Super Eagles ouster: Can any man predict the future? KAYODE KETEFE Considerable media hype was, understandably, generated over the prediction by the famous Prophet T. B. Joshua, of the Synagogue Church of All Nations, that the Super Eagles would not win their last qualifier match for the African Cup of Nations against Guinea on October 8, and that the Eagles would not qualify. The prediction was greeted with both credulity and scepticism. Some people who believed the renowned pastor had made many other "fulfilled" predictions in the past went into mourning even before the day of the match, while the sceptics, who scoff at all forms of prediction as worthless superstitions, dismissed it. In the said prediction, watched on video by this writer, Joshua had said "I was just sitting down when God showed me the game between Nigeria and Guinea next week. How they started it, and how they ended it. But what I saw was not favourable. Anyone who scores first takes the day. I watched the match yesterday" With these words, the renowned Pastor was already putting a match that was then to be played six days later in the past tense! Truly, the Eagles did not only crash out as predicted but the first team that scored (Guinea) carried the day! Does this show there are some uncanny esoteric truths amenable to the exclusive accessibility of only a segment of humanity-the seers? Put differently, can anybody really see the future and predict same with inerrant accuracy? This obviously would be a question for the acutely rational people; to the gullible, the question needs not arise as the incident such as mentioned above is amply sufficient to resolve the poser in the affirmative. But before any probe, we must distinguish the above type of prediction from informed guesses or pragmatic/intelligent forecasting which is based on inductive/ deductive reasoning and projections. Many football matches are forecast intelligently based on experience and knowledge gathered from observed strength and weaknesses of the teams and their respective pedigree. This is different from prediction of the Joshua's hues in that pragmatic forecasting does not proclaim something will happen with ineluctable certainty. It merely states that when present situation is interpreted against the insights furnished by observed criteria or the accumulated human knowledge, the said variable(s) may happen. For example, weather experts may "predict" that rain will fall at 3pm tomorrow, which means, given some meteorological calculations and understanding of the atmospheric processes, there are factors showing that downpour will occur at the said hour. This is not a prediction per se but a mere linking of two connected events based on the empirically verifiable laws of nature. If for example the predicted rain does not fall, meteorologists would simply re-evaluate their data in attempts to identify the reasons why the prediction fails; they would conduct experiments that may lead to discovery of new phenomena underlying the deviation from the normalcy; the state of knowledge would be updated and future predictions would be made on more informed grounds. But predictions like Joshua's, which thrive without causal determinism, should tolerate no margin for error; if it is claimed that God (or whatever other higher powers that putatively imbue seers with predictive abilities) has given a revelation, it means the predicted events must of necessity happen. That exactly is the brand of prediction the rational people would find difficult if not impossible to believe as it negates the concept of freewill which says humans are free agents. If the future can be foretold with inerrant accuracy, then it means it must have been ordained by higher powers whose directives the terrestrial elements perfunctorily enact in defiance of all human attempts to produce a different outcome. But is this what human's documented experience all over the ages proves? How can the future be predictable when billions of contingencies interplay at every nanosecond to produce this fleeting sensation we call reality? A believe in knowable future would not but engender some contradictions if not absurdities. For example suppose I am a footballer playing for a team called "Super Tortoise" and a seer predicts my team will inexorably win a final game by two goals to nothing, what is to prevent me from lobbing in an own goal if only to frustrate and thwart the prediction? Someone may say, you may deliberately score an own goal but referee may disallow it in which case the final score will still remain 2-0, leaving the prediction intact! But then, how many goals will the referee disallow? What if I keep scoring own goals just to rubbish the prediction? Will it lie in the seer's mouth to say the prediction would have been fulfilled if I had not thwarted it? Why predicting it at all if it can be thwarted? Critical thinking will show that an event as susceptible to endless permutation like football cannot be perfectly predicted. We should not be too awe-stricken about coincidences, after all the odd that a particular team will win in a football match is only 50/50 and the team that scores first is already on a winning path! No mortal can state with absolute conviction what tomorrow holds. |
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