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Originally Posted by Skepticologist  Quote:
Originally Posted by AB517 Quote:
Originally Posted by Maximus Quote:
Originally Posted by Skepticologist Quote:
Originally Posted by Maximus It's just weird. | Not when you think about it a little. After all, how many days do you go about your business and not come across someone from your past? People, the world, and the universe for that matter, are in constant motion. It seems to me that what would be truly wierd is never crossing paths with someone from your past.
Are you familiar with the principle of six degrees of separation? Basically, it asserts that if you're waiting for a flight in an airport departure lounge and strike up a long-enough conversation with the person sitting next to you, you'll eventually discover a mutual acquaintance within a chain of no more than six acquaintances. Is that fate? I don't think so. If I were a mathemetician, I'm pretty sure I could express the probabilities in an equation.
I constantly hear people claim that everything happens for a reason, but I don't believe it. In my opinion, things happen in line with the mathematical probabilites that they will or will not happen.
If you wanted to interpret that random meeting in a Subway shop as part of some kind of divine plan that you reconnect with someone from your past, that's up to you. I certainly don't think it would hurt to have a chat about the paths your lives have followed because it might be interesting. But it has nothing to do with fate. |
Oh man, that's just the slap across the face I needed.
Thanks.
I don't know, all this divinity crap gets to me sometimes, you have no idea the kind of people around me...well maybe you do, God damn, thanks man. |
Nothing to do with fate at all?
That is as narrow and closed minded as any religion. |
Right. NOTHING to do with fate at all. From my agnostic viewpoint, the universe has been set in motion by a force I have no way of substantively understanding, but I can still observe it.
What is deemed as fate by those among us who demand meaning from anything and everything that happens as the result of the chaotic motion of the universe is simply happenstance to those of us who don't demand such meaning. |
I agree with you to a point. God is not hiding. We can not only observe him and can understand him, what ever that is. He wants us to learn everything about this universe and him that we can possibly know, if it is 100% of him, that would bring him such great joy, you have no idea. Where I disagree with you is that once we know and understand what that “force” is god no longer exist.
It is a fundamental mistake that I see people making. They assume that once we can describe the laws of this universe that removes god. They call it “God of Gaps”. Because I know 2+4=4 doesn’t prove that God doesn’t exist, it only proves him more logical than we can understand.
Most of us do not demand a meaning, we only question if there is meaning. Chaotic motion of particles only seems chaotic when we do not understand the paths and or processes that the particles follow. The sheer number of co incidents in human existence points to something else. We can try to explain every one away, but that in itself seems to complex. Generally the more simple solution to a problem is the true answer.