Lightning strikes St Peter's Basilica as Pope resigns.

[Starboard Tack]

Maybe there is a God, after all!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-21421810

[cleanhippie]

1. I if one wanted to see these events as related, they easily could. It's called Apophenia.

Apophenia /æpɵˈfiːniə/ has been defined as the experience of seeing meaningful patterns or connections in random or meaningless data.

In 2008, Michael Shermer coined the word 'patternicity', defining it as "the tendency to find meaningful patterns in meaningless noise".[6][7] In The Believing Brain (2011), Shermer defines patternicity as "the tendency to find meaningful patterns in both meaningful and meaningless noise". The Believing Brain thesis also says that we have "the tendency to infuse patterns with meaning, intention, and agency", which Shermer calls 'agenticity'.[8]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apophenia

My beef is with the BBC suggesting that there IS some connection between the events. It is perpetuating ignorance.

[Starboard Tack]

4. Phew! Thanks for clearing that up. Damned BBC.

What would we do without you to explain such things as "seeing meaningful patterns or connections in random or meaningless data".

[cleanhippie]

6. Probably what you do now; get your info from "serious theologians".

I can understand how once one gets the taste for ignorance, they have difficulty giving it up.

[okasha]

11. "Patternicity"

"'Tis an ill phrase; 'tis a vile phrase. 'Patternicity' is a vile phrase."

"Agenticity" is worse, though, probably the worst since someone bastardized the noun to make "liase" a verb.

What would we do? Well, I suppose we'd just have to limp along in our happy ignorance.

[leveymg]

2. The God of Thunder is displeased! I think that God's name is

Topper Shut . . . or Thor, or Gene something.

[rug]

3. That's a cool shot.

[pinto]

8. Yeah. I love lightning strike videos. (aside) Had a close encounter once though, very odd.

Lived on top of a grade and had a greenhouse down the hill that had an inflated covering. We lost power during a freak storm. Went down to fire up the generator to keep the greenhouse inflated and intact. Coming back up the hill, it was like all the things you read about a lightning strike - my hair stood on end, the air almost crackled. I just fell prone. It was over in a matter of seconds. The strike had hit an electrical line transformer on the street.

[rug]

9. Jeez. New religions have started with less.

[cbayer]

10. We, of course, have a huge lightning rod attached to our home (the mast), but

fortunately live in a place with very rare lightning.

[okasha]

12. A lightning strike hit my school's art gallery a couple years ago.

Everybody thinks he's a critic.

[pinto]

13. rofl

[Leontius]

14. Had a similar experience while working for a lawn service thought we had time to put

our tools away as we watched the strikes about a mile+ away, next one was closer than we expected, tools stayed scattered. I also had two coworkers struck playing golf, one survived, one didn't. A few years later my brother and I almost got caught out on the same course, never knew a golf cart could go as fast as it did that day.

[pinto]

5. LOL. I saw the clip on CNN this morning. Expect news analysis on the up/down of it all.

[cbayer]

7. Great footage (and quite ominous)

[Warren Stupidity]

15. On the boston area morning news this morning we were given two choices

1. photoshopped
2. a sign from above

The morning news puppets agreed that it couldn't have been photoshopped.

[Deep13]

16. I knew it!

Static electricity DOES exist!