Sarah fell!


My wife Sarah stepped of the cabin porch badly while carrying a box, and fell. Ouch. Our friend Sherrie who lived just up the hill hear a voice in her head: "Sarah fell!".

Possibilities for how she knew:

  1. Pure random dumb luck.
  2. She heard something, and this triggered the voice.
  3. There was a mental or spiritual communication.
  4. God told her.

Considering one by one these possibilities of how did Sherrie know to come help Sarah:

Luck

In this option, Sherrie randomly heard a voice in her head and responded to it by scurrying down the trail to the cabin, and by sheer luck, Sarah was there having just fallen.

Perhaps there are cases in which this kind of extremely unlikely dumb luck is the correct answer, but I think we can rule it out in this case.

Sound

Some facts:

  1. From the cabin I could hear Sherrie's car door slam; the cabin and Sherrie's house were within hearing distance.
  2. Sound travels further and louder in fog or high humidity. The forest was often humid because it rained often.
  3. Sarah was carrying a box which is why she fell. The stairs were slippery and too narrow and the box blocked her view.
  4. Probably there were sounds from 3 sources: (1) the thud of Sarah falling and landing on the creaky old wood deck, (2) Sarah shouting (assuming she did), and (3) the box falling and the things inside banging as they hit the deck.

Based on the configuration of the gully the cabin was in, the sound could have reflected off the gully wall and up the hill to Sherrie's house.

Sherrie didn't report that she heard something, but perhaps she did and it didn't register consciously.

So, it's plausible that she heard it, but religious types will wish to deny this as a possibility, always favoring a supernatural explanation.

For example, my daughter recently avoided a high speed head on collision on a two lane road by stopping her car and pulling off to the side. But she saw an erratic driver passing dangerously off in the distance and, sure enough, he or she did not calculate the distance properly and certainly would have hit her. My daughter interprets this as God telling her to stop; this, because she had a feeling or intuition or premonition.

ESP

This option involves some kind of mental communication via something like ESP or panpsychism. One mind sends an invisible mental message which is accurately received by another mind.

There is no known scientific explanation for how such mental communications could occur. The brain doesn't transmit electric or magnetic or electromagnetic or acoustic energy, nor does the brain receive messages that way.

So in this option you have to believe that there is something going on which has not been detected by science. I can think of two possibilities for what this could be:

  1. A supernatural realm in which, at a minimum, minds function and interact with one another.
  2. That the universe is merely a manifestation of cosmic consciousness and that as conscious creatures, our specific locus of consciousness can communicate to others.

The problem with this option, the ESP option, is that it can never be empirically proven. For example, I can think of two other explanations of this type for what happened:

  1. Sherrie imagined hearing the voice (generated in her mind perhaps because she knew Sarah was in a weakened condition and was worried about things), and mentally transmitted it to Sarah who subconsciously heard it and acted upon it by falling. She would have fallen wherever she was if it was possible.
  2. A super powerful psychic on the other side of the world sent out a mental signal for someone she knew named Sarah. Both heard it and acted as mentioned above.

Christians will probably wish to reject this option, the ESP option, preferring instead a full-fledged supernatural realm containing souls, angels, demons, and God.

God

If there is such a thing as ESP or mental communication from a distance (the previous option), there is no need to consider God as an option.

This option assumes the existence of a full-fledged supernatural realm containing souls, angels, demons, and God.

Once you assume of such an option, anything is possible, even physically impossible miracles such as the parting of the sea and the sun standing still for part of the day.

There is no way to refute this option. Weirdly, none of these impossible miraculous events have ever been observed and measured by scientists. It's as if God doesn't want this option to be empirically studied. It seems that if scientists are present with their instruments ready to take measurements, God will not perform a miracle.

A side effect of this option is that so many bad things occur in which God doesn't intervene or send a message for someone to help. And so many horrible things happen causing suffering. Why does God so rarely intervene?

And why did God not warn Sarah to be more careful in stepping onto the treacherous steps in the first place? Why did he not insist that she put the box down first? Why did God let her fall, then send someone to help her? Seems mean-spirited to me.