Quote:
Originally Posted by evilcougar
I believe everything happens for a reason, and i believe you are what you make of yourself. I also believe that only YOU can change your life.
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Okay, I'm going to jump all over you for this statement, evilcougar.
I don't think you've thought about this very long or hard, or if you have, you haven't come to reasonable conclusions. Your two statements are mutually exclusive and cannot both be true at the same time.
If 'everything happens for a reason' then it absolutely cannot follow that 'you are what you make of yourself' because you have no control over the events that you experience or even create for yourself. Since all (or almost all) of your actions are going to impact others - and yourself - and 'everything happens for a reason' then you don't have any control whatsoever over yourself, because all of your actions are part of this 'higher-purpose', this reason driven existence.
I think what's going on here is that, like a lot of people - particularly those raised by the faithful - you have a difficult time accepting the idea that there might not be a reason for events. If bad things happen, or even good things, it can be difficult not to ascribe special importance to them. If someone survives a damaging experience (and we all have) they are likely to try to find a way to explain why that happened to them, in order to be able to deal with whatever it was that occurred.
Like many people, you want to believe that we (and by extension yourself) are "special", that there is a grand scheme of things and that you are an essential cog in it, however minute. The fact of the matter is, however, that if there IS a grand scheme of things and that you are a cog in it, it strips your life of meaning instead of imbuing it.
If everything does, in fact, happen for a reason - then there is no reason for you to make any choice over any other choice - because whatever you choose was intended to happen. There's no reason to get up in the morning, or even to behave in a moral sense (other than the direct and personal reasons that you will get bed-sores, or will go to jail), if everything happens for a reason, there is no "higher" reason for you NOT to kill your whole family the next time you see them, because if you do, there is obviously a higher reason for you to do so (since everything happens for a reason, and you killing them would then become "something that happened" it must have happened for a reason).
To sum up, the phrase "everything happens for a reason" is a philosophically vapid statement and an intellectually dishonest way to think, unless you honestly believe you're nothing more than a helplessly operating cog in a vast machine OR you believe in an omniscient creator-god who directly involved themselves with their creation, and somehow managed to imbue it with free-will.