[Textcritic]

Originally Posted by photon

For sure, it's crazy sometimes what happens and what leads to that event, but it's only amazing when viewing it in hindsight.

But that's just our perception. People are astounded when the 6/49 has the same series of digits 2 drawings in a row, or pulls numbers all right next to each other or something.. sure it looks amazing, but only because of our perceptions. In reality that sequence of numbers is no more or less likely than any other series. Our perception gives the coincidence meaning.

See, this is interesting as it is similar to one of my more recent ideas about how to talk meaningfully about God. The simple expression of what you are describing is that "hindsight is 20-20," and this is only so because we build our experiences into a narrative with some sort of purpose. But from a clinical perspective, there is no such thing as "purpose", and this is what I believe is horribly troubling for ALL Christians in their approach to evolution, abiogenesis, and cosmology (this is regardless of whether one is a creationist or subscribes to some form of theistic evolution). A belief in God seems to presume that there is some sort of grand purpose or "meta-narrative" of which everything is a part. Yet the scientific dissection of the world according to empirical reason continues to chip away at any notion of purpose. At least purpose in a deterministic sense. Here is a snippet of something I wrote a few months ago on the subject. It begins with a scene from the film The Matrix Revolutions:

It is pointless to keep fighting.
The Matrix movie trilogy is a story about illusions. The illusion of life. The illusion of survival. The illusion of sight and experience. The illusion of control, as Morpheus described it in the first of the movies. The illusion of purpose.
Humanity is duped by what it perceives to be “real”, and from a purely naturalistic point of view, life indeed—the very presence and essence of humanity—is without purpose. It just is. And it is the bane of our existence. Even a cursory glance at contemporary Western culture will reveal what ails our society. Corruption, loneliness, disillussionment, greed, decadence, and individualism are only symptoms of a more pervasive scourge...

Religion bears the brunt of the blame and shame for its failure to rectify what our world persistently requires of it: vindication, and redemption from the unrelenting prison of endless emptiness: wanton purposelessness; cosmic "chaos". Our theology must begin here: In the affirmation that life and all it has to offer is tragically without meaning. The world is material. It only makes practical sense that our pursuit of what is real and actual finds its genesis in what actually is:
the void of purpose.

Originally Posted by photon

I can't honestly say that I've noticed anything unusual in the random events in my life that would lead me to believe in some kind of providence, and even if I did I know the human brain fallible enough that I'd question my perception of that providence; I'd need a lot stronger evidence for it.

Just to be clear, when I am speaking about glimpsing "God" in the synergism of random events, I am not speaking of "providence", which I would define as a deterministic sense of God who unfolds and oversees all of life and existence. No. I don't think that a providential God is particularly compelling (hence the problem with theodicy, once again). I think that "providential" belongs with those meaningless rubrics "omnipotent" and "omniscient". I think God may be part of life in a mysterious sense, but "living" through it just as we all are. There is no "plan" or "will" beyond what is beneficial for humankind (and at this point, I feel as though I've painted myself into a corner in recognizing that "beneficial" is a loaded term that remains open to interpretation. Nonetheless, I must be on my way to pick up my b'kor from school! I'll be back in an hour).