Coincidence: Real Or Not?

[Thylacina]

Do you think there's such a thing as coincidence? I ask because I've been reading one of my books on the paranormal and there's a chapter devoted to synchronizations and coincidences and I wondered what other peoples' thoughts were on the subject. One example of coincidence that I find really intriguing is the similarities between Presidents Lincoln and John F.Kennedy:

Abraham Lincoln was elected to Congress in 1846.

John F. Kennedy was elected to Congress in 1946.

Abraham Lincoln was elected President in 1860.

John F. Kennedy was elected President in 1960.

Both were particularly concerned with civil rights.

Both wives lost a child while living in the White House.

Both Presidents were shot on a Friday.

Both Presidents were shot in the head.

Lincoln's secretary was named Kennedy.

Kennedy's Secretary was named Lincoln.

Both were murdered in the presence of their wives.

Both were assassinated by Southerners.

Both were succeeded by Southerners named Johnson.

Andrew Johnson, who succeeded Lincoln, was born in 1808.

Lyndon Johnson, who succeeded Kennedy, was born in 1908.

John Wilkes Booth, who assassinated Lincoln, was born in 1839.

Lee Harvey Oswald, who assassinated Kennedy, was born in 1939.

Both assassins were known by their three names.

Both names are composed of fifteen letters.

Lincoln was shot at the theater named "Ford."

Kennedy was shot in a car called "Lincoln" made by "Ford."

Booth and Oswald were assassinated before their trials.

A week before Lincoln was shot, he was in Monroe, Maryland.

A week before Kennedy was shot, he was with Marilyn Monroe.

Lincoln was shot in a theater and the assassin ran to a warehouse.

So what do you guys think? Are coincidences real or not?

[TNHawke]

Coincidences are very real. It's random chance of similar events. They happen.

However, the human brain is hard-wired to see patterns, just like it is to recognize facial features, so we tend to see them where there really aren't any.

[Silvereil]

Whoa. I gotta tell you, that is pretty freaky. And at the same time, kind of cool.

[slicing]

That's so interesting and kinda freaky but I imagine if you try hard enough you'll be able to find similar stuff about loads of people, I mean they had a 1/7 chance of being shot on a friday so I mean that's hardly awful odds of being the same, and you can say the same about a fair amount of stuff on that list. The dates are weird though!

Also yeah coincidences are real, I mean it's pretty difficult to deny that I guess unless you're a firm believe in fate and everything being set to happen in a certain way or something

[Intempestivity]

This subject can get pretty deep and involves people's beliefs; maybe it should be in Hall of Speakers instead?

I think whether or not you believe coincidences are just chance happenings or something more depends a lot on your internal belief system as a whole.

Personally, I believe in the paranormal, and I believe in reincarnation, so I believe that there are occasions where situations that appear coincidental are actually karmic events such as past lives balancing themselves out, or they may involve dimensional shifts or other paranormal events. For example, in one particular out of body experience that a woman reported as she was clinically dead on the operating table, she described the bone saw that was used to cut open her skull, she heard the conversation the doctors were having and she knew what song was being played in the operating room as they worked on her. Afterwords, she thought she was hallucinating, but she spoke to the doctor about it and he confirmed everything she saw and heard.

This was all while her heart was stopped and, her body chilled and her blood drained out of her (replaced with a cooling solution) to give the doctors more time to operate on an aneurysm. Some people could say it was a hallucination as her brain fought to stay alive (there is a surge of electrical activity in the brain after the heart stops), but it's a very big coincidence that her hallucination matched perfectly what actually happened, both auditorially and visually.

There's also things that science simply can't explain yet. Take placebo effects. People think the pills will work, so they get better. The scientific community tends to be split on the placebo effect--some view it as coincidence, others a recognised phenomenon.

So, basically ... yes, I believe coincidences, meetings and patterns of pure chance, happen. However, I think where said coincidence is statisically quantifiable as better than chance, then there's more at work there. It may be science that we are still working on understanding, or it may be something less tangible, something that can't be reproduced in a laboratory.

[MothballMilkshake]

Well if it's anything like luck mine must be good right now - I just got an Albino direwolf egg on my first breed!

[Mockingbird13]

I think coincidence is very real, and sometimes things just fit a pattern for no reason, or you run into the same names over and over just because, and it can be fun or annoying. Like my sisters are each dating a different guy with the same name. I won't put the real name down, so let's just say they're each named Mark. Arguably, my youngest sister is at fault for this. Because my middle sister has been dating Mark 1 for six years, while my youngest sister has been dating Mark 2 for three years and he spent most of those in jail. BUT it gets worse. My sisters both got pregnant via their separate Marks within a month of each other. Again, my middle sister got pregnant before my youngest sister, but neither one planned it. So I have a nephew and a niece who were born 2 months apart (nephew was a preemie) who both have a father named Mark. I should also note that both my sisters are furious about all these coincidences (the Marks are also not happy about the name thing because it leads to stuff like being called Mark 2, or getting nicknames like Criminal Mark and Bowlcut Mark). It gets really confusing trying to keep track of which Mark people are talking about without a bad nickname, and for the matching pregnancies my sisters each felt like our relatives had to split their focus and wallets for the baby showers.
My dad claims that this name matching just runs in my mom's side of the family, because I have a bunch of uncles with matching names. My dad shares a name with an uncle who married one of mom's sisters, and two other sisters married guys with matching names, and there's a brother and an in-law with matching names. However, all of these names are very common, like John, and my mom was the youngest of twelve, so....there were bound to be some repeat names with the boyfriends/husbands/brothers.
There's also a finger/toe-losing curse tied to the matching uncle names that's just more coincidences. See, both of my uncle Johns accidentally sliced off one of their thumbs (one of them did it twice actually, so he had half a thumb, and then even less of one), and a second set of matching uncles each lost a toe (frostbite and a power saw accident), and the uncle with the matching name to my dad sliced off half his pinky and ring finger. So now my dad is super careful with power tools because he's convinced he's next (although he has stated that it would actually be kind of cool to lose half of two fingers. his matched uncle sent him pics when it happened and he was like "wow cool") and my sisters keep discussing which fingers/toes they would prefer their Marks to lose and if it would only happen if they got married or if just dating was enough. Mark 1 is very superstitious so he's not happy about this, and Mark 2 also isn't a big fan of discussing his potential finger/toe loss as if we're all secretly planning to make it happen if fate doesn't step up, but I don't really like either Mark so I keep the topic alive.