Mark Gagnon

The philosopher Karl Popper would say that a framework is only as good as its ability to test and potentially be proven wrong.

And by that standard, the probabilistic framework has a bit of an edge because it makes testable predictions.

But the theologian would counter that some questions, for example, does an event have meaning?

aren't the kinds of things that you can test with statistics.

And a psychologist then kind of sits in between.

So this suggests that miracles, synchronicities, and coincidences might not be three different kinds of events.

They might be three different relationships or lenses to the same kind of event.

The miracle framework says the universe is authored.

It has some type of moving non-contingent creator.

And this event is a message from that author.

The synchronicity framework says that the universe has some type of hidden underlying structure.

Perhaps all things are connected in some way.

And this event reveals this pattern.

And a coincidence framework says the universe is probabilistic and that this event is just expected data.

What you believe determines which framework you reach for.

And this is very important.

All three frameworks are internally consistent in some way.

You can't disprove miracles from inside the coincidence framework, and you can't disprove coincidence from inside the miracle framework.

There are different languages for describing the same experience with reality.

But the truth of the matter is, most people don't actually live inside just one framework.