Coincidence

[Deep Knight]

Coincidence is a funny thing. Happens all the time, but those who are looking for hidden meanings find the occurrences to be more than meaningful. Especially the believers and scammers highlighted here. Being from Colorado, I find this post by MacHaffie particularly interesting…

Tuesday, January 10, 2012
Tebow Time: The three 3:16 references, boffo TV ratings and Lady Gaga love

By Chris Chase

You ever feel like there's too much Tim Tebow news? Neither do I. Here's a roundup of some of the most interesting Timbits from the aftermath of the Denver Broncos 29-23 overtime victory over thePittsburgh Steelers.
• The fact that Tebow had 316 yards passing and averaged 31.6 yards per pass in the game didn't escape notice on Sunday night. Tebow wore "John 3:16" on his eye black in the 2009 BCS Championship game and has since become identified with the famous Bible message. The coincidental stats caused millions of fans to perform Google searches on the Bible passage in the past 24 hours. Here's one more unbelievable stat: John Ourand of Sports Business Journal reports that the final quarter-hour television rating for the Broncos-Steelers game was, you guessed it, 31.6.
(John 3:16 reads: "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.")
…

Posted by John MacHaffie at 8:42 AM

MacHaffie is a professed Christian, although I’ve also read him reference the strange cast of new-age deities the other promoters of this scam channel as sources (Aton, Sananda, Ming the Merciless – how that works with the “no other gods before me” thing is uncertain). Anyway, he obviously sees some kind of spiritual confirmation of God intervening in human affairs in this. So do hundreds of other posters online.

The long and short of this is coincidence. Tebow passed for 316 yards, it’s true, but it had to happen sometime. Or rather 47 times.

And for those that are curious about the further weirdness of statistical anomalies, before last night there were 46 quarterbacks who had thrown for 316 yards in either a playoff or regular season game in NFL history. This morning? There are 47. If only that had any significance to Mr. Tebow ...

As for the TV rating of the final quarter-hour, once again statistics (this was an “overnight rating” which it’s said will probably change). Cherry picking, anyone?

Finally, the 31.6 yards per pass statistic. In actually he threw 21 passes, 10 of which were complete. I don’t know what’s standard, but if you look at yards per actual pass you get 15.0 yards. I wonder what John 1:50 says (I give the entire “paragraph” here, John 1:43-51, King James Version of course).

43The day following Jesus would go forth into Galilee, and findeth Philip, and saith unto him, Follow me. 44Now Philip was of Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter. 45Philip findeth Nathanael, and saith unto him, We have found him, of whom Moses in the law, and the prophets, did write, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph. 46And Nathanael said unto him, Can there any good thing come out of Nazareth? Philip saith unto him, Come and see. 47Jesus saw Nathanael coming to him, and saith of him, Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile! 48Nathanael saith unto him, Whence knowest thou me? Jesus answered and said unto him, Before that Philip called thee, when thou wast under the fig tree, I saw thee. 49Nathanael answered and saith unto him, Rabbi, thou art the Son of God; thou art the King of Israel. 50Jesus answered and said unto him, Because I said unto thee, I saw thee under the fig tree, believest thou? thou shalt see greater things than these. 51And he saith unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Hereafter ye shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man.

Most, but certainly not all, of the commentaries on this say that Jesus was surprised by Nathanael’s jumping to conclusions based on a simply-explained coincidence and is chiding him for being too credulous in verse 50. Purely coincidence, but then again…

[Deep Knight]

My coincidence story actually has two parts, but this one gets really weird. I wasn’t watching the Big Game on Sunday or the Bronco’s exciting overtime win, instead I was watching a really bad 1980 disco musical I had never heard of before, The Apple. This is on “On Demand” from my cable company and I highly recommend watching it. The “it’s so bad it’s good” excuse is overused, but depending on your taste it could be appropriate here. The story revolves around good vs. evil in the Garden of Eden in 1994, then 15 years in the future (filmed in 1979), where Mr. Boogaloo as Satan runs BIM, a music company that seems to have taken over the government. Two nice kids are interested in fame, she takes a bite from “the apple” but he doesn’t and leaves to finally join a group of hippies living in a cave. She gets disillusioned and returns to him, and as they’re arrested by the BIM police God comes down and raptures them up to heaven, which is a golden Buick that somehow acquired a Rolls Royce grill. A true musical it’s mostly song and dance numbers that are even worse than the plot.

This movie is bad. Monumentally bad. So bad it didn’t get a cult following until recently, and then only a small one. I loved it, recorded it, and last night made a bunch of DVD copies to send to friends and family. Some of them might not talk to me again, but that’s the price of art.

As I said, I had never heard of this movie. Even though at the time I hated disco, I had heard of other bad disco movies of that year, including Xanadu and Can’t Stop the Music. But I had never even heard a whisper about this one. So, I looked it up on the internet. There are several fan sites (and long, glowing reviews on bad movie sites like “Rotten Tomatoes”). More than a few posts were about its spiritual message. For one, the movie starts with “The BIM Song,” (at least that’s what I would call it) which starts with a chant where the singer says “B” and the crowd responds, “I. M.” or perhaps the whole thing is “BE! I AM!” Used in the Summit Lighthouse and I AM movements, it could have come from this, or simply be coincidence (in the movie BIM stands for Boogaloo International Music). Some think it’s an obvious tribute to the “I AM” movement, although I’ll point out that it’s the devil’s minions doing the singing, so it would have to be a backhanded tribute.

Another poster went on and on about the wonderful spiritual message in the film, saying it would have been the #1 film of 1980 if anti-religious media hadn’t given it such terrible reviews. Woulda, shoulda, coulda. In real life and before any reviews, the people attending the premier in Los Angeles threw their complimentary soundtracks at the screen damaging it. The producer/director/writer said he contemplated suicide after it got booed at a film festival. And one of the actor/singers later got married to a very rich man who spent years trying to buy up all the copies and destroy them (luckily he failed).

The network it was on was called Impact. I recommend it, but you’ve also been warned.

[Burnaby49]

On your recommendation I just put an order in for The Apple at Zip.ca, the Canadian equivalent of Netflick so you'd better have some substance behind the hype. These CDs cost $3 to rent!

[Deep Knight]

On your recommendation I just put an order in for The Apple at Zip.ca, the Canadian equivalent of Netflick so you'd better have some substance behind the hype. These CDs cost $3 to rent!

OK, but don't blame me if your wife and kids leave just because you have this in the house. Even if you're not married, someone else's wife and kids might show up, just to leave - it's that bad of a movie. Be sure to catch the '94 cars with their bubble domes and huge tail fins.

Dove used to talk about how the NESARA story would be made into a movie once it was announced (which was going to be any day then) because Hollywood was already clamoring for the story rights - behind the scenes of course. She wanted to be played by Meryl Streep. At the time I suggested, "NESARA, the Musical." If I had known about this movie then, I certainly would have mentioned it as the perfect model.

[Burnaby49]

My wife watches deep insightful movies that speak to the human condition so we go our own way when it comes to viewing choices. We did see Hugo together a while ago. Shallow and gaudy enough for me and it took place in Paris which worked for her.

I'm off to Hawaii for the first time in a few months so I'm using you as my guide to that too. Your two fisted adventure instructed me on exactly what to expect. I haven't told my wife about the disposable babes yet however I have cautioned her about one-armed men.