"temporally coincident occurrences of acausal events"

This is ranty, so consider yourself forewarned...

Do you think there is such thing as coincidence, or if you are just made hyperaware of certain things happening because of previous circumstances leading up to them? I think people will always see what they want to see in things, and even though I'm naturally, fairly cynical, I also really want to believe in their being a reason for things in this world. This kind of relates to something's that we've been talking about in my philosophy class, which is the idea of free-will... and I still don't really know where I sit with it all, so I'd really like to know what other people think...
The problem with most religions is that they are "Deterministic" and generally tend to believe that everything is predetermined, but also preach about morals and making right decisions. BUT, if everything is predetermined, then why bother with morals, we're all natural sinners and we're all going to do what the god's have fated us to do anyway, so we're all doomed really, and what a pisser... On the other hand, Indeterminists believe that since modern physics shows that the fundamental building blocks of matter behaves in random and probabilistic ways, matter is not determined, therefore we are not determined, because we are material beings. BUT, I believe that quantum physics would argue that at an atomic level there is order, so Indeterminists can't be completely right. So, there is a third option of Compatibilism that combines the other two trains of thought by redifining free-will as doing what you want, even though your wants and desires are caused by heredity and social conditioning. I don't really see this as "freedom", if your decisions are predetermined, even if it's not by a damning god. Society can be just as damning. Although this does seem to be the most accurate of the three, I think that on top of it all, there has to be another determining factor. So what is it?? I obviously don't want to believe that everything I do is predetermined by what society tells me, or by what my combination of DNA imposes, but this may very well be the case. I mean, I know that this leaves open the door for making my own decision about things along the way, but inevitably, I am who I am because of what I was born into, and that will never change completely, at least according to this theory. Seems depressing, but very likely true. Sooo... what's the truth, and is there even one? And is there a third determining factor that has something to do with "fate" or coincidence, or a series of seemingly random coincidence leading up to a pivotal moment in time. And if so, if you were to ignore these "signs" so to speak, and not follow them to their logical conclusion, would you be doing yourself a big diservice and setting yourself up for hardships along the way? ... Just a question...

From Wikipedia:
Coincidence is the noteworthy alignment of two or more events or circumstances without obvious causal connection. The word is derived from the Latin co- ("in", "with", "together") and incidere ("to fall on").

The index of coincidence can be used to analyze whether two events are related. A coincidence does not prove a relationship, but related events may be expected to have a higher index of coincidence. From a statistical perspective, coincidences are inevitable and often less remarkable than they may appear intuitively. As an example, the probability of two individuals sharing a birthday already exceeds 50% with a group of only 23 (see the Birthday problem).

In The Psychology of the Psychic the author David Marks describes four distinct meanings of the term "coincidence". Marks suggests that coincidences occur because of "odd matches" when two events A and B are perceived to contain a similarity of some kind. For example, dreaming of a plane crash (event A) would be matched by seeing a news report of a plane crash on the next morning (event B).

In optics, coincidence is also used to refer to two or more incident beams of light that strike the same point at the same time.

Remarkable coincidences sometimes lead to claims of psychic phenomena or conspiracy theories. Some researchers (see Charles Fort and Carl Jung) have compiled thousands of accounts of coincidences and other supposedly anomalous phenomena (see synchronicity). The perception of coincidences often leads to occult or paranormal claims. It may also lead to a belief in fatalism, that events are pre-destined to happen in the exact manner of a prior plan or formula. This lends certain events an aura of inevitability.

Deepak Chopra and other proponents of ancient Vedic spiritual and other mystical teachings insist on the fact that there is absolutely no coincidence in the world. That everything that occurs can be related to a prior cause or association, no matter how vast or how minute and trivial. All is impacted by something related to it that is unseen or seen, cognized or not in the universe. He and many others worldwide also suggest that science, in particular mathematics, is rapidly moving towards this conclusion as well. Nonlocality theory of physics is just the latest example of phenomenon that seemed coincidental, but are in fact causal. The claim is that this and other science and mathematical conclusions can extend this to every aspect of existence.

It has also been suggested that coincidence is just the mind connecting two or more unique events; if the mind does not make the connection then there is no coincidence. (Douglas 2005)

“It is no great wonder if, in the long process of time, while fortune takes her course hither and thither, numerous coincidences should spontaneously occur.”-Plutarch

and on Synchronicity...

The idea of synchronicity is that the conceptual relationship of minds, defined as the relationship between ideas, is intricately structured in its own logical way and gives rise to relationships that are not causal in nature. These relationships can manifest themselves as simultaneous occurences that are meaningfully related--- the cause and the effect occur together.

Synchronous events reveal an underlying pattern, a conceptual framework which encompasses, but is larger than, any of the systems which display the synchronicity. The suggestion of a larger framework is essential in order to satisfy the definition of synchronicity as originally developed by Swiss psychologist Carl Gustav Jung.[citation needed]

Jung coined the word to describe what he called "temporally coincident occurrences of acausal events." Jung variously described synchronicity as an "acausal connecting principle", "meaningful coincidence" and "acausal parallelism". Jung introduced the concept as early as the 1920s but only gave a full statement of it in 1951 in an Eranos lecture and in 1952, published a paper, Synchronicity — An Acausal Connecting Principle, in a volume with a related study by the physicist (and Nobel laureate) Wolfgang Pauli.[1]

It was a principle that Jung felt gave conclusive evidence for his concepts of archetypes and the collective unconscious,[2] in that it was descriptive of a governing dynamic that underlies the whole of human experience and history—social, emotional, psychological, and spiritual. Events that happen which appear at first to be coincidence but are later found to be causally related are termed as "incoincident".

Jung believed that many experiences that are coincidences due to chance in terms of causality suggested the manifestation of parallel events or circumstances in terms of meaning, reflecting this governing dynamic.[3]

One of Jung's favourite quotes on synchronicity was from Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll, in which the White Queen says to Alice: "It's a poor sort of memory that only works backwards".[4