Guys, guys .... why so focused on daily life?
I meant fate/destiny as a whole. That certain things are beyond our control and with the capabilities we have there is absolutely nothing we can do about that. Maybe by explaining my view on this it'll be easier to understand.
I think that such a thing does exist, if on a cosmic scale. For example - all of us were born in this universe, in this specific galaxy, on this very Earth. As far as science can tell based on evidence so far(and no, religious books are not evidence), all of our predecessors were born here too. Unless there are many incredible breakthroughs in science(either making us better survivors, finding out ways to terraform other planets so we can inhabit them, inventing precise teleportation, building machines that expand our view on the observable universe, etc), we will all die here. And there is very little any of us can do about that. That is what I view as a sort of destiny, those inescapable things you can't change at your current state. We all need oxygen, water and nutrition to survive(as well as lots of other things, since we're very fragile as a species). What I'm getting at is that causality is inevitable - certain actions have only one possible outcome. That's about the only thing I view as fate or destiny, BUT ... I wouldn't go as far as to say that it will be like this forever. Maybe there will come a time when our descendants will be able to view other universes. Maybe one day they will be able to venture to other galaxies. But none of that is for certain. As of now, if our sun explodes before we've found a way to survive the massive explosion and somehow continue to live on without it, it would be the end of us. Anything and everything we've ever done will be reduced to ashes very quickly. So on a cosmic scale, it exists, but that's simply because nobody/nothing is powerful enough to defy it. Things that we view as impossible today may very well be possible in the future.
As of destiny on a personal scale, I have little reason to believe that it exists. Everything that happens is a result of our actions, and we have a degree of control over those actions. No deity of any kind is making our choices for us, there is no one "upstairs", nothing is "destined" to happen on a personal scale, the possibilities of what could have happened instead of what happened are nearly endless. However, this goes to the question of free will, which is an extremely hard one. In a nutshell, a line from Max Payne 2: The Fall Of Max Payne sums it up very well - "Makes you think about free will. Have our choices been made for us because of who we are?". This does not imply that someone has made our choices for us, but it does imply that when presented with a choice, our personalities, character, experience and emotions will most often lead to the same one choice(some call it the "gut feeling"). It would be "always" rather than "most often" if we were completely rational beings, guided only by reason and flawless logic, but that is not the case. So in a sense we'll always choose what we think is the better course of action based on who we are, as well as external factors and current state of mind. Some would argue that this is destiny
P.S: Man, I hope what I wrote is understandable, because there is really no extremely simple way to write down ideas like these.
Last edited by lordtiger; Sep 6, 2012 at 11:35 AM.