Yesterday and today I had a couple of things happen to me that I think tie in well with why many people believe in the supernatural, or in their ability to foresee events.
Yesterday, I had to travel a few hundred miles to do an interview for a magazine article, and I knew stormy weather was coming here in Vermont. I had a bad feeling about the trip and the possible weather complications, so much so that I actually called my insurance company and checked on my coverage.
Long story short, the trip went perfectly, and I made it home just as the snow started.
My point? I think we constantly think ahead that there may be a problem with a trip or something similar. Now, 99 times out of 100, nothing happens. The ONE time there is an incident, we say, "I had a feeling something was going to happen!" as though we'd had a premonition of the problem. With selective memory, we forget the 99 times we were wrong and use as evidence of our awesome foresight the ONE time we were right!!
Then today, I was up early to shovel the driveway - I've got a long, steep driveway and a LOT of shoveling. There was close to a foot of snow, and when I got out there, the snow turned to sleet and rain. When I finished shoveling, I figured I'd back Lori's car out of the garage, turn it around, then back it back into the garage to make it easier for her to get out when she went to work at 2. I knew we'd have freezing rain all day.
Good intentions, BUT of course I had a hell of a time trying to get the car back up the ice covered drive. I was kind of in a bind, with Lori's car blocking the drive so I couldn't get my truck out and get to work. I sat there for a minute, thinking when I was a JW I'd be asking for divine help at that moment!
Then I slipped the car into reverse and suddenly backed all the way up the drive and into the garage with hardly a spin of the tires. If I was religious I'd have felt that god sent one of his angels and they just pushed me right back up that driveway! I'd have IMAGINED that that natural occurrence was actually a case of divine intervention on my behalf. "I'm god's chosen and I've got proof!!"
I think for people who believe in the supernatural, that kind of thinking dominates their days, and they see evidence of the supernatural in what are really just hundreds of natural events in everyone's life.
S4's "Deep Thought" for the day...
Premonitions and Prayer - Explained!
by Seeker4 49 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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Seeker4
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journey-on
I think you are absolutely right in that these types of common occurrences are erroneously attributed to "answered" prayers.
However, there are too many uncommon occurrences that have no reasonable explanation and that are just entirely too farfetched
to be coincidental. I can't discount these events, nor do I ever ever poo-poo a person that experiences one of these anomolies. There
is just too much we don't know as yet to disparage these experiences.
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Robert7
Absolutely, selective memory. I've met people who think God controls their everyday lives, and pray for everything. It's easy to attribute everything that happens to God. And even funnier to attribute things that aren't answered to God choosing to not answer them.
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snowbird
I agree, Journey.
I've had too many things happen in my life that are simply inexplicable without factoring in divine intervention.
I believe angels are watching over us, and the more our thoughts are tuned in to the divine, the more results we obtain.
I used to be all skeptical and questioning, now I'm simply thankful.
Sylvia
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Free
Just like all good things come from God. What about the bad shit ? Oh thats right, The sun shines on the good and bad or something like that, right ?
That just don't cut it. If you speed, you have a better chance of crashing, if you smoke you have a better chance of cancer.
Life is a game of odds, some in your favor and some against. Most times if you think of solutions you can answer your own prayers or should I say increase your chance for the good.
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lonelysheep
Seeker,
When I first accepted that the jw's were wrong and had my own crisis of conscience, your point is what I deeply thought about for a few days. Boy, it hit me hard. Hard like the house that fell on top of the wicked witch in munchkinland. That's exactly how I felt, too. I was living around a great number of people who were alike, and I suddenly became different. Dead, in a way. I let all of my illusions go.
I've met people who think God controls their everyday lives, and pray for everything. It's easy to attribute everything that happens to God. And even funnier to attribute things that aren't answered to God choosing to not answer them.
That was just how I thought while an unbaptized convert. If I was really going to believe in a being from now on, it had to be 100% or nothing. I lived life prior to then between 1 and 99%. Only it wasn't about finding the "right church" or a better pastor, it was about the reality of the lies I was being told all along.
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Awakened07
My point? I think we constantly think ahead that there may be a problem with a trip or something similar. Now, 99 times out of 100, nothing happens. The ONE time there is an incident, we say, "I had a feeling something was going to happen!"
-I touched on the same thoughts in a post I made in this thread: http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/6/142713/1.ashx
Here's the post (so I don't have to retype the same thoughts):
I don't know how much sense this post will make (I'm thinking as I post), but here I go:
-All events in our lives - big and small - are ultimately the result of a mind-numbing row of coincidental events. To use a hyperbole; I would not be writing this post if my great-great-great grandfather hadn't agreed to go to that specific trip and met my great-great-great grandmother who almost couldn't make it either, and if my great-great grandmother hadn't chosen to ride a bike to work that particular day she wouldn't have broken her leg and therefore met my great-great grandfather who was her doctor that day, and if my great grandfather hadn't moved to another county when he was 25, he wouldn't have met my great grandmother, and if my grandmother had died of asphyxiation at birth as she was moments away from doing, she wouldn't have lived to meet my grandfather, and if my father hadn't worn a helmet when he ran off the road on his motorbike at age 18 he wouldn't have lived to meet my mother.
All of the events above had to be in place for me to be alive and have the exact personality I have. Add to that a couple of billion other coincidences that make up my family's history and the things that have influenced me in my own life.... What are the odds that I am me?
Well - there are no odds on that, because it's looking at it bass-ackwards; all those things didn't happen in order to create me - I happened to become me as a result of all those coincidental events.
So life is already full of coincidences. Some we notice, most we don't. You got hit by a car today - - - - but if you had remembered to take out the garbage before you left the house, you would have spent a couple of minutes on that, and the car would have missed you because of it.
As for numbers - yes, I agree it seems too far fetched that this could happen as a coincidence. I guess it all comes down to interpretation. I think I have a few of these events in my life as well. Like all the times I would hear a scripture at the hall, and when I was to find it in the Bible, I would immediately open the book on the correct page number and my eyes would look straight at the correct passage. Or like the time I was fed up with it raining, and for fun "shouted": "Stop it!" - and only seconds later the rain was reduced to a trickle, and then stopped.
I see it as coincidences - you may see it as spiritual events.
Something I initially forgot to add here, are lottery numbers. Lotteries are good examples of coincidences happening. Let's say a friend of yours was put in another room from you, and was asked to write down 12 numbers. Then you were given the task of writing down 12 numbers as well. How amazing wouldn't it be if he came back to the room you were in, and it turned out you had written down the exact same numbers that he had!? But that's exactly what happens in a lottery. Granted, there are perhaps several thousand or even millions of people who enter the lottery, and so the odds of someone among them getting it right are lower. But to the person who wins, it's a big coincidence that he/she wrote down the exact same numbers that the lottery people had chosen as the winning numbers.
Another thing I've been thinking about lately (last couple of years) is all the times a coincidence almost happens but doesn't. Like looking at the phone and thinking of my parents. Nothing happens. But what if - by coincidence - they were to call me at that exact moment? Wow, it would blow me away, right? I think there are lots of those 'almost coincidences' throughout our everyday life, but for obvious reasons we only notice them when they actually happen.
Then again - who knows; there are lots of weird things in science today as well, like in quantum mechanics theory. Maybe we'll have an answer that goes beyond coincidences one day (and 'beyond' the spiritual). Most people experience deja-vu. Maybe it's something like that, and that it has an explainable origin other than what I described above. So - even though I view myself as an atheist and naturalist, I wouldn't completely poo-poo what those who feel they have spiritual experiences experience. But as of right now, I must say I think it's just coincidences, even though it sometimes may appear to be too far fetched and the odds seem to be against it.
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FlyingHighNow
That sounds like a foreboding feeling than a premonition. And anxiety can cause an uneasy feeling. Some call it trepidation.
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jwfacts
I agree.
I always felt there was something wrong with the JW thinking, because non-JWs also claim they have their prayers answered. The "it is Satan blessing the wicked" retort just did not cut it.
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Caljuher
I think a lot of what makes prayer seem foolish to some is the way people use it. Most people seem to see prayer as asking God for something. While this is something you will find instructed in Judeo-Christian writings like the Bible, it is a far too simple and somewhat ignorant understanding of the concept of prayer by even some very “religious” people.
The epitome of prayer is considered to be not asking God for something and having the prayer answered, but as great mystics have taught, communing with God in order to lose self and serve others. As Teresa of Avila once explained it, once when she was traveling by donkey on a mission, she was thrown from the beast after crossing a rocky riverbed. She claims Jesus told her: “This is how I treat my friends.” To which she replied: “And that is why you don’t have many friends.”
Mystics like John of the Cross, Teresa of Avila and others teach a very different type of prayer than what is being discussed and advocated in religions. Hopefully some of the bright points brought out here on this board in these discussions will help people see that it often isn’t prayer or God that is useless, but often it’s us who are so self-centered we only want our needs fulfilled or want our viewpoint to be proven right. When prayer doesn’t work according to some preconceived ideas (like held within the Watchtower) prayer suffers the blame instead of the definition of "what it should be."