deconversion

When I was a Christian and coincidences happened, I always gave God the credit, even when the coincidence had no real meaning. I liked to think that God was showing me that supernatural events happened to demonstrate that He was active in the world.
Since deconverting I no longer look for meaning in things that happen to me, but I am still struck by the number of strange coincidences that happen every few days.
Here are some examples:

• I rarely eat eggs for breakfast, but I decided to have eggs the other day. I woke up and my husband asked me how I wanted my egg cooked. The alarm went off and the radio DJ was asking how people preferred to eat eggs as it was World Egg Day. (I'm sure I had never heard of it before)
• When reading a book, I'll frequently hear a word spoken or on TV that is the word I am reading at that moment. Sometimes it is a really obscure word.

• I'm watching TV and hear my kids having an argument about a scorpion. I flick channels at that moment and there is a scorpion on screen.

I have read explanations about the fact that we are pattern seeking animals and attach meaning to certain events. I understand this in the context such as when someone is pregnant they notice how many around them are pregnant. However, I would have thought these other kinds of coincidences would occur quite rarely. Instead it seems to happen all the time.

How random does an event have to be to make it really random?

Does this happen to everyone and therefore it is just a recognition of patterns?

Can anyone point me to any further info about this as I couldn't find much about it?

Thanks.
Ali

How random does an event have to be to make it really random?

That's a good question.

Does this happen to everyone and therefore it is just a recognition of patterns?

I can't speak for everyone but it happens to me too.

Can anyone point me to any further info about this as I couldn't find much about it?

I'll try to look into it, but if anybody else knows more about this, I would be interested too.

I'd recommend reading Michael Shermer, a noted skeptic, for good discussions of this. A quick google search turned up this article. Sections #13 and 14 are about what you are discussing. He's written a lot on this topic.

My thoughts on this. Think about how many times a day a "million-to-one-shot" could happen to you, but it doesn't. How many words do you read that are not immediately said on the TV? How many old friends do you think about who don't call you? How many times do you hear somebody mention a breakfast food that you are not having that day? How many times could you have found a $20.00 bill lying on the ground, but you didn't? And on and on and on. There are a colossal number of possible coincidences that could happen any given moment of the day. It doesn't take very long for a million possible million-to-one coincidences to fail to happen.

In a million tries, we would expect a million-to-one-shot to happen, on average, once. But we are wired to remember that one coincidence, and forget all the times nothing happened. Nobody says "In this crowd of people, statistically, I should have bumped into an old friend by now, but I haven't. Spooky!" Things that don't happen just don't register on our radar. So everybody has the spooky experience of having that one coincidence happen, because nobody takes any note of all the times nothing did.

Another way to look at so-called "freaky" coincidences is through statistics. For example, it doesn't seem like it at first, but the chance that two random people would have the same birthday is actually pretty high. There's an entire Wikipedia article on this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthday_problem

One of the things has gotten under my skin the most is when Christians try to press meaning into every meaningless thing that happens. When it is a "good thing", then God is obviously given "the glory". If it is a "bad thing", then of course, God is just using that circumstance to test and refine faith.

Even when I was a child, this whole issue seemed hinky to me. It always seemed incredibly narcissistic to me to hear people go on and on about how God had bestowed upon them a special blessing by allowing/helping them to find their car keys, or whatever.

One thing people commonly pray for (Christians and non-religious people alike) is physical healing. If their loved one is sick, they pray that God will provide a special healing for that person. They ask all of their friends to pray that God will do so. If there is any improvement, or the chemotherapy does its job, then of course, God healed that person. If the illness took its expected course, then God "was in control" and was simply testing the faith of the faithful again. Pretty convenient, if you ask me.

A lady in the Bible study I recently stopped attending was very well-known for these claims. At one point, she said she had a serious heart condition, but when the doctors did the catheterization, there was no sign of heart disease ("praise God"). There are at least six different illnesses/conditions from which God has apparently "healed her". I guess he loves her so much more than everybody else, as people all over the world suffer and die from disease and poverty every single day and God doesn't seemed to do a damned thing for them, but by golly, he really loves this one lady. She's really special to him, I guess.

It makes me want to hurl.

Sorry - didn't mean to get completely off-topic, but I have come to the conclusion that coincidence is just part of life, and given the mathematic nature of the possibilities, surely there will be some that we all experience. I am learning not to attach anything more to any circumstance than it actually deserves (or at least, trying to).

I'll have to join Austin in veering off topic, because the situation with modern medicine and Christianity really pisses me off, and it's something I have to deal with on a daily basis, thanks to facebook and relatives who like to send out mass emails.

Thanks everyone for your comments. I've been on hols so took a while to answer.

I know you're right but sometime those coincidences seem so damn amazing!!!!

This discussion leads me to another one. How many of you have been (me) or have known people who looked for "signs" that god was leading them to do something? And they used coincidences as justification?

For example, I have a missionary friend (well, not any more, but that's another thread) who was trying to decide if god was calling him to be a missionary. What did he use a confirmation? (This is no joke) The church bulletin. You see, he was considering being a missionary to Brazil and one Sunday the church bulleting had a bible and a globe on the cover and, lo and behold! the corner of the bible was pointing towards Brazil! And THAT is how he determined that god had indeed called him to be a missionary to Brazil.

Amazing.

Yes, I have known quite a few people who do that. I did that once or twice myself. But the trouble is I find myself unable to compartmentalize for very long. I can't just look at the coincidences that seem to answer my prayers and ignore the times when they weren't answered. And I have seen people get all worked up over very trivial things yet are blind to the bigger things. There was a Christian woman I knew who was separated (but not divorced) from her husband (who had walked out on her some years ago). She met a man at her church who was studying for the ministry and they began dating. Week after week I had to hear about all the ways that God was showing her that this was the one, and how they were going to get married, etc. When I pointed out the not-so-minor fact that she was still legally married to her husband and wasn't free to remarry, she just dismissed me. The Lord was leading her. Well, it turned out that when the church elders learned of the situation, they took her boyfriend aside and told him point-blank that he could no longer continue as a candidate for the ministry as long as he was seeing a married woman. Surprise, surprise. All of a sudden, the Lord apparently woke up and said NO, because he chose the ministry. I said to her when she told me this, "I told you right from the start that I doubted that the Lord would approve you getting into a new relationship as long as you were still married, from what I understand of Scripture, this is not something He condones. But you kept insisting that the Lord was leading you and that this relationship was His will. Now you are telling me that the Lord is telling you that it is not His will after all. Does God do green light, green light, green light, red?" Maybe that was a bit harsh, but you have to understand she was always after me to accept Jesus, and always telling me what wonderful things He was doing in her life, and what wonderful things He would do in mine if only I believed. Unfortunately I have gone through too much to fall for that nonsense anymore. Like the little boy who could not see the emperor's new clothes I do not see the wonders God is doing in her life. Instead I see a great deal of other things, things that are ignored and not answered, things like why did your husband just go off and leave one day? What was happening there? There must have been something deep-seated going on. I can't say and it is really not my business, except that if someone is trying to witness to me in such a fashion, they cannot pick and choose the events in their life. I cannot compartmentalize like some people, I look at the whole picture, and the whole picture has to make sense. Because it does look to me like people are grasping at straws.

But you know what I get told by these same people? You think too much! And then they wonder why I am not attracted to their faith. Because thinking is who I am. I can no more stop thinking than I can stop breathing.

Does God do green light, green light, green light, red?"

But you know what I get told by these same people? You think too much! And then they wonder why I am not attracted to their faith. Because thinking is who I am. I can no more stop thinking than I can stop breathing.

Yeah, I'm guilty of this to. Perhaps that's why I'm not a "believer" any more. I just wanted my christianity to make sense and it didn't.

The deal with asking God for a "sign" is often called "putting out a fleece". It refers to a story in the bible where a guy named Gideon was looking for God's direction on some thing or another and put out a sheep's fleece at night and if it was dry in the morning, it meant one thing and if it was wet, it meant another.

LOL

Right. And we're also kind of told not to "put out a fleece" because we're not supposed to test God, despite the fact that many people in the Bible asked for specific signs and were rewarded.