To what extent do coincidences affect our lives?

[vz71]

I don’t consider it a coincidence that two people inclined towards marriage, found a partner among the people they knew, married, had sex and at some point had a child.

I don’t either.

I consider the DNA sequence that is you.
That sequence has not been before and likely will never be again.
And it is the product of other sequences and lives woven together through history.

The chances of you being who and what you are now is so incredibly remote some may be inclined to call it coincidence.
Others may see the hand of God at work.

 

[wmw]

We cannot always distinguish planned from unplanned coincidences. I believe our infinitely loving God intervenes far more than we realise…

I’m guessing that you don’t like the previous definition of a coincidence since it precludes any planning to be one.

I like the way of putting all this (with this being World Series season) as:
“Does God play baseball”? Baseball often seems to be determined in the margins that are outside the control of the players. As in the expression, “A game of inches”.

When science tries to measure this effect of luck all they get is bell curve distributions, but of course God is too smart to allow us to “get the measure of Him”.

I don’t think most of humanity would like a world that is just all caused by God. That many would find this too much of a secret prison. I think that part of God’s granting us free will and part of our rebellion and expulsion from Eden is that many of the consequences of our sins and even good decisions are allowed to follow paths of uncontrolled mayhem and true random luck/bad luck. God has it all in view and intercedes as He may wish and may add to that (from our perspective) at the answer to prayer, but our rebellious demand for separation/independence from Him often keeps Him from any wholesale intervention, particularly anything that would be too obvious or compelling of a miracle.

 

[tonyrey]

I’m guessing that you don’t like the previous definition of a coincidence since it precludes any planning to be one.

I like the way of putting all this (with this being World Series season) as:
“Does God play baseball”? Baseball often seems to be determined in the margins that are outside the control of the players. As in the expression, “A game of inches”.

When science tries to measure this effect of luck all they get is bell curve distributions, but of course God is too smart to allow us to “get the measure of Him”.

I don’t think most of humanity would like a world that is just all caused by God. That many would find this too much of a secret prison. I think that part of God’s granting us free will and part of our rebellion and expulsion from Eden is that many of the consequences of our sins and even good decisions are allowed to follow paths of uncontrolled mayhem and true random luck/bad luck. God has it all in view and intercedes as He may wish and may add to that (from our perspective) at the answer to prayer, but our rebellious demand for separation/independence from Him often keeps Him from any wholesale intervention, particularly anything that would be too obvious or compelling of a miracle.

Pride often causes our downfall in more ways than one. That is why Jesus insisted on the need for humility.

 

[abucs]

I guess there are different types of co-incidences measured against how likely they are to occur and their relative importance,

I have found that some non believers or searching agnostics value co-incidences very highly and are open to spiritual influence as partial explanations.

I was talking with one at breakfast a couple of days ago who told me of waking up with an acute feeling that something was wrong with his mother and finding out later that day that she had been admitted to hospital.

 

[Robert_Sock]

Then you believe God is **directly **responsible for all the disasters, diseases and deformities in the world?

Isaiah 45:7 - “I form the light, and create darkness, I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord that do all these things.” (Douay-Rheims)

I believe God is responsible for everything except sin. I’m sure you’re familiar with the above quote from Isaiah, but you seem to downplay it.

Is it vanity for us Christians to pray to God and our Guardian Angels for protection from all harm? I believe it’s blasphemous to believe that such imploring is beyond God, but I also believe that it is most profound to believe that God is the cause of all worldly events as I do.

LOVE!

 

[CHRISTINE77]

It does seem like there are two “camps” when it comes to coincidences.

The “camp” that says “wow, that’s such a coincidence that it must mean something significant”

and the second “camp” that says…"eh, it was just a coincidence, doesn’t mean much of anything.

I’m from the first camp. I don’t really believe in “coincidences”, I think everything happens for a purpose on our life’s journey. Even things that don’t seem significant are.

 

[wmw]

What of the “camp” that that it is a bit of both. Somethings are just luck (good and bad) and some are answers to prayers and the will of God for our lives. God doesn’t trumpet what he has directly asserted, but we thank Him for all because all good things come from Him.

 

[tonyrey]

Isaiah 45:7 - “I form the light, and create darkness, I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord that do all these things.” (Douay-Rheims)
I believe God is responsible for everything except sin. I’m sure you’re familiar with the above quote from Isaiah, but you seem to downplay it.

Unsurprisingly Isaiah did not distinguish ultimate from direct response.

Is it vanity for us Christians to pray to God and our Guardian Angels for protection from all harm? I believe it’s blasphemous to believe that such imploring is beyond God, but I also believe that it is most profound to believe that God is the cause of all worldly events as I do.

Non sequitur. It is simplistic rather than profound - and blasphemous to believe God deliberately wills the appalling suffering caused by natural disasters. Do you really believe a loving Father wants children to die in agony from diseases like cancer? The very fact that He often intervenes demonstrates that the answer is “No”.

 

[tonyrey]

What of the “camp” that that it is a bit of both. Somethings are just luck (good and bad) and some are answers to prayers and the will of God for our lives. God doesn’t trumpet what he has directly asserted, but we thank Him for all because all good things come from Him.

Precisely! It is simplistic to believe the alternatives are “always” and “never” - and unrealistic to believe misfortunes are an illusion. An earthly Utopia is sheer fantasy.

 

[tonyrey]

I guess there are different types of co-incidences measured against how likely they are to occur and their relative importance,

I have found that some non believers or searching agnostics value co-incidences very highly and are open to spiritual influence as partial explanations.

I was talking with one at breakfast a couple of days ago who told me of waking up with an acute feeling that something was wrong with his mother and finding out later that day that she had been admitted to hospital.

An important distinction! Dogmatic scepticism is a form of irrational fundamentalism.

 

[LoganBice]

I personally reject the notion that God directly causes everything. My understanding is God created everything but that some things through secondary causes. For example a massive Hurricane is caused by many factors in the atmosphere and wind patterns. In my view it is not God doing that directly but it is part of the design of earth and how it all works. A lot of the outcomes of things is the free choices that people make individually and as groups. God I believe does answer prayers and does intervene but not everything is direct. I think coincidences are mixed in with direct divine action.

 

[Robert_Sock]

Non sequitur. It is simplistic rather than profound - and blasphemous to believe God deliberately wills the appalling suffering caused by natural disasters. Do you really believe a loving Father wants children to die in agony from diseases like cancer? The very fact that He often intervenes demonstrates that the answer is “No”.

Can you please back this up based on Church teachings? I’m an idiot, but I’m wise to the extent that I know I’m an idiot. How to answer the question of evil from an all knowing, all powerful and all loving God is an old topic that no religious person can know with certainty. You’re basically saying the God is not omnipotent, which I think is blasphemous, but I’m too much of an idiot to engage in this never ending debate. I believe; I trust; I suffer. But I know not exactly why.

LOVE!

PS What I can say for certain is that it is our duty to help alleviate all the pain and suffering of others. We each must do our part.

 

[vz71]

Do you really believe a loving Father wants children to die in agony from diseases like cancer? The very fact that He often intervenes demonstrates that the answer is “No”.

So what does it say that God does not intervene in a great many cases?

 

[schaeffer]

So what does it say that God does not intervene in a great many cases?

The explanations I often hear for this are

“God works in mysterious ways”

and the word’s of Joseph " They meant it to me for evil, but God meant it to me for good."

 

[Al_Gonkwin]

So, there is another thread in another forum called "give your best reason for not becoming Catholic’. I responded to it with a few reasons, but frankly this thread provides a reason far better than any I came up with.

Whether God intimately and immediately causes everything which happens, or whether nature proceeds on its own course and the vast majority of things that happen on Earth are the result of chance and natural processes - that appears to me to be the single biggest question for theists of any stripe to answer.

It has huge import for the problems of pain and evil. It determines what prayer is and should be. It informs everyone on whether God ‘takes’ people in death at the time of His choosing, or whether deaths occur by natural processes like disease, car wrecks, and lightning.

I think this is the single most important question…and Catholicism has apparently done nothing on it, or about it. Sure, ecumenical councils can be called and Bishops made to ride camels for thousands of miles to meet to determine what title will be given to the Virgin Mary, but nobody ever thought to answer the question 'Does God kill people and take them or do they die naturally?" or “Does God cause Tsunamis?” or even “Does God give people cancer?”. Even on this message board, if you ask some arcane question about the history of Transubstantiationalism, you’ll get six dozen laser-precise answers about Aquinas and Berengar, but ask if God causes thousands of people to die in a natural disaster and nobody can agree.

This seems, to me, to be confusion bordering on insanity.

So, I revise my answer. This may be the very best reason not to be Catholic.

 

[Robert_Sock]

So, there is another thread in another forum called "give your best reason for not becoming Catholic’. I responded to it with a few reasons, but frankly this thread provides a reason far better than any I came up with.

Whether God intimately and immediately causes everything which happens, or whether nature proceeds on its own course and the vast majority of things that happen on Earth are the result of chance and natural processes - that appears to me to be the single biggest question for theists of any stripe to answer.

It has huge import for the problems of pain and evil. It determines what prayer is and should be. It informs everyone on whether God ‘takes’ people in death at the time of His choosing, or whether deaths occur by natural processes like disease, car wrecks, and lightning.

I think this is the single most important question…and Catholicism has apparently done nothing on it, or about it. Sure, ecumenical councils can be called and Bishops made to ride camels for thousands of miles to meet to determine what title will be given to the Virgin Mary, but nobody ever thought to answer the question 'Does God kill people and take them or do they die naturally?" or “Does God cause Tsunamis?” or even “Does God give people cancer?”. Even on this message board, if you ask some arcane question about the history of Transubstantiationalism, you’ll get six dozen laser-precise answers about Aquinas and Berengar, but ask if God causes thousands of people to die in a natural disaster and nobody can agree.

This seems, to me, to be confusion bordering on insanity.

So, I revise my answer. This may be the very best reason not to be Catholic.

I was born and raised a Catholic, but became a staunch atheist for the most part of my life…I’ll let you fill in the blanks on why I returned.

LOVE!

 

[tonyrey]

I personally reject the notion that God directly causes everything. My understanding is God created everything but that some things through secondary causes. For example a massive Hurricane is caused by many factors in the atmosphere and wind patterns. In my view it is not God doing that directly but it is part of the design of earth and how it all works. A lot of the outcomes of things is the free choices that people make individually and as groups. God I believe does answer prayers and does intervene but not everything is direct. I think coincidences are mixed in with direct divine action.

The truth is between simplistic extremes like “God never intervenes” and “God always intervenes”.

 

[tonyrey]

Do you really believe a loving Father wants

children to die in agony from diseases like cancer? The very fact that He often intervenes demonstrates that the answer is “No”.So what does it say that God does not intervene in a great many cases?

It tells us that it would defeat the purpose of creating an orderly universe. Even the archsceptic David Hume conceded that natural laws cause most of the suffering in the world. In other words an earthly Utopia is an infantile fantasy:

385 God is infinitely good and all his works are good. Yet no one can escape the experience of suffering or** the evils in nature which seem to be linked to the limitations proper to creatures**: and above all to the question of moral evil.

 

[tonyrey]

So, there is another thread in another forum called "give your best reason for not becoming Catholic’. I responded to it with a few reasons, but frankly this thread provides a reason far better than any I came up with.

Whether God intimately and immediately causes everything which happens, or whether nature proceeds on its own course and the vast majority of things that happen on Earth are the result of chance and natural processes - that appears to me to be the single biggest question for theists of any stripe to answer.

It has huge import for the problems of pain and evil. It determines what prayer is and should be. It informs everyone on whether God ‘takes’ people in death at the time of His choosing, or whether deaths occur by natural processes like disease, car wrecks, and lightning.

I think this is the single most important question…and Catholicism has apparently done nothing on it, or about it. Sure, ecumenical councils can be called and Bishops made to ride camels for thousands of miles to meet to determine what title will be given to the Virgin Mary, but nobody ever thought to answer the question 'Does God kill people and take them or do they die naturally?" or “Does God cause Tsunamis?” or even “Does God give people cancer?”

You are obviously unaware of all the Christian theologians and philosophers who have written extensively about the Problem of Evil, commencing with St Irenaeus in the 2nd century AD.

Even on this message board, if you ask some arcane question about the history of Transubstantiationalism, you’ll get six dozen laser-precise answers about Aquinas and Berengar, but ask if God causes thousands of people to die in a natural disaster and nobody can agree.

This seems, to me, to be confusion bordering on insanity.

So, I revise my answer. This may be the very best reason not to be Catholic.

All orthodox Catholics believe natural disasters are inevitable:

CCC 385 God is infinitely good and all his works are good. Yet no one can escape the experience of suffering or** the evils in nature which seem to be linked to the limitations proper to creatures**: and above all to the question of moral evil.

 

[Al_Gonkwin]

tonyrey wrote:

You are obviously unaware of all the Christian theologians and philosophers who have written extensively about the Problem of Evil, commencing with St Irenaeus in the 2nd century AD.

This is the sort of reply one only gets on the internet. No, Tony, I am aware, and I rightly stated that one’s understanding of causation has great import for one’s answer to the problem of evil, which is entirely and obviously true.

All orthodox Catholics believe natural disasters are inevitable:

You won’t even get concensus on that from the Catholics* in this thread*, much less on this message board, to say nothing of ‘all’ of them. Just try it. I dare you. Robert Sock wrote:

It is God alone who affects our lives, with nothing due to chance.

Start with him. Tell him he’s not orthodox, see what happens. I can already guess which verses of theologically inerrant scripture he’ll quote to you to prove his point.