Monday, July 06, 2015

Life changing events


I caught a news piece on the local TV station last night about a Woman who having survived a serious car accident without injury decided that because of this "life changing" event God must have some kind of purpose for her, re-found her "faith" and was this weekend inducted into some kind of Anglican church role amid much gold braid, pomp and elaborate millinery.

I often wonder what kind of simplistic (confirmation biased) logic leads people to have thoughts like this;  do they never stop to consider all the other people that didn't survive similar car accidents (like this poor bloke), what exactly was God trying to say to those people? Do they never stop to consider the relentless advance of technology that rests on the application of science and reason that delivers (mostly) safer cars and better accident mitigation systems. Do they never stop to consider the probability that the God they attribute this generosity to is merely one of thousands of Gods invented by Human beings over thousands of years all of whom are endowed with similar if not identical considerations.

Every event that happens in our lives changes it somehow; that's the true nature of existence. The only illusion is the one where we think we have some measure of lasting control over anything whether we believe in benevolent super-beings like Yahweh, Zeus, Allah, or just the simple fact that for a brief scintilla of time we inhabit a spinning rock in a vast universe that knows (or cares) nothing of us and that generally (rather obviously) we have a better time of it if we're nicer to each other and pay more attention at traffic junctions.

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