[John Freestone]

Originally Posted by Angela

You sure about that statistic, John? I think your sample might be a little too small, as the only discussion in which you participate here is regarding magical thinking IM/SR and what fools people are for adopting that perspective.

Sorry, did you take that 99.9% as a statistic, Angela? I meant it merely as a colloquial expression rather than a mathematical one. You don't know how many threads I might read. I'm also sorry that you see the purpose of the thread as you do. As I keep saying, I am trying to use it as a place for serious discussion. Perhaps it was a mistake to hijack the thread with such a negative title for serious discussion. But we seem to have done some interesting stuff despite that. Besides, in a way you are expressing what I meant when you say this is "the only discussion..." except that you assume that its purpose is very negative, IM-bashing, where I see it as a rare thread where sceptics and disbelievers are asking serious questions and making serious objections to IM/LoA. Still, clearly we can have different views about the thread as well as its contents.

Coincidentally (or maybe synchronistically), this thread is the only one I've noticed in quite awhile in that contains such open disdain and even contempt. It doesn't look to me like those are qualities that are very conducive to easy discussion or learning.

It seems fairly mild to me compared with some places I've tried to discuss things. Besides, although it can help if everyone is ultra-polite all the time, sometimes it is very healthy, imho, to share and even discuss personal feelings towards one another. Also, easy discussion and learning isn't always the best mode for important learning. If there is no place here for tough love, only friendly banter, then it would go down in my esteem. However, you're the mod and at the end of the day you are responsible for maintaining that boundary, I assume.

But I'm still pulling for you!

Yeah.

Originally Posted by cylon

That's a lot to carry around in your head. Purge, bro!

If you're addressing me, cylon, I don't carry it around in my head. I do this thing where words come to me as I construct sentences based on the ideas I'm having. They're not all there all the time. Bro.

Originally Posted by moonrambler

I wasn't talking about your own belief or disbelief in God, but making a metaphor that this is "like" talking to An Atheist. Talking about synchronicity with you is like talking about God to An Atheist. You contributed to that perception by stating somewhere in this thread that you do not believe in the concept of synchronicity, and when I asked you what would make you believe it, you essentially flat-out stated nothing would make you believe it because the concept is invalid to you. That is not an exact quote, and yes, life is too short for me to go look for what exactly you said,.

Sure, I think I understand, moonrambler. I get the sense that we are really genuinely trying to understand each other and I appreciate that. I feel that you misinterpreted what I was saying, although it is very close. I didn't say (or mean) that I flat-out don't believe in synchronicity. I said that until you tell me what it means, define it more clearly for me, I can't really say whether I believe in it. I think I'm beginning to see what you mean, and I'm sorry if it's annoying that it's taking so long. You seem to be saying that the difference between coincidence and synchronicity is in your experience of it (the latter) as being much more unlikely. So I'm guessing it's like there's a continuum of likelihood and somewhere along it you make a personal judgement that something is too unlikely to be coincidence.

But you see the thing I'm struggling with is this - and it's probably just a difference in the way we think about things - to me your distinction relates only to how you decide, how you recognise synchronicity, and I'm asking a different question about it's causation, it's metaphysical processes, how it works. I'm asking what actually might be going on behind the scenes, as it were, when synchronicity happens. Is there a God just drip-feeding us with clues and lovely things depending on how much we tune in, for example (please note, I'm not asking for a yes/no answer to my example, but your hypotheses).

Is there a metaphysical difference between coincidence and synchronicity, do you think, or does one merge into the other? Are they like matter and mind, or cold and hot water, or ice and water vapour - what? Do you see what I'm getting at? It feels like I'm asking someone why they believe in the sun, and they keep saying that it gets so hot sometimes there just has to be a sun. There's no physics (or in this case metaphysics) - no "look up there - see that bright circle - that's millions of degrees, a nuclear reaction". I can't accept synchronicity until I actually understand what is being proposed.

If the only difference between coincidence and synchronicity is likelihood, could there ever be any incredibly unlikely coincidences?

I did tell you what would happen that could make me maybe disbelieve it. I'm willing to disbelieve it. I simply have no reason to at the moment. This is a definitive difference from what you have done in regard to the concept of synchronicity, which is tell me nothing could make you believe it.

As to the first, I'm sorry, I must have missed it. Please could you tell me again? As to the second, I would believe in synchronicity if it fitted in to my world view in some reasonable way, which means I had some explanation for it. Of course, if I were having strong personal experiences of it, that would probably persuade me, just as you are having them and they persuade you, but I guess I would make sense of them somehow: I would go back to believing in a God (who perhaps is hiding behind a veil from those who are too rationalistic or whatever, but giving help and guidance to those who are in the synchronicity zone - apparently dopamine helps, btw, if you want more of it). It may just be a personal thing, but I have to have some kind of working hypothesis for the things I experience.

Thanks for sticking in there with this. I understand your other commitments and really, honestly, I do not need and probably would not be swayed by any further details of your synchronicities. Again, it's something about the way I think, and besides, some of them I am sure are much less meaningful to me because of the cultural divide and our different backgrounds. You said if I were to go around with you I'd see it for myself, but I wouldn't. I would see you connecting all sorts of dots that I could quite easily separate in my own mind - cars, old friends not seen for a while, thises and thats. I'm not going to restate my reasons for believing that coincidence often strongly resembles meaningful synchronicity (though I might post a link or three), and I'm not saying I'm right and you're wrong. I just have a very high synchronicity threshhold because I believe I have seen something of how that happens. I could check out those oak leaves in June or whatever it was and think, "Now that's odd, what on earth could have caused oak leaves to be lying on the ground now? If there are no oaks in the garden, where are the nearest ones? How far do oak leaves blow? How long do they stay intact? Could someone have put them there after collecting them last fall and keeping them in the freezer? What about there being two of them so strongly linked in circumstances...well, that, I would say, is just coincidence (unless one of the earlier reasons, like someone putting them there, is involved). I would not go "Oh gosh - it's too unlikely to be coincidence, it must be synchronicity, whatever that is".

P.S. You dealt with my other points very well, and I don't see any need to argue them again. Despite what you may think, I do respect your right to believe what you want to believe. I'm glad you keep your eyes on the road!