A interesting question of fate

Free will does not exist. It is an illusion. Fate is ALL there is, though it's not decided by anything except the fundamentla laws of the universe (whatever those may be)

The brain is a machine which is governed by the same laws of physics as anything else. All human action and thought, conscious or not, is the product of the electro-chemical reactions which take place in the brain. In any given situation, there is only one possible outcome of the chemical reaction.
Thus when you come to a fork in the road and "decide" take the path on the left, that is, in fact, the ONLY decision you could have made in that particular circumstance. The entire destiny of the universe, every single interation between every bit of matter and energy, led up to that moment - the same circumstances, therefore, will never be repeated. Thus next time your come to that same fork you may turn right, but if every condition was replicated and you were EXACTLY the same (down to the very atoms and electro-chemical processes which comprise your body), you'd make the same decision as before.

This can never be proven or disproven, but it create the illusion of free will. In sum: What happened is the ONLY thing which could have happened, because everything in the universe was the way it was. If everythig (or even something) in the universe were different, then the outcome would have been different.

It's no different than mixing chemicals together. Under X circumstances, you will always get Y results.

(Above theories liberally borrowed from Scott Adams)
 
I like to promote myself as the perfect atheist, who does not believe in the supernatural and thinks humanity is a sort of cancer of evolution. No heaven, no hell, and when we die, there is nothing anymore. We live our lives according to our own will, it is up to us what we make of what we have and where we head.

To be honest, I have started doubting this model quite a while ago. A series of unfortunate things happened to me that left me thinking "Did I deserve this?"

Although I still do not believe in a god that created us or a heavenly masterplan, I have started believing... no, wait, hoping that there is some sort of heavenly or divine justice. I have no reason to believe, but many to hope that one day, everybody will be judged according to what they did in their lives, and get rewarded and/or punished accordingly. It hurts me to see how people whom I consider good must endure hardships in life while complete arseholes get everything they want, sometimes not even needing to ask for it. I believe I have a somewhat reasonable mind and can judge who, in my opinion, deserves heaven (to oversimplify things by using this archaic imagery, if only because I don't want to go to lengthy explanations) and who deserves hell. Of course, there are borderline cases. And as for myself, I don't know. I only hope I will get the proper judgement when it is my turn.

As for fate, I don't know about it. I can't tell you if some superior plan made me sit here and type all this, or if anything was meant to be. History tells us that all events are connected, and it is one big process, but I have no idea where we are heading to, or where I am heading to. I remember talking to a cleric once asking him, if all lives are worth the same, and are worth more than anything else. When he said yes, I asked him "What about Hitler?" His reply was: "It depends on what you do with your life". This answer has stuck with me for all those years.
 
      One thing the post made by Perun makes me think about is the existence of good and evil and its relation to fate, personally I believe that both are faces of the same coin and the existence of both terms comes out of the personal view of a person faced with an event. Take the Crusades, bloody, uncalled for debauchery of power and greed, but its long standing effect was a good one, this is because it put back into motion the stagnated European culture (so it was good for the Europeans at least), slowly creating the Burgos, which coupled with another devastating event, the plague, set part of the basis for the renascence, taking power away from the few and the church and putting it, slowly, into the hands of more and more people. So if we take any event in human history we will see that it may be catalogued as bad by some but it may be good for others, and in the perspective of the future generations it might be great or bad depending on your personal view, but the reality of the event is that it is the consequence of a cause, and the cause of a consequence. This applies to fate in that if we see things in the historical view of causes and consequences rather than as good or bad then thing might appear to unfold rather than beginning to happen for no apparent reason as I said in my previous post.
    
 
Marcus Agrippa said:
      One thing the post made by Perun makes me think about is the existence of good and evil and its relation to fate, personally I believe that both are faces of the same coin and the existence of both terms comes out of the personal view of a person faced with an event. Take the Crusades, bloody, uncalled for debauchery of power and greed, but its long standing effect was a good one, this is because it put back into motion the stagnated European culture (so it was good for the Europeans at least), slowly creating the Burgos, which coupled with another devastating event, the plague, set part of the basis for the renascence, taking power away from the few and the church and putting it, slowly, into the hands of more and more people. So if we take any event in human history we will see that it may be catalogued as bad by some but it may be good for others, and in the perspective of the future generations it might be great or bad depending on your personal view, but the reality of the event is that it is the consequence of a cause, and the cause of a consequence. This applies to fate in that if we see things in the historical view of causes and consequences rather than as good or bad then thing might appear to unfold rather than beginning to happen for no apparent reason as I said in my previous post.
   
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(Emphasis is mine).  I think that the paths we are able to take are pre-determined, like reality.  However, I believe only through education will we be able to perceive a better way to act during a situation, thus a better path, in order to better our lives in all moments great and mundane.  Hard work leads to a better prepared mind, which leads to exploitation of opportunities or as I've heard it said: success is only opportunity meeting preparedness.
 
Perun appears to have stumbled upon the origins of religion.  Faced with the reality that ordinary people are capable of unspeakable evil -- setting aside the obvious famous examples, there was a story recently about a woman who cut a fetus/infant out of a pregnant woman, killing the mother and critically injuring the baby, to sell the child on the black market -- and that terrible things happen to innocent and good people, one struggles to make sense of how this could happen.  People not only are capable of evil acts, most people have an innate sense of the difference between right and wrong, between just and unjust.  (Tomes have been written about what justice means, so I'll leave that for another thread.  If you disagree with the premise, so be it.)  Human institutions often fail to punish the wicked or reward the good.  Life is filled with pain, disappointment and occasionally despair, though most people also experience joy, love and contentment, too.  In the face of all this, it is only natural to believe that some higher power or force -- gods, fate, physics -- can explain why bad things happen or will set things right in the end.  It is this notion of divine justice that leads folks to turn to religion.  I can't speak for other religions, but Christianity has tremendous appeal worldwide because it gives people who are miserable the hope that life is not all for naught, that one day the wicked will be judged and the meek shall inherit the earth.  The Christian (primarily Catholic) notion of original sin partly explains why even good people occasionally do bad things, and that it is only through faith in a higher power that we can be redeemed. 

No comment on whether I believe this or whether I think it is hooey.  Suffice it to say that a great many sane, rational people DO believe it, and it is an extremely powerful force in human affairs. 

I also note that, in the meantime, Genghis Khan (with an assist from Marcus Agrippa) appears to have come up with a basic tenet of existentialism.  Either that or a reformulation of the old cliche: "When life give you lemons, make lemonade." 
 
Genghis Khan said:
(Emphasis is mine).  I think that the paths we are able to take are pre-determined, like reality.  However, I believe only through education will we be able to perceive a better way to act during a situation, thus a better path, in order to better our lives in all moments great and mundane.  Hard work leads to a better prepared mind, which leads to exploitation of opportunities or as I've heard it said: success is only opportunity meeting preparedness.
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Amen to that Genghis Khan.  That's the attitude.
 
cornfedhick said:
I also note that, in the meantime, Genghis Khan (with an assist from Marcus Agrippa) appears to have come up with a basic tenet of existentialism.  Either that or a reformulation of the old cliche: "When life give you lemons, make lemonade." 
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On the surface it may seem like I'm agreeing with existentialism, but I'm not -- far from it.  Existentialism is a very self-defeating philosophy.  It claims that there is no meaning to life and simultaneously claims that each one of us must figure out life's own meaning.  If there is a more contradictory, psychologically damaging statement, I've yet to hear it.
 
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