just say an explosion will happen on the Kursk submarine? In 1980, we all knew what a submarine is.
It all seems too dramatised.

[Pappa]

>>she predicted that WW3 would start in November 2010,<<

Is it too late to start some orgies, just in case?

It could depend what you mean by "start". I mean, exactly when did WWI "start"?

[stripes4]

I started WW3 this morning. You'll probably notice it by 2017. It's a slow burner

[Feck]

If a prophesy doesn't work ,change the calender into Mayan or Chinese or Julian , words can be translated in and our of a few languages ,associations can be made with passages of any one of a list of holy books and if all else fails use numerology .

[Clinton Huxley]

I'm not having any world wars starting now that I've put the Xmas tree up. WWIII will have to be postponed until after the festivities.