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How common are coincidences


Rickswordfish

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I was wondering how common coincidences are in the world

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2 hours ago, Rickswordfish said:

I was wondering how common coincidences are in the world

 

I don't know and I suspect no one else does either.  It would certainly be difficult to quantify, measure, poll or analyze without significant rigor in the analytical methodology.  For example, one person's coincidence may be another person's correlation, or another person may claim actual causation. 

 

I have spent some time attempting to learn to distinguish the differences among and between non sequitur, coincidence, correlation and causation.  I've noticed that many folks tend to elevate the two events at issue to a level above what they actually are, and that tendency to elevate is correlated with (perhaps caused by) the person's infection with confirmation, expectation or other biases.  Conversely, other folks tend to do the opposite.

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An excellent analysis, Sdelsolray. My honey is the kind of person for whom correlation is causation. If A precedes B, then A had to have caused B. It can be frustrating at times.

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The reason I ask is i've read about the whore of babylon in revelations and I noticed it has a number of things in common with the vatican and the catholic church (it has even more in common with ancient pagan rome) my question is what are the odds that the vatican and the catholic church has these things in common with the whore of babylon and its just all coincidence 

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2 hours ago, Rickswordfish said:

The reason I ask is i've read about the whore of babylon in revelations and I noticed it has a number of things in common with the vatican and the catholic church (it has even more in common with ancient pagan rome) my question is what are the odds that the vatican and the catholic church has these things in common with the whore of babylon and its just all coincidence 

 

I think you've actually hit on it -- you've listed two things that have stuff in common with the passage. How many more things could you find? Maybe a lot! And are the things in common really things in common, or are they kind of a stretch? I remember in church when they read the passage 1 Tim 4:3 about someone coming later forbidding marriage and commanding to abstain from meats, and everyone said "hey, that's just like the Catholics not eating meat on Friday and forbidding the priests from marrying!". But most scholars think it's talking about the Gnostics, and it's likely they were already doing some of those things by the time this letter was written. (Most do not think Paul wrote this, and that it was late 1st / early 2nd century.)

 

The author of Revelation was writing about things he thought would happen soon, based on things that were happening at the time. Describing this "whore of Babylon" and giving it attributes of the Roman empire makes sense. That part would have been "current events," not prophecy.

 

My 2c.

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List of what the whore of babylon

 

  1. "Idolatrous practices"

  2. A city

  3. Rich

  4. Scarlet and purple

  5. Killed people

  6. Head of a worldwide organization

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List of what the whore of babylon has in common with the vatican and the catholic church

 

  1. "Idolatrous practices"

  2. A city

  3. Rich

  4. Scarlet and purple

  5. Killed people

  6. Head of a worldwide organization

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16 minutes ago, Rickswordfish said:

List of what the whore of babylon has in common with the vatican and the catholic church

 

  1. "Idolatrous practices"

  2. A city

  3. Rich

  4. Scarlet and purple

  5. Killed people

  6. Head of a worldwide organization

What the hell was worldwide in antiquity? Europe?

 

Anyway is that why the fundy crowd is has their knickers all in a wahd  over this "new world order" speak?

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The catholic religion has churches literally around the world

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Anyway i'm not saying the catholic church is the whore of babylon i'm just wondering what are the odds that the vatican would have this many things in common with the whore of babylon by coincidence

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47 minutes ago, Rickswordfish said:

Anyway i'm not saying the catholic church is the whore of babylon i'm just wondering what are the odds that the vatican would have this many things in common with the whore of babylon by coincidence

 

If you dug up more correlations somewhere would you start thinking the bible was true?

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3 minutes ago, midniterider said:

 

If you dug up more correlations somewhere would you start thinking the bible was true?

 

Maybe, why?

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4 hours ago, Rickswordfish said:

The reason I ask is i've read about the whore of babylon in revelations and I noticed it has a number of things in common with the vatican and the catholic church (it has even more in common with ancient pagan rome) my question is what are the odds that the vatican and the catholic church has these things in common with the whore of babylon and its just all coincidence 

 

Scholars think that revelations pertain to the time and place that it was written. It's not a far off futuristic book, though many Christians see it that way.

 

I've just been listening to Bart Erhman talk about the early conversations going on in Christianity and the different interpretations they would come up with for the same verse. Basically you can read anything you'd like into those verses. 

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5 minutes ago, LogicalFallacy said:

 

Scholars think that revelations pertain to the time and place that it was written. It's not a far off futuristic book, though many Christians see it that way.

 

I've just been listening to Bart Erhman talk about the early conversations going on in Christianity and the different interpretations they would come up with for the same verse. Basically you can read anything you'd like into those verses. 

I think there's a very good chance youre right but it just seems odd to me that the vatican/catholic church would have that many things in common with the whore of babylon

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Somehow this conversation skipped the part where the stories in Revelations had evidence of having any reason to possess predictive ability.  As in, proof of "power source" abie to make accurate future predictions, such as our scientific based weather forecasting models.

 

Until such time any observations that appear to match is effectively random and coincidental.

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It's possible to draw parallels between any number of works of fiction and certain aspects of our modern world. I wouldn't exactly call such things "coincidences". There are lots of plausible reasons why the written word might resemble things we see in the real world. Doesn't mean there's any special power there.

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58 minutes ago, ConsiderTheSource said:

Somehow this conversation skipped the part where the stories in Revelations had evidence of having any reason to possess predictive ability.  As in, proof of "power source" abie to make accurate future predictions, such as our scientific based weather forecasting models.

 

Until such time any observations that appear to match is effectively random and coincidental.

The vatican/catholic church has at least 6 things in common with the whore of babylon

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6 hours ago, Rickswordfish said:

The reason I ask is i've read about the whore of babylon in revelations and I noticed it has a number of things in common with the vatican and the catholic church (it has even more in common with ancient pagan rome) my question is what are the odds that the vatican and the catholic church has these things in common with the whore of babylon and its just all coincidence 

 

How many "things in common" exist between ancient Rome (say from 100 BCE through 400 CE) and the Orthodox/Catholic Church (say from 100 CE through 500 CE)?

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2 minutes ago, sdelsolray said:

 

How many "things in common" exist between ancient Rome (say from 100 BCE through 400 CE) and the Orthodox/Catholic Church (say from 100 CE through 500 CE)?

Don't know

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35 minutes ago, Rickswordfish said:

Don't know

 

Well, I suggest you investigate this because I think you skipped an important step.

 

In an earlier post you wrote (emphasis added):

 

Quote

The reason I ask is i've read about the whore of babylon in revelations and I noticed it has a number of things in common with the vatican and the catholic church (it has even more in common with ancient pagan rome)....

 

Following that, in another post, you wrote:

 

Quote

"List of what the whore of babylon has in common with the vatican and the catholic church

  1. "Idolatrous practices"

  2. A city

  3. Rich

  4. Scarlet and purple

  5. Killed people

  6. Head of a worldwide organization"

 

I asked you, "How many "things in common" exist between ancient Rome (say from 100 BCE through 400 CE) and the Orthodox/Catholic Church (say from 100 CE through 500 CE)?"

 

It seems to me that most, if not all of your list of six similarities already were part of Roman civilization.

 

Perhaps the Orthodox/Catholic Church, having been declared the official religion of Rome, simply adopted and/or developed the same descriptors from the Romans.  

 

Any similarities between the whore of babylon literature and the Vatican may be simply explained by the original Roman influence on that religion.  A parsimonious explanation would be the whore of babylon literature simply referred to Rome as it existed when the literature was first written.

 

Bonus question:  How many similarities between the whore of babylon literature and Rome are not found as similarities between the whore of babylon literature and the Vatican?

 

 

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2 minutes ago, sdelsolray said:

 

Well, I suggest you investigate this because I think you skipped an important step.

 

In an earlier post you wrote (emphasis added):

 

 

Following that, in another post, you wrote:

 

 

I asked you, "How many "things in common" exist between ancient Rome (say from 100 BCE through 400 CE) and the Orthodox/Catholic Church (say from 100 CE through 500 CE)?"

 

It seems to me that most, if not all of your list of six similarities already were part of Roman civilization.

 

Perhaps the Orthodox/Catholic Church, having been declared the official religion of Rome, simply adopted and became the same descriptors.  

 

Any similarities between the whore of babylon literature and the Vatican may be simply explained by the original Roman influence on that religion.  A parsimonious explanation would be the whore of babylon literature simply referred to Rome as it existed when the literature was first written.

 

 

I never thought of that

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6 hours ago, Rickswordfish said:

List of what the whore of babylon has in common with the vatican and the catholic church

 

  1. "Idolatrous practices"

  2. A city

  3. Rich

  4. Scarlet and purple

  5. Killed people

  6. Head of a worldwide organization

     Why do you put Idolatrous practices in quotes?  Either they commit them or they don't.

 

     Also, The Vatican is now a country.  It's within the city of Rome.  I just visited it earlier this month.

 

          mwc

 

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3 hours ago, Rickswordfish said:

I never thought of that

 

Education never ends.

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This line of inquiry looks like previous examples I've seen here when someone declaring to be a non-believer is searching for things to prove himself wrong. That aside, and returning to the actual stated question of the thread..........

 

When only 23 people are gathered there is a greater than 50% chance that two of them will share the same birthday. I imagine that fact is rather mind boggling if you believe that coincidence is very rare.

 

https://www.theguardian.com/notesandqueries/query/0,5753,-22978,00.html

 

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