h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

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I'm not entirely sure whether I want to take responsibility for my actions or not. But I don't have much choice in this modern age, do I?

As I understand it, my faith teaches that we do have predestination, but that our main task in life is to discover what that predestination is.

I personally believe that everyone was born with a purpose. They have to discover what that purpose is and then strive to achieve it. I know that I am meant to be a teacher, I just have to get the eduation.

My destiny seems to have something to do with psychology. Go figure. Isn't it always we ones that go into psych?

[Ben]

{[caer]}

I can't accept that there is such a thing as predestination, as I can't see who how or what would set that for you - I'm emphatically *not* a spiritual person folks. So I guess my line would be that one is here to f**k it all up on your own terms

The theory of predestination has always struck me as being in opposition to free will, although some religions claim to believe in both. If someone is born - not destined for salvation - then he can live an exemplary life and be dammed anyway. The flip side is that if someone is born - destined for salvation - and leads a despicable life, God will somehow lead him back into the fold so salvation will occur. In either case, God is cruel and arbitrary.

If predestination is true, then what's the point in trying to be good. It doesn't really matter what we do. That is so incredibly depressing.

Reincarnation and karma make much more sense. In which case, I can choose between physical lifetimes to be a poet or a teacher or whatever. This would explain the natural draw toward a certain profession/location whatever. But it still gves us free will and makes us responsible for our own actions. If I am supposed to be a teacher, it is up to me to actually follow through and to then be the best teacher I can. God isn't going to pull the strings and make it all work out.

Courtesy, that's an interesting question, and I'm giving it some thought.

I have been thinking about this "fate verus your own descion making" I have to admit that by the age of 21 I'd achieved everything I'd set out to do in life.

I've gone to university without my parents financial aid, and some *ahem* difficult personal circumstances. I'm 90 % sure I'm the first TS medical student, at least in the UK who'll graduate (unless I bugger up my exams..) - with the exception of girls who disgusted them selves as boys to go to medical school in the 19th century and earlier.

I'm really hopping I'll be the first TS to become a consultant, have a decent career and not be ostracised in medicine as people have been in the past, but I'd be naive if I thought that it wasn't a very strong possiblity.

But none of this is my achievement, it's because I was fortunate to be in the right place in society at the right time. Part of it was determination and stubboness, but the vast majority has been down to being fortunate enough to live in the UK in the 21st century. However much determination you have sometimes you can't achieve things, and some times however much you good fortune you have - lying back and letting life happen sometimes leads to achievement - but people who do that often end up been blown off course..

Bugga, I spent ages posting that and forgot to spell check it

I tend to believe in determinism rather than free will. But that rests on my probably shaky understanding of how these two terms are used in philosophy. It doesn't really matter and the word believe is aposite, as I will probably carry on thinking that this is a much saner way for the universe to behave even if it doesn't quite work like this.

Anyway, I believe in choice. I believe that we make our own choices but I also beleive that those choices are affected by external factors (the weather, the fact that the train was late, a chance meeting on the street, something I see in the newspaper, the colour shirt my colleague is wearing) and internal factors (my personality - whether that is shaped by genetics or upbringing or both, my mood, my personal backstory and so on). I believe that I would always make the same choice if the clock was wound back so that if I could make the choice again given that everything - the universe and me - were exactly the same as the first time I made the choice. Anything else is randomness, and frankly I don't particularly want to believe that I have no input into the direction my life takes if the toss up between option A and option B could not be predicted - I would like to think that this entity makes the choices she makes because of who she is (with diue ragard to how she is affected by rain).

This, I suppose, isn't incompatable with predestination, if you want to argue that knowing everything that has happened in the universe up to and including the very moment of choice would allow you to calculate whether I'm going to go for the cheese sandwich or the ham sandwhich. And presumably this would also allow you to predict from the very first moment everything that ever would happen. An omniscient god could therefore have both predestination, in the sense that she knows what will happen, and choice, in the sense that unless she fiddles with the universe to create a circumstance which makes me particularly predisposed to chedder on Tuesday, then short of setting the whole thing in motion, it runs itself. I'm not sure how ethical miricles and the like are, as that is interferring, but...

However, this relies on the universe behaving in a way which could be predicted from the very first, and this is where we get into physics and I bow out.

Still.

Interesting question.

Sorry for being absent for about 4 days here, guys. Sick.

Hey, to all the newcomers and newreturners! I caught some of you in what backlog I did read, but I'm sure I missed some of you in the backlog that I've yet to catch up on.

As for the current fate vs. choice argument, I've gotta side with free will. I can certainly see how some religions (various forms of Christianity, etc.) can believe in both of them. I think that the main reason that I believe in the "free will" aspect comes from some of my own religious beliefs about God and the Universe and various texts that I've read (such as when Moses manages to talk God out of doing something in the book of....um, I wanna say Exodus....).

Although I must admit that the way you've said things, Sporky, is probably true, that there are few to no random occurances in the Universe.

And the theory that God (I'm not meaning to offend anyone with this, BTW) would just preselect people for Heaven seems silly. If He's industrious enough to create a Universe, then you'd think that a process of monitoring people wouldn't be too tough.

Knowing that I am meant to be a teacher is not saying I was predestined for it. There are a number of other professions I could pursue but, I would not get the feeling of being fulfilled that I will when I enter my chosen pofession.

When you say "I know I was meant to be a teacher" Are you actually saying "I think I am in my nature suited to a job with features XY and Z,"

Which are in the situation and society you live in match the features of a teachers job?

That is what I am saying Z.

Just checking I've got it right then..

[Affy]

Welcome, KerrAvon!

Courtesy, I believe that we have free will, or at least the illusion of free will. Don't get me wrong...if there is an omnipotent being out there, I'm sure that our free will is merely illusory, and that omnipotent being knows in advance what our actions will be. But we don't, which makes it free will for all intents and purposes. I'll give you my Calvin paper sometime...it makes this argument in detail.

However, that said, I do think it is our goal in life to find out and pursue our purpose. We get sidetracked, and slide back, but eventually we get there, or we die unhappy and resentful.