CONTRIBUTIONS

I experienced my umpteenth coincidence today and the measure is full. I must mention it: God exists. What I mean by that, how I arrived at this and what conclusions can be drawn from it, will become clear in the remainder of this paper. At least that is the intention.

I would like to present my ideas on the basis of a case study. Out of all the "coincidences" I've experienced, I'll pick one to illustrate my "theory". As I suggest, everything can be disproved with the simple, precious little word "coincidence". My intention is precisely to refute this. At least as much as possible. There is never absolute certainty and no one will ever offer you in this life. Unless maybe someone like Jesus, but he hasn't surfaced for two thousand years and I really can't wait any longer.

Do I now want to prove that coincidence does not exist? No, not that again. I do want to show that there is more going on in our world than mere coincidence. There is more than science tells us and we are slowly starting to forget that. Hence reason enough for me to start writing. Science has even given us a kind of anti-god reflex. For example, many a reader will have frowned deeply at my statement "God exists" and with a little luck this paper has just escaped the dustbin.

I certainly don't want to lie to you. I have never seen or spoken to God. I'm not an envoy. I have not received any sacred messages from some angel Gabriel. I am an ordinary mortal who, as a scientist of the first category, analyzes the things he experiences and tries to draw conclusions from them. However, I do feel that I have been chosen somewhere because I have experienced such coincidences. However, I hope that everyone will recognize themselves somewhere in this and will say indeed, that Everlast is right somewhere.

What I want to achieve exactly is not clear to myself at this point. Perhaps it will become clearer to me and you at the end of this paper.

>CASUS: FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS

Before I begin to explain this case a bit, I want to emphasize once again that this is just one of so many coincidences (sorry for the word) that I have experienced. If this were the only thing, I would indeed have little foot to stand on.

Okay, the first case. On Saturday James tells me about a movie that is really worth seeing: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. We'll tell you a little bit about it, and the critics among you will point out that this isn't all we've talked about. Well, let me unsubscribe for a moment.

Now today, Monday, I went to Ghent and a guy in my room was watching a movie. Of course I immediately think of Fear and loathing in Las Vegas, obsessed with such coincidences as I am and guess what: it was definitely him?

The reflex that has been stamped into us by the many skeptics is to immediately think "nice coincidence" and immediately go on living like a chicken without a head as if nothing had happened. I too have lived like this for a long time, but as the coincidences pile up and pile up, it gradually dawns on me that something more is going on.

Normally I would now have to switch to the hypothetical and say "Assuming this is indeed not a coincidence?" This is where many of you, my dear readers, will drop out. After all, everything that follows is based on this one scientifically completely irresponsible assumption. Somehow I can understand why many classify everything from here as big nonsense. After all, you've been stamped in that science is "true" and everything out there is a lie. So from here, dear reader, we leave the physical grounds and here begins the metaphysics or at least my version of it.

James couldn't possibly have known I'd be going to a flat today where they were watching Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. So something must have moved James to tell me about Fear and Loading in Las Vegas and that something must have known what would happen today. These are already rough conclusions and it will immediately catch the eye that we use the homebase science and venture into unknown territory.

So the first conclusion was that something must have moved James to talk about that movie. Does James have no will of their own then? Is he, like me and you, of all things, a puppet in the hands of that something I shall henceforth call God? I do not dare to answer this with a resounding yes, because everyone feels somewhere that this is not completely correct. After all, everyone experiences that he has free will. So the truth must lie somewhere in the middle. So we are half-free dolls in the hands of God. Let us keep it here. You see, the "I think" real truth lies between the classic scientific truth and the classic scientific lie.

The second conclusion was that this something, our good old God, must have known that I would go to that room today and see that film in question. So this is the scientifically not justified story of Lady Fortuna. Everything is fixed. We can't change the future. Destiny, predestination, call it what Thou wilt. Again, I think the real truth lies somewhere in the middle and everything is semi-determined.

So yes, we now have two half-truths in our philosophy: we are half-free and everything is half-fixed. This is, of course, not very useful for further reasoning. After all, we are used to working with whole truths and not with half truths. I wonder, however, what's the point of believing in whole truths when there are only half-truths for us mortals. Why keep deifying it monster science as if it were the real truth?

You will have noticed that I am juggling the words truth and lies here to such an extent that you may be losing the thread. What I'm really saying is that we have too much faith in science and are lying to ourselves when we consider the truth that has resulted as sacred. Nor do I want to declare the inverted truths, the scientific lies (just listen to the skeptics), sacred.

The "new" of these ideas, however, is the God factor. Although at first glance I have shown nothing and have only created some confusion, I have introduced the concept of God. After all, without this concept there would be no half-truths, only the whole truths of monster science.

Note that I speak of monster science in order not to have to use the word science every time. Actually, I have nothing against monster science. I do have something against deifying it like the Jews who were deifying the golden calf when Moses came back from his tete a tete with God. Mind you, I don't want to ridicule classical religion either. I just want to try to make a kind of synthesis of these two extremes. As far as possible of course.

Now may be the time to take a closer look at that new factor in our equations, the God factor. Who is he or her or it (in the following I will just assume that God is neuter), what drives it and what does it want from us? When we know all that, we finally know the meaning of life. So it will be exciting dear reader. Tomorrow I will write the sequel and you will be reading it within seconds. Just a little patience?

Hi, here I am again. So we had come to the conclusion that there is something like God and that it has an influence on our earthly existence. As I have been able to conclude from a number of other cases, God does not only influence mortals, but also dead matter. This could also be the long-sought explanation of phenomena like gravity, but that would tempt us a bit and actually become a bit too hypothetical.

What I first want to dwell on is the significance of those coincidences. Those who have seen the movie Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas may remember that the movie is pretty much about drugs. Does God now want everyone to swallow or inject or sniff drugs en masse? Or the reverse? No, I'm pretty sure from other cases that these coincidences carry little extra significance. This is also the reason why we never stop to think about it. Such experiences of God are therefore usually classified vertically.

Now to return to yesterday's question of the meaning of life. Well, it turns out that we can't deduce much more from our coincidences than that God exists. It does not give us more information. At least not me. They are just hints that there is something more between heaven and earth. One of history's greatest hints was (probably) the arrival of Jesus.

After the previous paragraph, many will probably be disappointed. After all, we don't know. However, I would like to point out that I have actually already applied a lot. After all, most of my generation have resolutely banned the concept of God from their lives and I have reintroduced it with this. That is ultimately my main intention.

One can of course ask why you need God when you have Jupiler and marijuana and fancy convertibles and washing machines. Besides deifying science, our time of bread and play is a second great cause of the disappearance of the idea of "God". I'm starting to get the impression that I'm preaching a little too much. Sorry about that.

The attentive reader will have noticed that I have not yet said anything about the infinite goodness of God. If there's one thing most religions insist on, it's that. Well, I myself am not so sure about this at all, and if you look at all the misery in our world, you would rightly begin to doubt it. I don't rule out the possibility that God is both good and bad, but I don't want to make a statement about this. Also the fact that there are people with bad intentions leads me to suggest that there is also a dark side to the force, especially in the context of our only semi-free will.

EVERLAST: JUNE 25, 2002

Now almost 2 years later I still stand behind the above ideas. From the comments I have received on it, I would like to make the following clarifications. First, I introduced God as a kind of person. In principle, I would better define God as the cause of chance. Anyone who has seen the Matrix can see that this God could also be a particularly complex computer program. Or a psychic power that is within ourselves, but has not yet been discovered.

Many people also think that the above coincidences can one day be scientifically explained. The story of thunder is then told and how people used to think that God was behind it. People then think that everything that has not yet been explained will one day be and continue to idolize science.

Well, I don't believe at all that science will ever be able to explain my coincidences. The reason is that there is an intelligent force behind it. Science always works with non-intelligent objects, or rather with a non-intelligent view of these objects. Science essentially works with mass and energy and everything beyond that cannot be grasped.

A famous Belgian philosopher put it this way: "There is nothing but mass and energy?" It will be clear that this is a type that science sees as all explanatory. Intelligence is used by science as a means of building theories, but cannot be explained by these theories. And intelligence that would arise outside the brain is already a mystery to monster science.

Ultimately, what I want to achieve with this text is that people regain hope and believe in a God again. I do not know exactly what that God looks like and works and exists, but that there is more than mass and energy is an established fact for me and I want to point this out to my fellow man.

I would like to add another clarification to the text about those half-truths. Because I believe that God is good and bad, that the universe is finite and infinite, and that there is free will and at the same time no free will, that everything is fixed and not fixed. This goes against logic, but why believe in logic when the truth doesn't make sense.