I don’t believe in God or religion, but the fact that I find this spooky means I won’t find any explanation sans God convincing? How wrong and how patronizing.
I’ve got an explanation that doesn’t include God: He’s lying.
Why is logical leap any more necessary than the OP’s?
Is everyone who dreams of a plane crash lying or are they only lying if a plane actually crashes the next day?
What does Christopher Hitchens of all people gain by lying about this?
Just seems like a bit of a coincidence to me. It’s a big ol’ world and even if the necessary details to produce the dream didn’t filter into his mind subconsiously at some point in his life before, it still could just be a coincidence.
We don’t generally get to hear about all the dreams where people who know nothing about Judaism dream they they’re invited to join the Rabbi for a bacon sandwich, and this subsequently never happens.
I had a dream, in which the phrase ‘The Turning Men’ was somehow impressed into my memory - on waking, I thought it would be a cool title for a work of art - maybe a sculpture. I found out there is already a series of paintings by that title, depicting scenes that were sort of what I had in mind for my sculpture. It’s either just coincidence, or maybe I heard about it at some time in the past, then forgot I’d heard about it.
Something I find interesting is knowing how common one in a million things happen. With a US population of over 307 million more than 307 people have a one in a million day today. On average more than 7K Americans have a 1 in a M hour today and when you get to minutes you’re getting close to half a million having a 1 in a M occurance.
Well, it is your thread title. You’ll have to excuse us for thinking that’s your thesis.
And it’s not spooky, it’s just coincidental. I’m sure Cracked.com has an article somewhere about how our brains give mistaken significance to coincidence.
David Hitchens says that his brother is only 1/32 Jewish, and I’m sure that a person who has studied the different religions as much as Christopher Hitchens has had numerous dreams about numerous religions.
I do believe in God, and don’t find this ‘proof’ very convincing.
Then why have you chosen to describe this as “spooky” and stuck with it? There’s no reason to drag deities into it in the first place.
I had a dream last night that I was infected with some huge parasite. Guess I should go see my doctor.
1.) I didn’t actually mean to say that he’s lying. I was offering that as an explanation that didn’t involve God.
2.) It certainly seems more credible that he’s pulling our chains if he only mentions the dream after discovering he’s got Jewish ancestry. It’d be like if that plane crash occurred and then someone says “I predicted that it would go down!”
There’s no reason to assume he’s pulling anybody’s chain. But this is a good example of confirmation bias: if he hadn’t discovered he had Jewish ancestry, he probably wouldn’t be telling the story.
Frankly, when it comes to matters of religion I tend to assume that chains are being pulled.
He is a devilish (so to speak) mischievous, twinkle in his inebriated eye sort of fellow. Maybe he was just messin’ around.
How dare you say dreams don’t make sense and tell us important stuff? I once dreamed I went to Heaven and got into their file cabinet. I found the file for the German terrorist Ulrike Meinhof and opened it so I could find out where she’d gone. Much to my horror, she’d been reincarnated as my parrot.
But it made sense. My bird is a Ringneck parrot.
Why would he mention it before discovering his ancestry. It has no significance before that.
If someone said “I predicted that it would go down!”, I’d be more inclined to speculate that they sincerely believe it than that they’re lying. I’m funny that way.
Nevertheless, I didn’t see anything in the link where he said he predicted anything.
Guess he’s SOL then. The point is, any of us can claim to have dreamed about things in our lives that then came true. Mix in that this is regarding his religious beliefs and yeah, I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s a lie.
Do you also believe most self-described psychics sincerely believe that they have powers? I think that most of them are con artists.
I’m confused. How do his religious beliefs make it more likely he’d lie about this?
His beliefs don’t make me more likely to believe that he’s lying, but the fact that he’s talking about divine experiences.
Just as an example, if a person tells me that they believe in God, of course I don’t think that they’re lying. But if they tell me that they’ve seen angels (and I have been told this) I’d sooner think that they’re lying than crazy. Obviously that isn’t the same situation because he’s not claiming to have seen the impossible, he’s just recounting a dream that the had, but yeah. If I had to wager any amount of money I’d say he’s not lying and that this is confirmation bias or whatever. I’m just always surprised that in UFO/ghost/religious stories people seem reluctant to suggest that someone could just be making shit up and instead bend over backwards to provide other ways to explain things.