My Review of When Prophecy Fails (Relevant to this Blog)

On oft repeated chestnut in the perpetual debate between Christianity and its non-believers goes something like this: There are three possibilities about Jesus and/or the Apostles or Early Christians. They were either madmen, liars or telling the truth. Each of the former possibilities is then addressed with what might not be terrible arguments and, thus discounted, the third branch of the argument is arrived at as being true. I have never heard the previous two possibilities adequately dismissed, but the real issue with the argument, its real flaccidity, is that it is a false trichotomy. Humans are not either mad, liars or truth tellers - they slide effortlessly between the three states often within the span of single sentence, act or feeling. But most importantly, the argument fails to address the most complicating of factors: madness, lies and truth may manifest in a social group without any single person being obviously responsible for any of them. It is this phenomenon which makes "When Prophecy Fails" most interesting, since it describes the rise and counter-intuitive climax of a real UFO Cult in the Great Lakes area around the 1950s. The purpose of the work was originally scholarly - the authors wished to study whether disconfirmation - a shocking, undeniable reality which invalidates the beliefs of a group of people, can actually increase the fervor with which the believers proselytize others into their belief system, as seems to be the case from several historical examples cited in the introduction (most notably the Millerites). Whether the observations of the authors, who infiltrated the cult by posing as believers, bear out this conclusion is of secondary importance (although the argument is good that they do, so far as these things can be born out). The real meat of this book is the fascinating insight it gives into group madness. We see the cult develop from a band of mystics and Scientologist housewives into a coherent, self deluding movement. For those into this kind of thing, the book also provides insight into the connections between Theosophy, Dianetics/Scientology, the 1950's UFO phenomenon, and the New Age Movement which are also fascinating. I recommend the hell out of this book.