Fate (or lack thereof)

flogen

ok, because this is the first post (real post ) i think it should be a biggey.....do you believe in fate?
is your life predefinded, or up to you?

I still havent made any final decision on my feelings here, but at the moment i feel that we do not have a definite future, but rather a rough guideline laid out for us.
It is then up to us to follow this path way... or not, however certain aspects are for definite. I believe that no matter what you will meet the person you are supposed to be with.... your soul mate i guess. it depends on you and them wheither you actually stay together/in contact, but you will have the chance to do it.... but you could ignore it and never really explore this aspect of your life.
I also believe that death is pre-defined. The general time and cause is set out (again, roughly), but how and where we die depends, yet again, on how we lived our lives. And despite our ability to manover from the path given, we can/do not do so very much, one reason being that the actions of those around us generally contains us within a very slim variance of the said 'path' and only the most extreme cases break truely away.... Im not sure if i would believe that despite this break away, the same death awaits us, or if this causes some kind of change.... but thats what i believe so far... (i actually thought about it while waiting for a bus.... so its not exactly bullet proof... its just a framework!

Flogen

/edit.... whoopps, I used the wrong 'fate'...... duh....:p

fitz

It's a double edged sword.

Fate can be used to rationalise things we didn't want to happen, ie. the "everything happens for a reason" idea.

But, if that's the case, do we really have any choices in life?
If everything is just happening the way it's fated to, then we can't really change anything, and our choices are predetermined aswell.

Personally, I don't believe in fate.
I believe we make of life what we can, given the choices, options and events that occur around us.
We have many different paths open to us, and each choice is like turning down that particular path.

Our personalities may lead us down different paths that essentially go to the same place, but that's not fate. That's just different ways of realising who you are.

Wow. Arty waffle in the morning.
Nice.:p

Stark

Free will is an illusion imo, in that the choices we will make have already been made in the future (ie: the future already exists) but noone is conciously controlling these choices.
What that means, is that as long as we are unaware of the future we will always feel we have free will, but if say we gained fore knowledge of a future event, then we would be powerless to alter that event.

fitz

But future events are brought about by the interaction of decisions and actions by individuals at given times, so unless you can know exactly what every person will do at a set time, you could never tell the future.
The future exists only as time that has not passed yet.
Saying we've already made future decisions is a bit Matrix Reloaded.
We haven't, because we're not aware of the choices we may yet have to make.

Beruthiel

Originally posted by flogen
ok, because this is the first post (real post ) i think it should be a biggey.....do you believe in fate?
is your life predefinded, or up to you?

I don't believe so
I prefer to call some things that have happened to me as 'plain luck' I would like to think that I have control over my life, to the extent that I can that is.

I also believe that death is pre-defined

why would you think that?
once again, I believe it's all down to luck and chance, some part of it is in your genes but it also depends on how you live your life, those are choices which you will may or may not pick

flogen

i dunno, i just get the feeling that some part of this life is out of our control.
I think that our death is pre-definied and no matter how we live our lives... as rich or poor, fat or fit, careful or wreckless, we will die at the same age, and within the same general reasons... this doesnt seem to make sense, i know. Surely someone who was fit would have a better chance than someone fat, but remember that it doesnt always matter how well you keep yourself, and that from what I believe, because we all move along a route unconsiously (as in, we have a rough path, can stray, but the actions of others tends to keep us within a certain boundry) then it would not be very difficult for a pre-set death to suit our livestyles, even if we didnt follow the rough path to the inch....

Flogen

GuanYin

Originally posted by flogen
i dunno, i just get the feeling that some part of this life is out of our control.
I think that our death is pre-definied

Have you read Appointment in Samarra by Somerset Maugham? You'd possibly like it

Originally posted by flogen
I believe, because we all move along a route unconsiously (as in, we have a rough path, can stray, but the actions of others tends to keep us within a certain boundry) then it would not be very difficult for a pre-set death to suit our livestyles, even if we didnt follow the rough path to the inch....

I don't believe we have as much control over our lives an denvironment as we would like to think, but I don't equate this with fate. Whether or not the future is mapped out is really irrelevant as we have no way of knowing and no way of changing it, however it is the observation and reaction and reaction to an event that really matters. This is where I beleiev we have undeniable have free will.

flogen

i agree with you syke.
i think that firstly our reactions to events would be the variance from the path i believe that is infront of us.

I also believe that alot of what goes on depends on others, and not us. So, as an example, if a girl(or boy) decides not to go up to you in a bar, you may never meet, maybe because you were to shy to approach them, or maybe because you didnt even see them.
however, as i said before i believe that no matter what you will always encounter your soul mate. Its up to you and them where it goes from there.

I'll check that book out too

Flogen

Hobbes

There is no fate but the fate you make (to quote a certain film).

Everything that happens to you is because of you, and you have the chance to change it. Except maybe your final breath (which you can delay).

Very few people are gifted with predestination though.

Fate is an excuse to make someone else responsible for your actions.

flogen

Fate is an excuse to make someone else responsible for your actions.

as far as people who believe in a total fate and no real freedom, i would agree with this, but saying that, even with total freedom, what happens in your life depends alot on the actions of others, from the smallest thing to the largest. Thats why I believe that no matter what we feel, or want to do, there is only so much variance that is naturally possible from a given path, because we constantly 'bump' into people on their path, and they into us.

Flogen

fitz

Originally posted by Hobbes

Everything that happens to you is because of you, and you have the chance to change it.

Someone crashes a car into a family member and kills them, understandably changing your life.

How is that "because of you"?

Stark

Very few people are gifted with predestination though.

Curiouser and Curiouser. Who are these few?

simu

If you were to trace all the factors (even the most minute quantum fluctuations) that led to an action carried out by a person, you would eventually go back to the start of the universe. We believe that we have our own principles and morals but these are totally dependent on the environment we exist in and most of the time, we only have the most shallow knowledge of why we act the way we do. Some people analyse their behaviour and try to trace it to its roots more than others but all the same, there are limits to how far one can go with this.

So, I think we have the illusion of free will - at any point in time, the future seems uncertain.

I also suspect that the illusion of free will is "unbreakable" - its absence cannot be grasped intuively. Intellectually, I may be arguing that free will does not exist but in practice, I act as though it did and on a practical level, as Syke said, it might as well as data about the future is unreachable to us.

My €0.02!

PiE

Originally posted by fitz
Someone crashes a car into a family member and kills them, understandably changing your life.

Well, if you want to be callous about it; that family member had to make a decision to be in that place at that time. Not their fault, but they contributed to the outcome.

If there were such a thing as fate, it would mean that there is somebody deciding our actions for us... which to all extents would be a god.

I don't believe there is a god, so I cannot believe in fate.