Does Everything Happen for a Reason?

[qos]

I completed -- and then deleted -- a Q&A meme last night. One of the questions stays with me, however: Do you believe that everything happens for a reason?

No, I don't. Not on a grand, spiritual scale. I believe that some things are caused by a higher power, or a subtle purpose, but that most things are the result of mundane cause and effect. I don't believe that there are intentional "reasons" in the mind of a divine being behind disease, accidents, acts of nature, and/or most human accomplishments or follies.

I believe that, in general, humanity would rather believe in angry, vengeful deities who may or may not be propitiated, or who have a benevolent but obscure plan for everything and everyone, than facing the alternative: that the universe is a very big, very dangerous place, where anything can happen -- sometimes for the best, but often for the worst.

When faced with tragedy, it's easier to cope with the pain if you can believe it happened for a reason, possibly even a good one. "God called him/her home," is much more soothing than "This was a random, meaningless accident. There's no good reason why my loved one isn't here anymore." Or "God sent this sickness to help me grow and to learn to trust him more" rather than "We don't know what causes this painful, often fatal disease. You lost the lottery of chance."

I do believe that the Divine can help us transcend tragedy, can inspire growth, faith, courage, even heroism in the face of terrible things. But that doesn't mean that the tragedy was caused in order to have those effects. Likewise, I don't believe that the Divine is personally responsible for any and all good fortune or success.

The only reasons behind hurricanes, earthquakes, avalanches, and disease are the laws of nature -- including the natural consequences of human actions in a material world. The only reasons behind acts of terrorism and other violence are human fear, greed, and hatred. God does not set up these things like chess moves or patterns of dominoes to teach us lessons.

Are there exceptions? Almost certainly. (I try to avoid putting Deity into absolute boxes.) I've had experiences where I believe that there was divine influence. But I don't believe that it's everywhere or always.

Comments

[makhsihed.livejournal.com]

*grin* I was just reading something about this on the House of Netjer boards... I'll message you with it.

[wlotus.livejournal.com]

You expressed my exact sentiments far better than I could have expressed them. Thank you.

[oakmouse]

The interesting thing is that I agree with your reasons for your answer, but I would answer "Yes" --- because I see "happens for a reason" as including things like "Your spouse was killed in that terrible car wreck because the other driver was hopped up on cold medicine and decided to drive while impaired" and "You got this incurable cancer because you were exposed to toxic chemicals as a printer's devil in the job you had to get through college and we didn't know back then that the chemicals were toxic".

But then I'm odd enough, it makes sense that I would overlook "a reason" to be an implicit way of saying "a big important cosmic reason" and conclude that it simply means "a cause". And I'm quite sure that not all causes are Big Important Cosmic Causes. Some of them are just little things, sometimes totally idiotic little things.

[qos.livejournal.com]

I agree with what you've written here, and hesitated before making my post because most things do have a reason, at some level.

I guess that in my experience, people who talk about things happening "for a reason" usually are referring to a Divine Plan.

[oakmouse]

Oh, agreed, they are. I just always saw it from a different angle, is all, and I was amused by my response to your post.

[heron61.livejournal.com]

I completely and totally agree. It's easy and sometimes (at least for some people) desirable to believe that the good in one's life (or in other's lives) is a result of their virtue and that horrible things happen for a reason, but largely that's not true.

On a somewhat related point, one of the things I'm most thankful for my luck. I consider it a trait much like my having brown hair or being left handed. I've always had it, and it has no relation to any virtue or lack thereof on my part, it merely is. In addition, I also know that sometimes (although surprisingly rarely) it simply doesn't work, and I believe that there is no reason for this beyond chance and the fact that we live in a complex and ever-changing universe.

[qos.livejournal.com]

Would you mind elaborating on how luck operates in your life?

I wonder if we experience similar things and use different names for it. For years I've felt myself to be especially blessed. I've had my share of challenges in life, but I've never encountered more than I could handle or came out with crippling damage. I've always had friends, protectors, and allies to support me and help pick up the slack when I've been in need. My sister, in contrast, emerged from the same environment but has had almost the opposite experience: things seem to go out of their way to hurt her and complicate her life.

[heron61.livejournal.com]

It's something so ever-present that it's sometimes difficult to describe. I can have problems in my life, but very, very few disasters. The most striking examples include events like the only time I was woefully under-prepared for an exam in college, and the professor forgot to show up and because the exam was late in finals week, he gave everyone the option of either taking it in January or basing their grade on the rest of their work in the class, to various times when I've been desperately in need of money, and I've either been mistakenly paid twice by a gaming company I worked for or the time I returned an item my parents sent me for the cash, and the company sent me two checks, each for the value of the item. The most recent major examples were the summers of 2005 & 2006, when my parents wanted to come out and see where Becca and I were living. At the time, our relationship with our new third partner Alice (the relationship remains a secret to my parents, and will hopefully always remain a secret to them) was both new and somewhat troubled and Alice had not yet become comfortable with concealing our relationship from my parents. So, two completely separate events (one of which occurred only a week before my parents were due to visit) came up that kept my parents sufficiently busy that they could not visit. Things have calmed down and mellowed remarkably by the Summer of 2007, and so nothing came up when it was time for my parents to visit.

I count on my luck to protect me and trust it implicitly, but also have a fairly good sense of what problems are annoying but not sufficiently bad for my luck to intervene - those I generally need to deal with on my own.

It also manifests in a wide variety of trivial ways, the most noticeable being that I have vast luck in games of chance or in games of skill that involve dice that I've never needed to particularly learn any strategy in order to win. "John's luck" is pretty much a catch-phrase among people who have known me for a while.

Here's a post I made about it 4 years ago.

I've also known several people who are profoundly unlucky. I used to assume that the one I know best (my friend Aaron) was being foolishly pessimistic when he was certain various problems would occur with anything he tried, until I saw that even when he was clearly not doing anything to hinder himself, something bad often happened. Oddly and pleasantly, ever since he went through a period of self-discovery in his early 30s (around a decade ago) he has been considerably less unlucky, although he is still not someone I would consider at all lucky.

Does that answer your question?

[coen.livejournal.com]

I mostly agree with you, and that surprised me a bit.
I am, as you know, an atheist, and though I often agree with religious people on a lot of things, when it comes to questions about reason, purpose, and goal, I most often dissagree with religious people.
But in this case, I agree with you. People do things for a reason, but events happening to us have no reason, they happen because they reason.
Which does not mean you cannot give meaning to them.

When something bad happens, it does not happen for you to learn from it. It just happens because it happens. But even if there is no reason for it to begin with, you can still try to learn from it and in that way give it meaning. Bad things have happened to me that allowed me to become what I am today, so looking back at it, those bad things do have meaning.

[amqu.livejournal.com]

Ecclesiastes 9:11 says,

I have seen something else under the sun:
The race is not to the swift
or the battle to the strong,
nor does food come to the wise
or wealth to the brilliant
or favor to the learned;
but time and chance happen to them all.

Luke 13:1-4

Now there were some present at that time who told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices. 2Jesus answered, "Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this way? 3I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish. 4Or those eighteen who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them—do you think they were more guilty than all the others living in Jerusalem? 5I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish."

Interestingly, I find that coen the atheist's opinion on the matter cogently outlined the Biblical view.