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

How can people believe that they live life according to a predetermined path? It doesn't make sense to me! Why would somebody be destined to kill those poor little girls in Soham, what's the point? Destiny seems to me to be an excuse for the mediocre. They see others fly high and think to themselves that its destiny's fault that they cannot achieve such glories.

People will believe in fate, destiny, or any kind of propechy IF it predicts good things for them. They will also use it as a way of explianing why bad things happen to them, ie 'There must be a reason, ever if i cannot see it yet.' hoping the future will make sense of things that cannot be explained, or put into any kind of order.

now you're talking about what the point is in things and well really to say that someone getting killed has no point is silly because you don't know what the point of saving a load of people is yeah ok it feels goo and all that stuff but to really know is to know the meaning of life i mean really how do you know that someone getting killed today is stopping another hitler from being born you don't know so reallly oh i don't know where i'm going with this i'm drunk and enjoing life come on people lets enjoy it all woo hooo

How about;
Fate exists, but you make it yourself.

I don't think that that really makes sense. Either you follow a pre-determined path or you don't, its that simple.

You choose your fate. Does that make any better sense?

well as they say life is what you make of it, damn i just wish i knew who they were, please someone help me

Fate and God are both wish fulfillment thingummies. Useful but full of holes you could poke a barge through.

Ok so poke some holes and we'll see where we end up

Firstly, Free Will. Does he give it to us as his greatest gift or not, does he control everything?

Well if we have free will, why did he get so pissed of when we ate an apple? And why does he keep on interfering like sending his son down to save us.

And if he is controlling everything, why does he let people sin?

And if it isn't one or the other, then what is He playing at?
Eh?

Isn't that putting holes in Christianity , not God?

'Something' created everything you see?
Can we start there?

Isn't the hole in that argument that if it's necessary for there to be a "something" that created everything, there must be "something else" that created the "something"? And then another "something" that created the "something else"?

~~Aurora~~

But putting holes in Christianity is such fun!

Ok so something created us... but we created such notions of 'God' and 'Free Will'

I agree with Hasslefree in that you create your own fate ... often we unconsciously follow a path (a fate) that we have set ourselves. The notion of a higher power setting out a path that you have no choice in following absolves you of any blame for your actions. It's easy to blame it on 'God's will' rather than your own.

Aurora
Have you heard of infinity? Where will it all end?

Lilyth - now there's a name to play with
Have you ever contemplated the thought that we might BE the sum total of what we name God and that actually he/she/it does not exist anywhere else except for in the part of us we call soul?
A sort of collective consciousness.
Just a thought to have fun with

'The question is not why did God create a universe filled with evil, but why did god create a universe in the first place?' Sister Miriam Godwinson (from Alpha Centuari)

Loads of fun

I am contemplating the thought now ... too late at night is making my head hurt

I do think that we are part of what we call God but saying it doesn't exist anywhere else apart from in our soul (and what exactly is that by the way?!) excludes the natural world. Haven't you ever lay down on the grass in the sun and (at the risk of sounding corny) felt at one with everything?
I do believe in a collective consciousness .. and harking back to the original question of coincidence I wonder how much a collective consciousness would manifest itself in the day to day?
Am I making any sense now? I am feeling very close to being at one with sleep at the moment.

Sorry didn't mean to exclude the natural world.
The difference between that and mankind is that we have the ability to be aware
Sleep well.

We create a path for ourselves to follow? Surely this path can only lead into the next few days or weeks, because the longer the path the more other paths will branch off from it, it will be crossed by numerous other paths, presenting numerouse possibilities. Which still means there is no pre-determined path.

Grrr.

God? It is dangerous to take the Bible literaly. It is best to think of the story of Adam and Eve as a parable. Or it could be a truth told to us in a form we can understand, for example, the big bang theory corrisponds with the six days of creation; on the first day there was light, could mean the initial explosion.

Hopeful Monster.
Is the universe filled with evil?
Or is it filled with both good and evil, without which there would be no free will.

If we accept the 'greatest gift ' of all - free will- then we have to acknowledge that both good and bad must be in the world.

Evil (which of course is like beauty, often in the eye of the beholder - for instance it used to be evil to eat fish on friday, it used to be evil if you had your photograph taken thus having your soul stolen etc etc) must then be a necessary evil (s'cuse pun) for good to exist at all and vice versa.
Without free will we would be no better at living than this computer.

For everything of great beauty there must be something of exetreme ugliness, otherwise how would we know it is beautiful?