Luck Versus Religion: I'll Take Luck Any Day

One of the truly damaging aspects of religion is that takes away our pride and belittles our accomplishments. God gets all the credit, we get all the blame.

I was contemplating in bed this morning, enjoying a lazy morning, thinking about how I should be in here blogging, but instead watching the sunrise, talking lazily, listening to the birds singing their springtime songs, and enjoying the beautiful lagoon out my window with the beach and ocean in the distance.

A religious person might wake up on a beautiful day like this and say, "God has been good to me," with an undercurrent of, "... even though I'm an undeserving sinner." That's sick. It takes away our pride in our accomplishments. Even on the very best days of our lives, religion (especially Christianity) tries to knock us down, tell us we're flawed sinners, and convince us that in spite of our awfulness, God has begrudged us a nice day.

The Science of Luck - Really!

When I saw the headline, "Be Lucky – It's an Easy Skill to Learn," I thought, "Oh boy, here's another unscientific bit that might be fun to deconstruct!" Imagine my surprise and pleasure to instead find that this article about good luck was actually scientific, well researched, and fun to read!

Prof Richard Wiseman of the University of Hertfordshire (UK), according to his own web page, "has gained an international reputation for research into quirky areas of psychology, including deception, humour, luck and the paranormal." He has a REALLY cool blog with some great illusions and puzzles.

Many people, perhaps most, think their luck is a metaphysical phenomenon, controlled by beneficent or malevolent forces of good and evil, or maybe god, fairies, devils, what have you. When bad things happen, they are victims; when good things happen, they don't take credit.

Wiseman took the approach of a true man of science. He studied it, and discovered that the people themselves caused their own fortune and misfortune. After interviewing hundreds of self-described lucky and unlucky people, he discovered the underlying reasons:

• Lucky people were able to spot opportunities quickly and take them. Unlucky people overlooked opportunities, even obvious ones.
• Lucky people were optimistic and relaxed, unlucky people were anxious and worried.
• Lucky people listen to their intuition, unlucky people do not.
• Lucky people had positive expectations, unlucky people expect the worst.

If that were the end of it, you might imagine that unlucky people were pessimistic and shunned their intuition because bad luck had taught them bitter lessons. But Professor Wiseman went a step further: he offered lessons in how to improve luck, and it worked!

This is real science, and it's refreshing. All too often in this blog, I find myself criticizing yet another silly quasi-religious pseudo-scientific theory, whether it is homeopathy, scientology, or faith healing. It's too bad there aren't more men and women like Professor Wiseman, showing world that our fates are really in our own hands, not some mythical, mystical world of demons, fairies and gods. Life is much better when we live in the real world.