fate vs. coincidence

@Mykael Deschain,

I think they can co-exist. Assuming that Fate exists, then it may be impossible to completely understand the purpose of everything. If we are ignorant of our own destiny, that doesn't matter. A person can just live their life without knowing it's exact purpose, and to that person, everything is coincidence. But if somebody else gained infinite understanding of absolutely everything, they would realise that every tiny thing had a purpose, and what appeared to be coincidence was actually part of Fate.
And perhaps Fate will decide that it wants us to deny it's own existence... who are we to argue? It's Fate, after all...

@Welshie,

Welshie wrote:

I think they can co-exist. Assuming that Fate exists, then it may be impossible to completely understand the purpose of everything. If we are ignorant of our own destiny, that doesn't matter. A person can just live their life without knowing it's exact purpose, and to that person, everything is coincidence. But if somebody else gained infinite understanding of absolutely everything, they would realise that every tiny thing had a purpose, and what appeared to be coincidence was actually part of Fate.
And perhaps Fate will decide that it wants us to deny it's own existence... who are we to argue? It's Fate, after all...

If you believe in Fate, then you believe that regardless of what you do, or what anyone does, what will happen will happen. That means, whether or not you decided to write the post to which I am replying, that post would be written, and whether or not I decided to reply, I would have replied to the post. Do you believe those things?

@Mykael Deschain,

Assuming that Fate exists then I couldn't have not decided to write that post, I was always going to decide it and it was always going to be written. You were always going to decide to reply, and were always going to reply. This would have been true even a thousand years ago; and whatever is going to happen in a thousand years time, is going to happen. This is of course assuming that Fate exists, which if I'm honest I do believe in but I'm not going to take it for granted in philosophical debate and would be perfectly willing to then say 'assuming that Fate does not exist, then it's all coincidence', but I didn't think I needed to say that as it would be obvious.

@Mykael Deschain,

Fate is something that cannot be judged except retrospectively.

I mean even if there IS such a thing as fate, it cannot possibly matter if we don't know it in advance.

As for coincidence, this is something that people in general do not understand at all. I was thinking about this the other day when talking to some patients about end of life decisionmaking and found that they derived significance from a loved one dying at Christmastime.

If everyone were equally likely to die on any given day of the year, then 1 of every 365 people would die on Christmas. But Christmastime is a period, not just a day -- so if you take the, say, week surrounding Christmas, that's a 1 in 52 chance of dying at christmastime. Considering that MORE people die in the winter than in other months (all cause mortality is higher), that number is actually higher.

Throw in the possibility of dying on your birthday, dying on easter, dying on July 4, dying on your anniversary, etc, etc, and the fact becomes that by sheer coincidence you've got an EXCELLENT chance of dying on a day that has some sort of significance.

If you've got a classroom with 36 students, then there is a 10% chance that any two will have the same birthday.

And the story goes on and on. The fact is that any individual coincidence is low probability -- but there is a high probability that there will be some coincidence at any time.

@Aedes,

I believe what people call coincidence is just our perception to explain numbers to big to make sense of.
Its all about numbers and patterns. If a pattern is to in depth or spread apart, we dont like to recognize it. Actually most of the time I think we cant recognize it.

@Mykael Deschain,

Perhaps a clue can be found in the fact that we always use Fate in the past tense. "They were fated to meet," "It was his fate to become Emperor," but not "They will be fated to fall in love." This would seem to imply that what we call "Fate" is primarily an attempt to account for a causal relationship we find in past events. We pick out a chain of events and want to say that each contributed to some final state step-by-step; but often we will ignore all the subsidiary causes of each step, or link, in the chain. "John was fated to eat the cookie" seems a far step from saying John was hungry and he smelled the cookies in the oven, and ate one of them as soon as they cooled.

@Mykael Deschain,

I find fate to be a very strange thing. It makes me feel as if we are part of a story, and I just can't believe it. What is the point of doing anything if everything is already planned out?

As for fate and coincidence coexisting, how would it be decided what outcomes are fate and what outcomes are coincidence? And, was that decision fate as well?

@autumnramc,

autumnramc wrote:

I find fate to be a very strange thing. It makes me feel as if we are part of a story, and I just can't believe it. What is the point of doing anything if everything is already planned out?

As for fate and coincidence coexisting, how would it be decided what outcomes are fate and what outcomes are coincidence? And, was that decision fate as well?

Yea i guess in the end its a rather silly question due to the fact that the outcomes are the same for both. So its a matter of perspective based upon how much control you perceive to have over your life...

Though i was talking about this with my friend who believes in a Christian god who is an all knowing god.. To this ask; if he is all knowing then he must know our exact path we will take in life right? and she responds with; well yes but he's given us free will...

This contradicts itself right?

@Mykael Deschain,

Mykael_Deschain wrote:

To this ask; if he is all knowing then he must know our exact path we will take in life right? and she responds with; well yes but he's given us free will...

This contradicts itself right?

That's not the only thing that contradicts itself. Omnipotence and morality contradict one another. Why? Because true omnipotence, i.e. infinite power, means there is no distinction between what one wants and what one does. For God to want us to be good is for us to be good. For God to want the night to be dark is for the night to be dark. Thus, God cannot simultaneously be omnipotent yet relinquish power over our actions and decisions.

@Mykael Deschain,

Mykael_Deschain wrote:

Though i was talking about this with my friend who believes in a Christian god who is an all knowing god.. To this ask; if he is all knowing then he must know our exact path we will take in life right? and she responds with; well yes but he's given us free will...

This contradicts itself right?

I would say no... if God is omnipotent that can be used to question free will but not omniscience that doesn't contradict it at all. If God is all knowing then just because he knows what actions we are going to take doesn't mean it wasn't our choice to take them.

@Welshie,

So, if the almighty God does exist, he can just see into our futures?

@Welshie,

Hmmm...

Maybe the true question I want to know is if fate and free will can coincide.

anyone?

@Mykael Deschain,

I don't think that it is possible for fate and free will to coincide.
If our lives were fated we might feel as if we had free will, but we wouldn't because our live's decisions would be planned out beforehand.
And, if we truly had free will we would have the ability to pick and choose our paths without any fated interferences.

@autumnramc,

Fate is compatible with will; we can do something because we will it, but nevertheless be fated to will it. It is not, however, compatible with free will.

@Mykael Deschain,

I believe in fate but i know i have free will too.I do make choices in my life,some right,some wrong but they are MY desicions.There are things happen in my life that i can't control,like for example finding out that someone i love has just had an accident and died over the phone.Now,THIS is fate.I didn't want it,i didn't and would never choose something like that.However,how i'm going to respond to this event is still my call.At that point,my free will interefers.I either choose to cry for months,do something to hurt the person who cause the accident,maybe even go so far as kill myself...OR i choose to accept it thinking everyone will die one day,mourn for a while and continue my life with other people that i still love...

@Mykael Deschain,

Nashloke, I think you are missing something huge there. You make choices for yourself which are not fate, but things which you cannot control are not fate, right? Someone has made a choice which lead to that action, however, even though it wasn't you. So some non-fate related action has been carried out by someone else, hence it is not fate, but someone else's free will. Even death and accidents are related to someone's choice to do something, for instance the driver of the car caused the car to be in the place where it crashed etc.

I don't believe in fate but some of the replies in this thread have made me think, with the idea that you can choose but your very choice will always be predetermined...

However, I look at it from a different angle. How could it logically exist? Is it a force, and in that case, how does it work invisibly, intangibly? Etc. Isn't it just a step between not believing and believing in God? There is no solid proof for it so fate is all just speculation.

@Mykael Deschain,

Fate and coincidence are silly terms, obsolete notions.

Things are not coincidence unless one has had a desire previous; frankly, coincidences don't exist, things just are. If something happens in your favor randomly, who the **** cares but you? Noone! The universe doesn't judge. It was your personal desire, and if it happened, it had a potentiality to happen. Ouuuuu, it had to be coincidenceeee. Look at this sick little mystical term we've used to try to 'describe' events that fall to our favor; how arrogant is that?

Fate is just a clouded word to attach meaning to our existence. There's nothing mystical about our lives, and buttering our existence up with some elusive deterministic hand is just foolish. People, don't fall into that common religious error, "Oh, I have free will, I make my own choices, but but but, everything is still predeterminded by God!". Either you believe things are predetermined, there is a 'divine' plan, or you believe you are making your choices and in that case there is no 'divine' plan. If you believe in fate, you believe in some sort of deterministic hand, otherwise who's choosing the fate... what makes it the ultimate plan? Frankly, I find the word "fate" equally as arrogant; we are pushing profound meaning onto our lives, feeding our ego ever so rapidly.

The sooner we realize that our personal desires have NOTHING to do with the universe - the universe doesn't care! (and I don't mean this as in a negative manner... it frankly can't care, it has no capacity to care, it doesn't deal with petty human emotions) - the better off our species with be.

@ItMustBeKate,

ItMustBeKate wrote:

Nashloke, I think you are missing something huge there. You make choices for yourself which are not fate, but things which you cannot control are not fate, right? Someone has made a choice which lead to that action, however, even though it wasn't you. So some non-fate related action has been carried out by someone else, hence it is not fate, but someone else's free will. Even death and accidents are related to someone's choice to do something, for instance the driver of the car caused the car to be in the place where it crashed etc.

I don't believe in fate but some of the replies in this thread have made me think, with the idea that you can choose but your very choice will always be predetermined...

However, I look at it from a different angle. How could it logically exist? Is it a force, and in that case, how does it work invisibly, intangibly? Etc. Isn't it just a step between not believing and believing in God? There is no solid proof for it so fate is all just speculation.

Yes,it's someone else's choice but it becomes my fate.I didn't choose my family and they didn't choose to have me as their daughter.It just happened this way.Noone would choose to be born handicapped,just like noone would choose to raise a handicapped baby.

@Nashloke,

Nashloke wrote:

Yes,it's someone else's choice but it becomes my fate.I didn't choose my family and they didn't choose to have me as their daughter.It just happened this way.Noone would choose to be born handicapped,just like noone would choose to raise a handicapped baby.

Fate does not become, what are you talking about? The most commonly used definition of this silly term implies a determined hand, an intelligence greater, destiny ie. what's supposed to happen!

You're using the term in light of key events that make you consider. Oh, this profound thing happened in my life, it must be fate! I'm sure you don't consider fate when you take a ****, do you? Do you care if your turd hits the back of the toilet seat in just the right way? No! You most likely think that's disgusting, so why be choosy when to focus on FATE! I'll tell you why: Because the word feeds our ego. I mean, just look at the two examples you gave... emotion guided you to choosing a handicapped person, one who you have sympathy for, and also sympathy for a family that has to raise he/she. Why not use these examples: No one chose to not be handicapped, no one chose to have all ten fingers. It kind of takes the fun out of applying the term "Fate" when the events are not so profound, doesn't it? And since we individually determine what is profound through the reality we construct ... that should give you some indication this is all a pile of horse manure.

As the late Carlin said, "It's all bullshit folks, and it's bad for ya"

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