Do you believe in fate?

Choice is a myth indulged in by those who cannot accept the way the world works

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Originally Posted by atiguhya padma

I think the world is determined. There are no real choices. We have developed the idea of choice and freewill in order to maintain sanity in a pre-determined world. Our brains follow certain patterns and microseconds later our consciousness creates the idea that we have made a choice, when in fact we have been fooled into this belief: our brains have merely responded in an unconscious way to physical stimuli and then generated the conscious experience of freewill.

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I agree (given certain assumptions).

As far as I can tell, moreover, this is the consensus of modern science.

"Finally, free will as it is traditionally conceived - the freedom to make uncoerced and unpredictable choices among alternative courses of action - simply does not exist. There is no way that the evolutionary process as currently conceived can produce a being that is truly free to make choices." - William Provine

AP, have you any reading suggestions on this topic (as it relates to free will in particular)? Free will especially and consciousness more generally are of great interest to me.

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Originally Posted by Lara

Is our fate predetermined or do the choices we make choose our fate? If fate is predetermined then what is the point in sweating over those difficult life choices?

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Let's say we don't have the slightest idea on whether there is fate or not ...

There may be such a thing as fate; only, you don't know the end of the story. Or, as mr. Tom says in his role in The Last Samurai: "a man does what he can, until his fate is revealed to him". (As an answer to "do you believe a man can change his fate?")

This is, by the way, to me, a more .. logic question: if there is fate, can a man change it?

Fact: no man knows the future. Nor about his own fate. (Except for the cyclops, in Krull ...)