Coincidence And Christian Supersition

[SquareOne]

Christians are superstitious.

 

"No kidding, SquareOne: God, resurrection, sin, eternal hellfire... we had noticed that Christians are superstitious."

 

Ok, obviously Christians are superstitious in the most obvious sense.

 

However, many Christians are superstitious in a very particular and concentrated way.  The superstition of co-incidence or as Christians sometimes say 'God-incidence'.

 

I deconverted from come from an evangelical background.  The prevailing consensus among such Christians is that God has a plan for individuals, he answers prayers, and he communicates his intention to us.  However, it is acknowledged among those Christians that God does not speak directly to individuals audibly.  But, if the Christian looks to their life and experiences, then God's plan should be revealed to them.

 

One way in which God supposedly does this, is through 'God-incidences'.  This is not a Biblical concept, but Christians feel content to use it as a way to understand God.

 

"What is a God-incidence?"

 

Jenny is a Christian.  She wants to reach out to her non-Christian friends, but does not know who to concentrate on.  She prays 'God, tell me your plan, who should I pray for, who should I reach out to?'  Later that day, she is walking in town on the way to college and bumps into her non-Christian friend Sophie.  She hasn't seen Sophie for two months, and chats for half an hour.  They talk about college and mutual friends - and though Jenny does not mention God, she later wonders if she should have witnessed to Jenny.

 

The following day, Jenny bumps into Sophie in the supermarket.  Wow!  She hasn't seen her for two months, and now she sees her on two consecutive days!  Jenny remembers her prayer 'who should I reach out to?'  and wonders excitedly if God has answered her prayer!  Still, Jenny is an intelligent young woman, and realises it that it could just be a chance coincidence that she has seen Sophie again.  So, she says nothing to Sophie about God.

 

Jenny goes home.  She prays "God, should I reach out to Sophie?"

 

She doesn't see Sophie again for a week.

 

Then, on Sunday morning, as Jenny is walking to church, she sees Sophie walking up the street the other way.  Sophie is wearing high heels, and has smeared mascara.  She's obviously going home after partying on Saturday night.

 

Suddenly it all makes sense.  Of course Jenny is meant to reach out to Sophie!  God could not have been clearer in his answer to prayer.  She should have said something in the supermarket, so God has sent her an even clearer sign.  --She, Jenny, is walking to church, but Sophie is returning home from a night of self-indulgence; God is using the contrast as a strong sign to Jenny.--

 

This isn't just a co-incidence; this is the hand of God!  This is a God-incidence.

 

Jenny stops Sophie on the street, and talks to her, mentions she is going to Church.  Sophie says that's really good, and she wishes she had that sort of life.  Jenny invites Sophie to an introduction to Christianity course.  Sophie says something vaguely interested, albeit non-committal, and they part happily.

 

Jenny can't wait to tell her fellowship group about how God is moving in her life.

 

 

This is how many Christians think about God

 

The faultiness of such logic is probably obvious to you reading this as an ex-Christian.  For me, it was one aspect of non-Biblical Christian behaviour that frustrated me as a Christian.

 

The version of the story as told above is actually Jenny’s memory and perception of the events, but I have redacted some key aspects of the story, because these are things that Jenny has overlooked.

 

Jenny has overlooked these things:

 

1. When she prayed for direction about witnessing, she also prayed that God would help her get an A in her exam, that God would give her direction about which man she should marry, and that he would heal her mother’s serious illness.  Yet, three weeks later and Jenny got a B in her exam, she still doesn’t have a boyfriend, and her mother’s condition has worsened.

 

So, out of her four prayers, only one of them seems to have been positively answered.

 

2. Jenny is a very social girl, so she has a lot of friends.  She also lives in a small town, so there is a high probability that that she would bump into someone she knew, it just happened to be Sophie.

 

3. She actually bumped into other old friends that week.  She saw Henry, Jessica and Sam once each.  She saw Steve two times in the same week as Sophie, and Clara two times over the three weeks.

 

Bumping into old friends happens quite a lot.  Of all the friends she meets, she is statistically likely to bump into one more than once.  And on a rare occasion, their paths may cross three times.  But when Jenny saw Sophie three times, and once on the way to Church, this elevated the coincidence in Jenny’s mind.  It seemed was so unlikely, that Jenny believed there had to be a deeper explanation.

 

4. Jenny was not the only one saying that prayer.  In fact, her whole Bible study group of ten people were saying the same prayer.  Of the ten of them, Jenny was the only one with such an unlikely story.  Everyone in the group was equally inspired by the story though.

 

The point is this:

 

My argument is probably clear by now.  Of all the Christians saying prayers, of all the prayers that each Christian says, it is statistically likely that in relation to some of those prayers, events will happen in their life that will appear to be connected to that prayer.  It won’t happen all the time, but they will forget the times that it does not happen, and focus on the times that the prayer appears to be answered.

 

This is acute in relation to co-incidences.

 

Co-incidences are not unlikely.  They are likely.  Every day, we do a hundred small things, and ten significant things, and sometimes, one of those things is going to recur in a way we do not expect.  It has the appearance of a pattern, but is actually just a narrow assessment of a wide spectrum of occurrences.

 

Therefore, all Jenny is really doing is taking a set of random, everyday encounters, and attributes special meaning to a few of them because of their group-able similarity.

 

This is crazy

 

It is crazy that Christians actually do this.  All the time.

 

And this is total superstition.  These people are making life decisions based on coincidences alone.  Not the will of a divine mind in any way.

 

Is this a pattern of behaviour that is familiar to you?  Did you see fellow Christians doing this?  Did you do this as a Christian?

[MissingLink]

Yes!  I endured this on a weekly basis!  I belonged to an "accountabiliy group".  It consisted of 4 - 6 women who would meet in someone's home or in church. The 1st thing that would be asked, after the opening prayer, was "Where did you see Jesus this week?"  And then, one by one, each woman would tell a story similar to what you just told, Square One.  I dreaded that question, because I never had a good story.  I would try to think of something from the past week that I could twist into a story  that would make everyone say, "wow" or "praise the lord" or some such silliness. I'm sure occasionally I just made something up.  Because if you tried to pass by saying you couldn't think of anything, the implication was that you weren't "looking for Jesus".  And once again, I would feel like I just didn't get it. So I would promise myself that I was going to be more aware of Jesus in the coming week.  Never did though.  I came to realize that they were just seeing what they wanted to see - oblivious to the logical explanation behind it.  I am so relieved to no longer be a part of that!!  

[Margee]

I remember strongly in the Pentacostal church that they taught us if someone entered your mind and you couldn't dismiss' the  thoughts....you would go immediately to the phone and tell them that god has just 'spoken' to you (in your mind)  and you want to know if they are alright?  They were always sooooo excited to hear that  god was looking after them through 'using' humans. We were told god uses humans as his transporting vessels to help others!!! I used to say with such boldness,'God has a word for you!!....things are going to be alright!!!''

 

Well, now I  look back at that and laugh because generally, it dosen't matter what time of day it is (or night ) Someone has ALWAYS got some kind of stressful situation going on!!!!!

 

We always thought this was god guiding us........ What a hoot!! Fortune telling..that's what it is.....

[sdelsolray]

Four ounces of childhood indoctrination

Two ounces of peer group acceptance

Six ounces of confirmation bias

One ounce of anthropocentrism

One each of circular reasoning, argument from ignorance, and appeal to belief fallacies

Three ounces of fear

 

Mix well.  Let marinate for several years.  Bake at 350 for two months.  Serves one.

[MultifariousBirdLady]

Is this a pattern of behaviour that is familiar to you?  Did you see fellow Christians doing this?  Did you do this as a Christian?

 

Oh good god, yes, that kind of thing is very, very familiar.

 

The religious adoption agency I was placed through even used "coincidences" like this to match infants with prospective parents.  I've been told that my placement was one of the most "clearly" "directed by God" out of all the infants that had ever gone through their agency... according to what the agency staff told my parents. 

 

But it was nothing more than a matching game being interpreted as a sign of "God's plan."

[SquareOne]

Thanks for your responses.

 

When I was a Christian, this type of behaviour by other Christians really annoyed me.  Although, I was probably unconsciously guilty of it myself too sometimes.  I really wonder why churches are permissive of such behaviour.  After all, there is no Biblical mandate for it.  Maybe there is a lack of awareness of the prevalence of the attitude.

 

As a Christian I thought it was bad theology and dangerous to attribute coincidences to God.

 

As an ex-Christian I think it's bad theology and dangerous to attribute coincidences to "God".

[duderonomy]

SquareOne,

 

Do you have Sophie's number by any chance? She's been on my mind after reading your post. I know it's a God thing. ;-)

 

OK, seriously...I used to believe this kind of crap myself, although there was something in me somewhere that knew better.

 

I have a friend who's wife had to pray over everything. What to wear, what to say, what to eat that day, just to be in "the perfect will of God". They moved into a new rental and she had to go from room to room claiming them for Jesus. I know this doesn't have to do with coincidence so much, but it's Christian superstition nontheless.

[Thackerie]

You don't have to be a christian in order to believe in silly twaddle.

 

I was never christian enough, nor for long enough, to get into coincidences the exact same way they do. BUT when I was a teen-ager in the 1970s, I liked to read books about psychic phenomena  (which I now call “psychic phenononsense”), and I really got into synchronicity. The wiki article on synchronicity says:
 

Synchronicity is the experience of two or more events that are apparently causally unrelated or unlikely to occur together by chance, yet are experienced as occurring together in a meaningful manner. The concept of synchronicity was first described in this terminology by Carl Gustav Jung, a Swiss psychologist, in the 1920s.

 

It's very similar to "god-incidence" — maybe where the christers got the idea (unless Jung got it from them). Supposedly, whenever you notice synchronistic events, you are getting a message from the “collective unconscious” (another concept invented by Jung) that you must interpret so you can change whatever needs changing in your life accordingly. (Note: Jung also believed in astrology, spiritualism, telepathy, telekinesis, clairvoyance and ESP.)

Here's a woo-woo “spiritual” site devoted to the concept  of synchronicity.

And here's an excellent article from The Skeptic's Dictionary debunking it.

[Annier]

I just clicked on that synchronicity site, it looks scary.   A man in in the clouds, that 'smile' and hands out............eeeek............really freaked me out.

[falemon]

Something about that guy reminds me of Steve Jobs

 

I never bought the predestined coincidences and it used to annoy me as well. My first thoughts were about he confirmation bias since everyone was just focusing on the things that fitted the parameters of the question and ignoring everything else. That and the fact that they didn't understand what a coincidence actually means, which is simply two unrelated triggers causing events that cross each other's path.

 

To be honest I was a big fat skeptic, whenever I heard of miracles I would immediately cook up a non religious explanation in a heartbeat Plus the more you know about science, psychology and everything else you start to see how some unexplained blessings, such as people knowing this and that are far from divine.

 

There were lots of things that annoyed me like, the closing of the eyes in prayer, yelling, being loud in prayer, praying for someone and leaning them backwards and attributing the force of their hand to the spirit and other whimsical ideas

[RachelSkates]

These always pissed me off because they would go on that G%d gave them an apple because they wanted one (Oh how GOOD He is!!) and I was dealing with hard hard troubles like divorce at 18, abuse, eating disorders and things to completely ruin a person. Why, I would ask, would G*d give you an apple and leave me here with nothing??

 

Oh, it's been a long time, too, and any apples I have, I bought. In fact, my life has enfolded exactly as you think it would in someone with all these troubles and not allowed to get help because G#d was enough. Phhhhhhh

[RipVanWinkle]

You are describing how George W decided to go to war and invade Iraq. Scary, isn't it?

                                                                                                                                             bill

[marycontrary]

Yeah, god spoke to Bush. I remember looking at my husband while he was watching Fox news and asking him how long our president has been hearing voices and if it's known if he had visual hallucinations too.

[Vigile]

Except Bush didn't go to war because god told him to.  This is just one of the bullshit excuses he used to get your average citizen on board.

 

Bush's father even used a phony tear-jerker testimony of a 15 yo girl from Kuwait that supposedly witnessed Iraqi soldiers storming the hospital and taking babies out of their incubators, leaving them to die:

 

 

Problem was, the girl was the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the US and had never even been in the hospital in question:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nayirah_%28testimony%29

 

He also faked satellite photos showing Iraqi troops digging in at the Saudi border.  All of which he knew damn well were complete bullshit.  His son George advised him on a lot of this.

 

Bush II also famously used falsified testimony using CIA-paid informants and falsified intelligence data including the aluminum tubing testimony Colon Powell offered to the UN. 

 

I don't believe for a second that Bush himself believed god told him to go to war.  This is just how you get the rubes on board. 

[SquareOne]

 

Do you have Sophie's number by any chance? She's been on my mind after reading your post. I know it's a God thing. ;-)

 

 

Pray, and then dial random numbers into your phone.  If it's God's will- you'll get the right number.

[RipVanWinkle]

Vigile: Really? I have never heard about the girl's false testimony. I am aware of Bush 11's deceptions, or at least a lot of them. What was discovered about Bush 1's complicity  in the girl's testimony?

 

As to Bush 11, it does not necessarily mean that he didn't pray. Some of these nuts believe that once they think god has answered their prayer, that any means is ok. I read in a book written by Bush 11's  press secretary (can't remember his name) that Bush 11 asked him when he was hired if he thought it made any difference how he did his job as long as the result was good. This guy wasn't exactly a  mental giant, was he? 

 

Thanks for the info.      bill

 

 

[Vigile]

 

What was discovered about Bush 1's complicity  in the girl's testimony?

 

 

 

 

It's probably difficult to prove complicity in a case like this, but she was one of the leading pieces of propaganda the WH pushed in order to get people behind the war.  It's difficult to believe that the president didn't know she was the daughter of the Kuwaiti Ambassador to the US.  This would have been Bush's circle given his long-running ties in the ME from well before he was in office.  Imagine all of the people on his staff that were heavily involved in the details.  Not one of them whispered this secret, making it's way to the president?

 

 

As to Bush 11, it does not necessarily mean that he didn't pray.

 

I'm sure he did and I'm sure he's probably a believer of sorts -- as much as a shallow person can be.  I just don't think that he was motivated by this idea the way many suggest he was.  There were clear motivations behind the scenes coming from the group of neo cons he aligned himself with and it wasn't a detraction from the US foreign policy play book going back over the past 40 or so years so it seems rather simplistic to say he ran off to war half-cocked and high on god. -sorry if that sounded smart assed.  It was a poor effort at providing some color.

[RipVanWinkle]

You are most probably right that Bush 1 knew of the girl's deception. As to Bush 2, I have such a negative view of his intelligence and ability that I would not be surprised if he did go to war half cocked. In fact that's exactly what he did by failing to properly think things through as to what the war would accomplish. Or what was going to happen after the regime fell. I'm really bitter about the US starting that war. It's one of the worst things a president can get wrong. And the bastard is so limited I don't think he even knows it!

 

                                                                                                                                                                  bill