Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Please, I'm not talking about rape or abuse cases, I'm talking about the economy and various art forms that inspires, e.g. music, paintings, movies (not the trashy kinds) and literature and philosophy and scientific discoveries. (Maybe wars too, because no matter how you see it, wars change us a lot. Without WW1 or WW2 we might be living in a very different world now, which, for better or for worse we can't say.)
What about the butterfly theory and the chaos theory? How does it integrate in what I'm asking?
Most of what has happened needed to happen in order for the world to be just as it is today, but I don't think there is any reason that the world need to be exactly as it is today. Chaos theory implies that changing events - even relatively small changes - can have unpredictable and possibly major effects on the course of history. This is your "butterfly" effect. I think there are certain social trends and large-scale cycles that are fairly predictable because they are mostly resistant to the small-scale changes, but the details of these large scale movements are probably still unpredictable. So, for example, something more or less like "rock and roll" would have probably come into existence, even if, say, Elvis had not been born, but a lot of the songs would be different, and certain other famous rock stars might never have become famous. Still, I'd say there is a good chance that at least a few of the rock stars that we know would still be famous rock stars, even in a parallel world where Elvis was never born.
What I'm suggesting is that something more or less like rock and roll is probably a chaotic attractor. When you have an attractor in a chaotic system, the system tends to "settle in" to the attractor, no matter where you start from. It is difficult to say exactly what the attractors really are in human history, so I'm mostly just guessing when I say that rock and roll might be a rough sort of attractor, but given the chaotic nature of human society (chaotic in the mathematical sense, not in the mundane sense of random or disorganized), I think it is likely that many kinds of events would be recognizable from one parallel world to the next, even if certain major evens were different.
I don't know of any strong scientific evidence to support the idea that there are "guiding hands" at work beneath human history (e.g., God, or aliens, or the Trilateral Commission, etc.), but of course it is possible that some or all of these forces could be at work behind the scenes, in which case the dynamics of chaos would be modified, but (with the possible exception of some versions of the God concept), even if there were such forces at work, the system would still be ultimately chaotic, and thus all of the details of history would still be fundamentally unpredictable. Personally, I'd say that even if God created the world, the world that God created is essentially a chaotic system, so the details of history would still be unpredictable, and no specific thing would be "meant to be" - except to the extent that certain things might be chaotic attractors.
Religious folks might want to surmise that God designed our world to be a chaotic system in such a way that His Will is somehow inevitably expressed in human history, even though individual human beings would still have some degree of free will rooted in the fundamental unpredictability of details. Since I am an atheist, I don't think that this is how things are, but if I were to become a theist, this is probably the sort of theism I would adopt.
You don't need to set today as an endpoint. Things happen because they must, but with detail variations along the way yhsy simply shade in a master reality that conforms with the physical laws of the universe.
Think of it like the Evolution of the Species. Things that happen in historical time will either go down a fork in the road that is sustainable and has survival value, or that is a horrible mutant that is doomed to a quick end. Every time somebody changes something, it is either for the good and directs us further along a path of what "needs to" evolve, or it is useless and gets kicked aside and forgotten about.
For example, Lincoln ended slavery. Well, he had to, and it he hadn't, someone would have soon come along who would have. That was something that happened because it needed to. The evidence of that is, of course, that the USA was the last elected republic in the western hemisphere to finally realize that Slavery had to be abolished, and every other free people had already freed their slaves.
Can you imagine that without Henry Ford, the industrial revolution would have somehow gone on another century without anyone mass-producing products on an assembly line? It happened then because it needed to.
I am actually not sure, what is that OP is asking? That all events in the world are predetermined?
They are. They are part of personal and group destiny, as created by human thinking. There are no accidents or things of that nature, as EVERYTHING that is occurring on Earth is exteriorization of human thoughts, in accordance to the The Law of Thought.
A human, or a group, or a a large group of humans, can actively influence such events, once again, by adjusting his/their thinking. Exteriorization of events can be postponed, but then it is followed by accumulation effect, sometimes resulting in catastrophic events.
Same goes for personal endowments and traits of humans, manifasting themselves in arts and sciences. Those are predetermined by a personal destiny and, once again, can be adjusted by one's thinking, in both directions.
I am actually not sure, what is that OP is asking? That all events in the world are predetermined?
They are. They are part of personal and group destiny, as created by human thinking. There are no accidents or things of that nature, as EVERYTHING that is occurring on Earth is exteriorization of human thoughts, in accordance to the The Law of Thought.
A human, or a group, or a a large group of humans, can actively influence such events, once again, by adjusting his/their thinking. Exteriorization of events can be postponed, but then it is followed by accumulation effect, sometimes resulting in catastrophic events.
Same goes for personal endowments and traits of humans, manifasting themselves in arts and sciences. Those are predetermined by a personal destiny and, once again, can be adjusted by one's thinking, in both directions.
All of you gave very good answers, and this^ especially got me thinking.
but what exactly is the Law Of Thought? Has that law been proven? I haven't heard of this law before. Is it sort of like positive thinking ? Or are thoughts given to us by a higher force? For atheists, you can just assume that I mean the Universal energy, where there's this common deposit from which all of us draw from. I have also read before that all of our thoughts actually harmonize with one another, and exist as another form of our world in another dimension. Is that what you mean?
Not from a scientific standpoint, but from personal experiences I am starting to believe things do happen for a reason. I have had things that happen to me that seem chaotic but looking at the bigger picture I have seen that if some of those things didn't happen I wouldn't have had many of the opportunities that I am afforded today because of them.
While I do not think that everything is already planned but I think our lives are much less threads woven in fabric that change to different paths all the time.
Please, I'm not talking about rape or abuse cases, I'm talking about the economy and various art forms that inspires, e.g. music, paintings, movies (not the trashy kinds) and literature and philosophy and scientific discoveries. (Maybe wars too, because no matter how you see it, wars change us a lot. Without WW1 or WW2 we might be living in a very different world now, which, for better or for worse we can't say.)
What about the butterfly theory and the chaos theory? How does it integrate in what I'm asking?
Does sunrise every morning - is it because it happens or it happens no matter what?
Although, sunrise and sunsets are a myth - since its the earth that's rotating causing that to happen.
But seriously I think it's possible that things happen for a reason. Those reasons could be some kind of big overarching spiritual cosmic thing or just some mundane explanation where it's because one event caused another leading through a chain of events that brought us to where we are.
The butterfly effect: Does the flap of a butterfly's wings cause a tornado somewhere on the other side of the world? Quantum theory might have a say in this. Read The Fabric of the Cosmos by Brian Greene (hopefully that's the one). The part where he talks about the effect a light Agent Scully has on the light Agent Moulder has on the other side of the world. It's a bit too complicated for me to get into here ad I only remember half of it.
How about the imaginary butterfly effect? If I imagine a butterfly flapping its wings over here in America will that cause the people to imagine tornadoes in China?
If those things up there don't answer your question or anything there is the many worlds theory. I think, I hope, that every time a decision is made or something happens, millions of parallel universes come into existence. All with slightly altered histories. All on a similar plane but at different frequencies or whatever.
I think that life (and everything that happens) can be perceived as an Entity, an organism.
There is a system, governing life, a set of unwritten rules which life follows to make things happen. It's like a machine in some sense.
But all machines (as well as people) make mistakes. And so does life (or this system).
So since things are governed by a process (of life), through this process, things happen for a reason.
BUT, there are mistakes too.
How do we learn those rules? By learning it will we know what decisions to make? Which path to follow? Our likely futures?
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
