Fate? A Response

By: Kelly

One of my favorite bloggers, Hayley Hoover, recently wrote about fate and asked her readers their opinions on the topic. Unable to resist any sort of philosophical debate, I’m going to try to express my opinion in less than five thousand words. I’m confident I’ll use three times as many words as she did, and come off as much less eloquent. You should read her blog first though: http://www.hayleyghoover.blogspot.com

My issue with fate is that it implies there are aspects of our lives that are 100% out of our control. According to fate, some things are simply predestined to happen. I do not believe anything is inevitable. There is always a choice, even if it is slim and bleak. Even if it is the choice between living or dying, it is there. As a WASP, I whole-heartedly believe in the power of free will, hard work, and determination. However, I’m not naïve enough to think that the Protestant work ethic is powerful enough to overcome any obstacle, environment, or situation. Life is filled with so many different variables. While some are obvious, there are many that will slip past us before we ever see the enormous ways they affect our lives. So little of who we are as people comes down to, well, who we are.

This is why I always found it odd that psychologists were so caught up over the nature versus nurture argument. If most of our personality traits are predisposed to us at birth because of the genetic lottery, then that proves we have little control. If we are shaped as people by the environment lottery early on in life, then we still have little control. Why does it matter which side of the spectrum controls our development more? Either way, we are pretty powerless, right? Wrong. This could instill a sense of helplessness in me but instead, I choose to see it as liberating. Our collective lack of power means we never have to judge other people for the “wrong” decisions that they make because through their eyes, it was right. If we had been in their position, we probably would have made the same choices. However, while we have little control over the people we become, we do have some control. This is what separates us from animals- we do always have a choice. The nature-nurture argument makes it easier for us to understand why people make the decisions that they make but nevertheless, there are decisions being made. Sure, tough situations are thrust upon us every day, some more than others. But we get to do our best with the hand that has been dealt us. There is strategy involved as well as luck. This is why I don’t believe in fate.

My other issue with fate and determinism (the philosophy that every event, thought, and action is caused by environment) is that no matter how helpless a situation seems, if you give a person hope and the belief that things can in fact change, many times they will. It’s been proven in medical studies among cancer patients that had zero chance of living. It’s been proven in failing classrooms when attitudes were changed and the kids had someone who believed in them. I don’t believe in fate, but I do believe in fighting the odds and I do believe in miracles. I just happen to be more likely to view these “miracles” as flukes, or crazy coincidences than divine intervention or destiny. This is coming from a person who is both spiritual and scientific. I believe miracles happen, and I thank God for them, but I do not question them or try to find greater meaning in them. The greatest meaning we can derive from miracles is that they happened. To try to explain the great mysteries takes away the magic.

People use fate to create deeper meaning out of happenstance. When people say that everything happens for a reason, I think they have it backwards. To say that everything happens for a reason, implies that the events are caused by the reason. I do not believe this is true. I think things do just happen. They happen because of scientific occurrences and because of the interdependent nature of our world. They happen because of chains of events, the butterfly effect, individual decisions. The why really is not that important. Free will trumps fate every time- we determine the reason that “everything” happens for. We get to decide if we want to attribute meaning to things or if we want to dismiss them as “just things”. Even if you were to sit back and accept the hand that has been dealt you without trying to change it, you made that decision. Fate didn’t happen to you, you decided it would. That’s what they call a self-fulfilling prophecy.

This is about the time in the blog post when I direct you to a John Green video…but I am above that sort of predictability! So here is a, uh, related Hank Green video (fast forward to about two minutes in and listen until about 3:24)



I think that when people use fate to explain why we do the things that we do, they are making the same mistake made when we explain things with the hierarchy of needs. Both sort of dehumanizes people and strips us of our ability to be more than just machines. So Hayley, when you brought up the question, “How can two people with such fundamentally different beliefs be right for each other?” and answered it with: “Maybe it's because we were both at the right points in our lives to narrow down the options and choose people with complementary attributes, and our relationship is all math. Maybe we work because we were supposed to”, I think it’s both. As a woman of science and of faith, I have to say both. Sure, there are many psychological and behavioral principles that explain why you and Mike are in a relationship. But you are also together because you decided that you were supposed to be. That is the reasoning that you have attributed to your relationship. Basically, I think that there is no easy way out- no one gets a free pass and forgiveness for making bad choices because of fate, or because of their lack of control over a situation. However, it’s also not as simple as just “trying hard enough” and all your dreams will come true. Like everything in life, it is somewhere in the middle. But what do I know- we each make our own meaning. Some choose fate, some choose science, I choose something in between.