Does fate exist?

[*_ash_*]

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.

 

Put slightly better than me, but yes.

[epiphany]

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.

 

It seems from your post that your argument against fate is purely because it's too cruel to exist or hostile to your sense of free choice and control. Perhaps I have misunderstood.

 

As with any abstract philosophical concept, I don't understand how people can hold such absolutist viewpoints as to say "of course .... doesn't exist".

[Ghozer]

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

 

no, but think about it logically... use the same argument as "you can't say there are no aliens out there, think of the vast number of universes out there, with galaxies in them, with constellations, with stars, with planets orbiting etc, by sheer mathmatics and logic alone there has to be atleast one other planet with inteligent life...

 

just like the number of things that need proving is so vast that by maths alone more and more things will get proven, things we can't prove now will be proven later, it could be 5 yeras, 50 years or even 5000 (or more) years, but eventually...

[HeadingNorth]

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

 

 

No, but some things can be proven to be unprovable. (If that even makes sense!)

 

The notion of "everything happens according to fate" is one such. The only way to put that notion to the test is to think of sometihng that, if it happened, would not be according to fate; which is by definition impossible. There is no event, of any kind, which if it occurs cannot have been according to fate.

 

 

Even at the arithmetic level, Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem has proven that there will always be some things mathematics cannot prove.

[*_ash_*]

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

Glad I hadn't had a smoke before reading that

It seems from your post that your argument against fate is purely because it's too cruel to exist or hostile to your sense of free choice and control. Perhaps I have misunderstood.

 

As with any abstract philosophical concept, I don't understand how people can hold such absolutist viewpoints as to say "of course .... doesn't exist".

I don't think that you have misunderstood. I think his/her point of view is that it is nonsensical. Hence 'of course'.

no, but think about it logically... use the same argument as "you can't say there are no aliens out there, think of the vast number of universes out there, with galaxies in them, with constellations, with stars, with planets orbiting etc, by sheer mathmatics and logic alone there has to be atleast one other planet with inteligent life...

 

just like the number of things that need proving is so vast that by maths alone more and more things will get proven, things we can't prove now will be proven later, it could be 5 yeras, 50 years or even 5000 (or more) years, but eventually...

I don't see how you can compare this, Ghozer. To say that there are no aliens out their would be stupid. I don't think anyone has said anything close to that.

 

You mentioned 'intelligent life' in your alien analogy. What is intelligence? How you answer this could determine whether or not that it's likely that an alien exists, or could exist. There are almost certainly life forms out there [even if only a living cell of some form].

 

Their [alien], or our, ability to find some way of communicating with each other seems to be how most people define whether they exist or not. This is equally nonsensical.

 

I can't communicate with a DNA strand, but it's likely that it is far more intelligent than I. It can do amazing things without thought [well I think it doesn't think:|]. I have to think, and most commonly don't do amazing things.

[Wildcat]

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.

 

One problem is that on the face of it cause and effect as an absolute law is incompatible with big bang theory.

 

You can of course argue that because time and therefore also cause and effect, began with the big bang, to talk about a before is meaningless, but that seems like a cop out answer to me. If every effect has a cause then there should be no beginning because there will always be a cause prior in time to the effect.

[*_ash_*]

No, but some things can be proven to be unprovable. (If that even makes sense!)

 

This could be an answer to a thought I had the other week after reading a bizarre thread [a god one]. (I probably rightly thought against posting this ponder:hihi:)

 

If the universe [and earth] continued for infinity, and assuming human intervention didn't meddle with atoms [i.e. create new ones from existing ones], then since we wouldn't destroy any atoms, would that mean that every single atom that makes you and me as a person, eventually would have been a part of everything on this planet?

 

So since it could never been proven that an infinity could happen, then it must be unprovable. (I'm sure it would happen though, wouldn't it?, if infinity could be proven?)

 

 

(I need help!)

[Alien]

no, but think about it logically... use the same argument as "you can't say there are no aliens out there, think of the vast number of universes out there, with galaxies in them, with constellations, with stars, with planets orbiting etc, by sheer mathmatics and logic alone there has to be atleast one other planet with inteligent life...

 

just like the number of things that need proving is so vast that by maths alone more and more things will get proven, things we can't prove now will be proven later, it could be 5 yeras, 50 years or even 5000 (or more) years, but eventually...

 

If you think logically then the nano second you die and up until then no proof of aliens exist...then aliens or any lifeforms out there doesn't exist. If they do I can't dig you up and say "you were right"...because you don't exist.

 

Btw..there is the argument (because we don't know) that this planet is just as likely to be a one-off as is the argument that there are other lifeforms out there. They are both equal arguments.

[*_ash_*]

Their [alien], or our, ability to find some way of communicating with each other seems to be how most people define whether they exist or not.

 

Btw..there is the argument (because we don't know) that this planet is just as likely to be a one-off as is the argument that there are other lifeforms out there. They are both equal arguments.

 

Speak of the devil. (what is the phrase for that, when you are an atheist?)

[Wildcat]

You mentioned 'intelligent life' in your alien analogy. What is intelligence? How you answer this could determine whether or not that it's likely that an alien exists, or could exist. There are almost certainly life forms out there [even if only a living cell of some form].

 

Their [alien], or our, ability to find some way of communicating with each other seems to be how most people define whether they exist or not. This is equally nonsensical.

 

I can't communicate with a DNA strand, but it's likely that it is far more intelligent than I. It can do amazing things without thought [well I think it doesn't think:|]. I have to think, and most commonly don't do amazing things.

 

Some scientists think they will have a theory of consciousness soon and maybe even reproduce it in computers within the next 30 years.

 

http://spectrum.ieee.org/static/sing_koch

 

Whether they can or not is still to be found out, but it is certainly possible for there to be a deterministic set of rules for consciousness and that free will is on the one hand an illusion, but on the other an important but not incompatible concept on a different level of meaning to do with responsibility.