:I disagree with your interpretation; a majority of people (lets interpret this to mean reasonably educated western people) probably either haven't heard of Nostradamus, or if they have heard haven't actually read his predictions. In fact, most people who *have* heard of him have probably *also* not read the predictions, only descriptions of them in works which will generally seek to ascribe to them a particular impression (for instance XXX refers to event YYY). 
 :What does this mean? Basically that these people do not recieve a balanced perspective of alternate ideas as to how each prediction may be interpreted. Under these circumstances a reasonably logical person presented with only matrials written from a postive perspective could not be faulted for 'believing the prophecies' - i.e. the opinion of the majority, even *if* of the direction you identify, is irrelevant. 
 :So basically, I'm saying that you're not wrong for having this opinion, simply that the opinion is wrong.