Fate and Destiny: a philosophy thread

[Eliza Hodgkins 1812]

Originally Posted by lizziebith

Caminante, no hay camino...Se hace camino al andar. -- Antonio Machado (1875-1939)

From a poem I read about 10 years ago... the translation is, roughly: "walker, there is no road...we build the road by walking."

That just got my little bird heart beating very, very fast. Beautiful!

[lizziebith]

Don't laugh, but I used to "pray" for faith -- but it has never come. So I have to believe that I'm just not wired that way. Still and all I think I do okay without it. I have a hyperdeveloped sense of right and wrong, and I'm the goofiest, ****-eyed-est optimist I know. And I don't believe in an afterlife or reward of any kind for it. It's just the only way I know how to be. Goodness is its own reward, and life is infinitely interesting. I don't think there's a plan, and my story will only become a narrative superimposed upon my life, if anyone cares, after it's done.

I take only memories, and leave only footprints. I ramble therefore I am.

EDIT: Hilarious! Cockeyed got bleeped!

[Kevy Baby]

Originally Posted by Not Afraid

They live inside my head.

Do they come to you in your bed?

[Not Afraid]

They’re coming to arrest me, oh no.

[Moonliner]

The "Big Picture" eh?

Who are we, why are we, what is god and what is fate?

Wow not easy to address is it? But little that is worth doing is easy....

I've always considered myself an Atheist. The idea that the "Universe" (aka God, Allah, Buda, etc...) gives a rats posterior about me, who I am and what I do always struck me as way way too optimistic. The universe just is.

The same with fate and predetermination. If it's predetermined it had to be planned and frankly who has the time for that sort of thing? Some all powerful being is out there working to infinity so that today, for no apparent reason, I choose to put on my left shoe before my right rather than the other way round? I can't buy into that.

However it cannot be denied that many very reasonable people seem to swear by the higher power concept in one form or another. So it does seem a bit rude (not to mention egotistical) to just blow them ALL off as delusional.

So trying to be a "polite" atheists would seem to lead one down the path to being an agnostic but I've always seen agnostics as wishy-washy and frankly a bit on the sissy side. Not able to decide one way or another. I'd never make a good agnostic so I had to pass on that.

Which left me looking for a reasonable universal doctrine that I can practice. One that I can live with inside myself and at the same time not be perceived by the faithful as attacking their beliefs with my beliefs. It took some time, but I finally decided. I'm an Apatheist. God? No God? Fate or just luck? I don't really care. Let's talk about where we'd like to go to lunch instead.

[Not Afraid]

Was it fate or destiny that I downloaded Cheap Trick's "Dream Police" from iTunes tonight?

[wendybeth]

Originally Posted by €uroMeinke

...Perhaps the benefit of Faith, is that it allows you to pass along those things you have no control over to an entity that presumably does. You no longer have to worry, and can be relieved that someone is doing something about the perceived injustice, evil, and bad hair days of the world.

Now, I have a different view in that regards. I think that it's much easier to just believe that it ends and is entirely over with your last breath. No more worries, nada, and you won't care, because your power source has been switched off and you no longer think. You no longer are.

Belief in the continuance after death of one's self brings with it a whole new set of responsibilities. If you believe in reincarnation, you are living your current life in accordance with how you want to live your next life. If you belong to the typical Christian-type religion, you are encouraged to follow a lifestyle that fits within your church's definition of 'righteous', or face going south for eternity. There are few religions that don't have a code or set of requirements one must follow in order to gain whatever it is they are promising in the afterlife. It seems to me that being an atheist must be freeing in a way, although I'm sure it has it's downside as well. (Mind you, I am not talking about behavior, because most atheists and agnostics I know are the most ethical and moral people around- they don't need to be threatened with eternal damnation to be good, they just are). It's also harder to reconcile injustice, because we often don't see karmic payback in this life and people get away with horrible things all the time. This probably causes more crisis of faith than just about anything else, especially since we aren't allowed to go vigilante and stuff.

[€uroMeinke]

I guess I was thinking more in the face of the unknown. With faith, you needed trouble yourself trying to figure it out - it is simply God's Will, or workinging in mysterious ways, etc. I guess the rules or moral codes fall out of that in their attempts to put something concrete around those unknowns.

I think the most troubled souls are those that follow whatever dogma (religious or atheistic) without actually embracing those beliefs.

[wendybeth]

You're right- it's a workout actually wading through the dogma and trying to arrive at a truth that works for you. It's much easier to blindly follow or not question at all. I suppose one can question too much and just wind up confused about everything, but I respect that far more than I do someone who dogmatically sees things in black and white and refuses to even try and look at things differently.

[alphabassettgrrl]

Dang, ISM, you said everything I could have, only better! Was it fate that I didn't read this until after you posted?

The thing that stands out most is you share my belief that time is happening all at once. It's rare that I find somebody who will consider that.

I believe we create the world around us. My husband challenged me on that, asking me if the world really was flat and the center of the universe when everybody believed that to be true. I couldn't answer that, though my initial thought is that yes, somehow, it had to be flat. I'm reading a book on quantum physics and the "observer effect" seems to bring us back to humans creating our world by thought. At the very least, we create the kind of interactions that we choose. If I smile at somebody while shopping at the mall, hopefully their day is just a tiny bit brighter, and they may pass that on to the next person or two. Tiny sparks, true, but it's at least on the preferred side of the balance sheet.

I believe we choose the circumstances of our life. If I had a really good life in a particular circumstance, one would think I would choose it again. I would meet the same kind of people there as in the past, hopefully, so the same souls would be drawn together again.

I believe coincidence is more than chance. I'm not quite sure what it means, but it means something.

I do believe in a higher power, though it could be created by man's consistant belief and need. The Norse (I am told) believed the gods changed with man and his belief. This definitely makes sense to me.