Or at least, the math says so.
I think I’ve mentioned on here at least in passing the calculations Peter Stoner did. He took a group of prophecies about Christ and tried to put some numbers around the probability of one man fulfilling them by chance.
The numbers he came up with were so long that it’s hard to explain in a way someone can understand clearly. Something about a cloud of electrons with an almost 100 million mile radius. Which obviously sounds like a lot, but I don’t think we can grasp the enormity.
So he scaled it back to just 8 prophecies and got something you can visualize a little better. Cover the ground of the entire state of Texas with silver dollars. Two feet deep, with one of the coins marked with an X. The chance of someone picking the marked coin on the first try is roughly the probability one man would fulfill the 8 prophecies.
In other words, Stoner’s point was that at some point “coincidence” becomes a pretty unsatisfying explanation.
Now let’s do something we are all great at, making it about ourselves. What is the probability that you came to exist at all? You’d have to trace your lineage all the way back, knowing that every one of these people had to be born, in the same order, with the same parents, etc., all the way up the line.
One of them doesn’t show up where they did, doesn’t meet the person they met, dies a little earlier, or makes any of a thousand different decisions, and everything downstream changes.
And you’re not here today.
And that’s just your direct ancestors. Their lives intersected with thousands of other people, any one of whom could have changed what happened next. Wars. Disease. Accidents. Bad decisions. Good decisions. Pure dumb luck, if that’s what you want to call it.
That probability can’t be calculated, there’s just too many moving parts. But it doesn’t need to be. Sometimes the results tell you all you need to know.
In his books Nassim Taleb has a couple of recurring characters. Dr. John, a man of science who lives by logic, and Fat Tony, who lives by his wits and experience. In one section they are told to assume a coin is fair, and that it has been flipped 99 times and has come up heads every time. They are asked the probability of a tails on the next throw.
Dr. John gives the textbook answer. If the coin is fair, what happened before doesn’t affect the next toss. It’s still 50/50.
Fat Tony doesn’t accept the premise.
After 99 heads in a row, he’s not betting on tails. He’s betting that you’ve been wrong about the coin.
At some point the more reasonable conclusion isn’t that you just witnessed another astonishing coincidence. It’s that your assumption about randomness was wrong.
You’re not random either. And what you do matters.
So act accordingly.
P.S.
If you’d like to read through the Bible this year, you can join us at His Word Together.
No commentary. No telling you what to think. Nothing to buy. Nothing fancy.
Just steady time in the Word.
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