Is Uncompromising Rude Reality Too Much?

[CJK]

Could the comfort of living in a subjective reality be the pull factor for any faith?

[harvey1]

For the purposes of this exercise we could set up the system in a crypt or any intensely spiritual place and leave it running for ever (in principle). You might say that my adamancy is born out of a firm conviction that the alarm will never be tripped by anything other than a natural event.

The problem with that, of course, is that there are many currently thought of scientific experiments which we think we might be able to conduct someday that past scientists would have thought as "supernatural occurrences." So, for example, it is conceivable that we can teleport large size objects to distant locations and have those objects suddenly appear. That would have been considered a supernatural incident as early as 15 years ago. (Btw, this example is especially fitting since Lawrence Krauss wrote the book, "The Physics of Star Trek" in 1995, and on the issue of the transporter he did even consider it possible to teleport the whole individual using quantum teleportation. He only considered the possibility of sending one's atoms physically through the air and then being physically put back together. I thought that was somewhat humorous that so much can change in scientific thought within even 10 years.)

[QED]

Harvey, I'm not a complete stranger to synchronicity myself. Indeed I became fascinated by a very notable effect - nearly every evening while watching the TV I would find myself wondering what the time was only to glance down at the digital clock on my VCR to find it reading exactly 22:22

Even more amazing was the fact that I managed to find other people having the exact same experience!

As long as a 22 is prominent, I tend to spot it. The time might be 12:21, 2:02 or 2:20, for example, but mostly 22 minutes after the hour. I have frequently sat watching television for many hours at a stretch and, without the slightest premeditation, happened to glance at a digital clock at 22 minutes after the hour, every hour consecutively, and not at other times. Sometimes the glances are motivated unconsciously. Sometimes I want to know the time. It doesn't seem to matter. The instances when a 22 appears occur three or four times more frequently than all others combined.

WOW! This is an exact description of the effect that I am experiencing. So is it a mystery? I think not: the Amygdala shares the data coming into the visual cortex and is processing it all the while. This is in effect how our sub-conscious (a term most psychologists dislike) picks up on things that our conscious minds often miss. The pattern of 2222 is attractive and on the 24hour clock display the only other contender is 1111. But I'm rarely watching TV then. Either way I simply can't believe that there is some cosmic significance that draws our attention to this specific event (the time itself being highly relative). Rather, it seems infinitely more parsimonious that our peripheral vision is homing into something it feels is visually significant - sending only the faintest signal to our consciousness.

Mr Alden has many more accounts of synchronicity to offer in connection with the number 22 and I see that he is most impressed with Tarot cards as well. I too have a fine collection of Tarot decks and have been practising for around 40 years now but have yet to see anything beyond the supreme suggestibility of people on the receiving end of my readings.

I suggest that all this is precisely the sort of trick that our pattern matching brains play on us. Richard Feynman devotes a small portion of one of his books to the subject (I wish I could recall which one now) in which he very ably demonstrates why we notice coincidences -- but then we've been over this ground before with Arlene's clock.

[Cephus]

This is a sort of "shell game" isn't it. I presented some information here to demonstrate the fallibility of the human mind which allows it to be mistaken in its perception of the external world. This is a novel concept for some, as they imagine that they are coupled 1:1 with the world seeing and hearing it as clearly as they do. But as observers of this fact we are very poorly placed -- something easily exposed by any number of entertaining illusions.

Not only just illusions but preconceptions. Believe it or not, there is still a Flat Earth Society, based on Zion, Illinois, that firmly believes that the earth is flat and no amount of evidence to the contrary will ever sway them. Why? Because they are supremely convinced that their belief system is absolutely true, in spite of the evidence. If you really want to believe something, you'll find some way of conveniently disposing of the evidence or explaining it away, or more likely, explaining how the evidence really supports your point of view. I'm sure in your UFO example, there were people who are still demanding it was a real UFO and the A-10 explanation, even though demonstrated absolutely true, was a hoax or a government coverup or some other ludicrous explanation. People are all too eager to demand that their perceptions of reality are more real than reality is.

[Cathar1950]

By ss# has my childrens birthdays.
11 and 22
weird or what?

[Cephus]

By ss# has my childrens birthdays.
11 and 22
weird or what?

*GASP!*

It's a miracle! God is speaking to you through your SS#! You'd better hurry up and get to church!

[Cathar1950]

Why would I need to go to church if God is speaking to us?
What could it possible mean 11 or 22? It would be odd I thought 12, 40, and 7, and 3 were the usual numbers. God is going to change numbers in mid stream? Of course it could be a new revelation? But what is a good revelation if you think all the answers have been given and God never changes. I wonder how much is just plain old self fulfilling prophesy.
But in all honesty have experienced synchronicity and have hear stories. I also know that if we watch tv with the sound off and music on it always goes with the flow. We have a blind spot in our eyes that doesn't see an image or have a sense. Because it is where the nerves come together. Our brains(minds) process the info and fills in the gaps due to our experience and what we think should be there. We are bias it is natural.
I read that sight info goes thru the brain before going to the optic nerves to the brain we are sorting memories and it is now.

[Curious]

.. nearly every evening while watching the TV I would find myself wondering what the time was only to glance down at the digital clock on my VCR to find it reading exactly 22:22 ...

I wonder if perhaps you have an attention span of approximately 22 minutes (considerably longer than most people) and you were waiting for the rest of the news at ten to finish so you could continue with your evenings entertainment. It might also have something to do with the fact that the last 10 minutes or so of the news tends to be pretty bland.

...Mr Alden has many more accounts of synchronicity to offer in connection with the number 22 and I see that he is most impressed with Tarot cards as well. I too have a fine collection of Tarot decks and have been practising for around 40 years now but have yet to see anything beyond the supreme suggestibility of people on the receiving end of my readings.

And the suggestibility of the reader. Tarot is often used as a series of flash cards, where the symbolism within the card either directs towards or reinforces what the reader already believes to be true. It would be remarkable though don't you think, if after cutting and thoroughly shuffling a pack of 72 unambiguous cards, you were able to draw 10 that correspond exactly, in order, to an answer illustrated in a book. Uncompromising, rude reality, where such an instance could be adequately explained away as a chance event might actually be rather comforting.
There are far more terrors on this side believe me. We are all hurtling headlong without a parachute, the only difference is that the atheist doesn't even realise they're falling. BTW, try give up the tarot and I'll stop bombarding my luminous watch with neutrons (just in case!). (Joke!!! honest, I am not really doing this).

[harvey1]

nearly every evening while watching the TV I would find myself wondering what the time was only to glance down at the digital clock on my VCR to find it reading exactly 22:22 Even more amazing was the fact that I managed to find other people having the exact same experience!

Although an interesting coincidence, I don't think this is a good example of synchronicity. Synchronicity is just as the name implies: a synchronous event between two or more seemingly unrelated phenomena. Of course there's coincidences that can be explained by the brain being attracted to certain patterns, etc.. What I refer to as synchronicity is two significant and seemingly unrelated patterns joining together.

An example of synchronicity is, as you suggested, the Feynman clock episode since there is a synchronous relationship between the time on the clock and Arline's (Richard's wife who died) and the end of the time between Arline and Richard because this (the time on the clock) is the time that she died. Richard didn't chalk this up to the amygdala, he attributed the clock incident to the nurse using that clock as her time of death:

Richard was in Arline's room when she died. The hospital staff left him alone with her for some time. He bent down and gently kissed her and was surprised that everything smelled the same as if she were alive. He noticed another curious thing. He had given Arline a digital clock when she became sick, on which the numbers would change and one could read the time quickly. The clock had become old, but Arline still kept it. Sometimes Richard repaired it, and although it was a bit wobbly it still functioned. When Arline died, the nurse notice the time of her death; it was 9:22 (p.m.) and the clock had also stopped at 9:22. 'Since it was rather dark in the room, the nurse picked up the clock and noticed that it had stopped just at the moment when Arline died. There was something mysterious, which made an impression on me, but I thought it was explainable.' (The Beat of a Different Drum:The life and science of Richard Feynman, Jagdish Mehra, Clarendon Press, 1994, p. 148

Once we were talking about the supernatural and the following anecdote involving his first wife Arline came up. Arline had tuberculosis and was confined to a hospital while Feynman was at Los Alamos. Next to her bed was an old clock. Arline told Feynman that the clock was a symbol of the time that they had together and that he should always remember that. Always look at the clock to remember the time we have together, she said. The day that Arline died in the hospital, Feynman was given a note from the nurse that indicated the time of death. Feynman noted that the clock had stopped at exactly that time. It was as the clock, which had been a symbol of their time together, had stopped at the moment of her death. Did you make a connection? I asked NO! NOT FOR A SECOND! I immediately began to think how this could have happened. And I realized that the clock was old and was always breaking. That the clock probably stopped some time before and the nurse coming in to the room to record the time of death would have looked at the clock and jotted down the time from that. I never made any supernatural connection, not even for a second. I just wanted to figure out how it happened. Al Seckel

Notice the following from the above quotes:

1) Arline made it a point that the clock was symbolic of the time they had left many months before she died

2) Richard was in the room when she died, and you might argue differently, but I think he would have realized that the clock had stopped earlier in the day--prior to her dying. The nurse also believed that the clock stopped at her death.

3) The clock did stop occasionally, but it was Richard who fixed the clock and he was extremely busy working on the Manhattan project at the time. Had the clock stopped days earlier, the nurse would have known the clock was broken and would never have used that time.

4) The time on the clock, whether it had stopped or not, matched the time of her death.

This makes for a real synchronicity type event since there should be no relation between Arline's time of death and a clock stopping, however the clock was purposely used by Arline as a symbol of Richard and Arline's time together.

Richard instantly dismissed the meaning of the event, which is too bad for him. As the apostle Paul said, "the natural mind is at enmity with God."

[QED]

Although an interesting coincidence, I don't think this is a good example of synchronicity. Synchronicity is just as the name implies: a synchronous event between two or more seemingly unrelated phenomena. Of course there's coincidences that can be explained by the brain being attracted to certain patterns, etc.. What I refer to as synchronicity is two significant and seemingly unrelated patterns joining together.

OK, but there's no causality implied in the word Synchronous. It leaves that particular matter unaddressed. Synonym.com lists "coincident" as a synonym of "synchronous" so it seems to me that, whether contemporaneous events have any causal relation or not, we can put them all down to this mysterious sounding thing called "Synchronicity". Oftentimes, as in the case of the clock reading 2222, the causal link might not be particularly obvious or may even remain forever unknown, despite the fact that it exists.

I expect this is the reason why someone coined the term in the first place -- as an attempt to provide a supernatural explanation for unseen links between natural phenomena that were too obscure to be noted. Of course simple coincidence also falls into this category. In the case of Feynman's clock we start, at the most basic level, with a 1 in 720 chance of it stopping at the recorded minute of death. If the recording was made from the clock itself we can divide this by a further factor related to how frequently the clock was examined -- perhaps by as much as 10 if the Nurse only stopped-by every 10 minutes.

'Since it was rather dark in the room, the nurse picked up the clock and noticed that it had stopped just at the moment when Arline died.

I don't understand the sequence of events here: was the nurse picking up the clock to record the time of death, and if not then for what reason was she picking anyway? Just the act of moving the clock sounds to me like it might make it stop given its history of unreliability. But none of this logic will impress you if you're worldview permits pseudo scientific concepts like telekinesis (after all, this is close to what you seem to be postulating here).

Notice the following from the above quotes:

1) Arline made it a point that the clock was symbolic of the time they had left many months before she died

I could press you for all sorts of details concerning the supposed nature of this "supernatural tagging" but I don't want to come over as being cynical. I would rather examine the natural alternatives and arrive at a conclusion based on logic and parsimony.

2) Richard was in the room when she died, and you might argue differently, but I think he would have realized that the clock had stopped earlier in the day--prior to her dying. The nurse also believed that the clock stopped at her death.

This is difficult to second-guess given the information we have here, except to say that he probably had more pressing things on his mind than what time it was.

3) The clock did stop occasionally, but it was Richard who fixed the clock and he was extremely busy working on the Manhattan project at the time. Had the clock stopped days earlier, the nurse would have known the clock was broken and would never have used that time.

Which might also suggest that it was overdue for a breakdown.

4) The time on the clock, whether it had stopped or not, matched the time of her death.

Hold on, the clock was reported to have stopped. This is the very reason why we are debating this example in the first place. Feynman's own analysis that the clock was used used to record the time of death (when it was not realized that the clock had actually stopped) still stands as an undemanding explanation of the situation.

I really don't think you can justify an appeal to the supernatural like this by simply declaring that "the natural mind is at enmity with God". This would allow you to defend absolutely any arbitrary claim you might wish to make about God's supposed interventions.

[harvey1]

Hold on, the clock was reported to have stopped. This is the very reason why we are debating this example in the first place. Feynman's own analysis that the clock was used used to record the time of death (when it was not realized that the clock had actually stopped) still stands as an undemanding explanation of the situation.

It was funny, as soon as I typed the above response, I turned on the TV and a program came immediately on about synchronous swimming. Synchronicity in action?

I don't understand the sequence of events here: was the nurse picking up the clock to record the time of death, and if not then for what reason was she picking anyway? Just the act of moving the clock sounds to me like it might make it stop given its history of unreliability. But none of this logic will impress you if you're worldview permits pseudo scientific concepts like telekinesis (after all, this is close to what you seem to be postulating here).

Richard was in the room when Arline died, and he would have seen the nurse pick up the clock. No doubt the stopped clock would not have been an impressive situation (as he said later about this incident did).

This is difficult to second-guess given the information we have here, except to say that he probably had more pressing things on his mind than what time it was.

According to Feynman, he was in an observational state of mind:

Richard walked around and saw Arline die. 'This is terrible to say, but... it was interesting to watch the phenomenon [of death], which I had never seen before.'... Richard was surprised to find that Arline's death did not upset him. He had anticipated it. He felt rather philosophical... Richard had witnessed the whole process of Arline's dying and he tried to understand it in physiological terms--until she drew her last breath and was alive no more. Her hair smelled the same as before. Then he thought, why should her hair smell any different? Hardly any time had elapsed since she breathed her last. (Ibid, Jagdish Mehra, p. 148)

So, I think this suggests that Richard was never out of his usual keen observational state of mind.

Which might also suggest that it was overdue for a breakdown.

Sure, but put this into context. This dying lady had tied their time together with that clock, and that clock stopped the moment she died.

I really don't think you can justify an appeal to the supernatural like this by simply declaring that "the natural mind is at enmity with God". This would allow you to defend absolutely any arbitrary claim you might wish to make about God's supposed interventions.

I think it is really pretty straightforward, though. You have groups of people who are in some kind of struggle with God, and they oppose any explanation which doesn't suit their fancy. Why look to a deeper answer?