(Note: I'm still not done writing the first part of my "myths about atheism" series - did you know that fact checking and finding links for sources takes time?! - so today I'm posting something from our old blog, Nobody to Thank. I think it's worth reading.)
You know what I'm tired of hearing? "It can't be just a coincidence." "It couldn't have only been chance." "There's no way that was plain dumb luck." These are all lines that you are almost guaranteed to hear in any film or TV show where something remotely improbable happens. The point usually being, of course, to show just how boring and unfair our lives would be without some higher power guiding our destiny. And this always, inevitably, leads to the protagonist having some sort of revelation along the lines of: "Wait a minute! This was meant to happen. My life has some sort of special purpose. Golly, that sure is neat!" You see it happen with Neo in The Matrix. And again with Mel Gibson's character in Signs. And this happens to every single character on the show Lost (which has a lot of characters, so it gets old pretty quickly).
My favorite example, though, has got to be in 500 Days of Summer. For the record, I did enjoy this movie (it has Zooey Deschanel after all) but holy shit, this film's interpretation of "true love" has got to be one of the most wildly inane things I've ever seen. The plot of this film is basically that a guy named Tom falls in love with a girl named Summer. Except, wait! Summer doesn't believe in "true love" which actually makes her a cold, soulless person who is going to have to break Tom's heart eventually. But the fact that she doesn't believe in "true love," according to the film, really only means that she does not think that there are ever two people who are "meant" for each other.
But don't worry! At the end of the film, after she breaks Tom's heart, she finds another man and suddenly understands! She instantly abandons all those silly, cynical ideas she had before - you know, about people's romantic lives not being guided by some sort of cosmic destiny - and realizes that she has found the person she was meant to be with. And even though Tom is sad that he is no longer with the girl he had thought was his soulmate, he is glad that she finally understands what love is really all about, and then he, too, meets the girl he was actually meant for. You see? Cupid knew what he was doing all along!
Here's the thing: this is all bullshit. Not only because there is no cosmic force that chooses who we are supposed to end up with. More importantly, this interpretation of love - and the universe in general - is not any more joyous or fulfilling than plain old boring reality. Quite the opposite, actually.
First of all, a worldview centered around destiny and "everything happening for a reason" becomes much less optimistic once you take into account that maybe, just maybe, whatever force is guiding your fate doesn't really care about you or your happiness. Maybe the reason you were born is so that, after you die a lonely death without having accomplished anything in life, your grandchildren will be motivated to not make the same mistakes you made. Maybe the person you were "meant" to be with is an abusive asshole, but you have to stick with him because he can't do all the things he was "meant" to do without being able to vent his anger at you once in a while. Maybe God only gives a fuck about certain people, and the only purpose he gives to all those other people is to guide the "chosen ones" in the right direction. And if you're not one of the lucky chosen ones, there's nothing you can do about it, because you are not God.
But here's another thing. When people look at something unbelievably good that has happened to them and try to glamorize it by saying it was meant to happen, they are not really glamorizing the event itself. If you win a million dollars in the lottery because God wanted you to, this event has exactly the same result as it would if you won a million dollars by chance. When you attach destiny to particular events in your life, you are not saying that those events are in any way special - you are saying that you are special. You are saying that good things happen to you because God is looking out for you. This also applies to instances when you try to amend bad events by saying they were supposed to happen that way. Whether your best friend was hit by a bus on accident, or because God had some sort of reason that was ultimately benevolent, the event itself is just as tragic to everyone involved either way.
Furthermore, if there is some sort of destiny that is guiding everyone, then how does that make it special? Let's say that God has a plan for each and every one of us. Okay, then. Why try to glamorize the whole idea? Why should this make you look at our collective existence as somehow being more meaningful and less hopeless when, either way, there are good things that happen sometimes and bad things that happen sometimes?
For all of these reasons, I think that a world lacking any sort of destiny is much more than "plain dumb luck." I think it is liberating. I think it gives us the freedom to make our own meaning and shape our own destiny. I think it is infinitely more optimistic than the idea that a single invisible entity is doing what is best for all of us, and that we should just trust it.
Let's say you are going for a walk and you find a twenty dollar bill on the sidewalk. That's pretty great, right? What are the odds? Except, then you find out that your friend knew you were about to go for a walk, and intentionally left some cash for you to pick up because he knew you had just paid rent and were broke until you got your next paycheck. The end result is the same either way - you get twenty dollars. But if you found out that it wasn't a coincidence, and that your friend meant for you to get the money - wouldn't you be a little disappointed?
I guess what I'm saying is that fate becomes much less sexy when you take away all of the mystery attached to it. Imagine if God had a purpose for everyone, but he didn't keep any of it a secret - instead, he made himself visible and explained everything, to everyone, all of the time. "You are about to stub your toe," he would say to you just before you stubbed your toe. "This will make you stop for a few seconds, which will make you a little late for work. I'm doing this so that, on your way to work, you will run into the person who I have decided will be your soulmate."
Maybe this is just me - but in this scenario, once you actually know why everything is happening, doesn't it make all of these "meaningful" events just seem kind of boring? This is why I think that it's not the idea of fate that many believers are attached to - it's the intangibility of fate. It's the notion that there are things beyond our understanding. It's the ability to look at some of the worst misfortunes imaginable and convince yourself that there is a perfectly good reason for them - but more importantly, this reason is something that us lowly humans couldn't possibly comprehend. This lack of comprehension is, for many people, preferable to just accepting that coincidences happen.
But the fact is, coincidences do happen. Improbable events are bound to happen every once in a while, actually, because that's just how probability works. And I think that's exciting. It means that if something happens to you that has one-in-a-million odds, then you literally have just experienced something with the probability of one in a million. Add fate to the equation, and the probability drops to one in one. It was supposed to happen, and it happened, and that's that.
Even if something unbelievably and improbably tragic happens to you, I still think that accepting it as a result of chance is a much more optimistic approach than convincing yourself that it was meant to happen. If you believe that a tragedy was meant to happen, and that something good will somehow come out of it eventually, you are forced to accept this tragedy as being necessary. And furthermore, you will find yourself desperately searching for whatever benevolent purpose this tragedy served - and most likely find yourself disappointed when this purpose does not become apparent. If you accept this tragedy as an act of chance, however, you can admit that it sucked. You can say, "no, this shouldn't have happened, and I will do everything I can to make sure this doesn't happen again."
Having a true understanding of the natural world, and the actual probability of the things that happen to you, does not make you any more cynical or joyless. It makes you appreciate these "coincidences" even more. And if you end up falling in love with someone who is absolutely perfect for you, like something out of a romantic comedy starring Zooey Deschanel, and you don't believe that you were "meant" for each other - you are probably going to appreciate being with that person a whole lot more. Then you'll realize that things don't happen because of "just chance." Things happen by chance - and that's awesome.
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