Fate?
 

Do you believe in fate?

I read an article http://www.marinij.com/marin/ci_4911469 this morning and heard a tv snippet on it as well. The tree was 300 years old and gave way and crushed a woman as she slept in her bed.

Clearly there were a lot of factors at work to bring this event about. Some people feel that there is a fate which moves things inexorably to particular conclusions.

Some, such as Traveler, see the "hand of God" in such events.

I tend to be somewhere in the middle. While I don't belive in fate or destiny, there are some things which just seem so improbable that you wonder. "Was it her time to go?" Certainly it was once the roots of the tree let go.

So the question to gd is "How fatalistic are you and what about?"

Re: Fate?
 

No element of fate at all, just like it's not fate when I succeed or fail on a dice roll.

Re: Fate?
 

I can't imagine you rolling dice.

Re: Fate?
 

How else am I supposed to do leadership tests?

Re: Fate?
 

Fate? No.

I solemly believe we carve our own destiny. There are no greater powers acting outside our knowing, what happens is a result of our own doing.

Re: Fate?
 

I don't believe in fate, otherwise I'd have married a supermodel with loads of cash instead of my wife...although maybe that is my fate.

Re: Fate?
 

That story seems not to suggest any sort of 'fate' but merely the old adage that 'shit happens'.

There are probably half a dozen scenarios where the woman would have survived (e.g. if she woke up before it fell to get a drink of water, if she was on holiday at the time, working nights that week, the tree fell another direction etc). We can try to attach some great meaning that none of those occurred but what's the point?

Sure, perhaps if your loved one has just died you don't necessarily want to think of it as a meaningless pointless death, but in the cold light of day that's certainly what it seems.

Re: Fate?
 

Determinism in what sense?

Re: Fate?
 

“Wouldn't it be much worse if life were fair and all the terrible things that happen to us, come because actually deserve them? So now I take comfort in the general hostility and unfairness of the Universe”

Marcus Cole .. quote from Babylon 5

I'm with him on the subject

Re: Fate?
 

you never let me have any fun :(

(besides clearly it's dante who oughtn't play dice ... at least not for money ...)

(besides besides horn's turned into a prententious git hasn't he.)

Re: Fate?
 

I don't believe in not believing in things.

Re: Fate?
 

So what do you like to tell yourself you believe in?

Re: Fate?
 

We can talk about fate here my internet chum!

Re: Fate?
 

We shall see. Also won't you feel horribly inadequate when your firstborn child makes it to second base before you do?





We have seen! Not once, not twice, but thrice in fact.

Not just one of them but many.

Re: Fate?
 

Won't horn will have to have sex anyway to have children to get to second base before him? :confused:

Re: Fate?
 

No, just jack off into a tube I believe.







Not just any old tube mind horn, this one will need to be a specific sort of tube in a specific sort of place!

Re: Fate?
 

I look at fate as the intersection of nature and nurture.

You were born with particular genes which effect how you will react to certain things. Then things start to happen to you that shape the person you become. There may be some mystical point where free will comes into play. However, I am always skeptical as to just how free our free will is. I would accept that the variables are so myriad that determining the outcome of most things in life is virtually impossible.

Re: Fate?
 

So you're saying it will have to be a very small tube then.

Re: Fate?
 

Well I can perhaps agree that the terminology is not perfect, but I use them loosely to define a simple concept.

You are right in saying that no action guarentees the result you are seeking, but I do believe that almost anything is achievable if you want it badly enough. It all comes down to how you work the system and plain old persistance.

Re: Fate?
 

fate, no
but I do believe we're unable to control our "destiny" tho
since it's not fate that limits us but society

Re: Fate?
 

I'm a marxist, and henceforth I base my life on reason and science, not fate.

MATERIALISM FTW!

Re: Fate?
 

well if you want to put it that way, society can be controlled both directly and indirectly.. thereby shaping your destiny.

Re: Fate?
 

How very fatalistic.

Re: Fate?
 

only if you're a puppetmaster :(

Re: Fate?
 

Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Marxist Bases Life on Reason and Science. Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!

Re: Fate?
 

It's not fatalistic, you dumb head.

It's dialectical you know. :p

Re: Fate?
 

Basing your life on anything is fatalistic!

Re: Fate?
 

At least I don't base it around Guinness. :D

Re: Fate?
 

I don't believe in fate, at least not on an individual level. Perhaps mankind as a species is fated to greatness, at least in the long term. Although in the long long term entropy wins and all that's left are a few cooling cinders.

It might be interesting though. :)