We are bound by a set limit of physical and immaterial rules in our lives, like law of physics which means you won’t float into the sky like a helium balloon all of a sudden for no reason. With these set rules, we are subjected to an immense but ultimately limited amount of possible outcome. Imagine if each choice has an eventual outcome, subjected to change and diversion based on your decision which is affected by your individual freewill, you could say that fate exist in the massive but limited scope of possible eventuality.

You still get to choose your route, but what can happen is inherently limited by laws surrounding our existence.

I never said I was an atheist. I just don’t buy organized religion. I am a deist. Also, I definitely don’t believe consciousness is just brain chemicals. I wouldn’t be posting here if I did.

Luminarious-

I don’t see how there can be fate (a fixed event) and freewill at the same time. I believe you choose what you experience and you are not a prisoner to your environment and so there is no random either. Peebrain has said something similar but I’ve held this idea before posting here.

Randomness/connectedness are therefore not mutually exclusive, because all the different effects a cause might have, are possible. It’s just that some of them have slightly higher chance of joining the current stream of reality.

So it’s not really fate-OR-free-will either.. It’s more like 75% Fate/ 25% Will for some, 50%/50% for others and 25%/75% for the lucky ones.
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Hope that diversifies the opinion scene a bit..

THERE IS NO FATE. THERE IS NO DESTINY. THERE IS ONLY FREEWILL. If you want something you can get it! How? By trusting in your abilities and doing something with them. Haven’t you ever heard the quote: “Shoot for the moon, if you miss you will land amongst the stars”. Same principle. You can expand your limits, you can achieve fulfillment and true happiness you just need to make that fulfillment your highest goal and act on it with the abilities you have and are developing. There is no man in the sky standing in your way or some kind of cosmic moral law, just you and your freewill.

The only person who can decide what is right for them is you not some over-reaching father figure watching us from the pearly gates. If your happiness is your ultimate goal then you will not manipulate or hurt others because that does not truly bring a person happiness. I cannot change the world but I can change myself and if everyone did the same then the world would (and will) be as we all hope.

Meaning that despite ourselves achieving our maximum potential, we would nevertheless not be equal. Unless our maximum potential are all similar, there would still be the richer, the poorer, the ones that are more attractive, or smarter, or simply taller than the next person. Standards are created by ourselves, and as we change, it too adjust itself to fit our circumstances.

Though since we are not made equal, our idea of happiness will be different from one another. Each one of us having a different dream and a different role we wish to fit in society. We can agree on simple, superficial category such as attractiveness, intelligence, and even job description, just as we can all agree on the concept of fingerprint, which no two that are similar to the other have ever been found.

As Hey_you said, there are no “level” and there are no “bar”, just our own happiness. And in my case, our own preference.

So, I agree with you Sean. We all deserve to achieve our maximum potential.

And to war1025,

“To say man controls his fate, or that he knows what is best for himself… that is a leap.”

It is not a huge leap to suggest that our beliefs, decision, and degree of confidence sway, if not dictate, our eventual fate (pun unintended). Even if you are forced into a corner, you are not without your options. You could always, for an example, bite your own tongue and kill yourself, which, regardless of whether it is “best” for yourself or not, is something you decided and it did affect your eventual outcome, thus your fate.

Unless you remove the equation of free-will, which would make many of our points moot.

“If you believe this shit, then why haven’t you changed the world yet? Why isn’t everything as you had hoped?”

If something is unobservable, it does not immediately indicate that it is untrue. A man of God like yourself should understand that best. It is not a far-stretch to suggest that if the world is indeed changing, we might not be able to readily observe it.