@Lisasea --- None of my buttons work. Adm. said it would be fixed today, that was a week ago. It's really frustrating. That's why I'm writing this as a comment instead of a reply. Post and comment is the only thing I can do.

Everything does happen for reasons, but they're not supernatural. We can explain why children are starving or why people get cancer. The answers are incredibly complex and run back all the way to the beginning of time, but they're there. Are those answers as satisfying as believing it's part of some omnipotent being's plan? I think so.

Everything happens for a reason, and that reason is cause and effect. Everything happens because of a prior cause. Nature has no grand plan. That's just a superstition that people try to comfort themselves with.

I think you mean by that there’s a reason for everything means that everything has a purpose. I would agree that everything has a cause, but nothing has purpose outside human culture. You could argue that certain animal societies display purpose as well, but it only has meaning inside its own culture. A rock at the bottom of the Mariana Trench is just a rock.

I agree with most of the posts here. Everything happens for a reason = I don't know. It's a platitude intended to comfort but falls short.

A sociological outgrowth which evolved from the Enlightenment was the loss of the "sacred" within human existence. This expulsion of the transcendent morphed into a pathological atheistic humanism and collective political organization in the early 20th century that sought to replace our transcendent meaning in historical and human experience. The most identifiable offspring of this view of the immanent, material world as complete in itself, intelligible in itself, and lacking all need were Maoism 45m Nazism 25m and lenin14m Stalinism 30m. As spiritualities of the temporal they sought a revolution of the historical order (modernity) to affirm the meaningfulness of human existence by rejecting its transcendent source. This historical temporal immanentism has become so thoroughly entrenched that to question modernistic rationalism and atheism as a valid affirmation of the meaningfulness of human existence through the expulsion of its transcendent source is anathema. This "picture of the world" is no longer manifested primarily in Marxist doctrines of competing institutional views on materialism or dogmatic totalitarianism, but the powerful cultural undercurrent that remains including its rejection of the signs of the sacred in lieu of the secular has become the default domain of humanity. The loss of the transcendent results in a loss of the meaningfulness of human life, reflected alternatively in excessive consumption, despair and violence.

It's all about control, and I'm convinced that half the control freaks in the world don't even realize it.

ofcourse it all happens for a reason, good and bad are relative. People starving probably because food in habitat is scarce...its called natural balance, worse than that is over production of food in a habitat where the populayion burst out only in one species(Human) throwing off the balance.

Clearly, you win points for truth.

I just spent a day with one of those people and learned something new..."everything happens for a reason" is the new " it'sGod's plan." Apparently they think if they make it non-religious people will buy into it. I ask what the reason is that little kids are born into starvation in India and I'm told it's to teach the world a lesson. Nice! I actually had one woman tell me that those kids born into starvation CHOSE to be born that way in their previous life...my head was about to explode. My advice, keep those conversations to a minimum and read "The Righteous Mind" (Why good people differ about politics and religion) it will explain that it's not about facts, all about emotion and belonging to the group.

It is the religious "true believer's way to trying to cope with the fact that he or she cannot explain what is happening within the context of his bogus religion. It makes him squirm, so he has to say, "only God knows."

One of the problems I've always had is how people justify the actions of their particular gods. A winning quarterback will be sure to thank god for allowing his team to win (rather than acknowledge that they simply played better than the other team) or for his 'god-given' talent (because there's no way that genetics and 20+ years of athletic training had anything to do with it, right?). Likewise, when believers are unable to answer why their god would allow someone to shoot 15 children at a playground, they usually drop the old standard "God works in mysterious ways" Really? Did your god hate the losing football team? Did he somehow know ('omniscient', remember...) that every one of those 15 dead children would have grown up to be awful people, and that he just decided to let a gunman take them out early? People who defend an unknowable god are like the co-dependent families of alcoholics. God's actions don't appear to be any more than a coin flip, and there's always an unfortunate loser. The adherents will always be there to excuse away the coin flips when the results can't be attributed to his 'glory'....

I have asked someone using this argument "what would be the reason for me calmly punching them in the nose?"
After discussing it they were decided that whatever reason they assigned to the event it probably wasn't gods will!

the reason is humans decisions. Many believe this world has limited resources, the fact is this world has adequate resources for everyone. we just need to decide to be smarter.

if 'everything happens for a reason' is equated to 'cause/effect', okay....if everybody on the planet was fed and lived a full and long life...well, none of us would live very long...the population explosion would destroy us all...suffering is a natural state as is joy....survive one so you can have the other...but this does not mean don't help people...because I guarantee no matter how many people you try to help, death will find a way...

Yeah, they tell me the same thing. I guess when a child is stricken with cancer or a child gets sexually abused and that abuse leave a mark on their life, such as hem having a severe mental illness, that happens for a reason, too. The nerve some of these people have. Just a desperate way to hold onto their delusions and empty promises.

Carried to logical absurdity, the statement is true. Everything does happen for a reason. The problem occurs because the reasons never coincide with their beliefs. I can explain if you'd like.

Things happen and we assign a reason to them. If we can't explain or understand it, then "everything happens for a reason" explains the unexplainable. Kind of like "What ever!"

Yes, everything happens for a reason, but not in the way religious nut jobs believe.

Maybe god is satan? And we have it all backwards? ( no caps for these made up fictional beings and Caps are for good things, like Santa Clause ) With all the terrible stuff going on in the world, it makes more sense. As many of you may know that in third world countries, lots of people die during times of so called natural events from Mother nature in church's. Why? Because the church collapses on them while they are praying to god to save them. Many churches are very old and can't withstand heavy wind rain and such. Sounds like something a guy like satan would do?

What the reason? Give me the reason.

I look at any situation as having a cause and if we can identify the cause we can prevent suffering from the same cause by understanding it and changing it. The "everything happens for a reason" excuse is a catchall phrase for "I don't know and I am not going to help fix it." In any situation we try to find or make a reason because that is how most people cope with events that are in and out of our control, "if we can find a reason for it then we can accept it with less effort". So, I feel like "everything happens for a reason." is a total shrug off of any responsibility or effort to change what we are capable of changing.

I don't know that's a good question. It also kind of raises the question if you do good and be a good person good things will happen to you (or will it)But the saying good guys finish last was made for a reason. Sometimes it seems like things happen for a reason but most of the time it seems like just luck of the draw smh

I agree with you completely. I have a sister-in-law who told me that she lost her book and she prayed to saint (fill in the blank) and she found it.
I asked her why Her god can send out old St.Bul--hit for her book but he can't help starving and tortured children.

I'm surprised you didn't get that nebulous favorite"It's God's will".