I was talking to my father recently when we talked about me being trans. He felt that God has a plan, and I felt that there is no destiny, we make our own fortune even though the gods help us and the world to be good and happy. it still is us in the end that gets us there.

Well we agreed to disagree, but I kept thinking on it. I do believe in purpose, and that we have something to do in this world, but i don't believe in destiny. But what if both were true? What if it is because of our nature that locks us into a path and destiny, and if we change ourselves we escape said destiny?

For instance, maybe someone would be killed because she liked to help people. This made her go into a bad part of town where she was mugged and killed. That was her fate because she was a good person, it was who she was. This lead to a man being sentenced to prison and saved his girlfriend who he was planning to kill. because he was a person who would kill to get what he wanted this was in turn his fate, thus the girlfriend lives.

If the first woman hadn't been good hearted, then the girlfriend would have died. If the man wasn't willing to kill then both would live. People can change their nature, but these people hadn't. The fact that they were who they were lead to the outcome described. Thus if someone had changed the entire equation would change.

So how is this different then cause and effect? Well it is my belief that there is no true chaos in this world. That things are guided. The basis for this is simple, chaos is unpredictable right? But then if it is that chaos doesn't repeat, it predictably is unpredictable. The same with order, things staying the same. But if things will always follow a tendency to stay the same, then it is orderly to advance to being the same. Thus things change in ways to make them the same. A touch a chaos.

This in turn makes all things touched by order and chaos. Which in turn makes it so we can change our own destinies. What do you all think.

You are in an auto accident.  Fate?  Destiny?  Bad Luck?  Could be any or all.  Had you stopped to have a beer, missed a red light, left one minute before or after would it have all happened anyway?

QuoteYou are in an auto accident.  Fate?  Destiny?  Bad Luck?

Poor driving, car in need of mechanical repair, unsafe car, poor conditions and driving too fast, not wearing seat belt,etc.

Our world is full of cause and effect. The butterfly effect? In praying we set up our subconscious to make quick decisions on our behalf to move us in the direction we want our life to go. For all practical purposes God is only in our brain as we die so does the brain's influence. We might not be aware of all the causes that surround our life but the more we know about them the better we are at calculating the probability of things happening around us that affect us. To ignore all those practical events and put our lives to chance has created problems for countless people.

Quote from: lisagurl on January 19, 2009, 01:49:01 PM

QuoteYou are in an auto accident.  Fate?  Destiny?  Bad Luck?

Poor driving, car in need of mechanical repair, unsafe car, poor conditions and driving too fast, not wearing seat belt,etc.

Our world is full of cause and effect. The butterfly effect? In praying we set up our subconscious to make quick decisions on our behalf to move us in the direction we want our life to go. For all practical purposes God is only in our brain as we die so does the brain's influence. We might not be aware of all the causes that surround our life but the more we know about them the better we are at calculating the probability of things happening around us that affect us. To ignore all those practical events and put our lives to chance has created problems for countless people.

Maybe i'm not explaining it right, but the concept i'm trying to convey is not cause and effect. Ok, think of it this way. Most people will save a child because they feel compelled to right? This is because it is in our nature to do so. We don't have to, but we will because it is the right thing, or evolution, or whatever.

It ties into destiny because of our nature. We will bring out destiny and fate because of our nature. For instence, it is human nature to fight over reasouces, or not trust someone instinctively we don't know. Things like understanding of strangers or pacifism goes against the human nature. So as long as we are ruled by emotions as anger and greed the destiny of continuous war or worse in this world will always be a reality.

But if we understand the process and break the cycle we change our destiny. Case in point is transfolk, we were destined to live as our birth sex. however we all have taken steps, even ever so slightly, to change that destiny.

Maybe i'm muddled or describing something everyone already knows. But it isn't a concept of simply changing oneself or cause and effect. It runs deeper in the universe. Call it spiritual or philosophical but I believe that everyone has purpose for good or ill in this world. Everyone has the ability to make the world better, or set it ablaze.

First off, to me there's a fundamental difference between fate and destiny, but I'll explain what I mean just now.

People are, for the most part, animals. They act and react out of instinct and based on their neurobiology, and then they tend to rationalise those instinctive acts later. Bigotry for example - it's instinct - we're a social animal, and for the security of the pack, we only tolerate difference up to a certain point before we attack it and drive it out. On the other end of the scale, psychopathy is a structural variation in the brain that makes people less sensitised to serotonin, amongst other things, and makes them less able to consider the consequences of their actions or to take the needs of the group into account.

So yeah, from that point of view we are all slaves to our nature. We may think we make decisions and choices, but ultimately it boils down to our biology reacting to its environment, our memes and genes doing their best to propagate. And because it's so predictable, it forms a pattern that can be read, predicted and manipulated. That is fate, simply the huge big pattern of cause and effect.

Except...

Make somebody who is psychopathic aware of what they are and then give them the tools to manage that condition - things like meditation and medication and anger management classes, and that person can change. As a subconscious, unknown trait it ruled that person's fate, but in becoming aware of it and learning about it, that person gains control over it and unravels that particular strand of his or her fate. I believe that the same is true for everything else that drives us - greed, bigotry, love, infatuation, compassion, even GID - especially GID. As long as we are unaware of it, it sits there eating at us, manipulating how we react, but the moment we become aware of and accept a driver, we take control of it, and we can guide circumstances to give ourselves a better fate.

But then of course there IS circumstance, and that to me is destiny. We don't all get the same opportunities to become more aware and less ignorant and so gain control of our fates. The fact that my mom chose to stay home and teach me to read at an early age gave me a love of reading and learning, which helped me become more aware of things. The same cannot be said of a child growing up in the Sudan today, who is too busy trying to figure out where her and her five siblings' next meal will come from. So from that point of view, I suppose we do have destiny, but within that destiny we can change our fates through knowledge and understanding.

As Pythagoras said: "Know thyself and thou shall know the Universe and God."

Mina.

the idea that "all things happen for a reason" is just that: an idea. it's man-made. it's a comforting rationalization of what are disconnected or contingent people and events. it's a passive way of going through life putting blind faith in "destiny" or "god."

unfortunately, reason and rationalism are about all we have to go with. "validity" usually relies on hindsight, and our ability to connect the dots in ways the suit our preconceived notions.

i think that "all things happen for a reason" is valid on an individual basis, and its "evidence" would be in its ability to help an individual cope with life. it doesn't work for me.

Certain things we do are done to accomplish a goal. If along the way something happens to us, then that was part of the destiny of the choices we made.

The girl who ventured into the bad part of town, even though it was for a good purpose, made a choice that she knew would put her life in danger. She chose possible death as an outcome of her actions.

In the first instance, personal harm was such a small part of the equation that person should not be faulted for what happened to them.  In the second instance you could very well fault the person because there was a very strong chance she would be harmed but she took little precautions to prevent it.  And that faulting is most often done when we are trying to figure out how the harm could have been prevented.

No matter how you look at it, it is our decisions that place us in every situation we find ourselves in.  Fate or destiny had nothing to do with it.  We could have made a different choice and it would have resulted in a different outcome.  It is only when we are looking for the reason why something happened to us we didn't plan that we start wondering about destiny. 

Be ultra cautious or say damn the torpedoes, either way we will encounter unexpected results because we couldn't determine all the possible outcomes.  It's a lot easier to just live life and accept the fact there will be bumps along the road.

Julie

Destiny is when you realize you are God.

Quote from: Caprica-6 on January 24, 2009, 05:26:05 PM
Destiny is when you realize you are God.

i'm god & make my own destiny.

Me 2

If you believe everything that happens is part of one continuous chain of events, then (long story short) free-will is an illusion, and our lives are completely governed by "destiny" if that's what you want to call it.

However, there is a theory finally gaining traction in Physics which offers another possibility called the Many-Worlds Interpretation which says (again, trying to keep things concise) everything that is possible happens, every possible new configuration of matter at a given point in time splits off into multiple universes.  I guess we could infer from this that we then sort of choose which chain of events our consciousness experiences, but there are practically infinite versions of us who chose different paths, one or many of whom may turn out to be President of the United States!  Sounds crazy, right?  This theory was laughed at for 40 some-odd years, but now evidence is coming in which seems to lend it support, and Physicists the world over are beginning to believe there is something to it.

So whether it is destiny or we ourselves making our own fortune depends on which model you believe.  Personally I believe MWI solves so many problems so elegantly I'd be surprised if it isn't right.  Certainly oddities like the placebo effect and the seeming effectiveness of affirmations or prayer could be explained.

Our "true nature" is what it is in this Universe, in another it may be something all together different.

Here is a good overview of MWI if you are interested:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/manyworlds/byrne.html