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A Good Friday to Remember - A car crash, a coma, and a miracle.
All the best - and a wonderful holiday. Read the essay - it is worth your time.
Still, when it comes to any report of miracles, I’m highly skeptical. The vast majority can be debunked in an average of two minutes and 37 seconds. And I’m sorry, but I’ve heard too many stories about Jesus appearing on a taco shell and thousands of the faithful lining up for a peek. I’ve also known too many famous miracles that have been debunked. But it must be admitted that the ones most likely to be real are the ones you never hear about — the ones that don’t lead to best-selling books or inspire tourist centers that sell plastic figurines of the saints.
A lot of people have a psychological need for miracles; I don’t. Moreover, I’m primarily a science writer who comes to conclusions based on empirical evidence. I often say disdainfully of the media, “To them, one anecdote is worth a thousand statistics!” I can’t begin to say how many “anti-miracles” I’ve debunked, people claiming that exposure to this or that gave them symptoms they couldn’t possibly have had. The guy whose Gulf War Syndrome made him constantly puke vomit that glowed? Everybody in the media but me went for that one.
So. In this case, the statistics say that, on any given day, over 100 Americans are killed on the roads. Back of the envelope, that comes out to maybe 75 fatal crashes and a lot more near-fatal ones. That was more or less the case on Good Friday, 1992. And I don’t have to look up the numbers to know lots of people go into comas every day, and surely a good percentage come out on the third one.
Conversely, though, there’s the rule that says that the odds of any two or more unrelated things occurring simultaneously get smaller as you add in new occurrences. Thus the odds of two independent events that separately have one chance in ten of occurring have only one chance in 100 of happening together. Add another and you have one in a thousand. And so on.
So the odds of all those things together going in our favor? My calculator reads: “Incredibly slim.”
Still, it could have been coincidence. No miracles required, and no reason to dwell on it.
Except.
Except for those times when I lay awake at night, and I do.
A lot of people have a psychological need for miracles; I don’t. Moreover, I’m primarily a science writer who comes to conclusions based on empirical evidence. I often say disdainfully of the media, “To them, one anecdote is worth a thousand statistics!” I can’t begin to say how many “anti-miracles” I’ve debunked, people claiming that exposure to this or that gave them symptoms they couldn’t possibly have had. The guy whose Gulf War Syndrome made him constantly puke vomit that glowed? Everybody in the media but me went for that one.
So. In this case, the statistics say that, on any given day, over 100 Americans are killed on the roads. Back of the envelope, that comes out to maybe 75 fatal crashes and a lot more near-fatal ones. That was more or less the case on Good Friday, 1992. And I don’t have to look up the numbers to know lots of people go into comas every day, and surely a good percentage come out on the third one.
Conversely, though, there’s the rule that says that the odds of any two or more unrelated things occurring simultaneously get smaller as you add in new occurrences. Thus the odds of two independent events that separately have one chance in ten of occurring have only one chance in 100 of happening together. Add another and you have one in a thousand. And so on.
So the odds of all those things together going in our favor? My calculator reads: “Incredibly slim.”
Still, it could have been coincidence. No miracles required, and no reason to dwell on it.
Except.
Except for those times when I lay awake at night, and I do.
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