Doesn't fate imply lack of free will?

[Martin]

Btw, for this post I assume that ALL believers in fate believe in a god, but not all believers in god believe in fate.



Now, if "things are meant to be" as many believers in fate like to say, then everything people do has been predetermined. If fate exists, that means that god is responsible for everything bad that has ever happened, happening and will happen. Why would he do that?


The whole concept of fate seems ridiculous to me.

 

[Electric Amish]

Fate doesn't force you to choose a certain path, it just already knows which path you will choose.

amish

 

[BD2003]

I believe in fate, but I dont believe in god. I donr believe in the fate that I will go down a chosen path in life and blah blah blah...

I believe that every single thing to happen in the universe was already decided (not by god) at the big bang, its all just being played out.

 

[NikPreviousAcct]

Originally posted by: Electric Amish
Fate doesn't force you to choose a certain path, it just already knows which path you will choose.

amish

Kinda freaky isn't it

nik

 

[smp]

Yeah .. lack of free will .. in agreement on this one. Fate is BS, God is BS, religion is BS, humanity is BS .. everything is BS .. the only thing you can believe in is BS.

 

[Electric Amish]

Originally posted by: smp
Yeah .. lack of free will .. in agreement on this one. Fate is BS, God is BS, religion is BS, humanity is BS .. everything is BS .. the only thing you can believe in is BS.

That is very profound....seriously.

amish

 

[Maverick]

Originally posted by: Electric Amish
Fate doesn't force you to choose a certain path, it just already knows which path you will choose.

amish

thats not how I think of it and I consider myself a believer in a fate. I think of fate as a guide...it forces certain paths upon you, but the choices of which paths you take are ultimately yours...the subsequent paths are also predetermined by fate however. So yeah its not total free will...but its not a complete lack of free will either. Its kind of like a Choose Your Own Adventure book.

 

[KEV1N]

I do believe in fate. Too many weird things have happened to me for me not to believe that there's some kind of thread tying all of this together.

However the way I believe in it, fate isn't like a "script" that predicts every miniscule action you will take... it just defines major/key points in your life. What you do between those key points is up to you. Everything will just lead to the next fated point.

 

[bleuiko]

Originally posted by: Electric Amish
Fate doesn't force you to choose a certain path, it just already knows which path you will choose.

amish

my thoughs exactly on this question.

 

[Tsaico]

I would say no, lack of free will means you have no ability to do as you choose. Fate implies that the result is constant and will not change regardless what you do before it happens. I will give two examples... Fate would have two people meet. Regardless of what they do, "Fate" will put them together... Buying lunch at the same place, doing their laundry in the same place, taking the same bus, whatever. It was fated that those two would meet. Lack of free will would be more like when inmate #4123 must excersise for 12 minutes then shower and go to bed. He has no choice in the matter. Fate is the end results, free will is what you do to get there...

And keep in mind, some people might just be here to set an example for someone else...

 

[bmacd]

i don't like the fact that i'm not in control of my life.

-=bmacd=-

 

[KEV1N]

This is exactly my philosophy

Originally posted by: Tsaico
I would say no, lack of free will means you have no ability to do as you choose. Fate implies that the result is constant and will not change regardless what you do before it happens. I will give two examples... Fate would have two people meet. Regardless of what they do, "Fate" will put them together... Buying lunch at the same place, doing their laundry in the same place, taking the same bus, whatever. It was fated that those two would meet. Lack of free will would be more like when inmate #4123 must excersise for 12 minutes then shower and go to bed. He has no choice in the matter. Fate is the end results, free will is what you do to get there...

And keep in mind, some people might just be here to set an example for someone else...

 

[Pooteh]

fate breaks down when you consider the undeserved horrible fates of many throughout time. take death camp victims for one.

now you can still believe in fate if you believe God is an evil sadistic bastid

 

[phantom309]

It is what it is.
Oh, to be a sophomore again.....

 

[KEV1N]

Originally posted by: Pooteh
fate breaks down when you consider the undeserved horrible fates of many throughout time. take death camp victims for one.

now you can still believe in fate if you believe God is an evil sadistic bastid

Not everybody can be happy or have a happy fate. Without the bad no one will ever know the good!

 

[Amused]

My take on fate:

If we take the common definition of "god" as an omnipotent being, we must assume this god knows all, past, present and future. If this god does not know all, it is not omnipotent.

If this god created everything, and is omnipotent, it had to know everything that would happen, before it happened. Therefore, before each person is created, this god would know exactly what this person would do.

Moreover, if this god is omnipotent, it not only knows the future, it creates it and controls it.

This is the contradiction in most mainstream religions. There can be no "free will" with an omnipotent creator. An omnipotent creator would not be able to create something without knowing, or controlling it's fate.

 

[diskop]

Originally posted by: KEV1N
This is exactly my philosophy

Originally posted by: Tsaico
I would say no, lack of free will means you have no ability to do as you choose. Fate implies that the result is constant and will not change regardless what you do before it happens. I will give two examples... Fate would have two people meet. Regardless of what they do, "Fate" will put them together... Buying lunch at the same place, doing their laundry in the same place, taking the same bus, whatever. It was fated that those two would meet. Lack of free will would be more like when inmate #4123 must excersise for 12 minutes then shower and go to bed. He has no choice in the matter. Fate is the end results, free will is what you do to get there...

And keep in mind, some people might just be here to set an example for someone else...

So your view is more of a Sim City than a The Sims perspective. Macromanagement as opposed to micro.

 

[AvesPKS]

Setting the God aspect aside for a second, I believe fate is an inevitable conclusion of the observation of life. If I am in a situation where I have two choices, A and B I will make (arbitrarily) A...if that moment in time were replayed over and over again, I would still make that same choice. Some outside influence would have to come into play to cause me to choose B; barring that, setting me with the same knowledge through a certain situation will always result in my picking the same choice. I don't believe there could be any other outcome. And if I can only follow one path in life...I suppose it's not necessarily fate in the sense that a book, written long ago, contains my path in life, but that no matter how many times I were to repeat a decision, I would always make the same choice. Therefore, there exists a singular path that I will follow throughout life.

 

[Pooteh]

Originally posted by: KEV1N

Originally posted by: Pooteh
fate breaks down when you consider the undeserved horrible fates of many throughout time. take death camp victims for one.

now you can still believe in fate if you believe God is an evil sadistic bastid

Not everybody can be happy or have a happy fate. Without the bad no one will ever know the good!

are you saying that fate is a zero sum game? someone must have a suck ass life for another to live well? that would suck royally.

 

[Moonbeam]

I believe that the only intelligent thing I've seen on this was posted by Athanasius along time ago and I didn't understand it.

Personally I would say that omniscience is just another word for consciousness or self knowledge. When you know yourself you know everybody. When you know yourself you know everything that can be known that is of importance. Everything else is dessert.

 

[tcsenter]

There are varying interpretations of fate, it may not be an 'all or none' proposition.

How forceful is this 'fate'? Can you exert enough free will to derail it?

Edit: Damn I hate it when I hit 'submit' accidentally!

And you cannot completely disbelieve some 'forms' of fate. For example, I dare you to "free will" yourself not to die and live forever.

Or...is 'fate' simply another word to explain 'consequence'. As if you jump off a bridge...your fate is all but secured.

 

[RandomCoil]

Going down the list:

1) In answer to the first question I would say yes, fate implies a lack of free will. The bigger issue is why you choose to live a "free" or "fated" life.

2) BD2003: You must have gotten stuck on Newtonian physics at some point. A quantum mechanical view of the universe would not agree with "fate" being defined at the Big Bang.

3) And finally, there's no way to know whether fate is real or not. I'll go with "not" because it seems like just the sort of cop-out a human would come up with to explains things that a) they don't want to admit to being responsible for and b) they don't understand. People spend a lot of time asking "why?" and seem to like to go with the anser that takes the least work to understand.

Probablility is, I guess, hard to grasp.

 

[BD2003]

Originally posted by: RandomCoil
2) BD2003: You must have gotten stuck on Newtonian physics at some point. A quantum mechanical view of the universe would not agree with "fate" being defined at the Big Bang.

As far as I understand, the uncertainty principle means that we cant measure it things down to a certain point, but that doesnt mean theyre not ordered.

 

[RandomCoil]

I didn't say anything about Heisenberg. The key issue I was getting at was that QM allows for probability-based outcomes which Newtonian physics can't deal with.

 

[docmanhattan]

Originally posted by: RandomCoil
Going down the list:

1) In answer to the first question I would say yes, fate implies a lack of free will. The bigger issue is why you choose to live a "free" or "fated" life.

2) BD2003: You must have gotten stuck on Newtonian physics at some point. A quantum mechanical view of the universe would not agree with "fate" being defined at the Big Bang.

3) And finally, there's no way to know whether fate is real or not. I'll go with "not" because it seems like just the sort of cop-out a human would come up with to explains things that a) they don't want to admit to being responsible for and b) they don't understand. People spend a lot of time asking "why?" and seem to like to go with the anser that takes the least work to understand.

Probablility is, I guess, hard to grasp.

What's interesting about your post is that you say "not" to fate, yet you casually reference the Big Bang as though it's proven event will concrete evidence. I think that very well summarizes a lot of peoples feelings here. if it's related to science, it'll be accepted with the only sketchy, extrapolated evidence at best, but the the same leniency isn't given if the subject in question is at all tied to religion.