"Everything happens for a reason"

[Silent3]

Poll question: "Everything happens for a reason"

A lot of people seem to be fond of saying, "everything happens for a reason", or the related concept, "there are no coincidences". These sayings are most often invoked after something bad happens -- everything from an individual losing a job to millions being killed by a natural disaster.

What do you think these reasons are, if you think there are any reasons? To keep the choice labels in the poll short, I'll elaborate below what each poll choice signifies:



God's Plan: You figure that no matter what happens, no matter how bad, God (or some other great supernatural force) has some important Purpose for all things that happen, even terrible suffering, even if we can't understand it, it's all meant to turn out for the best.

God's Judgment: Much like above, but with good things being rewards and bad things being punishments -- people get what they deserve.

Personal choice/what you attract: Consciously aware of it or not, people choose everything that happens to them, and/or "attract" all good and bad things to them via their thoughts and desires. This is equally true for getting a promotion at work or having to watch someone kill your child, or even for being the child who gets killed -- ALL life experiences are chosen or attracted by those who experience them.

Powerful people: Most, if not all, of the suffering in the world is due to the greedy and the power hungry, who either do not care what harm they cause, or even deliberately cause much of the harm in the world because they see opportunities for profit and power in the results.

Shit happens - predestination: Everything is unfolding the only way it can based on physical laws. The "reasons" things happen are not human-value reasons, like gathering particular life experiences, punishments and rewards, etc.

Shit happens - roll of the dice: Like the above, everything is unfolding according to physical laws, but there are random elements (not controlled by human minds or by gods or Fate or anything of that sort) which make outcomes unpredictable.

Shit happens - some free will: Like the above, but people have partial, not complete, control over their lives, sometimes other people's lives too, in some way that somehow qualifies as neither random nor predetermined.



If your response would be a mix of one or more of these things, please just pick one choice that's closest to what you think matters most.

[dmallind]

1. I went with some free will - but sophists can challenge even that

We don't know enough about brain plasticity and neurology yet to really say whether biology itself is deterministic. I may have had no choice at all in my life, as any decision I perceive myself as having made could in fact have been an inescapable aftereffect of my specific brain chemistry, and same for everyone else.

However I say to those sophists that this is only a problem if you posit a "you" outside of and separate from your brain chemistry. Some kind of ephemeral soul or psyche. Since I do not, my brain chemistry and my "will" are inseparable and identical, so that even if in some fantastic future world a scan at birth could have calculated in advance every "decision" I would make, it would still be my "will" making those decisions.

[Silent3]

9. I'm a bit of a fence sitter about free will myself

I function as if such a thing as "free will" exists. The feeling that I actually get to make decisions about things is strong, but the more I focus in on what exactly "free will" means, it's hard to figure what exactly is left after you rule out predetermination, sheer randomness, or a "basic nature" (which would just be another form of predetermination).

Of course, if I decide to believe in free will, but there really is no such thing, it's not like I had a choice in the matter anyway. :)

[dmallind]

10. But even with predetermination, the bifurcation seems unnecessary to me

I just don't understand why people can say that if our brain chemistry dictates our decisions (along with other factors outside our control) that means we have no free will. To me there is no "I" separate from my brain. Everything I think or feel or hope comes from the brain, so at the very worst those selling determinism can only say that we understand free will better and can ,aybe one day even predict it, not that it doesn't exist. The way my neurons and synapses etc work IS my will, and hence is me.

[Silent3]

13. Because I feel there's an ill-defined...

...perhaps undefinable, concept that people mean when they talk about "free will" -- perhaps it's a meaningless concept, but it's one that seems not only meaningful but very important.

It's the idea that there's something more, when you stand at the precipice of a decision, especially an important decision, something that has to more free than an inevitable consequence of the chemical and physical state of your brain, yet more constrained and purposeful than a roll of the dice, something between those things without being a simple amalgam of the two, like a strong tendency with a bit of a chance for random variation.

Scientifically I don't believe in anything like what I'm trying to get at above. I'd never try to logically argue for anything about the nature of human behavior based on this. This ill-defined concept of free will, however, is the best I can come at expressing the emotional quality of feeling like I have free will, and the emotional response to other people acting in ways I consider either good or bad based on their free will.

[dtexdem]

11. We can't prove we have some free will, but ...

if we don't, we have no control how we answer the poll anyway. ;-)

[dmallind]

12. There is that - not my fault if I'm wrong! NT

[Silent3]

2. By the way, for sake of argument here...

...I'm considering chaos (sensitive dependence on initial conditions, impracticality of sufficient computational and measurement accuracy to make exact physical predictions) to be a separate issue from "true" randomness, which would essentially be effect without cause of any kind.

[hamsterjill]

3. I went with "Powerful People" and here's why

To me, it's not that the powerful people cause the suffering, but the fact that they have the means and the opportunity to do something about all of the suffering, and choose not to act.

They pretend not to see it, and hope it all goes away.

[LWolf]

4. Other: a combination of most on the list.

[Ichingcarpenter]

5. I agree to a certain extent

Needs an all of the above vote.


I haven't voted yet because I didn't like the totality of each choice
and the box it put you in.

[Political_Junkie]

6. All of the above.

nt

[proteus_lives]

7. Combination.

It's not just one.

Sometimes you can turn shit into gold or you can do everything right and still lose.

It's like a game of cards. You may not choose the cards but can still decide how to play the hand.

[Edweird]

8. Shit happens.

I won't date a woman that utters "everything happens for a reason". Everything DOES NOT happen for a reason - there is no reason good enough for what happened to me in my childhood.

[Silent3]

14. Hmmmm.... no votes for options 1 or 2 yet.

I get the feeling those scores would be way ahead if this poll was on Free Republic. :)

[InvisibleTouch]

15. My closest match is "Personal Choice/You Attract"...

...though one could ask, "Why would anyone attract horrible circumstances to their lives?" Well, I can think of at least two explanations: One, people get into bad habits of thinking, perhaps having learned them in a pre-verbal stage from their own parents, and that perpetuates itself. Two: all experience is valuable to the collective consciousness of the Universe, and some might choose to have certain experiences for the sake of their own soul's growth, as well as for the sake of adding to the collective experience. (For the record I *don't* believe in "karma" as it's commonly understood ... that suffering beings are paying for crimes from a past life. There may well be some past-life influence in the mix - bad habits of thinking, again - but it's self-generated and not a punishment sent from on-high.)

As to "Everything happens for a reason," I don't like that phrase. It puts me in mind of some detached sky-god capriciously pulling strings and playing chess. I think we're far more empowered than that. However I do believe that "All things happen as they should" (which may superficially sound the same as "for a reason", but to me is very very different), or else it wouldn't be happening. When faced with horrible tragedies in both personal life and in the world, that's very hard to keep in mind and accept, but I try to remind myself of it. It *doesn't* mean we're to resign ourselves to suffering and injustice ... it just means we approach the situation from a whole different mindset. The first step in affecting change is to acknowledge and accept the situation as it is (rather than burning energy being outraged and upset), to realize that "things happen as they should" - and *then* to say, Well, I personally don't like it, what can I do to change it? And when you take effective action to bring about a positive change (positive from your perspective; actually neutral from the standpoint of the Universe), then that too has happened as it should.

So okay, this response gets "out there" and abstract, but when you ask a question like this, you can expect that. :)

[Silent3]

16. That view has a nasty "blame the victim"...

...feeling to me. To look at someone who is suffering and think, "Hey, this is what they wanted" or "This is what should happen" seems very cruel.

If you had proof that the universe works this way, it would be one thing, but you don't really know, and have no way to confirm, the concept that there's any sort of "should" behind the way things turn out.

The first step in affecting change is to acknowledge and accept the situation as it is (rather than burning energy being outraged and upset), to realize that "things happen as they should"

That's a contradiction. If I happen to decide to "burn energy being outraged and upset" then THAT also has to be one of those things that "happens as it should".

Well, I personally don't like it, what can I do to change it?

If whatever happens is what should happen, choice is meaningless. Whatever choices I make, the outcome is what "should" happen -- which entails either an incredibly ineffective degree of choice or a very weak, to the point of meaninglessness, idea of "should". If you there are no even hypothetical circumstances under which you classify a real outcome as something that shouldn't have happened, to say that something "should" have happened is to say absolutely nothing of consequence at all, a mere voicing of circular logic.