Loading summary
Transcript1 lines
- [00:02]
A
Not sure how to tackle your taxes? Are you sweating the small print? You may be experiencing FOMO. The fear of messing up. The answer using TurboTax on Intuit. Credit Karma. They help you get your biggest refund and then we help you do more with it with a personalized plan designed to help you hit your money goals. It's time to take your taxes to the max. Start filing today in the credit karma app. Zootopia 2 has come home to Disney. Let's go get ready for a new case. We're gonna crack this case and prove we're victorious. Partners of all time. New friends. You are Gary Destiny. And your last name, the Snake Dream Team. Hidden new habitats. Zootopia has a secret reptile population. You can watch the record breaking phenomenon at home. You're clearly working at Zootopia 2. Now available on disc, Disney Plus. Rated PG. In 1972, the actor Anthony Hopkins was cast in a film based off the novel the Girl from Petrovka by George Pfeiffer. He wanted to read the book before actually filming the movie. So he went to go look for a copy somewhere in London. Goes into a bookstore and they don't have it. Goes into another bookstore, they don't have it. And he goes to another, they still don't have it. So he decides to go home. And on his way home, he sits down on a bench at a train station and notices a book sitting right there, abandoned. And it was the Girl from Petrovka. How strange. It's the copy of the book that he was looking for. Just sitting there, abandoned. And then later, when Hopkins actually meets the author, George Pfeiffer, he tells him this story that he found a book sitting at the train station and the author mentioned that he didn't have his own copy anymore. He actually lent his last one, heavily annotated with personal notes in the margins, to a friend. And that friend had lost it somewhere in London. Anthony Hopkins checked the copy and the copy that he found on the bench was actually George Pfeiffer's personal annotated copy. I mean, what are the odds? What do you call that? If you're religious, you might call it a miracle. Or at least maybe a sign from God. If you're into psychology, you might call it a synchronicity. And if, if you're a statistician, you'd probably say, well, there's 8 billion people walking around this planet. Weird stuff is supposed to happen. It's just statistical math. The same event, three completely different interpretations, and one impossible question. At the center of it all are miracles, synchronicities and coincidences. Actually different things, or are they just the same thing with different names? Well, today we're exploring the world of these weird, inexplicable phenomena and possibly finally uncovering what is supernatural, what is psychology, and what is science. So sit back, relax, and welcome to Religion Camp. What's up, people? And welcome back to Religion Camp. My name is Mark Gagnon and thank you for joining me in my tent where every single week we explore the most interesting, fascinating, controversial stories from every religion from around the world, from all time, forever. Yes, this is the place where I try to figure out what everybody believes, every person on this earth. You listening to this right now? Have been shaped in some way, shape or form, pun intended, intended by your faith or by your culture's faith in whatever God is popular in your area. And as a result, that's imbued in you even if you don't practice. So in order for me to understand the world better and my fellow human beings, I'm trying to understand what everybody believes. And furthermore, I'm trying to take all the good parts. I think religions are fundamentally a good thing if they've been around for a while. So I try to take all the best stuff and apply to my own life to be a better human being. And if you're clicking on this channel, I imagine you probably have the same goal as I. Well, today we're diving into a very interesting topic, but before we get into it, I just want to say thank you so much for watching the show. Every time you click or comment, you, you know, keep the fire burning here at the campsite. And I mean, yeah, you make my dreams come true. And also you pay the bills of my dear friend Christos Papadapados. How are you, Christos? Doing? Great. All right, Christos, we don't have time. I'm sorry. Because, I mean, look, if people want to talk to you, the best place to do that probably is patreon.com camp kaganon patreon.com camp I mean, that's like the inner sanctum. That's like the campfire where people gather. You know, just chat, chat with each other, chat about camp, talk about different episodes. We do a zoom every single month where we all just get on, just, you know, chop it up. We also do extra episodes, bonus apps. We also do ad free episodes. It's just like five bucks a month. So for the cup of coffee, you basically are going to get more content than you probably could even consume in a Month, so. And you get to talk to Christos, so maybe we'll do a discount for that. Anyway, today we're talking about this idea of synchronicities and coincidences, miracles, you know, serendipity. It's an interesting idea, right? And maybe it's happened to you. I. I mean, it's definitely happened to me. Like, you're just thinking of someone, and all of a sudden that person calls you. That happens to me all the time. I'm like, I wonder what my buddy's doing from high school. I haven't talked to him in, like, years. And all of a sudden I get a text. I'm like, what is going on? Maybe this is, like an algorithmic thing. Maybe we're both primed at the same time, and all of a sudden something that I posted showed up on his Instagram and he texted me. I don't know. It happens all. Has that happened to you? In Greek, they say that the person that calls you when you're thinking about them, that they're going to live 100 years. Really? Yeah. Wow, that's funny, because that's a superstition that happened from, like, pretty recently. You know what I mean? Like, that's not like an ancient Greek superstition. That's something that's been around only 30 years. Yeah, well, I guess they adapted it from someone visiting you that you were thinking about. Perhaps. It's just kind of funny. Anyway, it's a. It's an interesting thing, right? It happens. And, you know, maybe someone in your family is, like, given a certain time to live because of, like, an illness, and then they suddenly recover without any explanation, like, is that a miracle? I mean, some things are just too weird. Like, this happens to me all the time. I've had dreams about people, and then, like, I ran into that person, like, on the street, and I was just like, dude, I just had a dream about you. And they're like, you're dreaming about me? And it's like, not like that. All right. I just had a dream, and you happen to be in it. All right, so I'm making it weird now. Stories like these, and there are many of them, I'm sure you have many in your life, which I would love to know. For the record, I love these kinds of stories, so just comment them because I want to read them. It kind of makes us wonder, like, why? What is happening? Like, what is the. What is going on? Is there any meaning to this? To these sort of weird sort of, you know, coincidences? If you can call it that. So, really quick, before we get into this, I just want to clarify a few different things here in terms of terminology. Okay? A miracle is in the traditional sense, an event attributed to some type of divine intervention. And it wouldn't have happened in nature if it were just, you know, left on its own. You could say it's really derived from the Latin word miraculum, which means object of wonder. So in many, like Western theologies, this means a suspension of natural law. God steps in and basically overrides the rules, right? You can think of Jesus walking on water, right? It's like, okay, well we can't walk on water. So if someone did that, it is God literally intervening specifically at a time and place when those things aren't possible. But not everyone sees it that way. Some theologians, particularly in like Islamic thought, describe miracles as unusual but still law consistent acts see the difference a lot of times in Christian miracles, it's like God overrides the law, whereas in Islam, God works through nature rather than above it. Either way, the key ingredient is very much insane. The same that God intervenes and a miracle always has an author. Now, in Christianity, the party of the Red Sea is a miracle. And in Islam, miracles are called mujazat. They're considered signs from Allah and they basically authenticate a prophet. So for example, the prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, splits the moon. And then in Hinduism, the feats attributed to Krishna, like lifting a mountain with one finger, those are miracles, though they're often understood as expressions of divine nature rather than interruptions of the natural order, if that makes sense. In Buddhism, extraordinary feats are called siddhi, which can be read basically as like expressions of spiritual realization rather than like a legit intervention from a some divine being. Now, the common thread between all these different religious traditions is that these events point to something beyond ordinary human experience. Though of course, different traditions approach like how and who and why very differently when it comes to miracles. Now, let's talk about coincidence. This is basically the opposite kind of framework. It's when two or more events occur in a way that seems remarkable, but in reality has no meaningful connection. So the word literally comes from Latin co incider, or to fall together, basically. So coincidences are by definition meaningless. That's what you get when probability does its thing. You know, humans just happen to notice it. You think of your friend and then they call. You dream about a car accident, the next day you see one. A coincidence is just the scientific community's way of saying, like, cool, that's, that's an Interesting thing, you know, but it doesn't mean anything, right? A coincidence is like, yeah, you're thinking of someone, then they call you. It's like, well, duh, you know, they. People call you all the time. How many people did you think about that didn't call you? And how often is this person calling you? And you think of them one, you know, without you thinking of them. And then you have synchronicity. And this basically sits kind of in the middle between these. And that's actually what makes it really. Makes it really interesting. The term is actually coined by the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung in 1952. Jung basically defines synchronicity as the simultaneous occurrence of two meaningful but not causally connected events. You can see how this is kind of splitting the difference. The critical word here is meaningful. A synchronicity isn't just a coincidence. It's a coincidence that feels like it matters, but it's also not a miracle. Because Jung isn't claiming that God or Allah is, like, intervening. He was proposing something else completely. That the universe might have some type of underlying order, some type of connective cosmic tissue between the inner world of the mind and the outer world of events that doesn't actually operate through cause and effect. So to recap, a miracle has a divine author, a coincidence has no author, and a synchronicity has. Spring fest is heating up at Lowe's, and for a limited time, we have the extra big deals you need to impress guests. Get your outdoor space ready and save $50 on a select cobalt 24 volt blower kit. Now dollar plus save $80 on a char broil performance four burner grill. Now $199. It's springtime and our best lineup is here at Lowe's, valid through 413, while supplies last selection varies by location. Amazon presents Jeff vs. Taco Truck Salsa. Whether it's verde roja or the orange one. For Jeff, trying any salsa is like playing Russian roulette with a flamethrower. Luckily, Jeff saved with Amazon and stocked up on antacids, ginger tea and milk. Habanero. More like habanero. Yes. Save the everyday with Amazon some meaning, but is kind of a question mark. And it's important to understand that these aren't scientific categories, right? These are frameworks for interpretation. The event itself is the exact same. The thing that changes is ultimately the story that we tell ourselves about it. And by the way, these concepts didn't show up at the same time in history. And I think that the timeline also indicates something to us about what's going on. So, for example, miracles. These are ancient. They're as old as religion itself. Every civilization with a God or multiple gods has the concept of miracles. The Hebrew Bible is packed with miracles, Burning bushes and plagues and manna from heaven. The New Testament is basically, you know, centered on miracles, literally, like Jesus healing the dead, walking on water, rising, resurrecting from the dead. The Quran also describes a bunch of miracles, and Hindu epics have miracles. For most of human history, miracles have been the mainstream explanation for things that we can't explain or other, you know, extraordinary events or, you know, if something remarkable happens. God is the obvious framework, though, you know, like skepticism of God or divine, you know, intervention is not purely modern. A lot of ancient Greeks would question supernatural claims and stuff like that. But still, for the vast majority of people, across the majority of history, Mir miracles were just kind of how the world was. It's like, there's things we can explain and for everything we can't explain, it's God. Now, all that started to change during the Enlightenment in, like, the 16 to 1700s. So you guys are familiar with the Enlightenment. This is when thinkers largely began insisting that the world operated according to laws that were discoverable, the kind of natural laws or an underlying order. And no one really spearheaded this whole Enlightenment ideology more than the Scottish philosopher David hume. So in 1748, Hume published an argument against miracles that is still debated to this very day. His core claim is really quite elegant. A miracle is by definition a violation of the laws of nature, and the laws of nature are established by this enormous, consistent body of evidence. So the evidence against any particular miracle, namely literally everything that's ever been observed in natural law, is. Is always stronger than the testimony for it. So, I mean, if, you know, you see a person, like, just levitating out of nowhere, it's like, well, that's violating the laws of nature. So all of our recorded history says people don't just levitate, and if this guy's levitating, there's more evidence against it than for it. Now, Hume argued it's always more rational to believe that the witness was mistaken or deceived or lying or having some type of, you know, delusional episode than to believe that the laws of nature were actually broken. This didn't kill the belief in miracles, though. I mean, not even close. I mean, obviously it did create an intellectual space for the concept of the coincidence, because people were basically reckoning with this thing where, you know, two things happen that seem remarkable but Yeah, I guess it would be strange if all of a sudden things started happening in the universe that we couldn't explain. So what. What do we do if miracles are off the table as explanations? You need another word for these events. And this is where we get the word coincidence. So coincidence as a concept really gains traction in the 18 and 1900s alongside the development of, you know, modern statistics and probability theory. Mathematicians like Pierre Simon Laplace gave us the tools to actually say, like, this amazing thing was statistically likely to happen to someone. But we'll come back to more math stuff in a second. So synchronicity as a concept arrives last in our timeline in 1952, specifically when young published his book Synchronicity An Acausal Connecting Principle. And the timing here is really significant. Jung is writing in the aftermath of World War II at this Nexus, when pure rationalism felt inadequate to many people. He was also deeply influenced by his conversations with the physicist Wolfgang Pauli, who worked on quantum mechanics. And it's important to note here, some people assume synchronicity is based on quantum physics. It's not really. Pauli influenced Jung philosophically, but not scientifically. Synchronicity is a psychological and philosophical concept only. It's not a physical one. So Jung borrowed the feeling of quantum weirdness and sort of the, you know, kind of instability and uncertainty, this idea that, you know, the universe is stranger and operates outside of the classical mechanical suggestions. But he wasn't doing, like, equations or anything like that. Jung's most famous example of synchronicity is the scarab beetle story. He was sitting with a patient who was describing a dream about a golden scarab. You've probably seen these from, like, the movie the Mummy. It's an Egyptian symbol of rebirth. And as she was speaking about it, Jung heard a tapping on the window and he opened it. And as he. As he opens it, all of a sudden a Rose Shaffer beetle flies in. And that's the closest thing to a golden scarab that you're going to find in Switzerland at the time. And he caught it and he handed it to her and said, here's your scarab. And the moment was so striking that it broke through the patient's psychological resistance. And her treatment made a breakthrough. So what is that? I mean, is that a miracle? Is that a coincidence? Is it a different thing? Jung argues that that mystery that happened to him is something else. He proposed that mind and matter aren't as separate as we think, that meaning itself can be a connecting principle, not cause and effect. But something parallel to it. And a lot of scientists reject this, but the concept really stuck around in popular culture because it names something that people feel all the time that some coincidences seem to mean something. They, they carry weight, even if you can't prove it. Okay, now that we have these roughly defined categories, let's stress test them with real world cases and we'll kind of look at the data and try to decipher which category each story belongs to. So our first example, and this has been, you know, actually I won't even spoil it, I'll just give you the example and then, Christos, I need you to tell me which one you think it is. In 1858, a 14 year old French girl named Bernadette Subaru reported visions of the Virgin Mary in a grotto near the town of Lourdes in France. A spring appeared where Mary supposedly indicated and people who bathed in it began claiming that they were healed. Now, the Catholic Church takes miracle claims very seriously. They established the Lord's medical bureau in 1883, and since then the church says more than 7,000 cures have been reported. Of course, only 70 have been formally recognized as miracles after medical review. That's about 1%. But despite that being only 1%, 70 miracles isn't nothing. And notably, very few new miracles have been recognized in recent decades. The most recent was in 2018, which really tells you something about how the bar has risen. The process requires extensive medical documentation. Doctors, including non Catholic and non believing physicians, examine the cases. The healing must be complete, lasting, scientifically inexplicable, and no known medical treatment could account for it. So here is the cross examination. No pun intended. Get it? Cross examination. Are the 70 recognized Lord's miracles actually miraculous? Well, you see, skeptics will point out a few different things. First, millions of sick people have visited Lourdes with millions of trials. They would say some spontaneous remissions are statistically expected. Cancer sometimes just goes away. It's rare, but it does happen. Second, the medical bureau's standards, while rigorous for a religious institution, still are not the same as a double blind, peer reviewed clinical trial. And third, and this is subtle, we only hear about the people who get better. We don't track the millions of people who went home still sick or went home and got even sicker. And that's what statisticians would call survivorship bias. And it's difficult to say if the number of people that get healed after going to Lords is higher on average than just, you know, the average sample in society. You would expect if it was purely coincidence that the people getting healed at Lords would be the same as general society. But again, it's inconclusive. Also, the people going to Lords to get healed are a different sample size. They might come from a different socioeconomic bracket, or perhaps there's a place event where they're thinking that they're going to get healed and that it might actually contribute to their healing in some way. Again, we just don't know. But the miracle claim at Lords doesn't rest on the statistics. It rests on these specific individual cases and their timing. So could this apparition at Lourdes that then leads to a spring that then heals people, is this a miracle? Well, if you're religious, if you're Catholic, and you believe that God is behind these healings, then you would say, yes, this is a miracle from God. At least the people that are healed, those are miraculous events, which, again, according to this Medical Bureau, about 70 to 72 people have been miraculously healed. But could it also be a coincidence? Sure. People that are going there, they're in a higher income bracket, they're able to make a little bit more money, they get other treatment afterwards. Maybe it's just purely corollary, or maybe there's no statistical connection at all, and that in any sample of a million people, 1% of them will be healed. Who's to say? Now, could it be a synchronicity? Think about that term, right? Jung might say that if the healing was meaningful to the patient's psychological state. So you go in, you have some type of rare cancer, you go into the spring, you douse yourself with holy water from Lourdes. All of a sudden you start thinking, wow, God's got my back. I'm going to be healed in some way. And is it possible that lowering that amount of existential stress and dread, is it possible that that could sort of adversely affect how the cancer is progressing in your body, perhaps. And now it becomes something between the physical and the mental state that Jung would say could be a synchronicity. Now, let's move on to another example. In 1979, researchers at the University of Minnesota began studying identical twins who had been separated at birth and raised apart. The most famous pair was Jim Lewis and Jim Springer, and they were reunited at the age of 39. Both of them had been named James. These two boys were both given up for adoption, and neither of them knew about each other for most of their lives. They didn't know about each other until they get reunited at 39 years old. And here's what happened to them while they were separated. Both of them had been named James by their adopted families. Both of them had married women named Linda. Both of them got divorced, and then both of them married women named Betty. Both of them had sons. One was named James Allen, and the other one was named James Allen with two Ls. Both of them adopted childhood dogs named Toy. Both drove the same type of car. Both smoked the same brand of cigarettes. They both vacationed at the same beach in Florida. So what is that? I mean, these two men had no idea that each other existed. And at 39, they meet and then they uncover all of these overlapping similarities in their lives, down to the names of the dogs they adopt or the names of their children. Bizarre. Now, is this a miracle? Well, there's no one really claiming divine intervention, but calling it a coincidence feels inadequate. Right? Because it's not just one detail that matches. It is dozens and dozens. Jung would have probably called this asynchronicity meaningful. Parallels that can't just be explained by direct causation, but seem to reveal some type of underlying pattern, some type of force in the universe that somehow connects all of these things that happen. But here's the thing. Maybe there is a causal explanation, and it's stronger than a lot of people realize. Identical twins share 100% of their DNA. Behavioral genetics research shows that genetics influences personality and preference and maybe even the types of women or even the types of names that might appeal to you. So the same name coincidence might reflect that people with similar genetic predispositions are actually drawn to the same sounds that sound appealing to them. So Linda and Betty are extremely common names for women born in the 1940s. So the base rate is also really high. The matching habits could be genetic, too. Driving the same type of car might reflect a shared socioeconomic status and regional trend. Selection effects and reporting biases also matter here. Researchers and journalists emphasize all these really spooky, crazy matches, and they also downplay the many things that didn't match. So the Jim twins. I mean, this is a fascinating example of how the same data can support multiple different frameworks. If you're calling it a coincidence, you're basically saying it's, you know, genetics. These guys are predisposed to be similar, and they're both living in America around the same area, and there's common naming trends and, you know, very popular types of cigarettes. Maybe they smoke the same thing. It's just, you know, math. What if it's a synchronicity? Well, if it's a synchronicity. You would argue that this is some type of meaningful pattern pointing to some type of connection between them that is inexplicable and beyond our understanding of physics. And is it a miracle? Only if you believe that God somehow arranged this to be so. Now we have another prediction. This one is strange. This is the titanic prediction. In 1898, 14 years before the Titanic sank, a novelist named Morgan Robertson published a book called Futility or the Wreck of the Titan. In it, a massive, unsinkable ship called the Titan strikes an iceberg in the North Atlantic in April and sinks with enormous loss of life due to insufficient lifeboats. The titan was about 800ft long. The Titanic was about 882ft long. Both were described as the largest ships ever built. Both hit icebergs on the starboard side. Now, this looks downright prophetic, and some people even called it that. Oh, this is a vision. Maybe he had a premonition. Maybe there was some type of miracle of foresight. Maybe God talked to him. But here's the rational pushback. Robertson was a former merchant marine officer who knew a lot about ships. He knew that the shipbuilding industry was producing larger and larger vessels. He knew icebergs were a hazard in the North Atlantic. He knew the regulations about lifeboats hadn't been, you know, keeping pace with ship size. He essentially extrapolated current trends into a plausible disaster scenario. Science fiction writers do this all the time. The specific details that match the name, the month, the iceberg, those are striking. But consider how many thousands of novels have been written that made predictions that didn't come true. We just don't remember those ones. So the base rate of failed predictions is enormous. So for every Robertson, there are hundreds of writers whose disaster novels just didn't match reality. And that is what we call confirmation bias. We notice the hits and forget all the misses. So is this a coincidence? That's probably the most simple explanation. This informed guess that happens to be really remarkable in hindsight. So based on these examples, what do you think? Which categories do you think hold up? I mean, Croesus. What do you think about the Titanic? 1k pop demon hunters, Haja Boy's Breakfast Meal, and Hunt Tricks Meal have just dropped at McDonald's. They're calling this a battle for the fans. What do you say to that, Rumi? It's not a battle. So glad the Saja boys could take breakfast and give our meal the rest of the day. It is an honor to share. No, it's our honor. It is our Larger honor. No, really, stop. You can really feel the respect in this battle. Pick a meal to pick a side. Ba da ba ba ba. And participate at McDonald's while supplies last. Tomorrow morning is knocking. Stock your fridge now. How about a creamy mocha Frappuccino drink? Or a sweet vanilla smooth caramel, maybe? Or white chocolate mocha? Whichever you choose, delicious coffee awaits. Find Starbucks Frappuccino drinks wherever you buy your groceries. Titanic 1 is pretty creepy. Really. I. To me, that's, like, the least compelling. Really? Yeah. I'm like, all right, it's like, 14 years. It's not like this is, like, written, like, hundreds of years ago. So, like, it's in the time range. The guy has a history of working in, like, large ships and says, like, yeah, ship is going to hit an iceberg and sink, but the biggest ship ever built. I mean, if you're writing a book to be, like, the most prophetic thing ever. I mean, again, like, I can see from his perspective, being like, I'm gonna do this, and then, like, the hubris of man, kind of imitating art, coincidentally, I'm like, to me, I'm like, that one's the least interesting. The twin study. That one is more interesting to me. The Jim twins, they have so many similarities. Now, is it possible that, like, you and I, we're not twins? Some would say, but sure. Is it possible? We have a lot of similarities? I think so. It's like, oh, well, maybe we drink the same beer. Maybe we both like the same restaurant. Maybe we have all these similar sort of proclivities, but we just don't think that they're that remarkable, because why would they be? That's just purely coincidence, because we're not related. So it's one of those things where it's like, I can see the statistical argument, but it's more compelling to tell me that both of these guys named their kids the same thing. And you're telling me it's just genetics? It's like, maybe, but it's harder for me to believe that. And then the apparition of Lourdes. I mean, I'm a Catholic. That's a miracle. I choose to believe that based off my faith. I'm like, that's a miracle. Granted, Catholics aren't required to believe in miracles. It's not a fundamental condition of being a part of the religion. But I, for one, just accepted it that. What do you think about the Jim twins? The again, they're. They're genetically linked, so that makes me feel like all that stuff Is more possible scientifically correct apparition of lords. I'm not a big religious guy, you heretic. Oh, my goodness. Anyway, what do you guys think? I mean, drop a comment. I'd love to know your. What your thoughts are. What's up? Guys? We're gonna take a break real quick because I gotta ask you a question. Are you the type of person that just wakes up in the morning and immediately, like, hits your vape or gets a coffee or throws in a pouch because you just want to feel anything at all? Like, you just throughout the day, you're like, okay, coffee pouch. Coffee pouch. Vape. Coffee pouch. I mean, to be honest with you, that was me. Like, I was just going from cold brew to pouch to cold brew to pouch all day. And my heart felt like it was gonna explode. Like, I was just, like, felt strung out, like all day, truly. I was, like, just kind of anxious and I didn't even know why. And I was trying to, like, eat clean and I was lifting weights. Meanwhile, I was also chemically nuking my nervous system. And that's why I started these ultra pouches. I'll be honest with you. I found these on my own. And then I reached out to the company. I was like, hey, I would love to work with you guys because I love what you guys do. Ultra is amazing because it's nicotine free and caffeine free and it still gives you that focus and energy. It's really the best. Like, I'm like, okay, there's no nicotine or caffeine. I was like, well, what is it? Well, basically, they partnered with neuroscientists to put together a blend of, like, nootropics and adaptogens to actually help you focus and get energized and kind of, you know, help with that oral fixation. No diddy without, like, the jittery crash. So it's got like L theanine, infinity PX alpha, GPC, vitamins B6 and B12. And I'll be honest, they taste great, they make you feel great. And I don't know if it's just me or what, but, like, I truly feel like I'm more locked in when I'm taking them and there's no crash. And the craziest thing is that, you know, sometimes I'll still use nicotine. It just helps me cut back and I feel way better now. Caffeine and nicotine are going to wreck your resting heart rate. It's going to make you feel anxious if you're taking them all the time. And on top of that, it's going to destroy your sleep. So that was my biggest issues. I felt cracked out, I felt anxious, and I wasn't sleeping that good. But ever since I've been taking Ultra, I'm still getting that same little kick. I'm getting that thing to do throughout the day, and I just feel better. In general, Ultra is absolutely amazing. And if you're interested in checking them out, I have great news. You're gonna go to takeultra.com that's t-a k e ultra.com, and you're gonna use the promo code camp, and you're gonna get 15% off when you use that code. That's takeultra.com and use a code camp for 15 off. And when you check out, they're gonna ask where you heard. Just please tell them that we sent you over at Camp Cagn. It really helps us out a lot. Thank you guys so much. Feel better, sleep better, get less anxious, but stay locked in. Now, let's get back to the show. What's up, guys? We're going to take a break really quick because I just want to state the obvious. You're not going to hire a chiropractor to do brain surgery. And if you're going to go fight in the Octagon, you wouldn't hire a guy that watches a lot of ufc. And if you have a personal injury case, you're not going to just, like, hire your buddy that's good with contracts because you know that when you're hurt, it's because someone else was negligent. You don't want just, you know, lawyer y vibes. You want real lawyers. And that's where Morgan and Morgan comes in. They are America's largest injury law firm with over 100 offices nationwide and more than 1,000 lawyers. Crazy thing, they've recovered over $30 billion for over 500,000 clients. They've got a real track record of fighting to get people full and fair compensation. So if you are ever injured, you can check out Morgan and Morgan and their fee is free unless they win. Yes, free. You literally don't pay anything unless they win your case. That's how confident Morgan, Morgan is that they can get compensation for you and your injuries. So for more information, go to forthepeople.com gagnon that is f o r the people.com g a g n o n or dial pound law, that is £529 and let them know that you got sent by the people here at the campsite. Also, this is A paid advertisement. Now, let's get back to the show. Now, let's bring in the one framework that doesn't really care about meaning at all. And it's kind of similar to what we were talking about with some of the coincidence stuff, but this is probability. Now, here's where things get fun and also kind of counterintuitive. A lot of people dramatically underestimate how often weird stuff should be happening by pure chance. And there is actually a whole branch of mathematics that actually explains this. So, for example, the birthday problem. This is a classic statistical probabilistic nightmare. Okay. If you were in a room with 23 people, have you heard this before? Okay. All right. It's a big flagrant thing. We did this on Flagrant. Yeah, I don't remember. It was a Patreon episode. Oh, goodness. I cannot believe I forgot that you're like, I was there, and you just already remember it better than me. Now, if you're in a room with 23 people. Did I bring it up? Yeah. No. Synchronicity. Whoa. Look at that. All right, well, I'll tell you guys. How many people do you need to have in a room for a 50% chance that two of them share the same birthday? Well, you're thinking, okay, there's 365 days. So in order for that 50% chance that two of them share the same birthday, you probably need, like, 100, maybe 150. It's probably a reasonable guess. Seems fair. You need 23 people. Yeah. And then in order to get a 99.9%, you would probably. You're like, oh, you probably need, like, 360. You actually only need 70. Now, this feels wrong because there are 365 days in a year. But the math is actually completely correct. People underestimate it because they think about the odds of someone sharing their specific birthday when that's not what the question's asking. The question is asking, what are the odds that. That any two people share any birthday? Now, this matters because it's a metaphor for how we think about extraordinary events, Right? We ask, what are the odds of this specific thing happening to me? When the real question is, what are the odds of this remarkable thing happening to anyone ever? So Littlewood's law describes this beautifully. It was established by a Cambridge mathematician named J.E. littlewood, and he defined a miracle as any event with a one in a million chance. He then estimated that every person experiences about one event per second during their waking hours. Seeing things, hearing stuff, encountering people, making decisions. And at one event per second, eight hours a day. You're going to rack up a million events every 35 days. That means statistically you should expect a one in a million event roughly once a month. So according to this law, if miracles are one in a million events, they're actually not that rare. They're just, they're actually on schedule, right? Like think about you riding your bike and all of a sudden you, you know, stop to pick up a penny on the ground and right when you stop, a truck flies in front of you and almost hits you and you're like, wow, what a miracle. And it's like, yeah, it is. But also, you get one of those a month. Now the law of truly large numbers extends this principle to populations as well. With 8 billion people on Earth, a one in a billion event should happen about eight times. A one in a million event should happen 8,000 times every day. Someone somewhere is experiencing something that feels cosmically impossible, but actually it should happen. It's just math. But of course, these laws that aren't actually laws, they require you to agree with Littlewood's definition of a miracle. With the proposition of the average person experiencing just one event per second. It's an interesting idea to cool framework to try to like understand what's going on. It just requires you to get on board with his presuppositions. But then, another thing to consider, when you're looking at these patterns, we have to think about the phenomenon of apophenia. You may have heard this word before. Apophenia is the human tendency to perceive meaningful patterns in completely random data. And this isn't a bug in what makes us human, it's actually a helpful feature. Evolutionarily, it was far better to see a pattern that wasn't there than to miss a pattern that is there. So you're better off looking at bushes and seeing a face in the bushes that turns out to be nothing than looking at bushes and being like, oh, that's probably nothing and it's actually a lion. So our brains are actually sensitive pattern detecting machines. And we see faces and clouds or a message in a fortune cookie or tea leaves and divine plans and a random, you know, for like some random medical outcome. All in an attempt to find answers for both surviving and thriving and also dealing with the stress of everyday life. Confirmation bias compounds on top of this. Once you believe something meaningful has happened, you unconsciously seek evidence that supports that belief and you just ignore evidence that contradicts it. So if you pray for healing and you feel better, you remember the prayer. And if you pray and don't feel better, you attribute it to God's plan, or you just forget about it. So here's what's important. None of this disproves miracles or synchronicities either. It simply shows that the existence of extraordinary events doesn't require a supernatural explanation. The math can and oftentimes does account for many of these things. But, and this is very crucial, the math can't tell you whether the supernatural explanation is also true or not. Probability explains why and statistically, how remarkable things might happen, but it doesn't explain why they happen to you at this moment in this way. And that's the gap that a lot of people are searching for and trying to understand the greater meaning. So we've talked about personal events, books on benches, twins with the same name, a novelist who gets lucky. But what happens when the coincidence is something a lot bigger? Well, let's look at some of these cases that genuinely push the boundaries, and even events that just basically force skeptics to really sit there and think, like, this is weird. So, near death experiences, shortened to NDEs, are basically reported across every culture, every religion. You know, even atheists, People who are clinically dead or close to it describe remarkably consistent experiences. Moving through some type of tunnel, seeing a bright light, feeling overwhelmed by peace, meeting deceased relatives, sometimes observing their own resuscitation from above the cross. Cultural consistency is also striking. A Buddhist in Thailand and a Christian in Ohio and a secular or atheist person in Sweden all describe structurally similar experiences. And the scientific explanations include many things. Oxygen deprivation, triggering hallucinations, the release of endorphins, and the random firing of neurons as the brain shuts down. DMT release during death is often cited, but hasn't been conclusively demonstrated in humans. But a lot of people believe that when you die, you actually release some type of psychedelic drug like dmt, that you actually hallucinate. Now, these explanations account for some of the features, right? The tunnel, the light, the euphoria. But researchers point to cases where patients claim to describe events that occurred while they were clinically dead. So this would include, like, conversations in other rooms, details about their resuscitation, things like that. And these reports are compelling but very hard to verify rigorously. Memory is reconstructive, and it's difficult to confirm what a patient perceived versus what they pieced together afterward. So in 2014, researchers did the Aware study, and they tried to test this by placing hidden images on shelves that could only be seen from above. The results were inconclusive Too few cardiac arrest survivors could be interviewed and the study did not find reproducible evidence of perception during cardiac arrest. Most neuroscientists think brain physiology can explain the core features of a near death experience. But a small minority argue that there are enough reports to challenge a purely brain based account. Either way, as of now, the evidence for perception during clinical death is not strong enough to overturn the mainstream view. It's really intriguing, but it's not perfectly conclusive. So all this information leads to one question, the one that we stated at the very beginning of the episode. Are miracles, synchronicities and coincidences all different? Or are they the same thing, just wearing different hats? So consider the Anthony Hopkins book story. From the very beginning. It's one event, one real thing that happened. And depending on your worldview, a religious person would say that God arranged it to be so. This would be a miracle. A Jungian or someone drawn to psychology might say that the meaningful connection between Hopkins need and the book's appearance reveals something about the connected nature of consciousness. Perhaps like a panpsychism or what David Chalmers would call this kind of, you know, non localized in consciousness, this type of consciousness that exists outside of our brains. And perhaps our brains are the antenna that taps into this. This might just be a synchronicity. And a statistician might say that with billions of people losing and finding things every single day, this was bound to happen to someone eventually. And then eventually you would hear about it. So this is just a coincidence. None of these people are lying. They're not intentionally misinterpreting something to make it better for themselves. And none of them are stupid. They're just using different interpretive lenses to make sense of the same data. Now here's the thing. You can't really run an experiment to determine which one is right, because there's no measurement that distinguishes divine intervention from meaningful connection from improbable but statistically inevitable. Right? Like the event itself doesn't come with a label. So you might reasonably ask, doesn't one of these frameworks have a stronger claim to being right? And that's a legit question. The philosopher Karl Popper would say that a framework is only as good as its ability to test and potentially be proven wrong. And by that standard, the probabilistic framework has a bit of an edge because it makes testable predictions. But the theologian would counter that some questions, for example, does an event have meaning? Aren't the kinds of things that you can test with statistics and a psychologist then kind of sits in between. So this suggests that miracles, synchronicities, and coincidences might not be three different kinds of events. They might be three different relationships or lenses to the same kind of event. The miracle framework says the universe is authored, it has some type of moving, non contingent creator, and this event is a message from that author. The synchronicity framework says that the universe has some type of hidden underlying structure. Perhaps all things are connected in some way and this event reveals this pattern. And a coincidence framework says the universe is probabilistic and that this event is just expected data. What you believe determines which framework you reach for. And this is very important. All three frameworks are internally consistent in some way. You can't disprove miracles from inside the coincidence framework, and you can't disprove coincidence from inside the miracle framework. They're different languages for describing the same experience with reality. But the truth of the matter is, most people don't actually live inside just one framework. A deeply religious person might call a cancer remission a miracle, but call finding a parking spot just, you know, a coincidence. A committed atheist might insist everything is coincidental, but still feel like a little chill when they think of their dead mother. And the phone rings and it's their sister saying, you know, I was thinking a lot about mom. We all slide between frameworks depending on the intensity and the personal relevance of the experience. And that might be the most honest observation that we can make. Maybe the frameworks aren't about the events, they're about us. They're about what we need and what we need in that moment and how much mystery we're really comfortable with. And one more thing to mention before we wrap up. We haven't even touched on the parapsychology experiments that claim small but repeatable anomalies, or how different cultures have long elaborate systems for reading signs. Whether it's omens or oracles or divination. Entire traditions argue that what looks like mere coincidence from the outside is experienced as guidance from the inside. And psychologists who study grief and trauma find that people often report signs from loved ones. A song on the radio, a bird in the window, a book on the bench. As a part of how they rebuild a sense of coherence after loss. Regardless of whether those signs are objectively improbable, the need to find meaning in the strange isn't a flaw. It might be one of the most human things about us. So what do you think? Whether you call it a miracle, a synchronicity, a coincidence, There is something remarkable about These extraordinary events, and it is that they all point to the limits of human understanding. Whatever you call it, the next time something impossible happens, pay attention to how you feel. Not just the event, but what is your relationship to the event? Which framework do you reach out for first? Because that will tell you something really important. Not necessarily about the universe, but about you. You and what you believe about the universe. Because ultimately, all three miracles, synchronicities, and coincidences are all in some way saying the same thing. That the world has more than we can fully understand and explain. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is a brief summary of the differences between miracles, synchronicities, and coincidences. I mean, this is a topic that I personally love. It's something that I think about all the time. Like, me and Miles get into many arguments about this because it's like, how do you parse the difference, right? Like, do miracles exist? Do synchronicities exist? And let's say you're talking to the most staunch atheist materialist. Like, I only believe what I can see. If that person, you know, like, was with their mother as she passed away, and, you know, his mother loved cardinals and had a cardinal T shirt hurt. And then after the mom passes away, a month goes by. Actually, better yet, at the funeral, they're lowering his mother into the ground, and all of a sudden a cardinal comes and lands on a tree. You're going to look at that and be like, there's something mystical about what just happened. Like, you don't see cardinals all the time, and all of a sudden, one of them just landed on the tree. As you're lowering your mother into ground, who passed away with a cardinal shirt on and loves cardinals. Cardinals. You're like, all right, there's something divine here. But even if you don't operate in that framework, you still look at it and you're like, wow. And that, to me, is the significant part, because that is, like, even if you don't believe in anything supernatural, that event is supernatural. And maybe it just existed in your mind. Like, maybe, you know, they always talk about, like, what do they call it? The burning, The Behring, Meinhof frequency illusion that, like, you're gonna buy a yellow car and you really want this specific yellow car. And once you commit to buying it, all of a sudden you see that same yellow car all over the place. It's not that there's all of a sudden more yellow cars. It's just that the frequency is an illusion based off of where you're putting your selective, you know, sort of your Selective attention. So maybe in light of your mother passing away, you're more selectively attentive to cardinals, but maybe it's just a crazy thing that happened that makes you draw closer to the spirit of your mother as she passed away. All that to say. I lean more towards synchronicities, I think. And as like a Catholic, I leave room for like this sort of divine authored, coincidental, kind of like underlying pattern that the universe rests on. And of course, like, I think it depends too. Like, like, let's say, like something terrible happens to you. Like, let's say a bird poops on your head. My immediate thought goes, probability. I go, that's just a coincidence. That's just statistics. Like, you know, people, birds poop all the time. Every now and again, I might get a bird to poop on my head. But I don't think, like, oh, I'm cursed, or this is a bad sign, or this is a lucky thing. I just think that's the thing. So if bad stuff happens in statistics, if really profound emotional things happen, or like life saving things, those things are miracles. So it kind of depends on the type of event, you know, and that's to me, like the thing that I find the most interesting. But it's like, do ghosts exist? It's like, well, if you believe in ghosts and you get scared when you walk into like an abandoned house, like, the ghost maybe is real, but the ghost might just exist in your brain and that is the ghost, you know, like the ghost is that fear that you have that exists in your brain. So I'm like, in a way, it is real because you've convinced yourself it's real. Like, do placebos work? It's like, yeah, because your brain is suggestible. So to me, I'm like, all that stuff is just so profoundly interesting. But what do you think, Christos? Have you had a. An experience that is so coincidental, so synchronistic that you can't even explain what it is? You know, you need fiber for a healthy gut, but do you actually know how to get it? Quaker's been serving UP fiber since 1877 with over 100 great tasting, good source of fiber options to choose from. Whether you like old fashioned oats, instant oatmeal granola, or oatmeal squares, Quaker makes it delicious. Mmm. So good. Get your fiber with Quaker Shop. Quaker's good source of fiber products at a store near you. Chronic migraine is 15 or more headache days a month, each lasting four hours or more. Botox, Onobotulinum toxin A prevents headache in adults with chronic migraine before they start. It's not for those with 14 or fewer headache days a month. It prevents on average eight to nine headache days a month versus six to seven for placebo. Prescription Botox is injected by your doctor. Effects of Botox may spread hours to weeks after injection, causing serious symptoms. Alert your doctor right away as difficulty swallowing, speaking, breathing, eye problems or muscle weakness can be signs of a life threatening condition. Patients with these conditions before injection are at highest risk. Side effects may include allergic reactions, neck and injection site pain, fatigue and headache. Allergic reactions can include rash, welts, asthma symptoms and dizziness. Don't receive Botox if there's a skin infection. Tell your doctor your medical history, muscle or nerve conditions including als, Lou Gehrig's disease, myasthenia gravis or Lambert Eaton syndrome, and medications including botulinum toxins as these may increase the risk of serious side effects. Why wait? Ask your doctor. Visit botoxchronicmigraine.com or call 1-844botox to learn more. Yeah, I think when it's an example like the cardinal that you just talked about, I think I tend towards that's a religious kind of miracle kind of thing to me. And then when it's a boo bird pooped on my head, it's a synchronicity that's just numbers. It's going to happen to you. Oh, you mean it's a probability. Sorry. Yeah, I understand. Yeah. It's interesting how the type of event can frame it. I bet you people that are like extremely superstitious, like borderline OCD might look into events that are completely just like whatever and draw some type of meaning in it that's not there. There's a whole movie, the number 23 with Jim Carrey that's all about this. What happens? Well, it's more about how the number 23 haunts him and it appears and everything. So he divides the month of his birthday by the year of his birthday or something and it's like 0.23. And then it's all of these coincidences with the number 23. Whoa. Yeah, it's a shit movie, but really? Yeah. Well, it sounds like right up my alley. Check it out. I just don't know how to feel about this stuff. It's like I. It really depends on what it is and I need to know like specifics and I need to like, I need to have it just be investigated, you know, like the gym guys. I need to know what things were wrong like, how staunch were they? The movie Three Perfect Strangers does a really good job of this. It's three triplets. They get, you know, separated at birth, and basically they all have to get, like, they. They get separated at birth, and there. There's, like, a orphanage scientist that's, like, doing a study on them so he knows where all three of them are, but the three of them don't know about each other. And then they eventually all meet up and they realize that they have so many similarities and, like, they are the same type of person. Like, there's all these connections. But then as time goes on, they realize that they're actually very different and that living these different lives has drastically changed them fundamentally in ways that they couldn't even imagine. So it's one of those things, like, on the surface, it seems like, oh, wow, there's all these connections. And then they look underneath and, like, they're actually very different people. And that, to me is like, you know, it really kind of depends on, like, your framework. And I think that's really the biggest takeaway from this. That, like, I've heard it said that, like, jealousy can be a really helpful emotion because it tells you what you desire, and then you can assess if you should desire it, you know? So, like, if you see, like, a friend of yours from high school driving, like, a really nice car, you're going to be like, man, f that guy. Like, that's. I should have that. That. But that feeling, you shouldn't just give into it and you shouldn't suppress it. I think you should sit with it and think, like, what does that say about me? Like, oh, I want to have a really nice car. Why do I want to have a really nice car? Oh, I want to impress this one girl that I'm trying to date. And you're like, but if she's the kind of girl who's impressed by a nice car, is that the girl that I want to date? Like, it can help you rationalize feeling in a really, really important way. So noticing envy and jealousy can really entice and sort of bring something out of you that can be helpful if you're aware of it. Now, in lieu of this noticing how you react to things that you can't explain, I think says a lot about you and then can help you kind of unpack how you interface with the world. So if everything is God, like, I'm sure if you grew up religious, you have, like, an aunt or, like, a grandma or something that's like, that's the Lord and You're like, all right, it's not the. It's not the Lord. You know what I mean? Like, I've seen this happen with, like, people in my family where like, like early on when you're on Instagram and you get an ad based off something you were talking about, and you're like, the Lord's answering my prayers. I just got a 10 discount at Lululemon. You're like, well, it's. It's just targeted data. It's actually not the. Like, we know it's not the Lord, but if you're a boomer, you're just like, it's the Lord. So if you're drawn to that, I think it's worth considering. Like, okay, why am I drawn to that? Why am I always drawn to that? If you're purely materialist and, you know, someone passes away in your family and you have some type of remarkable connection where all of a sudden, like, you know, there's like a sushi roll at a restaurant and it's like your aunt's name and it's all of her favorite stuff, and you're like, that's pretty crazy. Like, what a weird coincidence. Maybe just being like, all right, maybe I'm open to the mystery. I think trying to find balance in these things and being aware of your own framework and then trying to be a more well rounded person, at least that's what I try to do. You know, maybe I need to be a little bit more like, you know, what stuff happens, and be more drawn to the statistical coincidences. But what do you guys think? Please drop a comment. This is my favorite topics. I think we need to do another episode on this and dive into more of these synchronicities because this is just my favorite thing. So please comment. I would love to know what your synchronicities are. Maybe I'll include them in the next episode that we do. As always, I just want to say thank you guys so much. It's no coincidence that you make this show possible. You guys are truly the lifeblood of this whole channel. And I just want to say thanks again. Patreon.com Camp Gagnon, you can join us at the inner sanctum. Come hang out. We drop additional content every single month. We do zooms where we talk live. It's a really great time. Additionally, we have history camp. You can check out all the craziest stuff from history, historical deep dives, all that. And then of course, Camp Gagnon, the main camp channel, where I do deep dives with actual geniuses and experts that really know their stuff as well as, you know, current events, some geopolitics, a little bit of conspiracy, all that good stuff. And you just rock with us here at Religion Camp. That's great too. This is where we meet every single Sunday and we go through the most interesting stuff from every religion from around the world. God bless you all. Happy Passover. I know it just came by. Happy Easter. Happy, you know, Ramadan Kareem or Eid Mubarak to all the Muslims I know that just passed. This is a very important month for all the religious people of the world. I wish you all the best and I'll see you in the future. Stitch Fix Shopping is hard. Let's talk about it. I don't have time to shop, so I buy all my clothes where I buy my seafood. I just want someone to tell me what shirt goes with what pants. I just want jeans that fit. Stitch Fix makes shopping easy. Just show your size, style and budget and your stylist sends personalized looks right to your door. No subscription required, plus free shipping and returns. Man, that was easy. That looked good. Stitch Fix Online Personal Styling for everyone. Take your style quiz today@stitch fix.com the right window treatments change everything. Your sleep, your privacy, the way every room looks and feels. @blinds.com, we've spent 30 years making it surprisingly simple to get exactly what your home needs. We've covered over 25 million windows and have 50,000 five star reviews to prove we deliver. Whether you DIY it or want a pro to handle everything from measure to install, we have you covered. Real design professionals free samples. Zero pressure right now. Get up to 40% off site wide plus get a free professional measure@blinds.com rules and restrictions apply. Peace be with you.