My Reasoning

12/19/10 -Sunday 12:57 PM

Im back at work again, figured I would take a few minutes and explain what I meant when I previously posted about my "belief" system.

As I said, I was raised Catholic but was never really "drawn" to it, most would say just never a true believer in God...and I accept that, and I also dont think anything differently of those that do believe in a God.
I was in college when I found my way to deal with situations in everyday life....I was in a Philosophy class.

A few definitions of concepts to start-
  1- Determinism- Every event, including human decision and action is the consequence of events that had occurred well beforehand.
2- Pre-determinism- Goes further stating that everything in the Universe to day, was implicit in the earliest moments of the Universe itself. There is are "inevitable causal chains" that have lead to everything present day.
3- Fatalism- A form of Determinism where every event in the future is Fated to happen, this normally does not require laws of causality or a "Higher Power."
4- Free Will-  Clearly is the freedom we have to choose

Most Philosophers associated a God into these philosophies.  I chose to take them and adapt them to a philosophy that would help me get through life and make things easier.

Basically, where I stand is a form of Hard Determinism with the inclusion of Fatalism

The easiest way to explain this: As bold as this may seem for these times, I chose to believe we as humans do not actually have any sort of Free Will-
I believe in Hard Determinism where, when it comes down to it, We are not free, we do not have free will and therefore we are not morally responsible.....Legally on the other hand is a whole other issue.

I decided to believe that everything in my life has already been decided.  Every so called "choice" I make, was never really a choice, I was always going to make that so called "decision."  So in the simplest of explanations, even when you do a last minute change of your outfit before you leave to go somewhere, it was already determined beforehand that you were going to wear that specific outfit, that specific time, no matter what you did or did not do in the surrounding moments.
I  choose to believe basically "it is what it is" not because God set it in motion, but just because it was supposed to be that way, which lead me into Fatalism.  I also choose to disregard any and all contradictory arguments to these ideas.

Some of you are most likely having the "everything happens for a reason" or "karma" ideas popping into your heads.  Well your are right. That boils my system of believes right down to the core.
I have no control over what happens to me and therefore I shouldn't worry so much.  If i made a bad "choice" and something bad happened, maybe like Rape or something- It really wasnt my fault because it was always meant to be.

Its a pretty strange way to look at things, but it gets me through. It got me through my fathers death, it has gotten me through some serious illness, It will get me through my rape.

It is a little bit harder now to have such a relaxed, calm acceptance that things are out of my control. I have to constantly now remind myself of that, whereas before.....it was just how I was, I didnt have to talk myself into believing it.
Honestly, if I had believed in God, I think mentally I would be far worse than I am right now after being raped. I would have been questioning my entire belief system and asking why God could let such a thing happen.  Instead, I fall back on the belief even if I had done things differently, I still would have been raped as it was always to be.

Anyway, maybe that explains a few things to some of you that may have a few questions as to why I handle things the way I do.

Hope everyones weekend is going well........Hoping the Saints beat Baltimore so I can rub it in my friends faces that are at the game.