Does everything happen for a reason?

I think so.

No, but everything happens due to a cause.

No. Much of life is accidental.

I want to believe so. I hope that what has happened was for a reason and was worth it.

Yes, I think so.

Absolutely. a good example is a man about to board an airplane to go home, after a grueling week at a conference. for some unknown reason, he decides to take a later flight. his original flight aircraft crashes and he is saved. there was a reason he changed his flight and this happened for a reason. why? it was his destiny.

There are people who believe in karma, destiny, fate, or any other explanation along those lines. The challenge is that beliefs are not facts.

We can find or create meaning in the things that happen to us or in the life we create for ourselves. We can make our own meaning of life and our own destiny, based on our choices, desires, and circumstances.

Yes…IMHO no doubt about it! All things may seem random or even an act of God, but even randomness has a set law of purpose of which can be influenced by what I know as the Butterfly effect whereas since the big bang all atoms have been randomly banging into each other and what we see and experience today is the net result of all those billions of year of chaotic atomic collisions. To even begin to consider the “what if” of every action and reaction that occurs and how it potentially affects the future direction of each atom you interact with is mind frying to say the least.

I’ll have what @Cruiser ‘s having.

If this questions seems familiar to some, maybe it is because of this or this or this

Is there anything new under the sun?

<<Hands @seazen a fresh brewed Columbian coffee and hazelnut creamer!!>>

I’m surprised how many people here are saying yes. There are those examples like @john65pennington‘s story that make us believe so. But perhaps try looking for a reason from the point of view of the families of all the people who didn’t randomly decide to take a later flight…

I’ve just spent too much time on pediatric floors in hospitals to be able to believe that everything happens for a reason. There is too much tragedy inflicted upon the perfectly innocent…

No, some things happen by concidence! :O

@Cruiser Thanks – now I’ll keep fluthering for a while.

Whether things actually happen for a reason according to a greater universal plan or we humans comfort ourselves by linking unconnected incidents “for a reason” is irrelevant. It seems to me that people who look for an explanation or justification are somewhat happier than those who see everything as random events and coincidence.

No. Quite the opposite. Things happen and then humans make up a reason afterwards. It’s what makes us human: creating meaning. There is no reason and no meaning to anything until a human creates that meaning. Reasons always come after the fact.

@Thesexier that would be synchronicity :)

@mammal oh :P

unless you can name something that happens without a reason or cause, i think that’s the most reasonable conclusion.

I believe what @wundayatta believes. Humans create reasons after the fact.

Everything has a cause but not necessarily a reason. I agree with @wundayatta: Reason is what we find in something after it’s happened, so we can make better use of the experience.

As per @ragingloli – everything happens due to a cause. But due to the size and complexity of the universe – the zillions of factors. It’s hard to account for all causes. Furthermore, it’s a flux of causes.

Thinking of reason – is a humanized error. Equating the universe with how our brain works. And while our brain may be a part of it (the big all, uni-verse) – it does not mean they work the same way.

No, not at all. Even many of the things humans do more or less deliberately don’t always have “a reason why”. So many of the things that we do are unintended consequences of other actions that we just aren’t smart enough to realize that “if I do A to cause B, then it will surely also cause C, which by necessity will cause D, E and F” etc.

And if we’re not talking about human-caused events (or things that trace back to human actions), then you’d have to believe in a god or gods that know and control everything to be able to believe that every action has a knowing and intentional “reason” behind it. I happen to not believe that way.

On the other hand, there are determinists (some active in this thread) who not only don’t believe in god or gods, but don’t believe in “free will”, either. They believe that each of your actions and reactions has been programmed into you and that you are no more “at cause” over what you do yourself (thinking that you have the ability to “choose” whether or not to do or not to the thing) than an ant is at cause over whether you step on it or not. They believe and argue at excruciating length that the beginning of the Universe set in motion chains of events that we are completely powerless to alter, and which happen without our volition or so-called Free Will.

I don’t believe in that, either. (But the determinists say that I don’t have a choice about whether or not to “believe”; that was preordained, as well.) It’s a fairly useless argument, IMHO.

Yes and No. Equally.

if one ever look at the big picture you would k now that all things are for a good purpose.

Let’s examine this. A man avoids getting on a plane for an unknown reason. If we learn later that the reason was “because it was his destiny” to be saved, well, the reason is not unknown: destiny was the reason. (The same reason could be given for the people who got on the plane: it was their destiny to be smooshed into a bloody pulp.)

However, if the man took a later flight for an “unknown reason,” how do we know there is a reason at all? After all, everyone has a destiny. Let’s say I come up to a traffic light, and I can go left, right,or straight through. No matter which thing I choose to do, for any reason or no reason, that would be my destiny, right? So we don’t need any particular reason to do things, our destiny will come around to bite (or kiss) us anyway.

So, giving “destiny” as a reason, or claiming that there is always a reason but it may be “unknown,” are both pretty much exactly the same thing as saying there’s no reason at all. It’s this kind of pablum mush that people too often take for “deeper meaning,”

No, I don’t believe so. It’s more of everything has an effect due to a cause.

No, here John Conway, coauthor with Simon Kochen, of The Free Will Theorem presents arguments for indeterminacy.

Sorry about the Japanese link, Princeton’s links don’t seem to be working just now.

No. But, you can try and make the best of the good or ill that comes randomly your way. Reason has nothing to do with it.

Philosophically, I like @skfinkel‘s answer.

But to speak directly to your question, what it gets to is, does the Universe run by cause and efect only, some super-intelligence’s master plan, or are some elements of it purely random. We do not even know that everything has a cause. Things appear to happen at the quantum mechanical level in a stochastic fashion. There are studies underway to see if radioactive decay of an isotope happens in an entirely stochastic fashion, or in some way that is just wildly chaotic and thus extremely difficult to quantify. There are statistical tools that can measure the difference, but they require a huge number of observations before they yeild a result, and we do not have that result yet.

No. Everything has a cause, but it is really accompanied by intention.

The universe doesn’t work in a deterministic way, but even the randomness happens for a reason: the uncertainty principle.

Just a friendly contradiction: To the best of our knowledge, the universe is entirely deterministic. One thing always, as far as we have ever experienced in any experiment ever, leads to another. No thing ever comes into existence without precedent thing(s).

@ninjacolin I believe in this. But I do believe we have the ability to give the universe a push in one direction or another.

I think that what we attribute to chance is just things where we haven’t identified the cause yet.

@downtide the way I see it, “we” are merely a part of the universe, we’re not above it by any stretch. Hence, we can’t push it around we can only contribute our inevitable share. That share happens to manifest itself as our decision making across time. And yes, this share includes our in born desire for a more romantic view of control in the universe.

Consider the recent TED video I Am My Connectome by Sebastian Seung. I really like the way these ideas seem to fit with the deterministic model of personhood.