What's the rationale behind "it was just their time."

Great Debates
1

I just watched the very end of a program on the history channel. The last part showed a lady being interviewed about a relative she lost that was on a ship that disappeared in the Bermuda Triangle. Her comment was that it was not the “Triangle” or any other mystery, it was just those 30-40 sailors “time”.

Now I am a religious person but I have yet to understand the rationalization of someone’s death as being “just their time.”
It brings up the old joke, What if it’s the Pilot’s time and not the passengers?

Can anyone shed light on this sugject? Anyone here believe that we all have a “time” that is ordained for us to die?

2

Sorry about that subject title, it should read What’s the rational behind “it was just their time.”

3

it’s people trying to comprehend the incomprehensible.

This line was used in the movie Groundhog’s Day, when Bill Murray (who kept reliving the same day over and over) thought he would try to prevent an old man’s death if he brought him out of the cold sooner, or got him a warm meal, something different for a number of days, none of which worked. The emergency room worker said to him finally, “It was just his time.”

Even though I know intellectually that everyone is born and everyone dies, I have difficulty dealing with it on an emotional level, especially since I am an agnostic. I don’t dwell as much on my own death as on that of people whom I will never see again. It could be such thinking brought about religious belief in an afterlife, or speculation such as “It was just his time to go.”

I think there are some people who believe that everyone’s life course is determined or predetermined. Or maybe some people believe that, in a sense, we decide for ourselves when it is time to go.

Too much serious thinking for me, off to limericks or a rootin’ tootin’ shoot out.

4

aha said:

Good question, aha! IMHO I believe that there is a plan in effect and that plan would have a part that outlines the length of our stay here, but… I also believe that man was created a free moral agent and can make choices that might affect adversely (he decides to smoke crack or be a motorcycle stunt rider :slight_smile: )what was origionaly set in place. A good comparison would be that of Scrooge in Dicken’s “A Christmas Carol”. Scrooge was told by one of the ghosts that although the route of a sailing ship is charted, a slightly different set of the sails can render a different destination over a long vouage.

As to how the phrase origionaly started, my understanding is that it is taken directly from the bible in Ecclesiastes 3:1-2.

My opinion, sure there are others.

5

Phil_15 Sed:

Ok I will buy that for now but what about the choices that man has little or no control over. For instance getting easily frustrated causing high blood pressure which damages vital organs and causes early death? Or having a penchant for eating sweets or meat that cause high cholesterol which is known to contribute to heart attacks and early death? And so on…

6

What if you’re on a plane, and it’s the pilot’s time to die?

(Stolen from a comedienne whose name I can’t recall.)

7

Hence the bumper stickers, God is my co-pilot?

I’m not of the belief that anyone has a predetermined time to check out. The saying, “it was his time”, is a means of easing the pain associated with a death.

I’ve heard the expression used under two circumstances. The deceased has died despite everyone’s good works and intentions. Or the death was cause by a string unusual events.

8

Moderator Note: I fixed the thread title. If you preview your OP and there are quotes in the title, anything after the quotes disappears. Remember, it’s not a bug, it’s a feature.

9

Uh, all of those sound like things that man has a whole lot of control over.

Marc

10

“It was just their time to go” probably gives the person saying it a sense of justification. A sense that there is a reason that we live, a reason that we die. After all, if there isn’t a master plan, then there isn’t anyone that cares what we do. No supreme master in the sky waiting in the wings to give us kudos for a job well done.

It’s a phrase for those that need to assign reason and order to everything.

11

It’s just a way of saying “You couldn’t have done anything to prevent this.” As for having a destiny for this life and death, I don’t know. Maybe I am supposed to die when I am 86 and a half, but I keep eating bacon cheesburgers and fall over at 55. I have negatively affected my outcome. I don’t think I was supposed to die at 55, I just didn’t use myself to my potential. And God says, “Well, I gave you a shot.”

12

Maybe, but I was thinking about the person who has a temper naturally. He may get upset easier than others naturally. Could be that he might take medication to control that but what about the side effects of the medicine which could shorten a life.

As far as a person having control over eating sweets it’s my humble opinion that some folks have little or no control over those things. Not unlike a person who is highly addicted to alcohol or cigarettes. There are people who just cannot quit their addictions.

Gaudere thanks. I knew that about the quotes but had forgotten.

13

What is being referred to is the continuing mental throwback to a preconscious cognitive mode. Prior to the advent of human consciousness, everything occurred by the hand of the “Gods” or “God”. It was therefore that augury, sortilige, omenology and the casting of lots were all looked upon as some sort of divine oracle.

How could the way the events occurred (omenology), or the appearance of the sacrifice’s entrails (sortilige) or the turn of the die not be preordained by some divine force? There was no concept of mathematical randomness (or organized chaos for that matter). Therefore, how could there be anything but predestined events? The human mind was incapable of conceiving otherwise.

All of these mental modes stayed in place until the advent of consciousness (somewhere around the time of Christ, give or take several centuries). Once humans were able to ascertain the machinations of reality through observation and consensual validity, things really began to change (especially brain structure).

When you or someone you see, looks upward and says, “Oh God, why me?” Regardless of whether that person is religious or not, you are witnessing that person revert to a mode which Julian Jaynes referred to as, “Divine Authorization.” As mentioned above, this is the ancient construct of seeing things as the result of some supernatural force be it God or any pantheon of deities and elementals.

When someone says, “It was their time”, they are merely utilizing an ancient mindset that allowed for coping with what were then, mystical phenomena. To this day this same mindset continues. The majority of mindless religious practitioners that I have ever met are firmly entrenched in this framework. So are many pseudo-science adherents and wiccans too. Even though I am a scientist, I am aware that there somewhat miraculous features in the world around us. The entire universe bursting forth from a proton sized particle of energy is one of them.

Nonetheless, reality is getting a lot easier to explain than it used to be. Thanks to failure analysis, forensics and pathological medicine, we know a lot more about what makes it, “Our Time” for each of us.

14

I saw that program too. (Neat!)

Maybe, I think, it’s just, well, a comfort to some people. They think, no, his life wasn’t wasted, he was here, he accomplished what he set out to do, etc etc…
Personally, if it gives her comfort, then I’m all for it.
I guess it’s sometimes easier to cope with death when you’re a religious person if you just admit hey! I don’t know what insert appropriate deity here 's plans are, so I’ll just trust that insert appropriate deity here know’s what deity 's doing!

15

Up front, though I’m a Catholic, and believe in a benevolent God, I don’t believe there is a specific time at which any of us are destined to die.

Oh, we’re born with a biological clock of sorts, which means there’s an outer limit to how long any of us can expect to live (80? 90? 110?), but a million things can happen to us before we reach that hypothetical age.

Some of those things are within our control, through diet, smoking, exercise, safety precautions, etc. But sometimes, we have no control at all. If I happen to be walking across the street when a drunk comes speeding by… if I happen to be mailing a letter when a postman goes berserk with an Uzi… if I’m just in the wrong place at the wrong time, I could be killed at any minute. I don’t believe any of this is destiny. As God (George Burns) put it, “A lot of it’s luck.”

People who argue that, “when it’s your time to go, it’s your time to go,” probably mean well, but that philosophy can be dangerous, especially because it leads to:

  1. Fatalism. “Why should I quit smoking? Why should I quit drinking? Why should I exercise? Hey, when my number’s up, my number’s up. It’s out of my hands.” This kind of thinking leads to apathy and sloth, and to shirking our responsibilities.

  2. Shrugging off evil in the world. If you accept the idea that we die when it’s “our time,” then what did Hitler do so wrong? It was just “time” for 6 million Jews to die!
    Along the same lines, several years ago, I saw a very nice, very well-meaning preacher on TV after the tragic Susan Smith incident (remember, the lady who drowned her kids?). He seemed to suggest that the murders had a positive side, that the kids died because “God loved them, and was calling them home.” The fact that this was a kind man who meant well only outraged me MORE!

I don’t believe it’s EVER “God’s will” for people to do evil things. But God didn’t make us robots! God gives us free will, and that means we can make choices. If I make the wrong choices, I can hurt myself and (worse) I can hurt many other people.

To use a VERY crude analogy, when you give your four year old child a container of milk, and let him pour a glass for himself, is it YOUR “will” that he spill milk all over the table? No! It’s your WILL that he pour the milk into the glass without spilling a drop. But you KNOW very well that the child may not be able to do it right. You KNOW there’s a chance he’ll spill milk all over the table, and you let him do it anyway.

Are YOU, then, evil? You COULD just pour the milk for him, after all. IF the kid spills the milk, are YOU evil for not preventing it? No… you love the child, but it’s your job to give him a chance to do things on his own. You HOPE he’ll do things the way you instructed him, but you have to stand back and see what happens.

In the same way, it’s NOT God’s will for us to kill ourselves or each other. But he’s not going to force us to be good. Free will sometimes comes with a terrible price… but I can’t say I’d want it any other way.

16

Most excellent rant Astorian! Such a well balanced view of destiny from the religious side of the fence is always welcome. So nice to have someone cut through the veil of fatalist obscuration.

That sort of drivel makes me bristle like a Rhodesian Ridgeback. Again, nice post.

17

I remember when my aunt died, my well-meaning nun principal told me that now I had someone else to pray to. I felt like telling her to fuck off, but of course, in Catholic school, I’d probably have been kicked out.

Personally, I find it comforting to think that they are in a better place.
Whatever comforts YOU, personally. But don’t say it to someone else. Since it was HER son, and that helped her, well, fine then. But don’t tell that to me.

However, I do think it is about time for Britany Spears…

18

If anything in this universe is pre-ordained – including but not limited to the time we die – we have no way of detecting it.

There are certain experiments in which, no matter how precisely you set up the initial conditions, it is physically impossible to predict the outcome. And that’s not a limitation of our imprecision in measurement, it’s a fundamental law of the universe. Quantum mechanics is notorious for this – you can predict the probability that an electron will hit a particular spot on the wall when you pass it through two narrow slits, but you can’t predict whether it’ll actually hit it or not.

As far as I’m concerned, if the universe is set up in such a way that it’s physically impossible to predict the outcome of certain types of occurrences, I’m going to assume that those outcomes are not pre-ordained until proven otherwise. That goes for electrons passing through slits, who wins the election in November, the next winning lottery number, and when somebody dies.

19

(rant begins…Your mileage may vary.)

It’s interesting that I see this thread now, as a good friend of mine suddenly died last week. The funeral is tommorrow.

She was a devout Christian, but even so, when some of our friends in common said “Well, it was her time…” it rankled me a little. My friend had some good gifts at helping people, encouraging them, praying for them, and it seems to me a shame that she should die in her early 50s.

I do know that God can work throught other people to do what my friend did, and I know I will see her again. And God can take anything, even my friend’s passing, and use it for good. But, I will still miss her.

I think that when my friends said “Well, it was her time,” they are simply saying that they are confident that God has everything under control, has a purpose in mind…but what is it?

However, I think my unease with the phrase “…her time” just means that I am wondering “Why now?”–a question that may never be answered this side of eternity. And that’s the kind of question that anybody, whether they are religious or not, asks when something like this happens.