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Fate vs. free will


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#1 Scrimsax

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Posted 06 February 2013 - 05:25 AM

I've been thinking alot about life lately. People talk to much about fate, and destiny, how there is a great plan up there for all of us. And you know what I realized? I don't believe it. I think you can't believe it, really, if you want to be happy. Just waiting... hoping... that doesn't get you anywhere. Fate, to me, is an excuse of the indecisive. SOmething people can hide behind, to blame for their mistakes.

"It isn't my fault I screwed up. It just wasn't fate that I should be with her."

"Dont worry. Everything happens for a reason."

"God works in mysterious ways."

"It'll get better eventually."

I'm not trying to be hypocrite here. God knows I've hid behind that excuse often enough. But... the time has come to move past that. I am man. I have free will, and choice. I'm not going to sit here and wait for happiness to just be served to me on a silver platter. Yeah, that can happen sometimes. I've been really, truly happy, twice in my life. The first was a random series of coincidences that led me to something amazing. The second... the second I worked my ass off for the better part of 3 years to earn. I screwed t up. Not because it was fate, or we weren't soulmates, or any of that, but because I forgot how much it meant.

Let me make one thing clear: I'm not hear to antagonize anyone. I'm not insulting other peoples view, or lives, or beliefs. But this is my belief... I suppose it fits with my staunch Agnosticism. I don't care if you see this and just move on. But I think... well I know, jut typing it helped me work out what I want. And there is power in words, that most people don't realize. Maybe this will be the thing that will help one person, make one person think, or maybe it'll just be something that'll sit in the back of your head, and that you'll remember one day when it'll make a difference. I don't know.

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#2 Kingultra

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Posted 06 February 2013 - 05:33 AM

Huh, we just covered this in Macbeth.
Free will, man. Fate is just used as an excuse/explanation/otherappropriate term.
Macbeth thought that it was fate that he would become king, that he would kill Duncan and the other guys. He used it as an excuse. Even after finding out about the witches' manipulating him, he wouldn't surrender, believing it was fate, or something.
Of course, it's 12:32 AM and I should be sleeping, so I might be missing the topic.
Meh.
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#3 Bobryk

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Posted 06 February 2013 - 06:01 AM

QUOTE (Kingultra @ Feb 6 2013, 12:33 AM)
Huh, we just covered this in Macbeth.
Free will, man. Fate is just used as an excuse/explanation/otherappropriate term.
Macbeth thought that it was fate that he would become king, that he would kill Duncan and the other guys. He used it as an excuse. Even after finding out about the witches' manipulating him, he wouldn't surrender, believing it was fate, or something.
Of course, it's 12:32 AM and I should be sleeping, so I might be missing the topic.
Meh.


Hey, I wrote a paper on that in high school! God knows what I wrote about that though

Anyway, I'm a mostly a free-will kinda guy, but I also joke/make half serious remarks when my notoriously bad luck gets in the way. seriously, the stupidest things happen to me >.> But that being said, some stuff happens (usually good) that you can't really explain, you know?

I think most people blame/praise fate when it comes to relationships though.
I mean, the whole fate thing gets overplayed in terms of "finding that someone," but does fate decide when two perfectly compatible people will just randomly meet one day? You hear stories of completely ridiculous occurrences, and not just in Hollywood.

It happened to one of my bosses: he met his wife while stopped at a red light (lol). Someone cut him off and forced him to stop, thus missing the green. Then for some reason he started talking to the woman in the car next to him.

If the guy who cut him off hadn't felt like being a douche that day, my boss would've gone through the light without ever meeting his future wife. Would they have met somewhere else? Would he even have found someone at all? Who knows. Was it fate at work...? I don't know, bros. but it makes a funny story nonetheless. they're still married after 20 years

I mean, I don't really believe in "fate" finding that perfect someone, so I'll just continue what I do! (Though I normally choose to date bitches. Attractive bitches, but bitches nonetheless.)

Uh, yeah. /mindvomit. Take from that what you will!
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#4 Scrimsax

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Posted 06 February 2013 - 06:24 AM

I'm actually planning it to be the theme of one of the Lorekeepers Tales, and is one of the biggest themes of my side project novel.

But yeah. I mean, if it wasn't for one of my friends getting me to join drama club, I never would've met and became friends with a girl who ended up being my connection to one of her friends, who ended happening to live 5 minutes away from me, and who spent 8 amazing months with me.

On the other hand, I also met a girl my sophomore year of high school that I worked for the majority of my highschool career to finally win over at the end of my senior year. Guess which one felt more fulfilling.

I think there are amazing coincidences, but I think it is just as much on us to make us of the opportunities we happen to get.

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#5 Golden Warrior

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Posted 06 February 2013 - 06:30 AM

I'm not a huge fan of the fate thing. Especially when it comes to people saying it was God's will. That's crap. I was talking to someone quite a bit older than me the other day about someone who had died recently, they said "Well, it was God's will that they die." NO! God wouldn't want to take a life you idiot!... and fate when finding a future wife/husband is not true either, in my opinion.

I believe we have free will, some say no. There is no right answer to this one. Free will VS. predestination/fate has been a battle for a good few hundred years no and niether side can win. That's all there is to that one, it depends on your beliefs, 2 different Christians can have completely different views on the matter, that's all to that one.

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#6 Lancer

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Posted 06 February 2013 - 07:12 AM

I think fate is dumb. Whether or not it's true, it feels like an excuse for everything. I'd rather live with the illusion of free will if fate were true, just because life will be happier that way.

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#7 Mercurius

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Posted 06 February 2013 - 02:39 PM

QUOTE (Scrimsax @ Feb 5 2013, 09:25 PM)
"It'll get better eventually."


This kind of logic when it comes to fate bothers me the most.

It assumes that what will come for you is good, when it could easily get worse. There are quite the number of times where people have told me that it can't get any worse than this, and then it does. >_>

And even if I did have some sort of bottled up luck waiting to explode on me for fate to be totally awesome, I don't think it would really be worth the rest. >_> (Unless it's something super contrived like finding a working elixir of immortality + eternal youth or something.)

I believe in judgment of humans through their judgment of fiction, for nothing else tells better of their disposition freed from apprehension.


#8 Rujio

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Posted 06 February 2013 - 04:37 PM

Science would suggest, for now at least, that fate is kind of real. Not so much as destiny or "everything is decided" as much as "time's just an illusion everything at every moment in time (except that there isn't really such a thing as a 'moment' in time hahahahaha) already exists." Science would also suggest that free will doesn't really exist to the extent that we would like to think. Take that for what you will.

In any case, I don't believe that there is such a thing as "destiny" or that there is something I or anyone should inherently be. No "mystical" fate, if you get what I mean.
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#9 bblues

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Posted 06 February 2013 - 04:40 PM

Hm, I like to think there is a bit of both.

Sometimes, events happen and they seem almost preordained.

But at the same time, nothing will just come to you, things only happen if you make them happen. Your decisions will set things in motion just as easily.

#10 boney

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Posted 06 February 2013 - 08:07 PM

And then if you have a one-track mind like me, you have a different view of destiny.

"Each day I work toward my ultimate destiny. Punishment for failure is death, because I can't bear to live in a fountain of endless shame."

My destiny is all I live for, but I chose my own destiny. I'm not gonna let the idea of a gad that may or may not exist decide my destiny for me. That's just ridiculous.

#11 kirant

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Posted 06 February 2013 - 09:58 PM

QUOTE (bblues @ Feb 6 2013, 09:40 AM)
Hm, I like to think there is a bit of both.

Sometimes, events happen and they seem almost preordained.

But at the same time, nothing will just come to you, things only happen if you make them happen. Your decisions will set things in motion just as easily.

I'm not sure what your logic on them is, but I find the concept of preordained events to be a simple human failure of logic. So many events happen that aren't reported that we take for granted that statistically unusual things SHOULD happen. That, plus most of us just fail at basic physics, chemistry, and biology when we read the news.

Let's use Fire Emblem as an example. If we use the true RNG as opposed to the averaged (which hard curves it so that high hit rates hit almost always, low hit rates hit almost never), we find that people can't understand why stuff may go wrong. In simple terms, if you make 7 attacks with 90% chance to hit, you're more likely to have missed one or more of those attacks than have hit all of them. Sounds a little counter intuitive, but that's the statistics of it (0.90^7 < 0.50).

I personally find it difficult to believe in fate due to how they interact with atrocities. Doubly so on the notion of karma.

Did the Jewish people deserve to be systematically compounded (please don't actually answer this - it's rhetorical)? Did the kids at Sandy Hook a fate that ended with them dying so early? Especially on the karmic side...how did they end up deserving that fate?

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#12 bblues

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Posted 06 February 2013 - 10:14 PM

QUOTE (kirant @ Feb 6 2013, 09:58 PM)
QUOTE (bblues @ Feb 6 2013, 09:40 AM)
Hm, I like to think there is a bit of both.

Sometimes, events happen and they seem almost preordained.

But at the same time, nothing will just come to you, things only happen if you make them happen. Your decisions will set things in motion just as easily.

I'm not sure what your logic on them is, but I find the concept of preordained events to be a simple human failure of logic.



I said seem, nothing more. And I was thinking on just a personal level, on the 'I forgot something, and because I went back to get it, I missed the train that got held up for 3 hours'. No, it's not fate, but it feels lucky, that's all.

#13 Cero

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Posted 07 February 2013 - 12:51 AM

QUOTE (Hatless @ Feb 6 2013, 08:39 AM)
QUOTE (Scrimsax @ Feb 5 2013, 09:25 PM)
"It'll get better eventually."


This kind of logic when it comes to fate bothers me the most.

It assumes that what will come for you is good, when it could easily get worse. There are quite the number of times where people have told me that it can't get any worse than this, and then it does. >_>


Jeez, ever heard of optimism?

Well anyways I find that people use fate to explain the improbable/luck. If something has 1% chance of happening then people might say "It must have been fate." Though people could you the "You got lucky." line but from my experiences that line is used more in resentment and not wishing good upon the receiver. Also adding to my low chance statement, people might use the fate thing if they don't want to believe something was by chance. For example say you survive a car crash, some people don't want to see it as themselves getting lucky but as they were supposed to survive. (My second part of this paragraph is all theoretical here) Also some people just don't believe in luck.

I for one do not know where my stance is on all this. I like to think somethings happen for a reason, but I also think somethings happened because of the involved peoples/people's choices were. But I prefer to think some things happen for a reason, especially if they all lead up to one thing.

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#14 Mercurius

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Posted 07 February 2013 - 01:34 AM

Optimism is disgusting when it relies on an assumption of unpredictable pre-scripted events.

I believe in judgment of humans through their judgment of fiction, for nothing else tells better of their disposition freed from apprehension.


#15 Rujio

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Posted 07 February 2013 - 04:05 AM

I always thought optimism was more about the silver lining than actual expectations of what will happen.
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#16 Bacon Hero

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Posted 08 February 2013 - 01:03 AM

Free Will. End of story. God doesn't fate or force us to make the right choices, he made us with free will. We decide our own fate.
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#17 Holy Kensai

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Posted 10 February 2013 - 03:05 PM

Alright. We'll go through this.

MacBeth's downfall was because his wife was a greedy ***** who manipulated him and then killed herself at the first sign of trouble.

Karma isn't real. It's a self-fulfilling prophesy.

God isn't real.

Free will is real. You have the free will to choose what to do next. However every choice you make is just made up of the sum of your previous experiences. Ergo you really only have one choice. So you have the free will to do what your past tells you to.

And your past is made up of interactions governed by the previous experiences of everyone involved. And so forth.

With enough information about someone you could predict what they would do in any given situation.

So free will exists. You have the choice to pick the only option available to you as a person due to the past. Or in other words, free will has created a predetermined path of pseudo-free will.
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#18 arimibn

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Posted 11 February 2013 - 07:30 PM

My god Kensai. Everytime you say something serious, you make me think you reeeeeally need a hug.

I believe in both. Personally, I think that God gave us free will in order to influence our fate. We are bound by his laws. He isn't. Say it's been written that I'll die in a car accident. Say I decide to give water to a stray dog. God may decide to change my fate accordingly. I personally use fate as a means to help me move on. Yes. I do believe that everything happens for a reason. And if something bad happens to me, I tell myself, "It was always destined to happen, so there's not much point in worrying about it." I use that mentality most often when some random unfortunate event happens to me. Like say, I get caught in the rain, or I trip and spill my favorite drink. I tell myself, "Welp. It wasn't meant for me to have it. Time to move on." Rather than being annoyed about it all day.

tl;dr I believe that our free will influences our fates.
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#19 Bacon Hero

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Posted 12 February 2013 - 01:21 AM

Arim is right. Our lives aren't set in stone from birth. We make our own choices with our own free will given to us by God. Everything does happen for a reason, to teach us something that will be useful to us in our future decisions. God gave us all of these things, and he DEFINITELY exists.
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#20 Holy Kensai

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Posted 12 February 2013 - 11:27 PM

Heh. God does not exist. You are free to pretend all you want, but be quiet about it.

What does the bible say about free will?

"O LORD, I know that the way of man is not in himself: it is not in man that walketh to direct his steps. " Jeremiah 10:23

"For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate.... Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified." Romans 8:29-30

Damn. Even your god does not believe in the free will of humans.

Now. Let's focus on what you said. "Everything happens for a reason". Right there. Do you know what the means? Destiny. Not free will. "Everything" also incorporates your decisions. So your post just contradicted itself. "We have free will because destiny".

And arimibn, you use your version of fate as a crutch much in the same way you use your version of your god.
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