Does objective reality exist ?

Penn Jillette makes a very important point in this video. I'm not sure it is shared by all people.

Surprisingly.

The reason I think this is important is this. I think people who believe in magic, who believe in unseen forces controlling everything, they have a very different relationship to the world. They believe everything is malleable, anything is possible, at any moment a miracle could change physical reality.

This kind of magical thinking is surprisingly common, and it explains a lot of what is otherwise inexplicable in people's beliefs and attitudes.

This is actually a pretty interesting read.

Wikipedia wrote:

Magical thinking is the attributing of causal relationships between actions and events where scientific consensus says that there are none. In religion, folk religion, and superstition beliefs, the correlation posited is often between religious ritual, prayer, sacrifice, or the observance of a taboo, and an expected benefit or recompense. In clinical psychology, magical thinking can cause a patient to experience fear of performing certain acts or having certain thoughts because of an assumed correlation between doing so and threatening calamities. Magical thinking may lead people to believe that their thoughts by themselves can bring about effects in the world or that thinking something corresponds with doing it.[1] It is a type of causal reasoning or causal fallacy that looks for meaningful relationships of grouped phenomena (coincidence) between acts and events.

Quote :

Arthur Koestler wrote:

The Jung-Pauli theory of "synchronicity", conceived by a physicist and a psychologist, both eminent in their fields, represents perhaps the most radical departure from the world-view of mechanistic science in our time. Yet they had a precursor, whose ideas had a considerable influence on Jung: the Austrian biologist Paul Kammerer, a wild genius who committed suicide in 1926, at the age of forty-five.

One of Kammerer's passions was collecting coincidences. He published a book with the title Das Gesetz der Serie (The Law of the Series; never translated into English), in which he recounted 100 or so anecdotes of coincidences that had led him to formulate his theory of Seriality.

He postulated that all events are connected by waves of seriality. These unknown forces would cause what we would perceive as just the peaks, or groupings and coincidences. Kammerer was known to make notes in public parks of what numbers of people were passing by, how many carried umbrellas, etc. Albert Einstein called the idea of Seriality "Interesting, and by no means absurd",[citation needed] while Carl Jung drew upon Kammerer's work in his essay Synchronicity.

Source

Lysa TerKeurst wrote:

I don’t believe in chance. Hi, I’m Lysa TerKeurst with Proverbs 31 Ministries. I don’t believe our lives are filled with random occurrences.

Case in point.

Life:

• Birth
  
• Random Occurrence <repeat>
  
• Death
  

According to Lysa it's:
* Birth
* A series of tests and mysteries put forward by God
* Death
* Endless pleasure or torment, depending on your score on the tests

This is one of my favorite topics. Possibly because I know I am susceptible to finding meaning in randomness too. It's a really tough habit to break free from. I think we are all programmed to one degree or another, to jump to finding greater meaning in random or coincidental events conclusions. The gambler's fallacy problem essentially.

The only way I know how to come to terms with this mental habit is to just be self-aware and observant while trying to gain a rational perspective on something that clearly seems unlikely, in terms of probablitiy, and also seems meaningfully coincidental to my life at the same time.

Here is one such example I am currently wrestling down from the heights of fatalistic/destiny thinking, down to reasonable causes distinct from my wishful thinking faculties:

Just recently while in the midst of my genetic genealogy research I discovered a family in the U.S. who is genetically tied to mine. We are approximately between 2nd to 4th cousins, yet we had no idea of each other's existence until I began getting my and my mother's DNA tested. One day last week we, that is, myself and my contact in the U.S. family, decided to exchange photos of each of our families, just so we could see what each other's family members looked like. We were also curious about possible family resemblances.

As it turns out, when I first saw their photos, I was taken aback with a tidal wave deja vu moment. I recognized some of them as photos I had seen before many, many, years ago as a child growing up. I thought at first it must be a trick of memory, or a sign I was aging. But the more I stared at them and thought about it, the more I was convinced that I had in fact seen these photos before. I felt embarrassed mentioning this to my contact, but I felt so strongly about it, I felt I had to.

I am in the process now of trying to confirm with some of my family whether in fact I had seen these pictures before, by seeing if they recognized them also.
The odds of someone in my family having had these photos that belonged to this other unknown family, neither of us were aware of each other and had never met, and neither was aware of our genetic relatedness.... is just staggering.

I began to have fatalistic imaginings because I just couldn't explain or accept that two families never having made contact and never being aware of each other's existence prior, could be linked by one outsider to each family who also had no idea of our mutual genetic relatedness - a step-father of mine; who owned these photos of the other family members, was my middle man who I now suspect knew members of each family at different points in his life.

How and why did this outsider, my step-father, bring my family together with this other related family without knowing I asked myself. There must be some explanation for the unlikelihood of such an event happening. There must be some meaning behind this which includes my step-father, since I mistakenly presumed it was he that brought our two distinct families together - a delusion on my part.

But there was a logical explanation... my step-father was in the navy during the Korean war, as were certain family members of this U.S. family I was now in contact with. My step-dad and a few men of this other family were of the same age and may have been buddies as it turns out while serving in the navy. After going their own ways when the war was over, my step-father received mementos, some family photos to remember them by, which almost 2 decades later I happened to notice one day laying on a table and asked questions about.

Those were the photos, two weeks ago, I found myself staring at from this other family, whom I just made contact with through our mutual DNA matching.

What are the odds? It must have been destiny. It must have been fate. It must have been "meant to be"... that we were brought together...

Nope. None of the above.

But the seeming unlikelihood of such a chain of events is exactly why my mind was triggered into supernatural/superstitious explanation mode when if I thought about it more, it really wasn't that unlikely of a chance meeting after all. I tried to imagine every reason why and how this coincidence could have occurred... yet from my emotions and capacity for wishful thinking, while ignoring the more simple, rational idea that maybe it was just random chance events connected by a fortuitous decision to get my DNA tested, and their family deciding the same.

My step-father years ago back in the early 1950's made friends with someone who had similar traits and characteristics to people in my family, whom he would meet decades later, and formed relationships with people from each family at two distinctly separate times in his life, all of us completely unaware that both family's were related genetically.

It's still staggering to think about however one interprets it. Yet sometimes bat shit luck just happens. However, because of internet technology, DNA analysis, and current popular genealogical interest in the baby boomer generations..., our families could find a way to be brought together to finally be made aware of each other's existence - and my step-father was just a chance occurrence to both our families.

So even an ardent atheist and skeptic like myself needs to expend effort to separate the facts from the fiction, especially the self-induced fiction, which is the worst kind.

Yeah, I think I get what you mean. The Wiki on coincidence mentions that in any group of (IIRC) 13 or more people chances are 50% or better that two people share a birthdate. That's counter-intuitive.

In my own family, my mother & father met on a blind date. Only after they were married did they discover that their fathers knew each other in college. Granted, the University of Washington was a lot smaller in the '30s, but still...

The test to get into heaven is pass - fail. There is no gray area, and you cannot retake the test.

Seems a bit unfair. Is there even a CliffsNotes?

NoCoPilot wrote:

The test to get into heaven is pass - fail. There is no gray area, and you cannot retake the test.

Seems a bit unfair. Is there even a CliffsNotes?

I'm not sure I follow. Or rather, I'm not sure how this post follows from the post previous.

It follows on the post two posts up.

SAI2 wrote:

I know I am susceptible to finding meaning in randomness too.

You have apophenia. It's a good thing you (and your ancestors) do since it keeps you out of the lion's maw.