Science is so far removed from enlightenment, that anyone who strays from the party line is branded heretic and symbolically executed as insane. Brilliant men and women may dare to study pyramids, but their lack of standardized Egyptology credentials and opinions has anointed them 'pyramidiots', as if a fanatical devotion to the 19th century version of truth is evidence of either IQ or true insight. So of course, criticism abounds if conjecture or debate employs a set of prophecies or any other non-provable tool of prediction. Even if done in concert with good science, this is a breaking of the faith. Yet humans embrace prophecy.
Prophets are amongst the few who give answers to driving questions.
That's a lot of people who would have trouble sending Nostradamus to the electric chair if prophesying was suddenly deemed a capital offense. In prophecy we find patterns. Yes, the same fundamental drive that draws men to science, draws them to prophecy. Humans, are intrigued by patterns, especially the inexplicable. We are drawn, as an expression of our role in the vast universal pattern and symbolic of the great creative force at work.