Do you believe "everything happens for a reason"?

The BBQ Pit
41

[QUOTE=DiosaBellissima]
Universal value to me. The universe in my mind. I suppose that is self-centered, but I don’t know how I could possibly view my consciousness from your perspective [snip]
[/QUOTE]

(bolding mine)

You suppose correctly. In fact the whole concept of any society depends completely on everyone having some empathy for others. You clearly state you don’t know how to do that.

So your idiotic, moronic ‘belief’ makes you by definition anti-social, and leaves you looking kinda dumb (you or your ‘beliefs’ are being pitted here)

42

What I’m saying is that when I see bad things happen in the world, I think to myself that those bad things must be happening for a reason. In my mind, that belief is absolute.

That said, I’m intelligent enough to realize that just because I hold that truth to be self evident, does not make it so. I suppose that is the primary difference between me and the folks the OP is complaining about is that perhaps they don’t see that their belief may be less than 100% true, whereas I accept that my truth may not actually be THE truth.

If I had a friend who encountered something horrible in life and that friend came to me for comfort, I’m sure I would express that I believe that everything happens for a reason and hopefully something good will come of the bad they’ve experienced. Of course, according to this thread, that might earn me a kick in the teeth or a Rob Schneider movie marathon heh.

43

[QUOTE=The Librarian]
(bolding mine)

You suppose correctly. In fact the whole concept of any society depends completely on everyone having some empathy for others. You clearly state you don’t know how to do that.

So your idiotic, moronic ‘belief’ makes you by definition anti-social, and leaves you looking kinda dumb (you or your ‘beliefs’ are being pitted here)
[/QUOTE]

Interesting, I’ve never once in my life been accused of being antisocial. Though I can certainly see where anyone would see my belief as dumb, I’m sure you’ve got some that if you were to express there’d be folks jumping on you as dumb as well. That’s life, eh? Not a single person in this world is 100% logical, 100% scientific, nor 100% rational 100% of the time.

I do wonder how you deduce that I don’t have empathy for others. I’ll fully admit that I’m not like some of my friends that will shed a tear whenever they pass a dead squirrel on the side of the road, but I do certainly care about the things I see. Just because I may believe that Horrible Event X was fated to happen doesn’t make Horrible Event X any less horrible. So, the people who were victims of Horrible Event X certainly have suffered horribly and certainly deserve at the very least help and sympathy.

44

[QUOTE=SenorBeef]
**Do you believe “everything happens for a reason”?
**
[/QUOTE]

Depends on how you define “reason.” Everything happens from a cause. Not everything happens for a purpose.

45

Or. Everything DOES happen for a reason, and that reason, which we at the time don’t or can’t know, sometimes sucks.

46

I think for a lot of people say it without ever deciding they should try to figure out what the reason is. Honestly, there’s faith, and then there’s a laziness and lack of curiosity.

I think it’s very easy to look for a reason when something bad happens to you. But who ever questions good luck? Remember that guy that won an assload of money and keeps making headlines for doing stupid shit? You think he ever seriously thought, “Shit, this is a challenge, a conundrum if you will. How will I be judged?”

47

[QUOTE=DiosaBellissima]
(snip) I do wonder how you deduce that I don’t have empathy for others. (snip)
[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE=Wikipedia]
Empathy (from the Greek εμπάθεια, “to make suffer”) is commonly defined as one’s ability to recognize, perceive and directly feel the emotion of another.
[/QUOTE]

It is that simple.

48

[QUOTE=DiosaBellissima]
What I’m saying is that when I see bad things happen in the world, I think to myself that those bad things must be happening for a reason. In my mind, that belief is absolute.
[/QUOTE]
How do you classify the collision of two Hydrogen atoms in the trackless voids of deep space? Is there also a reason for that, and the vast majority of all events, which appear neutral on the good/bad continuum?

49

[QUOTE=DiosaBellissima]

And I think that everything that happens on this earth is here for us to learn from- good and bad to both me and to everyone else. It’s not selfish, because I’m not the center of the universe and everything isn’t happening for my own betterment. Rather, I think that whether or not we believe it is gods, God, or nothing controlling what’s happening, every intelligent person looks around them and learns a little something from what they see. Of course, all of this is in the context of the human consciousness, as that’s certainly all I can go off of.

[/QUOTE]

This I agree with totally. Being able to learn from what happens, and make the best of it, is far different from claiming that the reason it happened was for us to learn from.

Shit happens, but shit makes excellent fertilizer, and helps grow wonderful tomatoes. And as a former horse owner, this statement is not the slightest bit figurative. :slight_smile:

50

I’m sure there is. I’m not a scientist though, nor do I claim to have any kind of intellectual, scholastic knowledge in that regard. (Again, totally proving my ignorance in the area), isn’t the whole Big Bang idea that atoms smashed into one another, thus creating a chain reaction that created the entire universe? ((Seriously, school me on this if I’m wrong. I’m fully admitting my ignorance here)).

In the end though, I’ve said my peace. The OP asked for someone who believed that way and I explained myself. I’m not saying I’m right, as I may very well be wrong. I’m not saying that my belief is the truth of the universe, but rather that it is the truth to me that happens to be my coping mechanism also. I don’t think my belief hurts anyone and I fully admit it may be it a little more than ignorant or naive.

So because it seems that this thread is devolving into personal attacks against me because of my opinion (not you, Squink– I’m just clarifying that, since I’m predominantly replying to your post here), I’m going to bow out now. I’m not trying to suggest that even a fraction of you guys are doing that, but I see it heading down that road. In the end, this is just one of those things like that. That is, unless I’m the only one that feels that way and you guys want some further clarification- I don’t want to just stop the flow of ideas because I’m being a sensitive whiner. :wink:

51

[QUOTE=DiosaBellissima]
I see it heading down that road. In the end
[/QUOTE]
Yeah, this being the Pit, I’d be shocked if it didn’t.
I just thought you might find it interesting to consider the many, many unimportant events that must be included if you hold strictly to claiming that everything that happens has some sort of higher reason for happening.

52

[QUOTE=DiosaBellissima]
What I’m saying is that when I see bad things happen in the world, I think to myself that those bad things must be happening for a reason. In my mind, that belief is absolute.

That said, I’m intelligent enough to realize that just because I hold that truth to be self evident, does not make it so. I suppose that is the primary difference between me and the folks the OP is complaining about is that perhaps they don’t see that their belief may be less than 100% true, whereas I accept that my truth may not actually be THE truth.

If I had a friend who encountered something horrible in life and that friend came to me for comfort, I’m sure I would express that I believe that everything happens for a reason and hopefully something good will come of the bad they’ve experienced. Of course, according to this thread, that might earn me a kick in the teeth or a Rob Schneider movie marathon heh.
[/QUOTE]

So here’s the problem. If there is a reason, there is someone causing the action based on the reason. Call it God. Now, we can measure a benefit from the event, and a cost of the things that caused the event. If God is not evil, the cost must outweigh the benefit. If God is any way omniscient and omnipotent, the cost should be minimal for the benefit.

Plus, we have side effects. Say God allowed the Holocaust in order for Israel to become an independent state - since there was a short time after the war when most of the world was so ashamed of what happened that anti-Semitism became unpopular. If this is true, my friend’s birth was a side effect of this, and the Holocaust was not a reason for it.

Isn’t our ability to extract good from tragedy far more uplifting than to have some God hand us the good on a blood-stained silver platter?

Consider this scenario. Say you want a promotion. The current occupant of the job dies in a car crash. If this was purely accidental, you can feel good about it while still, honestly, saying that you wished it never happened. If, however, God caused the crash in order to get your promoted, do you have any moral course but to refuse it and curse God?

Our very existence is built on tragedy. For a billion years, our ancestors survived while their brothers and sisters died. If there was no WW II, my parents would have no doubt had a child before me, and I would not have been here. We can morally benefit from causeless tragedies, but not from ones caused for our benefit. That’s the inherent immorality of believing everything happens for a reason.

53

I believe in cause and effect – but it breaks down at some remove from the cause, and I couldn’t tell you where.

A wife swears at her husband. He fumes while driving to work, a little too fast and a little inattentive. He hits a patch of oil. His car slides into a utility pole. The pole falls over and crushes him in his car.

I’d be pretty confident in saying he died because the pole fell on him, and the pole fell because the car hit it. But did he die because of an oil spill on the road? Or because he was angry? Or did he die because his wife called him a sumbitch? Hell, maybe he died because he WAS a sumbitch and his wife finally called him on it.

But I wouldn’t claim that.

54

[QUOTE=Boyo Jim]
I believe in cause and effect – but it breaks down at some remove from the cause, and I couldn’t tell you where.

A wife swears at her husband. He fumes while driving to work, a little too fast and a little inattentive. He hits a patch of oil. His car slides into a utility pole. The pole falls over and crushes him in his car.

I’d be pretty confident in saying he died because the pole fell on him, and the pole fell because the car hit it. But did he die because of an oil spill on the road? Or because he was angry? Or did he die because his wife called him a sumbitch? Hell, maybe he died because he WAS a sumbitch and his wife finally called him on it.

But I wouldn’t claim that.
[/QUOTE]

Well thats an interesting title under you name there, Boyo , where did you come by that moniker, if you don’t mind me askin’?

55

Yeah, Boyo, how’d ya do that?

What about things you think are horrid tragedies when you are young only to discover they made you into who you are today? Now at the time of these events you don’t think things happen for a reason. But perhaps later in life suddenly you realize without those events you would not be enjoying the life you have today. Perhaps those tragic events did happen for a reason, you just couldn’t see it for the time.

56

[QUOTE=Sapo]
Why is this on the Pit?

[/QUOTE]

As I was writing this, I realized that I was tempted to call a belief that a whole lot of people have utterly ridiculous. I originally was planning to post this to IMHO, and perhaps I still should’ve, but I figured the pit might’ve given us more freedom. I wasn’t trying to be mean, but it’d be hard to avoid being condescending if you feel as though someone’s beliefs are absurd.

[QUOTE=WhyNot]
Like DiosaBellisima, I believe that everything I go for can either serve to make me a more bitter and miserable human being OR it can teach me valuable lessons about myself, life the universe and everything. And everything I learn makes the next challenge more…do-able.

No supernatural guiding force needed. “Everything happens for a reason.” That reason is to shape me and challenge me and make me become the kind of person I want to be. Or not. My choice.

Kumbaya, dude. :stuck_out_tongue:
[/QUOTE]

This is a healthy view to me. Viewing bad stuff happening as a character-building learning opportunity. No belief in anything supernatural is needed for this. And for that matter you don’t have to think it happened for a reason - you can just accept that shit happens, and try to at least take something valuable from the negativity, without thinking there’s a reason behind it.

People on this thread seem to be focusing on the big stuff - big natural disasters, the holocaust, etc. Is there a cutoff point where fate/God/whatever intervenes? Is something that ruins someone’s day too small for fate? Kills 20 people? 1000? And how does this intervention actually work?

In the event of a human-made tragedy like the holocaust, does fate cause the trillions of different little things to happen that leading up to that point that were required for the nazis to rise to power?

DiosaBellisima is the closest someone has to come to admitting this line of thinking, but she’s said it in more of a “I vaguely try to think that bad things ultimately result in good things” view than a “fate works in such and such a way” view. Still, I appreciate the perspective.

In retrospect, I suspect that the people who believe in the stuff I described in the OP would be disinclined to respond because essentially they’d be trying to logically explain the illogical. Holding that belief requires mentally glossing it over and accepting warm fuzzies over logic, not examining it and trying to explain it. So even if half the people who read the OP believed fate in the sense I described it no one would want to really step up to the plate and try to justify it.

I don’t find the belief itself abhorrent in the sense that it generally doesn’t cause harm, but I find it strange that anyone can hold a belief - and an important part of their core world view no less - that they’d be completely unable to explain logically. The ability to essentially lie to yourself by mentally glossing over parts of your world view because you know examining them would be uncomfortable is strange to me, but quite common.

57

I believe everything happens for an explicable reason or series of reasons. If your child dies of cancer, for example, it’s due to genes and circumstance, and if your neighbor’s child who is a Bad Seed lives and prospers, that too is circumstance.

I don’t believe it happens for a purpose, however. As Mark Twain observed

Some see this as nihilistic and hopeless and desperate and the like, but I actually see a major solace in it. If your loved one dies from being hit by a schoolbus, there’s some solace in knowing it happened because she or he was in the wrong place (namely in the path of a bus) at the wrong time (when the bus was in motion), or even that “some folks will develop leukemia/bone cancer/sickle cell anemia/hemophilia/etc., some won’t- it sucks, but what can you do?” It’s not because God has it out for you or because you didn’t pray hard enough or cheated on that spelling test in 5th grade or your taxes last year, or because your neighbor’s a better person, or to teach a lesson. It sucks that Anne Frank died in the Holocaust and Albert Speer died in a comfortable villa, but to pretend it’s divine plan is dangerous as it makes us more helpless than we are and it makes acting to stop these things from happening again more pointless than they are.

And don’t do drugs without wearing a condom and your seatbelt.

58

[QUOTE=Sampiro]
And don’t do drugs without wearing a condom and your seatbelt.
[/QUOTE]

The other day I was sitting in my car wearing only a condom while shooting up. I used my seatbelt to pop the vein. OK, so I’m not sure what I was doing with the condom. Seemed like a good idea at the time.

59

[QUOTE=Omegaman]
Well thats an interesting title under you name there, Boyo , where did you come by that moniker, if you don’t mind me askin’?
[/QUOTE]

It was a surprise to me, a well-intentioned gift from a mod or admin, I don’t know who, related to this thread. Now I’m thinking if I have to explain it every time I post, this is not gonna work out. But I’ll give it a couple of days 'cause I’m feeling pretty braggardly.

60

Well I hope you aren’t offended that I asked. I do remember that thread and now it seems appropriate to offer congratulations to you, Sir, Honors of this caliber are not bestowed lightly, I’m sure. Best wishes to you and yours, and may you wear your Moniker with pride.