The Evangelical Universalist Forum

Cosmic Jokes?

There’s a book out called “When God Winks,” and some people say God has a sense of humor.

People who say that always make me a little uncomfortable, because they never really explain what they mean.

Are some things just Cosmic jokes?

Case in point:

South Carolina threatened to succeed from the Union in 1832.

In December of that year, Joseph Smith (the first president of the Mormon Church) predicted a Civil War that would begin in South Carolina.

South Carolina backed down after President Andrew Jackson sent seven small Naval vessels and a man-of-war to Charleston harbor, but after the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1861, the Civil War did in fact start in South Carolina.

To this day, Mormons point to Joseph Smith’s Civil War prophecy as proof that he was a prophet.

If he wasn’t, and if there is a God, why did God provide them with such a coincidence?

Is this some kind of Cosmic joke?

Also, what about things like this?

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futility,_ … _the_Titan

Unless someone we don’t know of read “The Wreck of the Titan,” and decided not to buy a ticket for the Titanic, no lives were saved by this eerie coincidence.
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Are such things Cosmic jokes?**

Is there a reason for them?

Are they “coincidence,” and what does that mean if there’s a God (or would the existence of true “coincidences” mean that there is no God)?

If you believe the word has any meaning at all, how would those of you who believe in the existence of God define the word “coincidence”?

We had a long discussion on this subject in another thread. I don’t believe coincidences (“cosmic jokes”) have any meaning for us. It’s merely apophenia.

I appreciate Greg Boyd’s evaluation of this sort of stuff here. This article may also be of interest, regarding the Lincoln/Kennedy coincidences.

The talk by Greg Boyd was interesting, and he seemed to prove that there’s no pattern to tornadoes downing Church steeples, but (in the process) did he also prove that God doesn’t exist?

And what about the woman who was told she’d never have children, and became pregnant with what she and her husband considered “a miracle baby,” only to lose it at the time of delivery?

It would have been nice if Greg had gone on to explain why he believes such meaningless coincidences exist in a universe governed by a Supreme Being.
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I would add that neither of these “coincidences” can be easily explained by freewill.**
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The Lutherans didn’t will a tornado to strike the steeple when they were deliberating their denomination’s position on the ordination of gay clergy, and I’m sure that neither the woman, her husband, nor her doctor willed that she be told she’d became pregnant after being told she’d never have children, only to lose the child on the day she gave birth.**

So did Greg actually end up proving that God doesn’t exist here?

Apophenia is the experience of seeing meaningful patterns or connections in random or meaningless data.

The term was coined in 1958 by Klaus Conrad,[1] who defined it as the “unmotivated seeing of connections” accompanied by a “specific experience of an abnormal meaningfulness”, but it has come to represent the human tendency to seek patterns in random nature in general, as with gambling, paranormal phenomena, religion, and even attempts at scientific observation.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apophenia

But if there is a Supreme Being, why would such a thing as apophenia exist?

Why wouldn’t there be a message for someone in every circumstance?

That’s my question here, it’s been my question in every thread related to the subject of “coincidences,” and if anyone’s answered it, I still can’t see the answer.

Can anyone help me?

It’s easy for an atheist to believe in “random” occurrences and “meaningless data.” but what do you, as a Theist, mean by words like “random,” “meaningless,” and “coincidence”?