"Irrelevant," I don't know... I mean, the circumstantial case against it all being a big coincidence gets pretty huge after a while.

The latter half of this week, 2 independent, unrelated sources I pay attention to drew attention to one chapter that is particularly relevant to my current questions regarding how to live Christian (Romans 12). As I was sitting in church, I thought about a certain parable (the sower and the thorns), and I looked 2 feet to my left at a pamphlet and the table and the sermon was about that exact part of that exact parable... and the pastor heavily referenced the chapter I mentioned above, making 3 unrelated references to it I ended up being pointed two in a matter of 3 days.

Adding all that with everything else, it seems irrational to shrug it off as irrelevant...

It might be, if the "message" you're getting from it is that a magical being that created the entire universe has to communicate with you via paltry games of coincidence instead of just being direct.

If such a deity that must do strange things for no reason appeals to you, knock yourself out. But, like a god that hides dinosaur bones in the ground to test our faith, I just don't find the mental gymnastics particularly convincing. Your life is literally swimming in coincidence, you just don't notice most of it. I find myself glancing at the clock at 12:34 so very often, it just can't be a coincidence. What is the Lord Of Time trying to tell me?

Zadocfish2 wrote:Eh... still, it's hard to deny these coincidences being connected somehow.

It isn't. They are not connected. That was pretty easy. It is, apparently, hard for you, but then you already think this God exists and wants you back in the fold. In other words, you already give anything God related a massive significance that it doesn't have for me.

Like, it would be easier for me if I WASN'T a Christian, to the extant that a lot of this is me trying to find reasons to disbelieve that these things have significance.

Well, it would definitely be easier for you if you were not already carrying a huge bias around, namely that a creator God who is trying to communicate with you exists, yes. That's the point. You already hold that belief, you've already been won over extensively to the whole idea. If you hadn't, you wouldn't be engaged in these teenage ouija type games in the first place. Take me. I have spent zero time flicking through verses looking for coincidences, therefore no coincidences of this kind have happened to me. I did think about a client I haven't seen since 2014 the other day though, and then she rang to make an appointment. If I was you, I might think that God was trying to tell me something. However I'm not you, so it's just one of those things that happens with regularity, mixed in with all the other millions upon billions of things that happen.

But what happens is, whenever I'm feeling the most conflicted, I'll try the random verse thing and, three tries in, I'll find the same verse I quoted to myself a bit earlier, or find that a verse of the day is the same as one of the randoms I looked at. Like, think about how crazy unlikely it is for those things to happen on the same day, in the same, like, four hours.

Sorry, I have no concept of it being 'crazy unlikely'. Having just re-read your OP, it seems to me that you have a bit of a habit of over-stating the unlikeliness of something happening, and also the significance. Like where you seem blown away that something comes up that is from a chapter previous to the one you read earlier. What's 'astronomical' about that? It's not even the same chapter.

These vod things have a limited selection of verses, but the selection is easily well into the hundreds. This "verses lining up" thing has happened multiple times, often in the same day. Things that statistically improbable just cannot happen that reliably without a reason. I think it's more absurd to think of it as mere coincidence, don't you?

No. Do you live in the world? Statistically improbable things happen. There's a reason why they're not called 'statistically impossible'. For give me, but a far more feasible explanation is that you that you are embellishing the truth, either unwittingly or on purpose.

Also, this is a truly fucked up way for an all powerful all knowing entity to communicate... my 4 year old does a better job.

Heh. Just as I was reading this I looked out the window of the bus and there was a church and it has a big sign out the front saying, "Coincidences... When God chooses to remain anonymous."

Must be something to it.



Seriously though. What does that even mean?

It sure would be nice if, just for once, he chose not to be anonymous.

Zadocfish2 wrote:The latter half of this week, 2 independent, unrelated sources I pay attention to drew attention to one chapter that is particularly relevant to my current questions regarding how to live Christian (Romans 12). As I was sitting in church, I thought about a certain parable (the sower and the thorns), and I looked 2 feet to my left at a pamphlet and the table and the sermon was about that exact part of that exact parable... and the pastor heavily referenced the chapter I mentioned above, making 3 unrelated references to it I ended up being pointed two in a matter of 3 days.

I am not seeing a remarkable coincidence in a pamphlet displayed in a church referencing the same topic source which the pastor is preaching that week.

Your "unrelated" sources don't seem very independent. Consider the possibility that your pastor pays attention to the same sources of inspiration you might while determining what to say and what to display.

I was just talking, the other day, about how we haven't had a major storm in quite a while, and how lucky we were that we weren't in Texas. Then we got a major storm, nearing 20 inches of rain over 4 days, floods everywhere, sewers backed up (the house smells like the inside of a porta-potty). Coincidence, or did God hear me and strike me down for my hubris? If it's the latter then I must be one important motherfucker, given that six counties in the area are under flash flood warnings and there's hundreds of millions of dollars of damage.

that'll learn you!

Another one: verse of the day was about how the worldly cannot understand the spiritual. Went to my random-verse-generator, prayed to have the third result be the same general message. Third result was John 3:3; "Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.(or, "born from above"; the wording in Greek is ambiguous)" This met the criteria in question.

I partially shrug it off as coincidence... verse of the day today was John 3:20. Not related by subject, but somehow it landed on the same chapter that contained the passage from last night.

Like I said, these "coincidences" really are a bit too consistent to fit the label...

Zadocfish2 wrote:Another one: verse of the day was about how the worldly cannot understand the spiritual. Went to my random-verse-generator, prayed to have the third result be the same general message. Third result was John 3:3; "Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.(or, "born from above"; the wording in Greek is ambiguous)" This met the criteria in question.

I partially shrug it off as coincidence... verse of the day today was John 3:20. Not related by subject, but somehow it landed on the same chapter that contained the passage from last night.

Like I said, these "coincidences" really are a bit too consistent to fit the label...

No, really, Justin. A Ouija board or the I Ching does just as well. You should try them out before you commit to some particular idiocy. What? Not enough time to check out every random bit of quackery? Such is life.

All I'm saying is that, just because one thing works, it doesn't mean something else does not work equally well. It all depends on your criteria for what "works well". Don't try model rocketry if you don't understand how we decide what works well.

Cito di Pense wrote:

Zadocfish2 wrote:Another one: verse of the day was about how the worldly cannot understand the spiritual. Went to my random-verse-generator, prayed to have the third result be the same general message. Third result was John 3:3; "Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.(or, "born from above"; the wording in Greek is ambiguous)" This met the criteria in question.

I partially shrug it off as coincidence... verse of the day today was John 3:20. Not related by subject, but somehow it landed on the same chapter that contained the passage from last night.

Like I said, these "coincidences" really are a bit too consistent to fit the label...

No, really, Justin. A Ouija board or the I Ching does just as well. You should try them out before you commit to some particular idiocy. What? Not enough time to check out every random bit of quackery? Such is life.

All I'm saying is that, just because one thing works, it doesn't mean something else does not work equally well. It all depends on your criteria for what "works well". Don't try model rocketry if you don't understand how we decide what works well.

All I'm saying is that, just because one thing works

one thing works

So you're saying it works now? Victory at last!

Zadocfish2 wrote:So you're saying it works now? Victory at last!

Of course it works. For you. Blub blub blub. For a more nuanced view, see rocket science.

I don't claim to have shown you something that works better. But I defy you to show me that the I Ching or Ouija board does not work just as well. You now are charged with debunking the I Ching and the Ouija board. Or not, but that means you have nothing to sell me and you might want to shut the fuck up about biblical coincidences.

When I drove to see 'Misery' at the cinema back the nineties, 'Shotgun' by Jr Walker was playing on my car stereo - When the movie starts, James Caan is in his car and what was playing on his car stereo? Yup! 'Shotgun' by Jr Walker - out of all the millions of songs in the world that could have been playing!!! Everybody has a story like that. We see million to one shots happen EVERY day because we're good at picking out patterns and are susceptible to cognitive bias and fallacious reasoning like Texas sharpshooting.

Zadocfish2 wrote:Another one: verse of the day was about how the worldly cannot understand the spiritual. Went to my random-verse-generator, prayed to have the third result be the same general message.

Okay. Why the third result?

Cito di Pense wrote:

Zadocfish2 wrote:So you're saying it works now? Victory at last!

Of course it works. For you. Blub blub blub. For a more nuanced view, see rocket science.

I don't claim to have shown you something that works better. But I defy you to show me that the I Ching or Ouija board does not work just as well. You now are charged with debunking the I Ching and the Ouija board. Or not, but that means you have nothing to sell me and you might want to shut the fuck up about biblical coincidences.

You realize, of course, that accepting that one event might be supernatural is inherently tied to the idea that supernatural events might be possible. Kind of an odd point you're making; I never said that other methods don't have results, because that would go against my point of the supernatural existing in the first place. You're making a strawman argument.

Okay. Why the third result?

Three is a significant number in Biblical circles.

Zadocfish2 wrote:

Cito di Pense wrote:

Zadocfish2 wrote:So you're saying it works now? Victory at last!

Of course it works. For you. Blub blub blub. For a more nuanced view, see rocket science.

I don't claim to have shown you something that works better. But I defy you to show me that the I Ching or Ouija board does not work just as well. You now are charged with debunking the I Ching and the Ouija board. Or not, but that means you have nothing to sell me and you might want to shut the fuck up about biblical coincidences.

You realize, of course, that accepting that one event might be supernatural is inherently tied to the idea that supernatural events might be possible. Kind of an odd point you're making; I never said that other methods don't have results, because that would go against my point of the supernatural existing in the first place. You're making a strawman argument.

(for me) It's still not enough to say that supernatural events might be possible. How might they be possible? I don't need them. You (apparently) do, which is why you're content with saying they might be possible. If you're trying to sell me something, no sale. Whether or not supernatural events are possible, I don't say they are. This is about what I don't say, and what you do.

Zadocfish2 wrote:Three is a significant number in Biblical circles.

Three is a significant number in Wiccan circles.

Well, I don't NEED them. I'm pretty sure I have Scrupulosity (a kind of OCD that turns your religious beliefs into a horrible feedback cycle), so to my mind it seems a grave wickedness to ignore possible signs, no matter how far-fetched it may seem. I don't know if I'm trying to "sell" something here... just pointing out how oddly consistent this sort of thing can be, when it clearly shouldn't be.

Zadocfish2 wrote:just pointing out how oddly consistent this sort of thing can be, when it clearly shouldn't be.

To whom? You don't identify 'scrupulosity' with 'native intelligence', do you? You can't even say how it shouldn't be consistent, except with respect to your 'scrupulosity'. Everybody has OCD to one extent or another, just not about invisible shit or to fetishise a scripture. Sometimes the latter is called 'bibliolatry'.

You seem to know what you're up to, so I'm sure you can figure out that pursuing it is just something you want to do, dressed up as something you have to do. This is about how important to other people you'll try to make your wants or wishes, and it's in that point that you could try to address it to other people.