This sounds like the distinction between “efficient causes” and “final causes” in Aristotelian philosophy.
Does “everything happen for a reason” as if the universe were like a tightly plotted novel or movie, in which each thing that happens was supposed to happen and has its own particular significance? This would require the existence, not just of God, but of a God who controls or micromanages every tiny detail and event of existence, without allowing for human free will. And even if there were such a God, there’s no reason to believe we’d like or understand his reasons that everything happens for.
I’m not going to address the real psychological and physical aspects of this phrase, because it’s so much associated, in my mind, with glurgy thinking. (As Larry Borgia points out above.)
I hate the phrase, myself. Although I am religious, I think it’s mostly used as a sort of non-comforting comfort. How can anyone say, with a straight face, to someone who lost family in some horrible crime, or even a simple accident, that it’s okay because there was a reason for it?
What I will say is that things can be be used to a purpose. This is true, IMNSHO, on both the personal and religious level. On a personal level - look at MADD: a movement started that changed the way a culture looked at drunk driving, because of the terrible, senseless loss a few people experienced. Likewise, on a religious level, I believe that God can find a way to use things that have happened because of humanity’s free will to serve His purposes. But that is a very different thing from saying that something horrible was God’s will.
Larry Borgia’s got it spot on. “Everything happens for a reason” is the most awful and horrifying justification I think one can have. It’s a horrible saying that belies a lack of though. I’d almost posit that people who believe such things haven’t really experienced tragedy.
“Everything happens for a reason” reminds me of the story (perhaps apocryphal) of a woman who escaped one of the World Trade Center towers in September of 2001. “God had a plan for me,” she said. Really? And he planned for the other thousands of people in those towers to die?
It seems to me that people pick and choose what was caused by God and what wasn’t. I’ll never understand the logic. Either everything was caused by God or everything wasn’t.
There is a mental process by which people come to the conclusion that certain events are components in larger events, and that their significance is best understood as a part, instead of as a whole.
Examples: “It’s all part of God’s plan,” “You may have won this battle, but I’m going to win the war,” “All these stop lights are turning red so that I’ll arrive later and fulfill my destiny,” “She smiled at me because we have a connection, even though I’ve never met her.”
Personally, I frequently have this sort of intuition (not necessarily like the examples above). Trusting this intuition is a matter of faith or self-determination. I think this kind of intuition is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, you open up the possibility of tapping the potential of your sub-conscious to make split-second life-altering decisions. On the other hand, you polarize your consciousness – you’ve created a filter which views all events as related to the “greater whole,” whatever you perceive that to be.
It’s obvious that this mental process is desirable in some situations since it is a widespread mental adaptation. With our mental make-up, the world rewards this kind of intuition. The question is, is it an artifact of our epistemology, or is it something real that we have evolved to take advantage of?
I agree. The “everything happens for a reason” people ought to consider the following. Six airplanes are flying along in a formation. All of them were built in the same factory and have relatively uniform characteristics. The six people in each of them is a heterogenous collection of good, bad, honest and dishonest who were chosen at random to fly in the same airplane and the six different crews were chosen more or less at random to be at that place on that day at that hour, minute, and second. And then an artillery shell explodes near one of them blowing it apart. And it is almost certain that the gunner who pointed the gun wasn’t even aiming at the plane that was hit.
“I seem to be having this terrible problem with my lifestyle.”
In QM, not only do things not always happen for a reason, but sometimes effects happen in order to satisfy a later cause, which is rather like winning the lottery in order to fulfill your goal of becoming a destitute, homeless alcoholic.
In the macro world, the only overriding “reason” or causation for most events is to satisfy the laws of thermodynamics; global disorder always increases. Why? “Whuhdunno,” say the experts, “It’s just life.”
Besides, the gunner was probably hired by Milo Minderbender to shoot down his own planes because it was cheaper and more efficient than having the planes fly all the way to the target just to be shot down. The syndicate makes a profit and everybody gets a share.
You can still reasonably believe that the pilot was killed “for a reason.” Think about all the military structures that reinforce the likelihood of this kind of event. Think about the upbringing and training of the pilot. Think about his family at home, asking themselves why this happened (they are going to do that regardless of any rationalization). It is the structure of war that random people get killed, regardless of whether they are good, bad, honest, or dishonest. And then people have to deal with the outcome. If the pilot was good, then maybe he was killed to make everyone feel like war is heartless (which it is). If the pilot was bad, maybe he was killed to make everyone feel like even bad people have worth on a larger scale (which they do). What I’m saying is that just because the event had a random component doesn’t mean that the range of possible events (and by extension, the actual event) is meaning-neutral.
A somewhat more crass example: if your dad goes to Vegas and puts the family’s savings on red, does the significance of the event change depending on whether he wins or loses? In a way it does, and in a way it doesn’t. What is most significant is your dad’s recklessness with the money.
No kidding; he already authored the damn novel I wanted to write, and did so before I was born, the bastard. And Terry Gilliam made my film, too. I guess I’m stuck with juggling as my field of genius accomplishment. Considering I can only juggle three balls, I guess I’d better get cracking.
If “Does everything happen for a reason?” means “Does everything that happens have a cause?” I’d agree.
If “Does everything happen for a reason?” means “Does everything that happens have an outcome planned by some type of being/deity?” then no, I wouldn’t agree.
To me,and my satisfaction, things happen Because they do.If one gets hit by a car to me the reason is just because that driver and pedestrian happened tp be at the same place at the same time and one or both were not alert at the time.
If you limit it to the fact that most things happen because of actions taken by humans or scientific reasons, such as the interaction of heat and water temperature creating hurricanes, then yes.
But if the phrase is used with the implication that Big Juju In The Sky caused it to happen, then no.
Or that it happened because of some overall master plan of that Big Juju. I see a small contradiction in this. Those who claim that there was a reason one person was saved out of 200 on board an airliner because of some predestined master plan from On High will also argue for free will which seems to me to negate a master plan.
