Lord, Give me a Sign

Yup, that’s what I said. Allow me to paint the picture. The air conditioning in the gym appeared a little weak. It was hot, I had just finished working out and I was wiping the considerable perspiration from my face. I was also twirling my car keys.

One of the guys looked up at the air conditioning vent and spread his hands about shoulder high to check if the recent call to maintenance was having any effect. He looked so much like a supplicant that I quipped “Lord, give me a sign.” At that instant the RF key went flying off my key chain.

We all looked at the RF key that had just gone flying across the gym floor. Then we looked at each other. Then I walked over, picked up the key, and checked the hoop that secured it to the main hoop of my car keys. Both it and the main hoop looked just fine. I then put the RF key back on the main hoop, which took some effort, and shrugged.

I twirl my car keys all the time and the RF key had never come off before. Given the tightness of the two interconnecting hoops, I doubt it will happen again anytime soon. It was a fluke. Flukes happen, but imagine if I was given to supernatural thinking? I imagine that I might be wondering if I had just gotten what I asked for.

Coincidences, flukes and other strange stuff happen from time to time. Of course far more often they don’t happen. We tend to remember the odd stuff, for the very reason that it is odd, and forget about all the times nothing happened. This has a name. It’s called “Confirmation Bias.” So-called psychics and clairvoyants build their reputation on confirmation bias, on the fact that people, especially people that have a need to believe, will remember the hits and forget the misses.

There’s a story on snopes.com about lightening hitting a church just after the preacher asked God for a sign. Needless to say the faithful went all giddy over this despite the fact that the bolt caused a fire which required a quick evacuation and $20,000 in repairs. Sounds to me that if it was a sign, it was a sign from the Deity to shut up already and leave him (her? it?) alone. A beam of light with accompanying angelic music would have been much more convincing and done much less damage.

Like my RF key coming off, the lightening was simply coincidence. A long shot perhaps, but long shots do happen. If you throw 100 die, some pattern has to come out on the first set of throws. Yet the probability of that pattern appearing is the same as for any other pattern, 1 chance in 6.5x10 raised to the 77th power.