Heinlein, Robert A – Expanded Universe

benefit of doubt.

I hold in my hand her predictions for 1974 dated Sunday January 13, 1974:

Here are some highlights: ” .. . Nixon . . . will ride out the Watergate

storm . . . will survive both the impeachment ordeal and the pressures to resign . .

. will go down in history as a great president . . . will fix the responsibility for

Pearl Harbor” (vindicating Kimmel and Short).. . “in… 1978 . . . the cure for

cancer will be acknowledged by the medical world.. . end the long search.” (1974)

“The dollar will be enormously strengthened as the balance of payments reflects the

self-sufficiency in oil production.” “The trouble in Ireland will continue to be a

tragic situation until 1978.” (Italics added-R.A.H.) “Willy Brandt” (will be

reelected) “and be in office for quite some time to come. He will go on to fantastic

recognition about the middle of 1978.” (On 6 May 1974 Brandt resigned during a spy

scandal.) She makes many other predictions either too far in the future to check or

too vaguely worded. I have omitted her many predictions about Gerald Ford because

they all depend on his serving out the term as vice president.

You can check the above in the files of most large newspapers.

e) & 1)-no comment needed.

g) & h) need no comment except to note that they are overlapping but not

identical categories-and I should add “People who allow their children to watch

television several hours a day.” (Television, like the automobile, is a development

widely predicted… but its major consequences never predicted.)

i) The return of creationism-If it suits you to believe that Yahweh

created the universe in the fashion related in Genesis, I won’t argue it. But I

don’t have to respect your belief and I do not think that legislation requiring that

the Biblical version be included in public

school textbooks is either constitutional or fair. How about Ormuzd? Ouranos?

Odin? There is an unnumbered throng of religions, each with its creation myth-all

different. Shall one of them be taught as having the status of a scientific

hypothesis merely because the members of the religion subscribing to it can drum up

a majority at the polis, or organize a pressure group at a state capital? This is

tyranny by the mob inflicted on minorities in defiance of the Bill of Rights.

Revelation has no place in a science textbook; it belongs under religious studies.

Cosmogony is the most difficult and least satisfactory branch of astronomy;

cosmologists would be the first to agree. But, damn it; they’re trying!-on the

evidence as it becomes available, by logical methodology, and their hypotheses are

constantly subjected to pitiless criticism by their informed equals.

They should not have to surrender time on their platform, space in their

textbooks, to purveyors of ancient myths supported only by a claim of “divine

revelation.”

If almost everyone believed in Yahweh and Genesis, and less than one in a

million U.S. citizens believe in Brahma the Creator, it would not change the

constitutional aspect. Neither belongs in a science textbook in a tax-supported

school. But if Yahweh is there, Brahma should be. And how about that Eskimo Creator

with the unusually unsavory methods? We have a large number of Eskimo citizens.

j) The return of witchcraft-It used to be assumed that Southern

California had almost a monopoly on cults. No longer. (Cult vs. religion-I am

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indebted to

L. Sprague de Camp for this definition of the difference. A “religion” is a

faith one is born into; a “cult” is a faith an adult joins voluntarily. “Cult” is

often used as a slur by a member of an older faith to disparage a newer faith. But

this quickly leads to contradictions. In the 1st century A.D. the Christians were an

upstart cult both to the Sanhedrin and to the Roman priests.

“Cult” is also used as a slur on a faith with “weird ideas” and “weird practices.”

But this can cause you to bite your tail even more quickly than the other. “Weird”

by whose standards?

(Mr. de Camp’s distinction implies something about a mature and presumably

sane adult becoming a proselyte in a major and long-established faith, such as Islam