Statistically speaking, yesterday did not happen

Have you ever wondered how sometimes people have a run of 'bad luck' where statistically unlikely things happen in a weird chain of events?

Let's look at yesterday. We had to go to London to see Lin's specialist about her treatment. As there is no parking in central London we chose to take the train. We arrived at the local station, parked the car, paid the ticket and got on the train. We travelled down, saw a very unpleasant specialist in an awful hospital whose staff were not able to pronounce our names correctly. We travelled all the way back, and that's when statistically the day stopped happening.

What are the chances that the ticket machine would take our money and spit out an invalid ticket to only us? Even though we displayed the printed ticket we were given, we found a parking fine waiting glued to the window. OK, so that's pretty unlikely, but shit happens right?

So we travelled home.

We found that the day-job software ordering system had screwed up and sent out an invalid licence code to a customer causing an almighty mess. Well, in ten years that's never happened before, so we can rate that as being really unlikely.

Then I decided to clear some outstanding day-job support issues and logged into our main support site and my anti-virus immediately went nuts as a Trojan downloader tried to install itself on the server. The forum software we use had an unlisted flaw and some B******* had hacked the site and installed a Trojan downloader. So it took several hours to clean up the mess.

What a day! But it wasn't over. Later last night I found out that something else had happened, a family tragedy, that I can’t blog about but which was very shocking and very unlikely to happen.

So what are the chances of those things happening all on one day? Pretty slim I would say.

Now it makes you wonder about the way of the universe when things like this occur. Until recently I had quite a strong faith, but due to the amount of statistically unlikely events occurring with such awesome regularity, this caused me to question my faith. The philosophy I had been taught just didn't seem to fit the circumstances.
Often when bad things happen, religious people say things like "It’s a test of faith" or "It’s so that you can learn and grow" or "Only God knows he greater picture and it will all be clear in the end."

Empty platitudes.

Testing ones faith has a place when there is actually some form of point to it. It’s like holding a biscuit up for a dog. The dog will do all sorts of tricks in the belief that at the end of it, he will get the treat. The more the dog believes he will get the treat, the more he will play. But eventually, he will tire and stop. You have tested his faith to the point where he no longer sees any point to it and gives up.

If the purpose of the life-test is so that you can learn and grow, then why keep pounding away? There is no sense in trying to break someone just for the heck of it. Pile on the crap, see how much someone can take. Watch them fall, see who lasts the longest. It’s like a Japanese game show where they torture the contestants until only one is left.

“Only God knows the greater picture” relies on there actually being one. If there are enough random events that serve no real purpose other than to make your life harder, it becomes difficult to believe in any higher purpose. For example, what higher purpose is served by a parking fine after having followed the rules? It's a random unlikely event that has no consequences to the rest of the universe, other than depleting my wallet. Most of the trying events in our lives, that are not self inflicted, fall into the “random crap with no outside effect” scenario.

So after looking at my faith, I gave it up. I decided that it was just random crap and that there was no point in trying to fathom it out, it was random and just life. Better to get on with it and not try to ask why.

But then yesterday happened, highly unlikely events occurring, some which border on the miraculous (but not in a good way.) This caused me to question my lack of faith.


And then I had an epiphany. There must be a God after all.

So how come there is a God?

Well some of these things were just too statistically unlikely to occur all at once without some other influence. That influence could therefore be described as God. But he's not the God that we get taught about at Sunday school. You know "The God and the Devil, God is good, the Devil is bad".

What if there is no devil, there is only God? Maybe the devil is just an invention for control purposes, and God gets to blame him like a kid blames his invisible friend for the puddle on the floor? What if God meddles in our lives for no other purpose other than personal gratification? It's like a kid playing with ants, some live, some die, it’s nothing personal. Some go under the magnifying glass to be fried by the sun, some get away, but it’s not as if the kid hates the specific ant, it’s just an ant.

Now being a rational, scientific type of person I realise that there absolutely no evidence for God. But I can also see that statistically, yesterday could not have happened, and that just lately there have been way too many days that statistically should not have happened!

Go figure!



Roswell Ivory, facing a demon!