19 replies to this topic

[Feli]

"If a thing is fated to happen, it will happen no matter what. Even if someone tries to prevent it, it will still happen."

What do you think about this argument?
Do you Agree or Disagree? Why?

[Yan Q]

If you believe in predestination, and that what happens is meant to happen, then you preventing it (or trying to prevent it) was also supposed to happen. 

 

Honestly, I don't worry too much about that sort of stuff. I just do what I do and if it's meant to happen, cool, if fate doesn't exist, also cool. 

Simple, right? 

[danfare]

i don't believe in fate, what i do believe in is action and consequence.

the things you do/say will/will not have an effect on someone/something and vice versa.

 

idk, i guess if i did believe in it i would think of myself as prone to a single behavior or personality and that that would determine the outcome.

not believing in it means i can get out of any situation because i would feel i am in control of my life but then again, what someone else chooses to do with theirs could unavoidably trigger something in mine. ???

it makes more sense in my head.

[Shrimpeh]

Hmmm, here is how i think about it:
Some things, like being born, dying, marriage, etc.. are predetermined to happen, and it's written when and how it will happen,

while other stuff, like your normal everyday stuff, passing/failing an exam, etc.. isn't really  fate, but are results/consequences if your Actions and stuff.
 

[ThatYellowFever]

I don't personally believe in a pre-ordained destiny or chain of events. One could argue however, that in any given situation, burdened with the exact same information beforehand and ignorant of the actual consequences of any given action, the choices we make are the only choices we could ever make. While in hindsight it is easy to think that if you went back you would do things differently, this is usually informed by our knowledge of what outcomes one particular choice/ set of actions entail, thus the choices made are the only choices possible - In essence who we are and what we have experienced has ensured the outcome is decided before the action is undertaken. Though this may be more of an argument that free will is an illusion than for the existence of fate. 

Edited by ThatYellowFever, 14 January 2016 - 04:59 PM.

[bonfart]

I believe we are living in the past. Everything we are experiencing has already happened.

[Alraisen]

I personally think fate, even if it exists, is a waste of time.

Now, this is a blunt statement ( although it is mostly because I'm foreign and I can't always come up with the right word), but the reasoning is pretty easy. Why does fate matter? Supposing it really existed, we would not know what would the outcome be. OK, so the destiny could be for us to reencounter again at the Unicorn Domestication Center, but what if it is not? What difference is there between both of those? Thus, assuming fate is for real, it would not affect our lives in any particular way, not in any way that helped us.

[ThatYellowFever]

I personally think fate, even if it exists, is a waste of time.

Now, this is a blunt statement ( although it is mostly because I'm foreign and I can't always come up with the right word), but the reasoning is pretty easy. Why does fate matter? Supposing it really existed, we would not know what would the outcome be. OK, so the destiny could be for us to reencounter again at the Unicorn Domestication Center, but what if it is not? What difference is there between both of those? Thus, assuming fate is for real, it would not affect our lives in any particular way, not in any way that helped us.

 

The irony of what your statement arguing that it is pointless to worry about fate is that it is incredibly fatalistic

[Aurius]

I think...

 

Sometimes all we can do is make decisions that we hope we don't regret, and try to do the best we can in life.

 

 

Let the philosophers worry about fate.

[Alraisen]

The irony of what your statement arguing that it is pointless to worry about fate is that it is incredibly fatalistic

Why?

Note that I'm not angered at all, just curious about why you state that.

[ThatYellowFever]

Why?
Note that I'm not angered at all, just curious about why you state that.

You say that even worrying about fate in the first place is a waste of time and and that we should simply go on with our life's without worrying about it because it won't directly affect how we live. The start of what you said is almost of a dismissal of fate regardless of whether it exists or not and then you move on to adopt a que sera sera attitude to both fate and life which is in itself fatalistic.

I wasn't trying to antagonise you I just found that an interesting point

Edited by ThatYellowFever, 15 January 2016 - 11:18 AM.

[Nepenthe]

I don't believe in fate. I think the people who believe in fate and destiny are the ones who either haven't really experienced the full brunt of reality, or can see clearly the path they want to take and perceive it as having little obstacles. Or just people who haven't sat down and thought about the whole idea for a while. I think the universe is just a bunch of statistics playing out. There is an x chance something will happen, and a y chance it won't. We only get one life, and it's a waste to let it passively go by just because we believe that destiny will carry us to our happiness.

 

And what about people who die as victims of violent crime? People who contract incurable diseases and die young? People who die just in random accidents? So, they lived their wholes lives leading up until that horrible moment when it ends. That was their fate. Infants who were "destined" to be abandoned and die of exposure? That's such a horrible concept. You can't just let fate and destiny be the happy, exciting things. 

[blue.monday]

*My Opinion*:  There is no argument, the premise is flawed.

My reasoning: I do not *believe* in fate (I consider fate to be bullcrap), thus there is no *fated to happen*...

 

 

somewhat related : reddit@stephen_hawking_on_fate_vs_free_will/

It's kinda bad of me to link that one for several reasons, especially without even a minor explanation, but oh well...

[shelly]

I won't say I believe it, because I haven't decided what I believe yet, but this idea is an interesting one:

 

Say I believe in parallel realities/many-worlds/multi-verse; the one with the branching realities.

 

Then I would say that I believe in fate, because every possible result/fate is fated to happen to some version of you.

   No matter which path you choose, the end result is pre-determined for that path.

 

(I say "no matter which you choose" because I believe in free-will, so fate would have to be defined as: "Something that is fated to happen no matter what you try to do to avoid it" because free-will means that your thoughts and actions are not pre-determined.)

 

This also means that fate, even if true, would be meaningless because by being able to choose which path to walk down, you choose what fate you end up with.

So, even though every result is pre-determined, you can choose any of the possible results based on what you choose to do at moments when there is a choice.

[nadaNada]

Fate huh, I don't fully believe it but, I believe some event are fixed but some event are not. For example, I believe the time you're dead are fixed event, you can't change it no matter what. But other things like what will you be when you older, people you're marry (and divorce), how rich are you, are not fixed. it depends how you live your life.

[pizhhh]

There is no fate. Only luck. Lots of external factors that we don't have control over. As nice is the idea that our lives are determined by our actions and choices, it's not entirely accurate. A good, hard-working single mother gets stricken by a rare terminal disorder. A friend gets hit by a drunk asshole on a motorcycle. A peaceful family on vacation falls victim to terrorism. An already well-off dude hits big-time lottery with a ticket he bought on a whim. These people never chose the outcome they were given, it is all pure dumb luck.

Relevant:
LUCK had me chancing upon this video while reading a mostly unrelated article about bad movie life lessons, a few minutes after my original post
https://youtu.be/aMVE0fN_Y4s

Edited by pizhhh, 18 January 2016 - 02:46 PM.

[AnimeManga272b]

Well, I guess every good thing or bad thing happens for a reason, but I don't really believe that it's because of fate or some higher being controlling everything. I think for the most part we make decisions that directly correspond to what happens. Of couse, there are things that are mosty out of our control, such as death... but I don't think things like that are fate, but just a part of life.

[Orange orange]

I'm a bit tired so won't write down the long version of things. Instead you get the shortened thing.

   If there is anything which is truly random in the universe, then that entails that there is no such thing as fate and that free will exists. If there is no randomness, then all those annoying fatalists are right (sort of). This is because as soon as there is an outcome from a truly random process, then it still implies there was a choice. And if there was nothing which made it so that only one thing could be chosen over the other, then that implies there exist an inherent free will in whatever partook in the process. Essentially, if there are multiple possibilities but only one was realized then it must have been an intrinsic "free will" which made the choice.

    Obviously this is poorly formulated and full of holes, as my brain is not functioning right now, but the core idea still stands. We humans like to separate ourselves from the universe for some reason, and see it as something other than ourselves. This creates a lot of bizarre scenarios, which can only be "solved" by marrying the human to the rest of our existence. Free will is thus nothing exclusive to the thinking human, but rather a part of every single thing which has made a choice which was truly random. 

   Another thing, it does not matter whether fate exists or not. Because to us it will all basically be random anyway. One interesting thing though is that it is impossible for any single being to be know everything about a system they are a part of. Though I do not know if an existence can know exactly what they don't know, similar to have you can "see" black holes thanks to the absence of light (among other things).

   PS. To any fatalists out there, please do not act as if our existence is meaningless and fate dictates everything. It would be annoying if people ran around ransacking everything because it was "predetermined". 

[Faederwulf]

Fatalism is misunderstood. Fate is simply the past acting upon the present to create the future. While we are limited by the past, we still have multiple routes we can take, even if most only vary by the slightest degree.