Can natural forces cause weird, mysterious events to happen?

I was answering phones at a church office one day. Someone called and said they had a large tent, like the kind you hold a fairly large event under.  Wanted to know if we knew of anyone who had a need like that. I put the person on hold to answer another call.  Someone was calling to find out if we knew of anyone who had a large tent they could use, I forget what it was for.  I told him hold on a minute there is a caller on the other line who has one.  A large tent is not something that is a usual request.  

I wish I had an answer sitting on the top of my head but I can't think of anything at the moment.
I'll keep thinking.
And I hope to come back to your question to more closely read all the answers.
:)


To work I go - - -


This post was edited by WelbyQuentin at December 4, 2018 7:05 PM MST

anything is possible, ive never had it happen

Weird and mysterious things happen around here all the time.  However, I have cats.  99% of the time the "phenomena" was caused by one (or both) of the cats (the other 1% I still blame on the cats anyway).

I do however, have one phenomenon that is definitely NOT cat induced.  I have a refrigerator that will, occasions, talk and/or play music - literally.  No, it's not supposed to do that.  The sounds are like what you get off a crystal radio.  The best I can figure is that it's somehow picking up wifi signals (at random times).  Since the outside casing of the fridge vibrates when this happens, I assume it's acting like some sort of speaker.  Its did this ever since I got it. It's a bit spooky to wake up in the middle of the night to hear strange, "wispy" voices talking in your kitchen.   I can be cooking dinner when suddenly the refrigerator starts playing music (rock, country, spanish, and more).  These "episodes" generally last about a minute (each) and occur very randomly; however, many happen at night (probably because that's when its quiet enough to really hear them).  Sometimes  several "episodes" will happen back to back or even simultaneously.  I can yell at the cats to knock it off, but how does one tell a refrigerator, shut up, I'm trying to sleep?

Sure. Natural forces influence our world constantly, pervasively, and in countless ways, many of which remain mysterious to us. Some only await further investigation. 

“Weird” is simply something outside of our personal perception of ordinary. A subjective description.
A mystery is merely a condition that currently defies our meager ability to understand it.
It follows that mysteries can seem inherently weird.

Neither is proof of the supernatural, nor of divinity.

Years ago when I was working in a dental office, I sat next to a large floor-to-ceiling window which overlooked the parking lot. I was going through the list of patients to call to confirm their appointments for the next day and had not left my desk since I arrived. I got to one name on the list and realized they were having a crown seated, but couldn't recall if their crown had come in from the lab or not, so I got up to check. I was maybe 15 feet away from my desk when I heard a crash behind me. A car had crashed driven through the window and smashed my desk. I was dumbfounded. If I had gotten up 30 seconds later or if the car had come through a minute later, I would have been crushed. This was back when Toyota had cars on the road that would accelerate when the brake was pressed. We all thought the elderly woman just shouldn't have been driving anymore because the news about the vehicles had not broken yet and she swore up and down she never accelerated. The accident wouldn't have killed me, but it probably would have mangled my pelvis or broken my spine. In any case, I felt certain there had to be a reason I was spared, but I haven't come up with one yet. 

Back when I was still married, a friend of mine was all into manifestation and he swore up and down that if I concentrated hard enough on making something happen, it would happen. He insisted that I try it while on the phone with him. I jokingly told him I was manifesting a tall man with dark hair bringing me coffee and money. To humor my friend, I concentrated on it for a moment before moving the conversation along. It's worth noting that, by this time, my husband and I were not getting along at all and barely spoke to one another, so I was jokingly manifesting myself a new man. The next morning when I woke up, there was a cup of Starbucks and grocery money on the counter; left there for me by my husband... a tall man with dark hair. I was more than a little freaked out. I think I even took a photo of the coffee and money and sent it to my friend. lol 

Things happen. I don't consider them to be miracles or anything. Things are only miracles if you see them that way. To give an example, I was really struggling the Christmas after my ex left. I was trying to create some normalcy for my kids, but they'd gone from having me home with them all the time to me working all the time and we were super broke. We celebrate the holidays out of tradition, but I wasn't really feeling the holiday spirit that year. The kids insisted we put up a tree though, and so we did. It was a Charlie Brown tree (sparse and sad), but decorated with the pizzazz only a three-year-old and six-year-old can bring to the table, meaning the bottom third of it had three boxes of decorations on it and the rest had none. Anyway, one of my former co-workers thought she was being helpful. She belonged to the LDS church and sent some of the sisters out to meet me. I really felt bad for them because I'm also an atheist and one of the women in the group was particularly young and sweet. She believed in God and her church with every fiber of her being. And, in truth, I was a little jealous of that. I was honest, but gentle with her about my stance on things. She launched into a story about miracles and how they're all around us and how, if we see those miracles, we have to believe in God. I was like, "Yeah. No. Miracles aren't a thing. They're logical brains trying to make sense out of things that don't make sense. Nothing more." And, she replied, "Well, you're an atheist. And, here we are, sitting in your kitchen talking about God. That's pretty unusual. But, let's take this another step. You're having a tough time and you're not feeling festive and yet, somehow, despite being an atheist and struggling, you've got a Christmas tree up." I was like, "Lady, a mom catering to her small children is no miracle." And, it's not. But, to her, it was. To her, it was a sign of hope. It was a sign that God was at work in my home. 

There's some beauty in that for sure. To be able to see things we don't understand and believe there's a higher power at work. To think that there's a reason for everything. Some all-powerful all-knowing entity orchestrating our lives. But, it's just us, looking for answers. Chances are, the real answers are totally logical. The house shifted or a rodent passed by and the glass fell. You misplaced the papers or you mailed them in and forgot. Oral infections do heal on their own. It's not unheard of, but rare. Oftentimes, people think they've got an abscess, but it's really just a popcorn shell or something stuck too. Not as much fun to think that, but there's usually a logical answer or just plain coincidence at work.

Sure!
In the times before the understanding of how and why the natural world works in the way it does, almost every natural event was considered weird or mysterious:
what causes pregnancy or disease,
why animals and people were sometimes born with mutations,
why someone was struck dead by lightning,
why earthquakes and hurricanes affected some but not others in seemingly random ways,
why the sun is sometimes eclipsed by the moon,
why a needle in a cork in a dish of water will always point north,
why fireweed sometimes spontaneously ignites...

When we don't know why something happens, we humans tend to invent reasons, and then some of us tend to come to believe them with or without proof. We can also reinforce our beliefs with the placebo effect.
To this day, when there are coincidences (which may often be linked by a chain of mundane causal connections even though we can't see them)
some of us tend to see it as proof of supernatural mental powers or some divine agency.