Is believing in luck in any way related to religious belief?

Started by riv66723 pages

Is believing in luck in any way related to religious belief?

Just asking.
Overhead someone comment that they dont believe in luck like they dont believe in God.
That make any sense?

Depends what s/he means by "luck" and "God." Offhand, sounds like s/he's placing both in a supernatural category, the latter understandably so, though empirical science does recognize what appears to be random chance. Isn't that what statistical analysis is all about?

No supernatural agency.
No random chance.

What does this person believe in? "Himself?"

No idea. The guy's a douche nozzle so i usually avoid lengthy conversations. Sure as heck wasnt going to start one on religion.
Still made me wonder enough to bring it up here, though.

Re: Is believing in luck in any way related to religious belief?

Originally posted by riv6672
Just asking.
Overhead someone comment that they dont believe in luck like they dont believe in God.
That make any sense?

Depends on who the person is and how they define "God" and how they define "luck". If their definition of "God" is "genie who grants every wish asked of him by people of moral behavior" for instance ...?

At the moment, I'm interested in how they and you define "luck".
That answer could reveal a lot.
More info when you can provide it, please.

Sorry about any confusion...

I'm more interested in how YOU guys define the two.
I believe in God, am Asatru, and believe in luck, with no problems having had dinosaurs walk the earth, to clarify.

Originally posted by riv6672
I'm more interested in how YOU guys define the two.

Luck: chance.

God: Dreamer/Dream (favorite metaphor).

So no crossover in your opinion?
The two are mutually exclusive?

(I think i asked that right)

Originally posted by riv6672
So no crossover in your opinion?
The two are mutually exclusive?
No. The Dreamer/Dream is unconditionally infinite. There's room for everything...which may seem paradoxical to us mere mortals.

Put another way: there is nothing, literally Nothing, outside the Dreamer/Dream (ie, nothing outside unconditional infinity).

Funky.

Transfunk.

I meant it in a good way, just not feeling overly wordy today. Slight head cold.
I liked your reasoning though...🙂

Originally posted by riv6672
I meant it in a good way, just not feeling overly wordy today. Slight head cold.
Tis the season. I had a bout of bronchitis last month. May your chi rebalance with full vitality. yinyang

Wait, you believe in CHI?!?!

-rushes to start new thread-

😉

Theres basic chance in life. People can simply be lucky. However, i'm of the school of thought that there is a such thing as fate and destiny. Sometimes people can be so lucky that there is something more than just good fortune occurring for them.

I've known folks like that. I envy them.

As other have said, it just depends. Luck in the colloquial sense is practically self-proving. It's inevitable and obvious. But luck as the result of supernatural agency would be in the same category as God.

Same can be said of words like fate or destiny. It's all in what you mean by it.

The universe is deterministic by all accounts, so anything resembling supernatural uses of the word(s) are unsupported, at best, and ridiculous and misleading at worst. If someone wants to say something is fated in a religious sense, that's their choice. But it's needless magical thinking. It's no more "fated" in a supernatural sense than a pencil is "fated" to hit the floor when you drop it because of gravity. It's all just causality. Calling it anything else, to me, sacrifices clarity.

I believe we live in a deterministic universe, luck is pretty much nonsense as everything is fixed and randomness is just a name for probability we cannot calculate. If there is no randomness there is nothing we can consider luck.

But we could, if in trouble, improvise another more fitting definition of luck (more fitting for a deterministic universe I mean), the idea of an intuition that leads you take good décisions with a minimum of data, consious or unconsious. This kind of reflective instinct, could actually make sense since determinism pretty much abolishes the idea of time as we use it. However, that luck wouldn't be random, it'd be a characteristic of intelligence (choice vs data).

Choice vs data. Subconsciously, you think?

The very first time I bought a scratch lottery ticket, I won $500.
The very first time I played a pokie machine, I won $250.
Never won anything ever again.
I put it down to luck.

Prayed & turned to God many times.
Nada.

Originally posted by riv6672
Choice vs data. Subconsciously, you think?

Again, for luck to have an actual sense it would have to be more than the acummulation of events (as everything is included in such a sequence). I'm just defining luck in relation with talent, one would be conscious and the other one would be instinctive. My point is that for someone to be consistently "lucky" we just need to ignore the reason behind his good choices.