Dynasty's comment about it being a form of praying is fair.
Ultimately, cosmic ordering is no different from any other form of superstitious behaviour, whereby it is evoloutionary benificial for animals to believe that we can control our surroundings. It is part of all of us, from deep within our instinctual brain. Some people are able to behave rationally and ignore it, others put less thought to it and go with the flow.
The behavioural science behind this sort of thing is extremely fascinating. The animal brain has evolved to spot trends and patterns in life, because it helps us stay alive.
If a zebra spots a shape that looks like a tiger in the grass and runs, then it survives. It may be that there is no lion 99% of the time, but the zebra always survives. The zebra that does not spot the pattern gets eaten, so does not pass its genetic code onto the next generation. Darwinian natural selection in action.
So why has this got anything to do with Cosmic Ordering? Well, the pattern of spotting a tiger is conceptually the same as a cause and effect (with some confirmation bias) and pattern spotting that a human uses when they “practice” Cosmic Ordering.
We are just like pigeons in a Skinner Box!
For those who don’t know what a Skinner Box is, it is basically a box with a button, in which a pigeon is housed. When the pigeon pecks the button, a hatch is opened to a feeder tray, allowing the pigeon to get some food.
Skinner showed that a pigeon is clever enough to peck the button and get a reward of food. However, if the button is disconnected, and the feeder tray hatch opened at random times, then the bird will associate its last action (at the time when the hatch opened) as the cause of the effect. From that point onwards, the bird will frantically repeat the same action, attempting to re-open the hatch. The fact that the first 10 frantic attempts don’t result in the hatch opening are ignored by the bird, but on the 11th attempt, the door opens, confirming to the (stupid) bird that it was the flapping that did it.
Humans exhibit the exact same behaviour. We attach meaning to actions and rituals where none exists. We believe that if we think about red balloons hard enough then we will cause one to appear (or 99 no less!). The reality is, that red balloons are pretty common in our world, and just like the pigeon, if we don’t see one for the first 10 days, we don’t give up, we keep hoping, and eventually when we see one and celebrate our success!
We “pray” for our loved ones to survive illness and when they do survive, then it was our prayer that saved them (never the hard working doctors, nurses and scientists). When they die, we assume it was their time to pass and that it was gods will (or what ever controlling power an individual has made up like a pigeon).
So, in summary, Cosmic Ordering is bollox. We are all stupid pigeons... Or are we?
There is nothing wrong with having a stupid animal brain, since this is the stupid brain that has survived all of the difficulties over millions of generations of evolution to make you live today. It helps you not get eaten by bears, and run away from aggressive people by simply reading their body language. It makes you scared of snakes when you don’t even know why and gives you reflexes to stop you burning yourself (before you have even “felt” the heat).
We should celebrate our animal brain, it is bloody brilliant. However… the thing that makes us different to pigeons (and other animals) is the fact that we can understand all of this, so maybe, just maybe, we should try to rationalise some observed facts from what we can measure and prove within the universe, and recognise that Cosmic Ordering is nonsense of the highest order.