I’m not understanding you. If one believes we are here for a purpose (not have a purpose after we are here) then god arranged it, and he did what he did. If we are somehow fated to be born without god, then a second path of meeting would be wildly improbable, even more than the first. My friend’s father was married before the war. To have him be born, his first wife would have to die, he would have to meet his second wife (who I think lived in a different city) and they would have to be motivated to come to the US despite no pressing need. Multiply this by six billion equally unlikely alternatives, and you have what you are proposing. My wife and I would never have met if she hadn’t gone to music camp with a girl who went to MIT, and whose friend’s roommate was a judo student of my freshman and sophmore year hall tutor. Unlikely enough?
Any mechanism making these things happen is close enough to god for all practical purposes.
One’s parents would have been predestined to have sex on a certain day at a certain time, then the sperm (that carried you) race to hit the egg at a certain time, or you wouldn’t be here at all.
Some one once said we all start out life a winner,a happy accident !
Monavis
And I’m not understanding where the disconnect is.
If we are predestined, that doesn’t mean God has to decide everything for us to exist. There is the possiblity, even though it may be unlikely, that the only thing God plans is our birth for an eventual plan that is yet to come.
With your friends parents, the Holocaust was not a requirement for your friends birth, nor was their moving to the US. He could have been born out of wedlock in Europe. Your friends father could have been on a business trip, been in a fight with his wife, never married his first wife, … any number of things. Your friend and you could have never met.
I’m not saying this is the case, but I recognize it as a possibilty. Perhaps I watch too much sci-fi, but haven’t you ever seen those shows where the same character exists in every timeline? Where in one timeline there is no war, in another constant war, but almost always the same people.
I think I see the problem. What do you think makes us us? Do you think that the personalities and looks of children are guaranteed from two parents? What role do you think genetics and environment play?
I think I stated this explicitly above, but putting off sex for even a day will result in a very different child. It seems wildly improbable that under two different timelines any set of parents would have sex at exactly the same time. Even if you think environment plays a major role, that changes too. Perhaps my kids would have had the same environment started a month later, but don’t you think my friend would be a different person growing up in Poland instead of Chicago?
I know in alternate world science fiction you get identical people coming from very different environments, but I think in the real world (if there are alternate universes) you’d never meet your twin, except in a duplicate universe.
I can agree with improbable, because while not likely, its still possible.
And while I have no clue what our purpose is, it is possible that are purpose is solely survival and procreation. Location, personality, etc would then be of little consequence, as would our environment. We don’t have to be nice to survive and procreate.
Unfortuantely, I think in my attempt to say that it is possible that we’re here for some ultimate God given purpose without God designing all the events that have taken place, I’ve diverged the conversation into a nonsensical debate on untestable theory, sorry.
What I should have said was:
I disagree with your assumptions, but assuming, for the time, that they are correct, no I am not worth it. From what little I know of my family history, on my mother’s side of the family tree two major historical events had to occur for me to be here: 1) the colonization of America by Europe and 2) the American Revolution. I’m not sure which was more important because both represent two big changes in my family history, but I have no children, have little impact on improving the world for the common good and the beach I constructed in Freeport, Texas is of little importance when compared to the loss of life that occured as a result of those two events, but perhaps that’s why I question being an engineer so much; because, if all these things lead to my being here, maybe I should be doing something more productive that has more meaning than moving sand around.
Not as possible as my winning the lottery. 
I agree that if this is the purpose, there are no problems.
For all you know your beach inspired someone to fall in love, with the result being a person who solved world hunger. Who knows? When there are really specific purposes, all bets are off. But I think we’re in basic agreement now. I don’t think anyone can live up to the horrors in history that had a part in producing them, if they were deliberate. Being the accidental byproduct of these events is a different story entirely.
Nice talking to you. I think we’ve converged.