Everything Happens for a Reason

It's reasonable to say that, by way of previous events and circumstances, all singular events have a cause. For example, the book fell off the shelf and hit me on the head because it was put back carelessly. Plus, objects will fall to the ground if there is nothing to stop them from doing so. Simplistic, but you get the idea.

However, this is a phrase that people use to mean something rather different. Usually without really considering what it is they are saying. This seems to be a way of consoling themselves when life goes wrong or, more broadly, a way of fulfilling their need to give the universe meaning and purpose. Everything happens for a reason, with that 'reason' being a predetermined goal in which all events have a share.

This can't actually be disproved (like most things) but it can be shown to be illogical and deeply rooted not in human wisdom, but in human insecurities. To propose that an intelligent agent has crafted every miniscule aspect of your life, everyone else's lives and the lives of everyone who has ever lived and will ever live to a carefully constructed plan is a bewilderingly huge and unfounded presumption.

What is even stranger is that many people who believe this are atheists and agnostics. So what exactly would this plan be? After all, people have suffered and endured pain and death since the dawn of time. What good has come of it and what's changed?

 

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Well of course everything happens for a reason. The problem is we often do not understand the reason, hence all the confusion.

 

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Why 'of course'? What are you basing that presumption on?

 

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Your correct that everything can't actually be proven to happen for some reason or another...it just gives hope to someone who is going through rough times...

 

Causality.

 

Re-read the OP. The discussion isn't about causality it's about the reason (claimed) for things happening, not the cause.

 

This only supporable for macro events by non animate objects.

People often use ambiguous word meaning for rhetorical purposes.

I would agree that the notion that everthing which happens is controlled by some unseen intelligence is illogical.

I've not noticed this to be the case. Atheists in particular seem resistant to attributing events to unknown and unseen intelligences.

 

There's a "sub-group" of atheists who believe in ghosts, goblins and ghoulies. And the Tarot etc. THAT type also uses the phrase "everything happens for a reason".

 

In my experience very few atheists believe that sort of thing. In fact, I don't think I've ever heard any atheists say that. In my experience it's always religious people.

 

That point is moot.

Why? Reasons won't always be singular or straightforward, but no events (at least, events we would reasonably expect to encounter during our lifetimes) ever happen in total isolation with no causes or consequences.

 

Equally bewildering is the proposition that all life events are purely random. Bear in mind that until the age of about 5 or 6, every minute aspect in our lives are constructed by our parents or carers - intelligent agents, albeit known.

And, people have suffered life and joy in this time.

By asking this question you are proposing a constructed plan and purpose. What if there is none?

 

That's a pretty minor subgroup and they usually identify as new age.

 

"Everything happens for a reason"...
1.) Everything has a cause: Correct
2.) Everything is coming together to result in the grand plan of some cognizant greater power: Placebo.

 

I'm going to play Devil's Advocate here. So brace yourselves!

The universe does have meaning and purpose, and there does seem to be design behind it. Not every event is predetermined, but every event that has an impact on the human experience is significant. Anyone who doesn't at least suspect this is unable to fully comprehend just how profoundly unbelievable the very idea of conscious intelligent life really is. The fact that you are sitting here, right now, alive, is a reality that is just as absurd as anything anyone else believes might also be a reality. I mean seriously, science might one day be able to properly explain the mechanisms responsible for consciousness, but is it ever going to be able to quantify how it is exactly that you know that you are you? Consciousness is, if you consider it in that context, an entire realm of existence. An additional dimension of reality, even if it is only a subjective one. It's not space, it's not time, it's not matter, yet it is a collection of these things and more that amounts to something far more profound and incredible than anything considered individually. How can that not make you wonder? I suggest that it is those people who don't embrace everything that makes it truly incredible to be alive, including everything that can give our lives more meaning, are the ones who are insecure. Somehow the true scope of human existence is too scary for you to explore, and you run home to your logical haven of conservative scientific thought where everything is quantified for you.

Have fun with that.

 

1. Yes.
2. Or, everything is coming together to result in the grand plan initiated by the primal causal event.

 

As Devil's Advocate majeur here, I submit this, so as to avoid the thread derailment:

This is outside the scope of the OP.
Let's not confuse meaning, purpose, design with "reason"....

 

Is/Was this event cognizant?
Is/Was it omniscient, including being clairvoyant?
If not, it could not have a "plan".

 

This is unknowable.

This is unknowable.

Correct. :m:

 

How does one know what is in the set
unkowable?

Would it often be unknowable what could be in that set?

pardon any paradoxes that arise, but I notice people often saying with great certainty what one can not possibly know, despite us having found out many things that perhaps would have been considered unknowable earlier.

 

It is unknowable in the sense that is utterly inscrutable.

Yes.

Yes, this would be unknowable given our current knowledge.