Do You Believe In Destiny? [TOTW 20.11.06-26.11.06]

[Maggie]

do you believe in destiny?
do you think your life is managed from the beginning or it's up to you to chose what ever you want? and to chose your life for good or for bad? do you think for example when something happen to you or to anybody you know that it's his destiny and not his bad choice is what happened was bad? or wein person die do you believe that because it's his time now and not the situation which end to this act??

do you believe that God manage your whole life? Do God chose our life style? Do God chose to be good person or bad person? or it's our choice to be bad or good?

do you believe that you can make your own destiny or it's wrote even before you born??

[coralie]

i think that we make choices in our life so basicly we are the designers of our destiny and should be the sole responsable for the outcomes of those choices ...

[Osiris]

Destiny refers to a predetermined course of events. It may be conceived as a predetermined future, whether in general or of an individual. It is a concept based on the belief that there is a fixed natural order to the universe.

I don't believe in such thing.. I don't believe in palm reading and tarot cards.. I don’t like the idea that everything that happens was meant to happen, I think we control our life and if something happens it doesn’t mean it was meant to happen or happen for a reason... any reason!

Originally Posted by Maggie

do you believe that God manage your whole life? Do God chose our life style? Do God chose to be good person or bad person? or it's our choice to be bad or good?

Most people take everything for granted.. no need to think, no need to do anything.. everything is "in God's hand", he "decides everything", "he died, it was written by God, it's his destiny!" Well, no I don't believe in that.


I believe destiny to be what we make it, it's the weight of circumstances.

[maroon1]

I'm a Muslim and as I know Muslims believe in destiny, so this means that Muslims don't believe in free will.

Personally, I don't believe in free will for scientific reasons, not for religious reasons.

I believe that free will is just a human illusion, I think that all our decision and choices which we make are based on the genetic effects and the effects of the environments around us.

I will give example, if you throw a dice many people think that result will be random but thats not true because if we can measure all the forces acting on the dice (including air resistance and the position when we thrown the dice), we will know the result of it when we throw it.

The same thing for humans, if we can know all the causes that affects us we will able to know what we will do

My english is not so good so I don't how to explain this, but I believe that all physical matters (including humans and living things) have its future already predetermined

[Maggie]

Originally Posted by maroon1

I'm a Muslim and as I know Muslims believe in destiny, so this means that Muslims don't believe in free will.

Personally, I don't believe in free will for scientific reasons, not for religious reasons.

I believe that free will is just a human illusion, I think that all our decision and choices which we make are based on the genetic effects and the effects of the environments around us.

I will give example, if you throw a dice many people think that result will be random but thats not true because if we can measure all the forces acting on the dice (including air resistance and the position when we thrown the dice), we will know the result of it when we throw it.

The same thing for humans, if we can know all the causes that affects us we will able to know what we will do

My english is not so good so I don't how to explain this, but I believe that all physical matters (including humans and living things) have its future already predetermined

Nooooo ILLUSION ????
it's not illusion? tayyib tell me how do you explain a man became criminal? where is the physical matters influence here?

i understand that you are a person who believe in science and everything refer to the science. but not everything in this universe is science.

[Kakou]

CHOICE CHOICE CHOICE!! We design our life and GOD is waiting for us to make good choices. He just interfere SOMETIMES with a CLAP on our face to wake us up from an ILLUSION or to applause a good thing... just like PARENTS do!!

[Orange Patriot]

Originally Posted by maroon1

I'm a Muslim and as I know Muslims believe in destiny, so this means that Muslims don't believe in free will.

Personally, I don't believe in free will for scientific reasons, not for religious reasons.

I believe that free will is just a human illusion, I think that all our decision and choices which we make are based on the genetic effects and the effects of the environments around us.

I will give example, if you throw a dice many people think that result will be random but thats not true because if we can measure all the forces acting on the dice (including air resistance and the position when we thrown the dice), we will know the result of it when we throw it.

The same thing for humans, if we can know all the causes that affects us we will able to know what we will do

My english is not so good so I don't how to explain this, but I believe that all physical matters (including humans and living things) have its future already predetermined

Ahhhh! Let me try to apply the dice analogy to real life.

What you're trying to say is that life....is completely predetermined and decided by "forces" [be they gravitational, spiritual, social or otherwise]...

...but as in the dice example, what we thought was luck, are actually immeasurable forces to the average human being...

therefore "fate" is a summary of immeasurable wide range of "forces."

I hope I've helped put your idea across.

Thats an EXTREMLY interesting way of explaining fate.

Would kind of coincide with my view on fate...which is that in life its a combination of both.

Any one action will have a series of following actions if unhindered by external forces. THAT is what we call "fate" , I believe. Whenever there is an external force that affects THIS particular series...it moves it off course...to another "line"...and the series then proceeds linearly again [although on a different course now.

In life, however, we have an almost unlimited number of external forces knocking our "linear fate" all over the place like a pinball. And THIS is what makes it seem "random" and seemingly not serendipitous. [THAT is where our inability to calculate these forces enter the theory].

In the end we are all going in one direction due to time. I dont mean one thin linear axis [like the X-AXIS] but i mean a general direction like the X direction. So as much as our life is pinballed around..time still takes it forward. Much like the tilted table of a pinball machine..but without inserting a small predetermined hole where the ball goes into. Its more like an infinite number of holes in line waiting for your ball to go into.

My last addition would be that within these incalculable uncontrolable forces there are a few we CAN control....or we at least can narrow to 5 or 6 from an infinite number of forces at anyone incident and let fate decide which of these 5 or 6 we're gonna hit [instead of the uncontrolable infinite possibilities].

THAT... would makes sense of the fact that we DO make decisions daily.

Pinball Theory. going to copyright that.

[Faithful]

I believe that when we born, we born free, free to do whatever we want in our life. “ma fi chi maktoub”.

God gave us everything we need to be able to take our own decisions, so we make our life, we make our destiny by choosing the way we want to go.

If we take the right decisions and act accordingly, no one can prevent us from achieving what we want to. If we fail, it must be due to something wrong on our part.

God’s will is to make every person happy. He really knows what is in our hearts more than we do. But he never pushes us to do what he see better for us. He gave us the Freedom if we want to listen to him and ask for his help, or not.

He taught us what is right and good for us and what is wrong that made us unhappy.
If we choose to not listen to him, it will be our mistake and we don’t have the right to blame him on every bad situation.
We must learn to accept our failure and our mistakes. (Yalli mnizra3o, ra7 no7osdo)

We are our destiny’s maker.
We can be alone to take our decisions or ask for God’s help because life is a big responsibility and we all are weak and afraid and we do a lot of mistakes and we need a lot of help to control our life.

[Fragrance of Roses]

Originally Posted by faithful

I believe that when we born, we born free, free to do whatever we want in our life. “ma fi chi maktoub”.

God gave us everything we need to be able to take our own decisions, so we make our life, we make our destiny by choosing the way we want to go.

When you believe in the creator who gave you what he/she has given you, and can take away what he/she can take away, then you have to acknowledge that maybe he/she has a say in your life... at least when it comes to the beginning and the end of it...

I like your analogy though!

I still have not made up my mind yet regarding the subject... a few months ago, I would have given explanations and evidence one way or the other... but then suddenly... religion and mainstream God disappeared out of my life! Poof! Vanished into thin air, so at this crossroad in my life, I cannot be honest with you and tell you what I believe in, for I cannot even be honest with myself! (I HATE YOU OSIRIS FOR INFLUENCING ME SO MUCH :@ :P:D)

[maroon1]

Nooooo ILLUSION ????
it's not illusion? tayyib tell me how do you explain a man became criminal?

Any man become a criminal is because he was raised in a bad way, because he parents or his environment that he lived made him become a criminal. I mean that there are reasons that make a person become criminal.
The reasons might be social or genetic.

If Saddam Hussein was raised in a good environment, he wouldn't become a criminal. If Sharon was the son of Khomeini, he would become like his father.
If Hassan Nasrallah was raised in Israeli family he would become like Sharon.

Remember that our parents, the environment that we live in, our DNA, and the experience that we took in our life are the things that build our personality.

Also,I want to tell you that good and evil is something relative. The Israeli people and some Americans think that Sharon is good person and Nasrallah is terrorist, whereas the Arab people say the opposite.
In Iran any person who have sex with another person (without marriage) is consider as criminal and he must be punished. Having sex in the west is very normal. Human sacrifice in Aztec culture was normal.

As you see good and evil is relative, it is different from society to other society.
The same thing for time and place, according to Einstein time and place is relative.

where is the physical matters influence here?

I believe that human are exceedingly complex machines, no different in principle from computers. I don't think that computers have free will. Our cells, brain, respirations system and all our body functions mechanically. There is noting in our body that violates the law of physics.

Can you tell one thing in our body that is not physical ??

Simple feelings such as guilt, growth, learning, adaptation, expression, emotion, passion, adversity, perseverance, survival, and emergent behavioral properties such as spontaneity, initiative, creativity, compassion, love and originality. All can be explained on a deterministic basis.

i understand that you are a person who believe in science and everything refer to the science

Yes thats very true

. but not everything in this universe is science.

I disagree with you. I think that every thing in Universe is a science.
Can you tell me one thing that is not science ?

Everything in the universe is logical. And it is impossible to have any thing that is illogical. Because saying that there is something illogical is the same as saying that 1 + 1 = 3, can 1 + 1 = 3 !!! ??
There is things that science haven't discovered yet but this doesn't mean there is some thing that can't be explained by science.

THAT... would makes sense of the fact that we DO make decisions daily

Thats true, we can make decisions, but we can't make free decisions (or free choices). Our choices can't be free from the external forces. There is always a cause or a reason for our choice.

I will give you an example, this example I found from another website

"Let's say that you could have chosen to have either tea or coffee with your breakfast this morning.
Your choice was unconstrained by external factors, you were able to choose according to your will.
Let's say (for the sake of argument) that you chose coffee.

Suppose that now we could "rewind the clock", and set absolutely everything back to precisely the same way that it was just before your decision (including all your internal neurophysiological states etc). (I know this is impossible in practice - it's a thought experiment after all). Would your decision be the same again (would you again choose coffee) the "second time around"? "


My answer to this question is that he will choose coffee, because the same causes will always make the same effect. The causes that made him to choose coffee the first time is the same as the second time, so he will choose coffee. If you repeat this experiment 100 times, he will always choose coffee.

Now I want you to answer this question, do I agree with me or not ?, and If not then why ???