Fate, Destiny, Density....

[poogie]

"You are my density...." (I've always loved that quote, can you name the movie?)

Do you believe in fate, in destiny? Not just in terms of love but in all aspects of life. I think I've already asked about soulmates and true love and all that but this is more all encompassing. What about a higher spiritual power? Do you believe in God or some other religious figure?

/P

[ladychris]

Yes, I believe in God. At the beginning it was just because I have been taught to do so, but later my physics studies showed me the universe to be of such a complexity that there must be a superior mind behind it (call it God or how you prefer, it doesn't really matter).

What I don't believe in is fate. Your destiny is not written in advance.
Ofc it depends on a lot of factors and when your habits, behaviour, relation to others and such are already well settled, it is hard to imagine a total change in the course of your life. But that doesnt mean someone else is pulling the ropes of the puppet... The only responsible of your life is yourself, and blaming your failures on fate is just a lame excuse...

Btw it is seldom heard of someone praising fate for his/her personal successes, did you notice?

[Russ]

Well, my personal opinion is that I don't believe in a God, or at least not in the traditional sense. I certainly don't think that some supreme being created the universe all for our benefit. I think that is just too big headed of us to think that!    
Religion is a bit of a double edged sword though, in one case it is good because it gives people something in their times of need, etc.  But it is also the cause for 99% of the worlds conflict too. (or certainly used as an excuse for other reasons).

As for fate... I'm not sure... I think there is fate in some sense, purely because you are who you are, and so if something happens, because of how you are, you are fated to take a certain action. (I hope that makes sense) I don't think that your whole life is predetermined from when you are born.

I hope I haven't offended anyone, I'm just saying what I believe...  

[Fenix]

As for fate... I'm not sure... I think there is fate in some sense, purely because you are who you are, and so if something happens, because of how you are, you are fated to take a certain action. (I hope that makes sense) I don't think that your whole life is predetermined from when you are born.

I couldn't agree more, everyone has it's own "fate" based o his personal characteristics. A really good psychologist can even predict your future  

And if you really need a God, why don't you take me for it? Praise me and your wishes will come true, for a price ofcourse   At least you'll have someone to make responsabile if you're dissapointed    sounds familiar?

There's no force controlling the universe, it's just Chaos and our incapacity to understand. Several era's ago we were praising the Sun, now that we found out it's just a puny star we are praising the BigUnknownForceRulingThings  

[Kymn]

The only 'religion' I've heard about that plausibly makes any kind of sense to me is the old mother earth, Gaia, where earth itself could be an organism of sorts, or a collective organism, like an anthill. Some mechanisms in nature seems too deliberate to only be explained as random occurences to me, like developments of sicknesses, the rebalancing mechanisms for ecosystems etc. But that's a big stretch for me.
I seriously can't understand (I really don't mean offence, but I just don't get it) that anyone could find any of the other religions I've learned about believable, but that's me being the scientist that I am I guess.

What I really do despise is how old mouldy manuscripts are used in todays world to discriminate women, homosexuals, ethnic groups etc. In that all big religions are equal crap to me, they should all rewrite their documents in concurrence with todays society, and burn the old ones, they are like anchors that drag us all down.

As of fate, I think I might believe in that, since I don't believe any process happens randomly, that is, if you would knew the state of everything and the processes for everything, you would be able to exactly predict the future. In philosophy says that means I believe that there is no free will. So in that I do believe in fate as in everything is predetermined, but since it's practically impossible to know everything and the process for everything, it doesn't matter much hehe. If that would make me give up and say "it's all fate, doesn't matter what I want to do", that would have been predetermined aswell

[Snapple]

Yes, I believe there is such a thing as a destiny. I also believe theres a higher power coordonating things, but I dont regard it as God. It's a very neutral, cold and calculated power, not the all loving God the bible gives us. Destiny doesnt mean that we all have a purpose or a fix goal to achieve in life and that we're obliged to achieve it.
I'd rather say we chose our goals. Destiny manifests itself in the way of this irational choice we make. Often there's no logical explenation for this choice. It's the force that controls us, and if we chose to ignore it, it's the longing we feel, the longing for something we don't even know.  
Things can be very simple but also very cold and impartial. We have the power to chose our goals. However, chosing something against your destiny is pretty much like peeing against the wind. It will come back and haunt you for the rest of your life.
And yes, there is such a thing as soul-mates. They do exist. Some of us know them, some of us only dream of them, most of us only mistake soul-mates for lovers and get dissapointed when things didnt work out.

[Dissectica]

Nopes, I don´t believe in God. I´ve just read an complex course at the university about Gods exsistence, arguments for and against...there simply were no good arguments for His existence that made impression on me. I cannot say that he doesn´t exist of course, just that I choose not to believe it.

Do I believe in other higher spirits? Tough question. That may need some investigation in my mind and some definition of "higher spirits". I belive in Mother Nature, sometimes I guess people don´t really see the power in that already. Otherwise, yes some incidents in my life has made me believe in some unnatural power, some divine intervention, something that doesn´t really fit into the natural laws we have so far. I wouldn´t call it miracles, but something unregular at least. Though, even then Im not sure they´re tricks in my mind or something really happening. At least Im doubting there may be some kind of power out there, but Im not sure.

Fate...nopes, I don´t believe in fate either although the thought about it has crossed my mind several times. Fate is I guess somewhat like determinism, and I wouldn´t stand living in a determinist world (although I wouldn´t notice it by then of course..hmm). Well, I don´t believe in fate anyway.

[Carrion]

I lack time and enough english knowledge to fully express what I think when we're talking about these highly interesting things...

Destiny... I can definitely picture everything to be deterministic. If we could actually put all rules and objects (down to the smallest possible particles) into our imaginery 'fortune telling machine', it could predict everything. Even chaos might not be as chaotic as we think atm...

God... Nope, don't think there is any gods or other higer beings... No 'ghosts' or 'demons' either... But if there IS some kind of higher deity, then a real GOD (you know, one that has created everything and can do whatever it chooses) isn't any harder to believe in, is it? Not to me, anyway.

Yes, I know, every word written creates at least 10 new questions... Interesting indeed!

[Dissectica]

God... Nope, don't think there is any gods or other higer beings... No 'ghosts' or 'demons' either... But if there IS some kind of higher deity, then a real GOD (you know, one that has created everything and can do whatever it chooses) isn't any harder to believe in, is it? Not to me, anyway.

I can agree with this to a certain degree. Although I guess it lies in the definition of God and the "higher deity". I would think it is quite possible to believe in a higher deity and still very difficult to imagine God (now refering to the christian God). Of course it lies in every humans own definition of God but I would say that a general definition (of course there are more than this) of God is that he is omnipotent and omniscient. I guess, for me at least, omnipotence is hard to comprehend and certainly that doesn´t need to be in the definition of other deitys. Well, my point is that sure, believeing in God could be easy once believeing in higher deitys, but it doens´t have to be, it´s all a question of definition. And well, this is just my own thoughts about it

[Carrion]

...it´s all a question of definition....

Amen!