Does fate exist?

[epiphany]

You can't prove you would have taken any other path other than the one that has led you to this point right now.

[HeadingNorth]

You can't prove you would have taken any other path other than the one that has led you to this point right now.

 

More importantly, if someone had taken a different path, and was now at a different point, they would argue that it was their destiny to arrive at that point, just as they argue that it is their destiny to arrive at this point where they actually are.

 

All such unfalsifiable notions are a waste of thinking power. For any theory to have any value, you must be able to design a test which would prove it false if the test were to succeed. The notion of "everything happens according to destiny" cannot be subjected to any such test, even in theory.

[Ghozer]

I sort of do.., I believe in an end point (and I don't mean death)

 

I believe that as we go through our life we make our own decisions and own choices which path to take, but no matter which we choose, we will always end up at the point we were meant to be.. its these choices that determine wether were happy or not, or wether we enjoyed getting to that point, or not etc...

 

so while the end is set, how we get there isn't - so saying that two people met, that was fate, I don't believe it...

[epiphany]

More importantly, if someone had taken a different path, and was now at a different point, they would argue that it was their destiny to arrive at that point, just as they argue that it is their destiny to arrive at this point where they actually are.

 

All such unfalsifiable notions are a waste of thinking power. For any theory to have any value, you must be able to design a test which would prove it false if the test were to succeed. The notion of "everything happens according to destiny" cannot be subjected to any such test, even in theory.

 

Indeed, but we're in the realm of philosophy here so I don't think it's waste of thinking power at all. It's interesting and it brings up other notions about free choice and other possible illusions of manifest consciousness that science can't really grasp meaningfully.

 

I think the concept of fate overlaps with determinism, which states that each moment is perpetually determined by an unbroken sequence of prior occurrences, all the way back to the "beginning of time" or as far we can perceive it. Fate, or at least the concept of fate, has a place within that philosophical quandry surrounding free choice vs set paths.

[HeadingNorth]

Indeed, but we're in the realm of philosophy here so I don't think it's waste of thinking power at all.

 

 

At this level, all philosophy is a waste of thinking power. There can never be any useful conclusion, since nothing is ever provable. At best, it is an idle way of wasting a few hours in debate; at worst, it leads to arguments and people trying to score points from each other, or force other people to admit that their unprovable idea is better than anyone else's.

 

 

Now, wasting a few hours in idle debate is not necessarily a bad thing, of course. We all have our own ideas about how to spend leisure time; I'm wasting some of my leisure time by contributing to this thread, with my opinion that it's completely pointless anyone contributing to it!

[epiphany]

At this level, all philosophy is a waste of thinking power. There can never be any useful conclusion, since nothing is ever provable. At best, it is an idle way of wasting a few hours in debate; at worst, it leads to arguments and people trying to score points from each other, or force other people to admit that their unprovable idea is better than anyone else's.

 

Oh lighten up. Fine, let the point scorers... score their points. I for one love discussing this stuff. It's like art and music - there is no right or wrong, but you can still engage in a meaningful discussion about its form and signification.

[Ghozer]

At this level, all philosophy is a waste of thinking power. There can never be any useful conclusion, since nothing is ever provable. At best, it is an idle way of wasting a few hours in debate; at worst, it leads to arguments and people trying to score points from each other, or force other people to admit that their unprovable idea is better than anyone else's.

 

 

Now, wasting a few hours in idle debate is not necessarily a bad thing, of course. We all have our own ideas about how to spend leisure time; I'm wasting some of my leisure time by contributing to this thread, with my opinion that it's completely pointless anyone contributing to it!

 

you can't prove that nothing is ever provable..

 

ok, while we wont ever be able to prove EVERYTHING, most things we think impossible to prove now, will at some point, one day be proven (or disproven, which ever way)

[epiphany]

while we wont ever be able to prove EVERYTHING, most things we think impossible to prove now, will at some point, one day be proven (or disproven, which ever way)

 

Do you have proof that most things we think impossible to prove now will at some point be proven or disproven?

[*_ash_*]

Does fate exist or is it rubbish

Like someone mentioned earlier ... 'does it exist?' is impossible to answer. I have wondered about it though. It just doesn't match the way that I think. So I would say I consider that it is rubbish.

Like rfs-001 I too believe in fate and believe that everything happens for a reason - even the awful things in life. I can't always fathom out what the reason for some things is but definitely it does happen so that we can learn by it and maybe do things differently another time.

I don't think 'believe' would be the right word, but I think in a way that is just about the exact opposite of this.

 

I that everything [including us] is an effect. An effect of decisions, actions, and internal and external environmental influences, which create what is here and now.

 

Some examples: why are you reading this post on this forum? It is the effect of something that you did in the past, i.e. (perhaps you once Googled 'why are bus drivers so miserable?')

 

Why are you alive? This is the effect of a single decision by one or both of your parents [and their parents, and their parents, repeat many times] which meant that they met.

 

Why are humans alive? The effect of millions of actions, and internal and external environmental influences.

 

 

(I'm not bored or wide awake honest - this is the effect of being rained out of tennis today, and not burning any energy )

[flamingjimmy]

Of course fate doesn't exist.

 

If I was born with some sort of severely debilitating condition into abject poverty and starvation I really don't think it would 'educate my soul' and if I was killed by some 'fated' event out of my control then I certainly wouldn't be able to learn from it.

 

It's easy to make these arguments from our comfortable position, but try explaining to some orphan child with aids in some third world country that he was born into abject poverty and will have a horrible disease for his entire (probably rather short) life through no fault of his own, and his parents are dead, and that that is his fate and how things are supposed to be.