As an aetheist, agnostic and freethinker I used to think things that happened to me personally were because they were meant to happen. Now I'm not so sure I was supposed to get cancer.

Well if you think about it logically everything does happen for a reason. Not because if some unseen force but by actions taken/not taken by people in most cases. Our failure to act our failure to care or involve ourselves with the needs if ithers so that is the reason things happen.

Karma lets Nature takes its course

It's one of those platitudes I hate hearing. Like "she's in a better place now" when someone dies.

If anything happens for a reason, that reason is Physics.

I have always wondered why evolution made us the way we are. We may be getting too smart for our own good. We are the only animal on earth that can manipulate things for our own benefit or to do great harm to this earth. Now we are starting to threaten our own survival and the survival of many other species. Human beings need to learn how to limit our population to a reasonable number so there is room for other species to live we just can't keep taking more and more.

I think everything happens for a reason also, just has nothing to do with religion, god, church, etc. We are the captain of our ship, responsible for everything that occurs in our life, creators of our own reality. Our mind is the creative force that drives the body, we are not separate from that force. The idea is learn the lesson and accept the gift, pay particular attention when the shit happens. Just my take on it.

“Everything happens for a reason.” Whenever someone says that to me, it pisses me off. What reason? Is there one reason that everything happens, or are there different reasons for every different thing that happens? Who or what makes these reasons? I may be just a little more sensitive than usual to that statement right now because my 37 year old friend just passed away 10 days ago after a three year fight with cancer. And if there was a reason this beautiful person had to die so young, I’d like to know what it is. I’d like to know how anything was made better by her suffering, or her death. As to the statement that “suffering builds character”, does anyone on here believe that?

The saying "everything happens for a reason" when used in a religious context is just another, "I don't know", "I don't understand" or even "God only knows" it's an escape route that the religious require to avoid critical thinking. When confronted and asked to face real issues, as you found out, in general either they shut down or start to spout apologetics, that once again when broken down are the same "I don't know". There are reasons why these things are happening, usually corruption and poor education are often the culprit.

Hi, Ruetres! Nice to see a fellow Cornhusker on the board.

Some religious people have used the "everything happens for a reason" cop out to avoid taking responsibility for their own behavior from as far back as I can remember.

It's infinitely easier to say, everything happens for a reason (Translated: I don't give a shit) than it is to make the effort to ensure that the playing field is level so that success or failure amongst able bodied and minded individuals is based upon individual effort and drive rather than trickery and smoke and mirrors.

Everything happens for a reason is a cop out of many proportions. Lack of knowledge, fear, blind acceptance, etc. And also used for the capture of the weak minded of those in highly distraught situations. The statement is a tool.

it's total bull. I believe in God. I was raised that way, I have no way to change that. But I more believe he's like a deadbeat dad. He's here, he made us, but he doesn't care enough to come by, let alone make a phone call. It's either he is all-powerful, but he's evil as hell, and likes making the world a worse place for no reason, or he has the power to create, but not to interfere with his creations. (I say "he" out of simplicity, I don't care about God's gender, if God has one) Either way, I don't see God as someone worth worshiping, let alone having trust in. It's up to us to make the world as good as we can. God is just an excuse to be complacent.

It's nonsense. Ask them to walk down a children's cancer ward and explain their reason for that happening. Not to mention 2 year olds getting raped. Oh, I don't respect anyone who believes that "god works in mysterious ways".

In a way, I subscribe to this theory as well, but in a wholly different way. Things that people have control over...yes, I got that job because I worked very hard to get the qualifications. Yes, I was able to make that purchase because I sacrificed and saved. Yet, many of the good things in my life happened because I was fortunate enough to be born into the family I was born into, in the country I was born into, and that set me up for some success, and not everyone is that fortunate. Sometimes, the "reason" things happen are beyond your control. Sometimes, they are within your control and so whatever happens is because you brought about the reason. And still other times, SHIT JUST HAPPENS. "Life is as random as it is deliberate, as funny as it is tragic."

When people say this, they usually do it as a form of consolation, to offer an assurance that the "reason" is some sort of nebulous better future. You're supposed to take comfort from the notion that "it is necessary to suffer now in order to prosper later."

I'm not at all convinced this is even remotely true. Sometimes things work out for the best. Sometimes, though, they just keep on being awful.

And technically, everything does happen for a reason. The reason sucks sometimes, though. Why are there starving children in Yemen and Somalia? Because local warlords monopolize the food supplies as a way of forcing the population to obey them. Also because global climate change has accelerated and exacerbated weather events inducing droughts, soil salinization, and erosion of arable farmland. And also because some nations have governments that have failed to manage economic conditions and infrastructure, resulting in massive shortages of food and other vital supplies.

Those are reasons. They aren't supernatural and they give zero hints that they are somehow necessary pre-conditions for something much better to happen in the future. If we want to change those reasons, we humans must act and change them ourselves.

Like how the fuck do they know that?

I was raised as a christian and very active in the church growing up until age 14 when I was given the choice. After that it was strictly xmas and easter.
When my 12 year old daughter was hit by a truck, in a coma and then died, I received all the platitudes. I didn't want to hear it. At that moment I was done with god and all the bullshit.

Things don't happen for a reason. They happen because things are always happening. People who say "there is no such thing as coincidence" are wrong. I don't believe there is some invisible guiding hand dictating and choreographing events that will impact your life. You go where you go and get where you are usually as a result of choices. Even going nowhere is a choice. We are subject to the laws of coincidence in which we interact with other humans purely at random in many cases and we respond from there. Things happen because things happen. There is no divine intervention or unearthly force guiding the events of your life that were laid out in some grand plan somewhere in the great beyond.

Buying into myths and restating them as reasonable responses has nothing to do with the existence of God. Furthermore, the logically deduced conclusion of an intelligently designed universe only introduces the conceivability of a divine "matter facilitator". After the realization of some of the world's most brilliant minds - including many well known physicists - consider the profound, inexplicably complex nature of all symbiotic systems required to sustain even one organic life-form a justification for belief in a supremely intelligent, coordinating intellect. Famous scientist, Francis Crick (father of DNA and devout atheist) has the answer to resoundingly perplexing enigma: space aliens and ray-guns!

This saying annoys the hell out of me. I have acquaintances who are not really religious who say this.

It is really translatable as "this is not my problem".

Technically it is correct, there is always a cause. It just becomes an excuse not to take action and to not give a damn.

The "reason" is that we live in a random universe and shit happens.

The reality is that the universe “allows” every wonderful and absolutely horrific thing you can imagine to take place. Humans for some reason allow horrible things to happen to themselves and perpetuate horrible things onto each other. It has nothing to do with a god or a devil and everything to do with a flaw in thinking and an insane way of living based on the idea of a separate “self’ To divide what is actually a whole system is what creates conflict . There simply is no separate you, there is only relationship. I recommend meditation for dissolving the silly notion of the grand self.

I do not know whether everything happens for a reason, but there is always a reason to everything that happens. Even shit happens body discard undigested food. We just need to find the reason.

I agree, it is an apathetic thing to say and really cold hearted to say to someone who just lost a loved one.Nothing is certain in this world. The entire universe is conducted by organized chaos. cause and effect. If there were a god who plans out everything, then that god is an evil force and should not be admired, followed, or worshiped.

Everything does happen for a reason, but the reasons may not be good, for example the reasons why children starve may be because of a combination of apathy and greed. Of course one must face the reality that the reasons are man made and not god given, for that to happen, god would obviously first have to exist, and since he doesn't......