Atheists, how do you explain this?

Riley

Confirmation bias

Anonymous

Cognitive bias. Your perception is not reality. This has been repeatedly scientifically tested. It's not real. It's your brain, misreading reality. Also, dude you have OCD. Medication can help.

Lapiz Dominoes

Most of the responses here are good. I`d say the mental ritual helps you believe more in your own instincts and in your own intuition to a degree that helps you heed them, so I would say kudos and, stay with it!

Jamie

Every single day, a mixture of good and bad things happen to you. Often something makes you pay attention to one or the other selectively. You wonder if bad things will happen if you don't do your ritual (which sounds very much like OCD), so when you don't do your ritual you notice the bad things. When you do your ritual, you notice only the good things. It's called confirmation bias.

𝕾𝖍𝖆𝖉𝖔𝖜𝖋𝖎𝖗𝖊

Congratulations. You're learning to access part of your brain that most people don't realize even exists. and I strongly suspect that this is what caused the first religions to come into being too. The ritual you do is basically a generic equivalent of "Oh, Lord, if this is the right thing to do, then give me a sign!" Christians don't actually access some omnipotent being. they are accessing the subconscious, which I feel is more correctly termed the superconscious. it can analyze the situation around you, even details you think you've forgotten, and tell you exactly what you should do. It can also cause unconscious changes in your behavior which affect the world around you. Hell, it could actually be sending out positive energy. But I can't prove that, so we'll skip that discussion.

Anonymous

U and every other poster must be totally insane to even question this. It is your instinct, your intuition. I don't say superstition may not play a part in it but it is by no means irrational. If I am searching for a lost object, I try various strategies and look in ever more obscure places and eventually one of these guesses pays off. But it is not random. It is an intelligent search every step of the way. I hope to randomly come across it but by no means depend on that. (Otherwise I would probably have already found it.) It is good to analyze your feelings, with a view to eliminating stupid stuperstition.

SBR32277

Simple, state of mind matters and you are superstitious. The problem with testing this is you "believe" there will be bad luck if you go against your feelings where you don't test this every single time. If you did, you might discover that every time you felt bad things were going to happen they might not. Even you did do thorough testing and in every case something bad happened, "bad" is subjective and your state of mind could actually be creating the bad situations. It's sort of like feeling you want get served food from a restaurant and then showing up after they've closed and confirming your feelings to be accurate. People who experience a lot of bad luck usually set themselves up in this manner.

steve

Believe me it has got nothing to do with god. I often feel the same. I think about things that I want to happen and sometimes they do and sometimes they don't . That has nothing to do with god it is called positive thinking. If you wish for something to happen and it does it is pure luck. Similarly if something bad happens it is again down to misfortune.

Tad Dubious

It cannot be explained rationally.

A.J.

Plenty of answers, but I'll also input. To get things clearer, agnostic really isn't "I'm not sure about God". Agnostic people believe that God can neither be proven nor disproven. They accept that most people believe without proof, and some do not believe. Atheist, which I am, say I do not believe in a deity. There is nothing to be said, and too many things in the known universe and science make an overwhelming case, but agreed I cannot disprove a non-corporeal being. I just ask to be allowed my belief, and keep government secular, and don't discriminate over personal beliefs. There are those who are neither atheist nor agnostic. In the USA, it is "none of the above". A spiritualist believes religion is important but is very personal. A free thinker says it is unimportant. Now, as to your thoughts, when we think about problems and issues we work out solutions and best choices and paths. When we don't think about things, "sh*t happens". There is nothing amazing. We have many senses and powerful capacity to think. When we expect something to happen, often it does, like a self-fulfilling prophesy. When we expect to succeed, we do, and when we expect to fail, we do, and usually, we are making it happen ourselves. Often, we think in vague ways and when anything is similar we self-justify. If good things happen when you focus your mind in a certain way, just do it. It is feeding a self-confidence.

Elle

This is called the Law of Attraction or The Secret. Welcome to what millions of people already know.

tentofield

"I’m Agnostic myself but lean towards atheism" makes absolutely no sense. Theism is the belief in gods, atheism is the lack of belief in gods. Everyone is either a theist or an atheist, they either believe in gods or they don't. There are no shades of grey, no fences to sit on. You can't "lean towards atheism", you are either an atheist or you are not. Agnosticism is not about belief and has nothing to do with theism or atheism. It is about knowledge. The agnostic says that it is impossible to know if gods exist therefore whether they do or not has to be a matter of belief. Most atheists and many theists are also agnostics. You are just experiencing confirmation bias. It is very common.

bender_xr217

That's simply confirmation bias. You think if you do a thing then good stuff happens, alternately... if you do another thing, bad stuff happens, the reality is both good and bad things happen in our lives all the time. All you're doing is attributing them to one thing or another. If you expect good things... you look for and see good. If you expect bad things... you look for and see bad. And you may even be doing this on a subconscious level.

Erzsébet

I imagine it has more to do with you expecting and noticing good or bad things more often. When you do this ritual, you are expecting good things, and more likely to notice them. Likewise, you’re expecting and noting bad things when you don’t do it. A similar thing is that you’ll notice, if you leave your home late and need to be on time, it seems like all the traffic lights are against you. But they’re not any different on this day. Think of a number, a small one, like 47. Now you’ll see it everywhere if you think about it. Really ask yourself, is it more likely you have superpowers, or that it’s in your head? You could even start keeping a log of good and bad events, and compare the occurrence of each.

poldi2

You avoid things that might give you bad luck because when you didn't avoid them bad things happened. Only a moron doesn't avoid things that have caused bad luck in the past. Our subconscious minds process information much better than our conscious minds, there are always clues that something isn't good. I explain this as simply you are listening to your own subconscious. If you want to attribute this to God, you go right ahead. But since there is no proof its anything other than your own mind, atheists will remain atheist.

Duck

Self-fulfilling prophecy. If you believe enough that bad things will happen, you'll find a way to make it reality.

🌟👑Stevan 👑🌟

Stuff happens in life, get over it

Nathan

Cognitive bias.

Fireсоск

Confirmation bias, self-fulfilling prophecy

Erin

Karma. Buddhism bad leads to bad, good leads to good.