beekay

Not sure if this is the correct place to post this ... feel free to move it if need be ...

Watched Ripley's Believe it or Not on TV last night. There was a story about a girl launching a balloon with a note attached to just to see if anyone would get it and respond, I guess. Balloon landed in someone's back yard. Lo and Behold, the recipient had the same name (first and last) as the sender! The girls were the same age ... had the same general body build ... each had the same type of dog ... each set of parents had been married in the same year ... I think there were a couple of other amazing similarities. Was a shocking story to say the least. The kids were quoted as saying something about God wanting to bring them together.

I can brush off as coincidence one or two things, but so many things were the same that it really is just too hard to beleive ... Truly weird!

What's your take on it? Anyone else happen to catch the same show? My wife takes a story like that as evidence for a God. I can't really refute this convincingly hmmmmmmmmmm <img src="confused.gif" border="0">

Viti

Well...were the girls names Smamanampoo Yorgenstern or Ashley Taylor? Were their dogs Entlebucher Sennenhunds or Golden Retrievers? Was either of them unusually sized for their age? Were either of their parents unusually young or old for having children of this age? How far did the balloon get...was it out of their socioeconomic area?

I have had more "coincidences" surrounding my possible kidney donation...3 people have told me I was "meant to donate" by God. I think its all BS

MortalWombat

It's a good thing that God had nothing more important to do than make sure some balloon ends up with someone with the same name as the person who sent it, what with disease, hunger, war, and other types of suffering having been already eliminated by him. Oh, wait a minute...

LeftCoast

When was this supposed to have happened? Did they offer any kind of supporting evidence or did they just expect you to believe it on their say-so? A popular show such as Riply's I do not consider to be a really reliable source. They are in the business of providing just this kind of entertaining tripe, I doubt that they would have investigated this claim very carefully.

Coincidences do happen and sometimes some real long shots.

Two from my life:

1) While touring the western half of the US in 1986 (solo driving) I met and had a short conversation with a fellow (engaged in similar pursuits) during a tour of Wind Cave in South Dakota. At the end of the tour we both said farewell and that was that. At no time did either of us speak about our expected travel routes. Five weeks later at the Grand Canyon I run into this same fellow again. Coincidence? Yes. Incredible Odds? Yes. Do I see any reason to think that some deity was at work. No.
2) Returning to San Diego from Indiana on a business trip two years ago, I was rerouted through Cincinnati, OH instead of Chicago. While passing through the Cincinnati airport, I happen to run (almost literally) into a friend of mine who lives in Oklahoma. Neither of us had any idea that the other was even traveling at that time, and had either of us been 60 seconds faster or slower arriving at that precise spot, we would never have known that we had both been in that airport that night. Again, Coincidence? Yes. Incredible Odds? Yes. Do I see any reason to think that some deity was at work. No.

Jayhawker Soule

<a href="http://www.cut-the-knot.com/do_you_know/coincidence.html" target="_blank">First Site Found Using Google to Search for Coincidence</a>

IMO, LeftCoast make an important point about validating the extent of the coincidence.

Marduk

ehh,
with so many people in the world going hither an yon, the odds of even really unusual things happening, even a billion to one odds, is bound to happen sometimes.

bluefugue

The chapter "Unweaving the Uncanny" in Richard Dawkins' book Unweaving the Rainbow goes into a detailed examination of "miraculous" coincidences. Definitely worth a read for anyone interested in the topic...

Vorkosigan

Neither of us had any idea that the other was even traveling at that time, and had either of us been 60 seconds faster or slower arriving at that precise spot, we would never have known that we had both been in that airport that night. Again, Coincidence? Yes. Incredible Odds? Yes. Do I see any reason to think that some deity was at work. No.

The same thing has happened to me twice, one in Nepal and once in Malaysia.

Michael

beekay

Quote from the Ripley's website:

The Two Lauras
Laura Buxton tied a message to the end of a balloon. It landed 140 miles away in the garden of another girl named Laura Buxton. And Believe it or Not, the similarities don't stop there!

Wish there were more details in that episode summary, but oh well...

The link provided by ReasonableDoubt was helpful, but mostly covered the chances of one particular coincidence happening, folks having the same birthday. The list of coincidences in the Ripley episode was pretty long.

And Ripley stuff has a reputation of being fairly reliable, no I can't vouch for the reliability, but it's difinitely not the Weekly World News if you know what I mean.

I am not taken in by the divine intervention "theory" of this story, but I just have nothing convincing to argue against it with. My wife and I have turned this into a friendly debate and I'm not doing too hot. I do like the "oh so God had nothing more important to do" arguement, but it carries very little weight with someone who truly believes that God actually does this kind of stuff.

Help ....

Mageth

This reminds me a bit of the Lincoln/Kennedy comparison.

Once the first "coincidence" of the girls' names being the same happened, it's easy to extract many things that are similar about them. What they ignore and don't tell you are the many many more things that are dissimilar about them. In short, if the balloon had landed in another girl's yard without the same name, you could find just as many similarities (although perhaps different ones) between them.