Hi chaps.
Some of the old crew may remember me. Long time absent as life pressures such as Blood Bowl and Wargaming have kept me busy.
As the old gang know , I am a pretty dyed in the wool skeptic and atheist. I listen to Tim Minchen on my MP3 player and I have TED podcasts in my car on the way to work. I have followed JW's down the street when they pass by my house asking for a conversation and I am pretty much on their banned list.
Last week I was having a lovely debate with a Chemtrail fan. That sort of stuff.
Well here is a story I wanted to share.
My mums in hospital with cancer and terminal, she is a devout Christian. (Nope its not a story of healing miracles).
The other week we traveled to see her (6 hour trip so we had to stop on the way at the Golden Arches.
The "Boss" was in and doing a good job of entertaining the kids. My daughter was watching the rope trick he was doing and the guy was skilled. He "separated the rope" and "Joined it together". I was quite close but diddnt see the slight of hand. My 13yr old Daughter was impressed but I have brought her up a skeptic and when she asked how he had done it i said "Dunno...its a common trick, notice however that he held his hands so you couldn't see the back of the rope?" She agreed.
We visited Gran and gave her a St Christopher's pendant, a tiny thing as it was just meant to be "symbolic" for her because her faith is so important.
Skip forwards a week to yesterday: Seriously this story IS going somewhere!
Me and Mrs Barney visited Mum again. She had changed wards and I noted that the pendant was missing. Obviously taken off her by the staff and lost or dropped or swept up. We were looking for it and we found a large cross in silver with a crucified Christ on it. "Ahh!" I said "I know whats happened mum, its got bigger! I now believe in miracles!" to make her laugh. My mum smiled as she knows my sense of humor.
After the visit we drove back. My Wife often wears a pendant we got from a seaside trip. It is a swirl made out of shell. It has a hole bored in the top which the string passes through and the string is closed by two knots and beads pass over the closure. What I am getting at is this thing is tied tightly and doesn't come undone. You can see where this is heading now yep?
When we got home we walked inside and Mrs Barney said "Hey Barney, come and tell me this. How the fuck did this come off?"
The string was round her neck, the beads were over the knot, the knot was tied and the loop continuous. The shell had come off and the hole was bored in it and there was no cracking around the hole. The shell was too brittle for a hairline crack to form (I assume) for the rope to work its way through.
"You must have snagged it" I said, but that doesn't explain why there string was intact or the shell intact.
"Perhaps its a hairline crack", but no. It isnt. (I havnt put it under a scope)
"Perhaps the string was pushed through the hole and we never noticed it before and its worked its way out?" But nope. That is possible, but nobody makes pendants like that and the way it hangs says otherwise.
"OK, I dont know", I said (That Mrs Barney had done it is another possibility , unless you know her and that she is as much of a skeptic as me, if not more)
"There is no reason to invoke the supernatural though" I said "There has to be a naturalistic cause. But OK lets try the supernatural. Spirits or force that made the pendant come off! Can you wiggle this packet of cheesy wotsits?"
The Wotists sat there unmoved.
"Well OK" I said. "They seem a bit shy all of a sudden..they are willing to take a pendant off a string but cant move a bag of crisps"
"Oh I dont think its supernatural" said Mrs B.
"Nor me , but I really cant think of a explanation" (Which I always have been able to do before.
Perhaps its Ronald McDonald doing it and he is a mighty deity.The entertainer we saw was not a poorly paid actor but the ACTUAL Ronald Mc Donald!
If it was a god then why use such a crap rope trick.
So I though about it. Am I a good historian of this? Well fuck yes, because I was skeptically analyzing it as I was looking at the evidence. Does my memory fail me. No, because I was thinking as I was examining the silly string " Hey, in examples of stuff like this- nobody can recall what actually happened and everyone's story differs slightly"
If it was Yaweh and Son then they should know that I work on evidence. I like things to be repeatable. That way we avoid errors. Or is it enough that in my highly charged emotional state that Yaweh and Son do a really shit magic trick to "sow the seeds of doubt in materialism". Seriously! Intervening in the world to fuck about with a pendant when Islamic State are slicing off innocents heads? Or decent Christians like Mum are dying painfully?
So lets look at Pattern recognition.
- We have a recent religious pendant bought. It goes missing in hospital. 0 points for woo woo
- A larger one appears with no explanation known. Oh hang on a second! A present from a friend who visited? 0 Points of woo woo
- Ronald Mc Donald does some rope tricks. 0 points of woo
- My wife's pendant comes off the string with no known cause and apparently against the laws of physics. 1 point of woo.
So why am I letting you chaps know all this shit? Well I thought it would give you a laugh and also perhaps I haven't covered some bases of explanations.
I've never had an event I couldn't explain and welcomed your opinions and no doubt derision!