There was a sort-lived TV series a few years ago, about how people reacted to learning that the moon had mysteriously shattered, and the fragments were going to smash into earth in an inexorable approach and the resulting demise of all life as known before.
Perhaps this kind of apocalyptic future is what inspires the doomsday scenarios that seem so beloved of our magical thinkers. But as noted elsewhere, there is no viable branch of scientific inquiry that even points to any such outcome.
What we see is the practice of a cult known as “scientism”, a belief in the holy power of according some few glib and persuasive individuals to take a few known facts, and to extrapolate these facts into an untested theory, bending and ignoring contrary findings, and “predicting” only the very worst of outcomes. While this makes for great “science fiction”, the emphasis is on the FICTION and not the science.
After all, the great L. Ron Hubbard founded a whole religion on speculation about “what if” the human psyche could be reduced to a few mixed messages received early in life? And the mixed messages could be drawn out and reassessed?
Thus was born the cult of Scientology.
I like this idea. Scientism is a cult that is anything but true science.