Home Politics & Debate
If you need urgent support, call 999 or go to your nearest A&E. To contact our Crisis Messenger (open 24/7) text THEMIX to 85258.

Choices

2»

Comments

  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    So there is such thing as fate, but only affecting human actions and behaviour. Is that what you're saying?

    Doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Either it's your fate to die in a car crash or isn't. If it was 'fate' for someone to die in a car crash, or murdered by someone, then it also has to be fate for 300,000 people to die in a natural disaster.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    I wasn't talking about fate....

    ..I was just saying you can have a God and have people dying in natural disasters at the same time, maybe its off topic but thats where it was heading on the last thread so thats what I wrote..
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Yeah I guess you could have a God and hundreds of thousands of innocent people dying a horrible death by natural disaster.

    Doesn't make God a terribly attractive proposition though.

    But in any case, aren't God and fate linked? Fate must have been laid down by someone after all. Someone must have decided that Mr so-and-so is going to be run over by a bus next Monday- otherwise it wouldn't be fate, just a random occurrence.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Who knows.

    It could be linked to God, I mean they say "God has a plan for you" and such. But again we do have free will, which indicates our own choices and possibly not a fate.

    Myabe it doesn't make it attractive but if he said he isn't interfering, he isn't interfering. Sticking to the word at least.

    People have to die somehow anyway, you can't live forever. Its just antaural occurance you may or may not die in. No real biggie for me.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Surely fate is always negative ("meet your fate", "fatal accident") whereas destiny is the positive spin on things? :p

    I suppose then we start getting into ideals of freedom and whether or not we have the liberty to make the decisions and choices that we imagine we do. I'm not too sure that we have completely free will, but I think that any predestined conclusion has to be reached through some voluntary decisions...if that makes sense. :crazyeyes

    The idea of predestination/determinism (whether you're religious/agnostic) usually just gives me a headache, so I try not to think too much about it. However, I do try to believe in free will and being the master of your own "fate" - whatever the hell that means...
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    lol

    It makes sense to me briggi ;)

    Its a nice view actually.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    briggi wrote:
    Surely fate is always negative ("meet your fate", "fatal accident") whereas destiny is the positive spin on things? :p

    Mmm... debatable

    vader1.jpg
    "Join the Dark Side Luke. It is your destiny"

    :p
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Sweet film!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Aladdin wrote:
    Mmm... debatable

    vader1.jpg
    "Join the Dark Side Luke. It is your destiny"

    :p

    Hmm, it's true that I hadn't considered George Lucas's philosophical school of thought.

    :chin:
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Or the Final Destination movie trilogy.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    turlough wrote:
    Or the Final Destination movie trilogy.

    Well they were very profound and believable.

    :yeees:

    Seriously though, there's no way I believe we're all pencilled in to die on a certain date. If someone decided "haha, I'm going to trick fate/death and kill myself TODAY" would "fate" have predicted that? It's all a wee bit daft to be given much credit imo.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Yes, quite.

    It's like when somebody has a lucky escape from a car crash or even a plane crash, and they say "it simply wasn't my day to die".

    Oh really? Why don't they put it to the test, and jump off a cliff or shoot themselves with a shotgun before the day is over? Surely they'll survive that too since it wasn't their day to die. :rolleyes: :D
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Aladdin wrote:
    Yeah I guess you could have a God and hundreds of thousands of innocent people dying a horrible death by natural disaster.

    Doesn't make God a terribly attractive proposition though.
    Why not?
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    I think it depends on what you expect from God. If you want someone to save people from dying or from suffering, then you're expecting a magician or a fairy godmother, not God.

    People will die of natural disasters or any other cause. I don't believe God is there to save you from death, he's there to give you life after death and, consequently, to give meaning to present life, before you die.

    That's what makes Him attractive IMO.
  • Indrid ColdIndrid Cold Posts: 16,688 Skive's The Limit
    klintock wrote:
    Yes, all events are predetermined.

    No, we have no idea what those events will be.

    Same difference as if they weren't predetermined then. :cool:
    That's right. Unless there are people who can see the future, it makes no difference whether fate exists or not.

    My own "belief" is mixed. I believe that most things are sort of within our control: John can choose to take the bus or a cab, and his choice will change his short term future a little (it's obvious how).
    Of course, there are consequences that John can't predict; for example, the bus might get hijacked, and if John had chosen to take it he'll end up in city B instead of city A where he planned to go. If he chose the cab, he gets to city A.
    But I also believe that there are some things that will happen no matter what. Not necessarily important ones. In the above example, imagine John takes the bus and ends up in city B. There he loses his wallet because of the incident. If he could travel back in time and take the cab, he'd think he won't lose his wallet since he won't be in the hijacking, but someone might pick his pocket.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    bluewisdom wrote:
    I think it depends on what you expect from God. If you want someone to save people from dying or from suffering, then you're expecting a magician or a fairy godmother, not God.
    So all millions of people who pray to God for those very reasons, or those who make pilgrimages to Lourdes have it all wrong then? ;)

    People will die of natural disasters or any other cause. I don't believe God is there to save you from death, he's there to give you life after death and, consequently, to give meaning to present life, before you die.

    That's what makes Him attractive IMO.
    In answer to this, and to your question 3 posts earlier, anyone who has the power of foreseeing and stopping a mass scale natural disaster that kills hundreds of thousands of innocent men, women and children and orphans, widows and make homeless many millions more of what are already very poor and struggling people, and does nothing to prevent it from happening is a rather nasty piece of work IMO.

    I don't think I'm alone in thinking that incidentally. Even religious leaders were left to question what kind of God could allow such calamity to happen in the aftermath of the Boxing Day tsunami...
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Aladdin wrote:
    So all millions of people who pray to God for those very reasons, or those who make pilgrimages to Lourdes have it all wrong then? ;)
    Of course they don't 'have it wrong', I don't think you can in terms of praying. Everybody is entitled to pray for what they want, now if it's granted that's another story. If they have faith that it will then, great, that's their faith, I'm just expressing mine.
    Aladdin wrote:
    anyone who has the power of foreseeing and stopping a mass scale natural disaster that kills hundreds of thousands of innocent men, women and children and orphans, widows and make homeless many millions more of what are already very poor and struggling people, and does nothing to prevent it from happening is a rather nasty piece of work IMO.
    Fair enough, it's very reasonable to think that, but as I said before I don't think that's what God is there for. He is not here to intervene to prevent suffering, as I said before. (And just incidentally, how do you know He hasn't prevented many other kinds of even more horrible suffering? If they were prevented we wouldn't know about them would we? But this is beside the point really.)
    Aladdin wrote:
    I don't think I'm alone in thinking that incidentally. Even religious leaders were left to question what kind of God could allow such calamity to happen in the aftermath of the Boxing Day tsunami...
    Of course I know you're not alone, you're representing the view of thousands of people, its not like I never heard of that reasoning before! ;) I know many religious leaders question this as well, as we do all, but that doesn't prevent us from attempting to come up with some answers... i think that's precisely the point of questioning in the first place! :)
  • Indrid ColdIndrid Cold Posts: 16,688 Skive's The Limit
    I might be cruel here, but maybe the major catastrophes are a way to keep the planet's population in balance? I'm not saying that God rolls dice and chooses a part to hit, that's Nature's work... Keeping things in balance as best as possible.

    I'm going off the subject here, but I feel I have to "voice" one of my concerns about humanity. Millions of cats, dogs etc die before they're too old, but cats and dogs still exist. They don't have doctors among them, and the human doctors for pets don't bother with the larger part of the animal population.
    With humans it's different: People die and it's horrible, so we try to keep everyone alive as long as possible, using medicine and stuff. But isn't that what has caused the overpopulation? So should we set a line at where to stop treating people? Like, someone has an organ failure and it has to be replaced... This isn't a natural process, and it's only done because the person's relatives/friends etc don't want him/her to die. How far does humanity go before it's gone too far?

    NOTE: I'm not saying transplants etc should stop; it was just a question used to voice a concern. So don't attack me. If you're thinking about replying with something like "Well, let's have YOU have your <insert relation here> die because saving them wouldn't be natural, and see how you'd like it" then you've missed the whole point of what I said.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    On the subject of 'what kind of God would allow such horrible events to happen like the boxing day tragedy', well look at how that happening has brought back so much compassion for our fellowman, if nothing like that ever happened we would become a race of practically robots - uncaring and unsympathetic.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    answering the topic question...

    i don't really think things are predetermined, i'd like to think theres a choice in everything and infinite paths you can take.. obviously you could say 'you were always gonna choose that'. But i think the impulsiveness of people and the amount a certain circumstance can influence a decision shows we really do have choice. :cool:
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    No, I don't believe in fate, and I don't believe in destiny.

    I don't believe anyone has a partner marked out in life as "the one".

    Every tiny decision you make has huge consequences. Every tiny decision I make has huge consequences. They bring people together, take people apart. But it's just coincidence.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    I think just because you can only ever take one path it doesn't mean there is only one path to take.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    icey wrote:
    On the subject of 'what kind of God would allow such horrible events to happen like the boxing day tragedy', well look at how that happening has brought back so much compassion for our fellowman, if nothing like that ever happened we would become a race of practically robots - uncaring and unsympathetic.
    which to some extent takes us to the thread about the baby on life support.

    while theres people who need caring for ...there will be caring people. where compassion is needed ...compassionate people will grow.

    take out the pain of life and you loose ...something very valuable ...love compassion empathy etc.

    the less there is to care about ...the less caring people there will be ...where does that leave us?
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Aladdin wrote:
    So there is such thing as fate, but only affecting human actions and behaviour. Is that what you're saying?

    Doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Either it's your fate to die in a car crash or isn't. If it was 'fate' for someone to die in a car crash, or murdered by someone, then it also has to be fate for 300,000 people to die in a natural disaster.

    I can't say I understand your point? I don't believe that we a pre-determined path at all because we all have the free will to make decisions. You say its fate for 300,000 to die in natural disaster well its not necessarily pre determined that they will die because they could have been elsewhere at the time. I seriously can't understand why anything is pre determined because we always make our own decisions. I can understand that if I said my lifes over tomorrow then thats because its my fate but I find it obscene that a force greater than us has it planned that i'm going to do that.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    I don't believe in fate in any shape or form. I was simply replying to an earlier point about whether fate was set out by a deity or not and suggesting if someone had decided you would die on a plane crash then that someone had also decided a magnitude 9 earthquake would create a killer wave in 2004 that would wipe out 320,000.

    As I said, I don't believe any of that happens.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    I don't believe in Fate, but then again I don't believe in much.

    Also Fate by definition is pre-determined events and not thoughts, unless you consider thoughts events which, if so, means even every single beat your hearth have has been written.

    Fate could exist if the universe was just a piece of software running in a computer.
    Also this is a theory that could be exact, as all the universe is is electricity, even when you touch an object or hit someting you think it is because it is hard, but it is actually because of its electrical charge. A blackhole could just be a virus eating a part of the software or a delete button being press. Stars could be just lines of code that haven't been cleaned up yet or process/scripts that are still running.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Best avoid running AdAware then or else all the couch potatoes won't be able to get their daily dose of Eastenders! ;)
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    I don't believe in Fate, but then again I don't believe in much.

    Also Fate by definition is pre-determined events and not thoughts, unless you consider thoughts events which, if so, means even every single beat your hearth have has been written.

    Fate could exist if the universe was just a piece of software running in a computer.
    Also this is a theory that could be exact, as all the universe is is electricity, even when you touch an object or hit someting you think it is because it is hard, but it is actually because of its electrical charge. A blackhole could just be a virus eating a part of the software or a delete button being press. Stars could be just lines of code that haven't been cleaned up yet or process/scripts that are still running.

    Don't mess with peoples heads with that shit
Sign In or Register to comment.