Are people who believe in fate narrow minded fools?

[Newbie 0]

That's pretty extreme so take that with a barrel load of salt, but seriously, don't we make our own luck and good/bad fortune?

I firmly believe that there is no such thing as a fatalistic outlook on life and that we are masters of our own destiny....up until mother nature or human error decides to enter into things, in which instance we usually don't stand a chance and are whisked away into the next lifetime whatever that may be (examples might be an air crash or natural disaster, you know, things you get caught up in, but have no control over).

So - do you believe in fate? If so, why?

"Skydiving is a door"
Happythoughts

[wmw999 2,537]

Some people are definitely luckier than others. They are born to parents who care, who make enough money, who value education. Or they just happen to buy a winning lotto ticket.

Some people are strong enough to rise above adversity that others aren't. People are different.

That said, people who are prepared, and who have taken advantage of what they could, tend to be able to do something wtih the opportunities they get.

Wendy W.

There is nothing more dangerous than breaking a basic safety rule and getting away with it. It removes fear of the consequences and builds false confidence. (tbrown)

[Pendejo 0]

No fate but that which we make.

Pendejo

He who swoops the ditch and does not get out buys the BEER!!

[fallingchip 0]

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Some people are definitely luckier than others. They are born to parents who care, who make enough money, who value education.

It's all how you lived your prior life.
My dog for instance. This fucker must have been a saint or something. You can't get pissed at him, he's well feed and cared for, nothing is expected from him except eat, shit, sleep. He is loved, ect.
It's not fate, it's reward.

______________________________________________
"A radical man is a man with both feet firmly planted in the air."
-Franklin Delano Roosevelt

[Newbie 0]

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Some people are definitely luckier than others. They are born to parents who care, who make enough money, who value education. Or they just happen to buy a winning lotto ticket.

Some people are strong enough to rise above adversity that others aren't. People are different.

That said, people who are prepared, and who have taken advantage of what they could, tend to be able to do something wtih the opportunities they get.

Wendy W.

People can certainly be born with a certain amount of "born-in-to advantage" as you mentioned - having rich parents for instance...but that doesn't mean they will have a lucky upbringing. They might be the ones who overdose on drugs, get cancer or die in a plane crash, just as some kid from the inner city can start up his own business and make it big.

What i'm wondering is, does some higher power (God, a god, fate, magic pixie dust) decide at some point either before, during or after the birth of that child, that something they absolutely cannot avoid happening to them will do (e.g. meeting their soulmate, dieing an unnatural death, finding a suitcase of money one day, etc etc)

"Skydiving is a door"
Happythoughts

[Michele 1]

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What i'm wondering is, does some higher power (God, a god, fate, magic pixie dust) decide at some point either before, during or after the birth of that child, that something they absolutely cannot avoid happening to them will do (e.g. meeting their soulmate, dieing an unnatural death, finding a suitcase of money one day, etc etc)

Ah, the age old debate between free will and fate....a good one to ponder. I haven't any time right now to say more than this...

Yes, there is fate. And Yes, there is free will. And yes, some people get "lucky" and some don't.

Racing the clock today, so if I can, I'll post more later.

Ciels-
Michele

~Do Angels keep the dreams we seek
While our hearts lie bleeding?~

[mr2mk1g 10]

If I throw I knife up in the air and stick my foot out is whether or not it stabs me in the toe down to luck or down to a complex series of factors including how much force I put into the spin of the knife, how high I threw it, how far away, how much cross wind there is, how far I stuck my foot out, how heavy the knife is, where its balance point, its length, air density etc etc etc ?

I'm pretty sure that if you spent long enough working through the sums and measured everything precisely you could work out exactly where that knife was going to land and how on any given throw.

Luck doesn’t come into it; it's just beyond the comprehension of people who lack the skills to perform the necessary calculations.

Similarly if I could accurately and measure every single variable in the spinning of a bunch of lottery balls, their interaction with one another and the paddles, I could accurately predict the call of the lottery. The fact that I can’t is not because luck has anything at all to do with it, but because I currently lack the computative power to measure and analyse all those trillions of variables.

Therefore stupid people think it's luck. "Luck" in all its forms is just a way of explaining the difficult to explain in supernatural terms which are easier for people to handle and get along with. So yes – its all because of stupid people.

[Newbie 0]

LOL good post.

So that describes luck - what about fate? Are you saying those that believe in fate are doing so because they lack the computational power to understand what is really happening?

"Skydiving is a door"
Happythoughts

[Mike111 0]

What i'm wondering is, does some higher power (God, a god, fate, magic pixie dust) decide at some point either before, during or after the birth of that child, that something they absolutely cannot avoid happening to them will do (e.g. meeting their soulmate, dieing an unnatural death, finding a suitcase of money one day, etc etc)

[tso-d_chris 0]

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So - do you believe in fate? If so, why?

Timshel.

[Newbie 0]

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So - do you believe in fate? If so, why?

Timshel.

?

"Skydiving is a door"
Happythoughts

[tso-d_chris 0]

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But There is no God in my view, and im glad i believe that because some people use God as an excuse for their fate - they are not in control of their lives and so can';t determine what happens.

IMO, Physics' pursuit of a Unified Field Theory (aka Theory of Everything) poses a much greater threat to the idea of free will than does any religion.

[tso-d_chris 0]

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Timshel.

?

Short explanation:

Hebrew for "thou mayest"

Long explanation:

See John Steinbeck's East of Eden.

[billvon 3,072]

>I'm pretty sure that if you spent long enough working through the
> sums and measured everything precisely you could work out exactly
> where that knife was going to land and how on any given throw.

Actually, that's one of the most profound results of Heisenburg's work, and some later chaos-theory work - not only is that hard to do, in some cases, it is impossible. An example we used in a probability class was trying to balance a broomstick in a moving boxcar. If you knew to absolute precision what motions the boxcar made, could you put the stick in such a position that it would always stay uprights, swaying in perfect opposition to the boxcar? As it turns out, you can only make that work for about 15 minutes before quantumn effects start multiplying enough to make it impossible.

Put another way, you can't predict the future of complex systems with any certainty; the farther forward in time you go the less certain the outcome. Even if you know every possible factor.

[Mike111 0]

How does the theory of everything pose a much greater threa? sorry i don;t understand what you mean?

Do you mean events or anything that could happen could immediately pose a threat and change our destiny and thus poses more of a threat to freewill and our choice to decide our destiny than religion and god does? - they are more likely to happen and so pose a great risk?

[tso-d_chris 0]

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How does the theory of everything pose a much greater threa?

Paradoxically, a Theory Of Everything could be used to predict the discovery of the Theory of Everything.

A theory of everything would explain just that-- everything. It could be used to show that its very discovery was, in fact, inevitable, and not at all a result of any scientists' free will.

This is of course at odds with Chaos Theory, which places great importance on "missing information." It is also contrary to most, if not all religions I have studied. For example, the Tao te Ching begins with (something to the effect of) "The Tao that we can speak of is not the true Tao. In other words, the ultimate truth is beyond human understanding.

[bianuan 0]

I think for people that have had somethng really terrible happen to them or their friends/family (car crash etc) the only way to be at peace with loosing loved ones is to believe something like 'it was their time to go', that was their fate. Living with the thought that you lost someone for no good reason is too hard. You need an explanation that cant be questioned, i dont think that would make someone narrow minded though.
I seem to recall seeing a telly programme on this sort of thing, one of the theories they covered was that every possible outcome actually happens, but we choose the one that exists for our reality - i think it was String Theory or something like that.

Ann

[genoyamamoto 0]

I think we all have the ability to influence our surroundings. (free will)

We, however, don't always have enough influence to effect meaningful change in the environment/circumstances that we are in, like your examples of plane crashes and natural disasters. (fate)

Gotta go... plaything needs to spank me
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