# Do You Believe Everything Happens For A Reason
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-believe-everything-happens-for-a-reason/266215
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion
**Created:** [September 26, 2004, 11:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-believe-everything-happens-for-a-reason/266215 "2004-09-26T23:39:00Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Alice\_The\_Goon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alice_The_Goon)
#### Post date: [September 26, 2004, 11:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-believe-everything-happens-for-a-reason/266215/1 "2004-09-26T23:39:00Z")
I used to be a big proponent of this theory. As I get older, though, it’s going the way of “What goes around, comes around”- the fact is, plenty of mean, selfish people still enjoy great success and personal happiness. Look at Pol Pot, he never got what was coming to _him_, now did he?
As I get older, I’m coming closer and closer to being an atheist. I still consider myself agnostic, but I can see the day when I don’t believe in anything metaphysical anymore.
Do you personally believe that things happen as part of some grand design? Do you have any related anecdotes?
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### Author:  [@Ace309](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ace309)
#### Post date: [September 26, 2004, 11:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-believe-everything-happens-for-a-reason/266215/2 "2004-09-26T23:40:57Z")
No, but if believing that everything happens for a reason allows someone to rework what they do in order to achieve a desired result or (to a lesser degree) simply find comfort in a bad situation, then I’m not going to argue.
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### Author:  [@Ephemera](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ephemera)
#### Post date: [September 26, 2004, 11:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-believe-everything-happens-for-a-reason/266215/3 "2004-09-26T23:47:38Z")
Nope. Nothing has a reason to exist, let alone happen. It just does.
Life is what you make of it.
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### Author:  [@Mr.Blue\_Sky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Blue_Sky)
#### Post date: [September 27, 2004, 12:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-believe-everything-happens-for-a-reason/266215/4 "2004-09-27T00:06:42Z")
If you felt things did happen for a reason or were part of a grand plan, you’d go insane trying to figure out the logic.
Recently, another Doper asked the same question after some people close to her (people who _shouldn’t_ be suffering - they were nice people) were suffering and dying from horrible diseases while she was going through life relatively unscathed.
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### Author:  [@Jayn\_Newell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jayn_Newell)
#### Post date: [September 27, 2004, 12:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-believe-everything-happens-for-a-reason/266215/5 "2004-09-27T00:51:46Z")
Less “Everything happens for a reason” and more “There’s a lesson to be learned” (sometimes). Though I do believe that some things are predetermined before birth, it’s still to help your spirituality grow in the end.
And besides, it’s just easier to learn and grow when things go haywire than to dwell on them.
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### Author:  [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)
#### Post date: [September 27, 2004, 1:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-believe-everything-happens-for-a-reason/266215/6 "2004-09-27T01:07:34Z")
Yes, but all for the same reason – that the universe exists.
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### Author:  [@Ephemera](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ephemera)
#### Post date: [September 27, 2004, 1:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-believe-everything-happens-for-a-reason/266215/7 "2004-09-27T01:22:38Z")
> [@Jayn\_Newell](#):
>
> …I do believe that some things are predetermined before birth…
Besides death and, if you live long enough, taxes, what else is preordained?
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### Author:  [@dangermom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dangermom)
#### Post date: [September 27, 2004, 1:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-believe-everything-happens-for-a-reason/266215/8 "2004-09-27T01:25:06Z")
My thoughts: some of this, some of that. Some things–but only some–happen because God wants us to learn something. Some because people are human and make choices that have consequences. Some because the world is like that.
I do think that God, or people, can get good things to come from bad situations or bad choices. But then, you might have to be willing to accept that, or learn from it, or something; if someone refuses to let anything good come from the situation, then it likely won’t.
I don’t think that bad people will necessarily have bad stuff happen to them–thus the old phrase “flourishing like the green bay tree”–but then, they do have to live with being themselves–possibly even after they die. Would anyone want to be Pol Pot, even if he hasn’t been punished?
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### Author:  [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qadgop_the_Mercotan)
#### Post date: [September 27, 2004, 1:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-believe-everything-happens-for-a-reason/266215/9 "2004-09-27T01:35:22Z")
Sure. Not necessarily for a good reason, though.
On the whole, I subscribe to **Boyo Jim** ’s interpretation.
I think that often we can make good things come out of bad events because said event triggers us to reassess what we’re doing and make changes.
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### Author:  [@Sublight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sublight)
#### Post date: [September 27, 2004, 2:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-believe-everything-happens-for-a-reason/266215/10 "2004-09-27T02:58:23Z")
I believe in cause and effect, although the causes are often so numerous and minute that the effects are often beyond our predictive capabilities.
I don’t believe that things are predestined, planned out, or acting in accordance with a karmic balance.
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### Author:  [@Mirror\_Image\_egamI\_rorriM](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mirror_Image_egamI_rorriM)
#### Post date: [September 27, 2004, 3:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-believe-everything-happens-for-a-reason/266215/11 "2004-09-27T03:22:59Z")
I think Terry Pratchett phrased it very well. “Things happen. What the hell.”
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### Author:  [@Jayn\_Newell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jayn_Newell)
#### Post date: [September 27, 2004, 11:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-believe-everything-happens-for-a-reason/266215/12 "2004-09-27T11:24:51Z")
> [@Aesiron](#):
>
> Besides death and, if you live long enough, taxes, what else is preordained?
Still death, but death of a child. Some relationships as well. Maybe other things. I’m not privy to the will of God (or whatever divine entity there is). For me it matters more that you can learn something from a bad experience than that some things you agreed to before being born. If they’re going to happen anyways, I don’t see the point in wondering about it.
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### Author:  [@Shirley\_Ujest](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shirley_Ujest)
#### Post date: [September 27, 2004, 11:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-believe-everything-happens-for-a-reason/266215/13 "2004-09-27T11:40:18Z")
I think things happen for a reason.
The gaffs, the accidents, the humilitation, front row seat to some public boo boo, the partial news stories of relative insignificance we catch but cannot ever forget: Are all lessons in super condensed form from the University of Life. Cliff’s Notes On Reality. Pay attention people.
\*Everyday there is a lesson. \* Only if you open your eyes and listen with your ears. And shut the hell up.
Sometimes the test on what you learn (patience, compassion, how not to behave, how to fix something, child/inlaw/boss handling skills…) isn’t for years some come.
Remember kiddies, _everyone has walked in the Valley of Shit in their lives._
Very few learn the lesson and fewer help those who are mired in the Valley with the monkeys flinging poo at them.
\*Our role in this universe is to learn to improve ourselves, learn the Life Lesson. \*
Some times you are getting poo flung at you and sometimes you are carrying an umbrella reaching down to help someone up from the muck, avoiding a feces grenade.
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### Author:  [@elfbabe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elfbabe)
#### Post date: [September 27, 2004, 12:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-believe-everything-happens-for-a-reason/266215/14 "2004-09-27T12:07:02Z")
What **Qadgop** said. (Funny how that happens…)
If there weren’t a reason for it, it wouldn’t _happen_, and I’m a little bit too literal-minded to fully dismiss that answer. It is, however, certainly possible for much more good to arise from events than might be originally apparent. Everything can be used as a lesson or an opportunity, but that doesn’t mean it happened in order to be one.
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### Author:  [@astorian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astorian)
#### Post date: [September 27, 2004, 12:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-believe-everything-happens-for-a-reason/266215/15 "2004-09-27T12:58:04Z")
Another 2 cents from a believing Catholic.
Do all things happen for a reason? Yes, but very rarely because God willed it. Most of the things that happen in our lives, good AND bad, are the result of choices that human beings make.
If we make the wrong choices, we can hurt ourselves or (more tragically) innocent third parties. That’s an inevitable result of the free will God gave us. It doesn’t follow that the tragic results were God’s will, or that what happens is a necessary part of His divine plan.
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### Author:  [@hlanelee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hlanelee)
#### Post date: [September 27, 2004, 1:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-believe-everything-happens-for-a-reason/266215/16 "2004-09-27T13:19:46Z")
I would refer you to the book of **Job** in the Bible, if you are so inclined. Job had every thing that a man would desire: wealth, family, and health. On what amounts to a “bar bet” between God and Satan, Job was made to lose everything and suffer immense pain to prove that he would remain faithful to the Lord. I’ve studied the Book of Job since I had lost everything before and I have concluded that things just happen and if there was a reason, it may not be for us to know.
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### Author:  [@calm\_kiwi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/calm_kiwi)
#### Post date: [September 27, 2004, 1:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-believe-everything-happens-for-a-reason/266215/17 "2004-09-27T13:26:27Z")
**Shirley Ujest** you have a wonderful way of making me giggle like a drunk hyena while trying to nod in agreement. It’s damn tricky cause Im not very coordinated. Bugger you.🙂
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### Author:  [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)
#### Post date: [September 27, 2004, 2:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-believe-everything-happens-for-a-reason/266215/18 "2004-09-27T14:02:28Z")
I think things happen without reason and people try to put reason to it. That’s what keeps people from going insane.
Life is insanity; people make it sane.
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### Author:  [@pepperlandgirl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pepperlandgirl)
#### Post date: [September 27, 2004, 4:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-believe-everything-happens-for-a-reason/266215/19 "2004-09-27T16:05:26Z")
I do, insofar that Event B was a direct result of Event A, even though that may not be apparent. Or even Event Z is a result of Event A.
Whenever anything negative happens, somebody says this to me, as though it will make me feel better. Yeah, well, screw you. I don’t want to hear empty platitudes and meaningless words and pointless phrases that I guess sound deep but really amount to so much crap.
I’m more of the “Shit happens. Deal.” school of thought.
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### Author:  [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor)
#### Post date: [September 27, 2004, 4:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-believe-everything-happens-for-a-reason/266215/20 "2004-09-27T16:09:38Z")
Yes, but all for the same reason – \< whispers \> \*people are plotting against me! \* \< /whispers \> :eek: 😉😃
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