Do you believe in fate?

I know that physics works.

No not everything…and why we have the honor of handing out the Darwin Awards each year.

OH, why, heck, yes. Fate, like poop, happens. It’s real. Count on it!

No…

No, I don’t believe in fate. I think it’s something that fatalist minds with no courage to fight life would accept. “I was destined to do this” often times sounds like “I’m too lazy/afraid to change the circumstances I’m in”.
That said, I don’t believe everything happens for a reason either.
I do believe that everything has a cause, though. People tend to mistake cause for reason, thinking that “What caused this?” is the same as “Why did this happen?”. It’s not.
Nothing happens just like that and everything has a cause, but still, things simply happen, with no specific meaning behind.

Hope you understand this.

To me, fate just happens, it isn’t predestined. It has to happen for a reason (gravity, erosion, general cause and effect, odds), just not a fabricated one.

I think our choices at any moment in time are far more constrained than we imagine and it may even be that there is only one choice we can make. I don’t think this is incompatible with free will and I don’t believe that every time we make a choice we step into a different universe. I think we stay in the same one. I believe in fate objectively but subjectively I don’t believe in it.

No, not in some mystical fashion but, from a psychological perspective sometimes, most certainly. Without intervention many abuse victims go on to become abusers, many children of alcoholics and drug addicts go on to become addicts themselves. Many with genetic predispositions to family mental illness also become mentally ill. Fat families often have fat children, etc.
You could, therefore say, that “fate” is in ones behavioral and genetic cards so to speak but can be overcome with knowledge and hard work a lot of the time.

What’s fate? It could be defined in many ways.

I don’t think that any decisions are pre-made; there’s no god saying that this is going to happen to you when you are 65 years old.

On the other hand, people have free will, and you can draw some conclusions from the actions people take. If I choose to smoke, there’s a good chance I’ll die earlier than if I don’t smoke. If I drive drunk, there’s a good chance I’ll be in an accident.. But that’s not fate; that’s pretty much cause and predictable effect.

I agree with @kritiper – there’s nothing predestined.

In a few billion years the Universe is going to disappear. There will be no trace of our presence. What purpose could fate have? Live in the moment and in the immediate future. Take pleasure in what you experience and try also to make things better for others.

@LostInParadise
“a few billion years” is only until your sun dies.
The universe will persists much much longer.
Until the last black hole evaporates due to hawking radiation, a googol years will pass.

I don’t believe everything happens for a reason. That’s a meme that some people tell other people when they are in the throes of confusion after a sudden tragedy.

I think shit happens and we aren’t in control of all the events that occur in our lives. In order to live, we accept those thing by giving them reason. We learn from them as much as we can, in either a practical or philosophical way, and that gives those events reason. If you don’t do that, these things will haunt you. That’s about it.

Oh, and as to the original question: No. I don’t believe in a magical, pre-determined fate. Even if you were able to prove it to be true, I would go down denying it. On principle. Our fate is far from pre-determined, even with our own biological limitations which we have pushed the of time and again with technology—our brains. Cumatively,

I spent over an hour and a half underwater today at about 90 feet at 24 minute intervals, in comfort with my own life support system. From the dawn of man, up until the 1950’s, that was impossible.

No, I don’t. I hope I never find out that it does, either, because I wouldn’t really want to be a spectator in a pre-determined reality.

Of course everything happens for a reason. My shoelace breaks. I hear it snap, look down and get hit by a passing bus. Those who aren’t laughing their asses off at my funeral can argue that it was “just his time.”

Everything happens for a reason. Sometimes that reason is that people are stupid and do stupid shit.

Yes