Are our lives predestined or do we shape our own destinies?

[diggy]

What do you think?

[Urban_Journalz]

This may sound screwy, but I think it's actually both.

We do shape our destinies through a conscious effort to focus our energies to whatever ends that we desire. In some cases you have positive examples like Ghandi, Malcolm X and Lao Tzu. In other cases you have Adolf Hitler, Saddam Hussein and George W. Bush.

In both cases though, you have the same foundation. People who focused on one goal and sought it through to the end.

However, I also believe that these people were meant to be who they turned out to be. It's a bit of a mystery to understand, but I think we have more free will than we can imagine, but just enough not to get completely out of control. That's me though.

[TheBoarzHeadBoy]

Everything is predetermined because all time is happening simultaneously. Time is like a river running in a circle, but more then that the river is all the same water.

Think about it. The atoms that make you used to be someone else, used to be an animal, a plant, soil, a rock, water, dust, a star, the big bang. Its all an illusion, but we too are illusions interacting with other illusions which are the physical world. The atoms are just atoms, the quarks are just quarks. It's just matter. Our forms our fleetingly temporal but they're just matter. Time isn't real because the matter essentially isn't ever changing. Its like when you look at an intricately patterned curtain and see tiny faces in the fabric every time you look there are different faces so we could assume that the faces are changing and moving, but in reality our perception is mistaken.

[PALEHORSE]

i say both

there are ooutside influences but you are the creator and certain things pull you to do certain things

[MrDiamondFDC]

I believe God knows if we will go to Heaven or Hell when we are created because he is all knowing, but I don't believe in Calvinism.

[TheBoarzHeadBoy]

I don't think god is only described as all knowing, all powerful, and in all places because the entire universe (or multiverse) is God. It's all matter. I'm god, you're god, she's god, the table is god, god is everywhere, everything, and thus knows everything since every consciousness is a part of god. That's how I interpret the bible, that's what the hindus and buddhists think, and its true, because at the subatomic level everything is made of the same stuff. That's where god is. God is that universal energy/matter that all existence draws its illusionary conscience from. Our realities are all illusions set within an impossibly vast mind. We're all real if only because we're all equally false. Thus we can interact with each other on the same level, our thoughts however are on a different level and thus aren't actualities within our realm of perception. So I can see you more clearly then my dreams because you are in a sense on the same wavelength as me. But like you can't read my thought because you aren't perceiving them. The whole point of Buddhism being to listen to all the different radiostations and thus perceive the universe. I think Christianity was the same, I think Jesus was probably a Bodhi and that the Jews etc around him lacked his understanding which brought us the religion we have today.

Have I blown your brain yet?

[diggy]

There are limits to our abilities as well as natural limits external of us.

We could accept life's limits and work with them.

[zooruka]

I believe God knows if we will go to Heaven or Hell when we are created because he is all knowing, but I don't believe in Calvinism.

cosign

This an intresting question because in the bible it says there is a book of life and this contains all those names of people who will go to heaven and it says that is was written before the foundation of the world...So while I believe our lives are not predestined God already knew who would make it to heaven and who won`t before he made the earth...

peace be with you !

[Dooch]

its all about odds making and being realistic.

Certain thiings are predetermined i suppose.....by that I mean we have certain limits to who we are and what we are.

But outside of that dimension, in our everyday lives, we definite have our own free will to do as we please.

Like right now, if i wanted to i could break my laptop against the wall....but i choose not too.

[TheBoarzHeadBoy]

So what you're saying Zoo is that God intentionally created people just to punish them? Thats neither fair nor loving. You're saying that a loving god created people who are inherently cursed to suffer and sin until they are given an eternal punishment?

That's contradictory. Your idea of God takes pleasure from punishing people. That is without justice. Justice is punishing those with a choice. Punishing those without a choice is injustice. An omniscient God cannot be loving unless he shows love through punishment (which I assume is what Jews must believe.) Your world view can not be taken as reason. Thus Hell cannot be eternal.

[diggy]

...So while I believe our lives are not predestined...

Let's get this thread back on track.

[ligerstyle]

I've been thinking of how to word this post for quite a while in order not to confuse myself or the fellow members.

I believe that there are many outcomes/destinies to life, but above these outcomes is the predestined idea that we will reach a certain destiny. This could be seen as we have choice in our destinies but only the options that are given to us (which in turn is predestined)

Apologies for the repition of the word predestined. Everything seems to make sense in the mental realm.

[brock]

I think predestiny would make everything completely pointless. Try and argue with that logic.

[SKAMPOE]

if u look at cattle in a pen/coral, all the cows are in the same place, some cows are loners some cows mingle with other cows, but when the cowboy comes they all move to where they are told... its never predestined, we are masters of r own Delf... religion and government laws is just that dirty cowboy!

[Uncle Steezo]

reality is a dance of co-creation between the individual and the one.

individuality is the projection of the one, the universal consciousness.

we all will die. there is your predestiny.
what you do in between is up to you.

but on that note the universe has a way of balancing itself which may slap you back into line when you get out of pocket.


simultaneous time...
time is just a measurement. a measurement of motion.
what we consider the future is just potential.
nothing is for certain.

all that exists is the NOW.