Why do particularly things happen to us? Why does one person get sick while another does not? Why does it rain on some people's wedding days, and not on others'? Why did that zit appear under your lip on the night of your big first date?
For the non-religious, the reasons for these phenomena can be explained by some combination of science and coincidence. For the the religious, it's a matter of divine will. This critical difference can make it difficult to talk to someone from the "other side" ("other side" is in quotes because this binary representation of people as religious or non-religious is, obviously, simplistic, but in this case useful all the same).
When someone attributes a phenomenon to "divine will," it can be initially exasperating to a non-religious companion. Take the coronavirus crisis, for example. A secular thinker is eager to uncover the scientific explanations for the behavior of the disease. When a religious person insists it's all God's will, the non-believer tends to throw up their hands in disgust.
But maybe the thinking of the religious and the non-religious person aren't so divergent as it appears. The purely secular thinker might seek rational, science-based explanations for phenomena, but even in the non-religious system there is still a point where coincidence factors into the functioning of the world. Why did it rain today and not yesterday? Why is one person's consciousness tied to a body with a certain genetic make-up that leaves them prone to a disease? Why that person? Science itself even allows for coincidence at the most basic level, with quantum mechanics telling us that at the most elemental level it's probability, not certainty, that determines phenomena.
This essential role of coincidence often goes by a familiar name: fate. Certain things happen a certain way because they do. Whether it's all decided by a supreme being or written in the stars, it still happens, often in ways entirely beyond our control.
For the religious, this fate is the responsibility of a divine will. Things happen because God brings them about.
So why did it rain today, your wedding day, and not yesterday or the day before? Was it coincidence, fate, or divine will? Philosophically, the leap from one explanation to the next might seem massive. In practical terms, however, all three explanations are referring to the same thing.
Non-religious folks can use this understanding in talking to their religious peers. Imagine a religious person resisting going to the doctor for a preventative exam, insisting it's God's will that determines when they die. A militant atheist might decry the believer as crazy, insist the Bible is a series of fairy tales, and leave the believer as resolute as ever in their determination to skip the exam. A reasonable non-religious person, intent on making a genuine connection, might instead argue that modern medicine has come about because of God's will, and use this framing to urge their friend to undergo the exam. Is the secular person in this case lying, or misrepresenting their beliefs? Not really. They're simply adjusting their language, shifting from "coincidence" to "fate" to "God's will," in an effort to give a commonly-understood phenomenon a name their audience will understand.
What the case above comes down to is an enlightened view of communication. When you speak with another person, the goal should not be to reify your own thoughts, but to establish a fruitful connection and understanding with the person you're talking to. While in some cases this might be impossible (talking to an ardent white nationalist springs to mind), there are plenty of occasions on which a dexterous interchange of terms can make communication profitable where it might have been futile.
So why is it raining on your wedding day? With your secular partner, shrug and chalk it up to coincidence. To your romantic-minded friend, wax lyrical about the vicissitudes of fate. With the pastor, declare it's all God's will. You won't have lied to any of them.
*** This is the first of many posts to this blog. Normally, no work of mine sees the light of day without a lengthy gestation period (during which it travels from my brain to my notebook, from my notebook to my laptop, undergoes a series of revisions, etc etc etc). That won't be the case with these posts. They're raw by design, typed straight into Blogger. As a result, they might not be as impeccably polished as I'd like. I apologize for any typos, grammatical mistakes, and, worst of all, logical oversights. I'm sure years from now I'll look back at these and cringe. But such are the perils of the written word...
Thank you for reading.
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