This is from a free newsletter by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar <kareem@substack.com> I pass it along in full because I am sure he appreciates the plug, and the topic is perfect for RFM. Dead missionaries were needed in the Spirit World™ is a subspecies of this remark. ===============
Everything happens for a reason.
-- Anonymous (thankfully)
People love saying this as a balm whenever something bad happens. Their hearts are in the right place because they want to make someone who is hurting feel better. They don’t understand that what they are saying has the opposite effect—if you think about the words.
The implication that “everything happens for a reason” is that there is a supreme consciousness—a god or gods—who has designed all events toward some grand purpose known only to them. The further implication is that the grand purpose is good for us as a whole, even if it’s bad for us individually. This is the answer to the one question that is the foundation of human morality: “Why do bad things happen to good people?” Grand design attempts to make us feel good without questioning whether we really are “good people.”
Of course, the whole idea of a grand design removes free will from the equation. Despite the mental and verbal contortions over the centuries of those who want both free will and a grand design, no can do. This leaves us expected to endure horrible events and pain with a resigned shrug because we’re pawns in a greater game. For me, again, no can do.
But this phrase can have other meanings that make more sense. It could mean that everything that happens is an opportunity for growth. Something bad happens to us and we examine why it happened and if there’s something we could do differently next time to prevent such an occurrence. Even if we can’t, we can learn how to cope with disaster and disappointment so we are less vulnerable the next time. We can become stronger from pain. More importantly, we can be inspired to help others better endure their pain.
It could also mean that everything has a cause-and-effect reason for happening. A nail is embedded in the wood because a hammer repeatedly hit it. Or people who were abused as children are more likely to abuse their children. When we understand the causes, we can better control the effects. That’s what philosophy, religion, and therapy are for.
While the second and third meanings make sense to me, the first meaning does not. It’s better to accept that sometimes terrible things happen and they are in themselves meaningless and without comprehensible reason. There is no one to blame—even though it makes us feel better to assign blame to everything. That makes us feel powerless and insignificant, but I’m okay with acknowledging my powerlessness and insignificance in the scope of the universe so I can focus on what I do have power over and the people to whom I hold some significance.
To feel significant, I don’t need to see everything that happens to me as part of a grand, unknowable design. I just need to do good things that matter to others.
I remain solidly on the list of people who believe that mormonism is a Grand Design religion: nothing, absolutely NOTHING happens without a reason!
My first mission companion, for four months, died in a car accident 3½ years after we being released from the mission. It's my opinion he had a shot at becoming an apostle, but instead, he got called to "The Other Side" to preach to some of the 100 billion humans who lived and died without getting to hear about the gospel of Jesus Christ while in their mortal bodies.
As a Reformed Atheist, Missouri Synod, I believe in the Bell-Shaped Curve: shit happens, but only to the same percentage of people as hit the lottery. And it's not personal . . .
For religion to make sense, Man was created to be stupid. Eve took the apple. Stupid. Adam listened to Eve. Stupid. Kicked out of the garden. Maybe Eve was smart enough to ask for directions.
God is out to get you because Man was created stupid. But it's okay because God also created a savior for you who was magically not stupid.
There is a link on another thread on this Board to a video about how cults use and misuse language. One of the things that video talks about is how some cult leaders (and others) use words to try to shut down conversations on subjects that they perceive as being harmful to the cult.
"Everything is done for a reason" is one of those phrases. It sounds nice but it doesn't really allow the person being spoken to to vent his or her frustrations about the tragedy he/she is facing. That said, beyond the cults, I think there is a real human need to turn away from perceived bad news--we fear that hearing details of another's problems will somehow mess up our own lives.
One can be a hard determinist, and still allow for quantum uncertainty. You can have unpredictability without having to give up determinism. In fact the unpredictability is deterministic. We can't eliminate it.
"Everything happens for a reason and the reason is none of your business," said Mormon God, and, well every God du Jour. "Don't worry your pretty little heads my children. And yes you. You are my chosen. Really I swear. No. Honest. It's you. Er, what was your name again?"
It's not mine (author noted in my post), it's not a diatribe, and I suppose whether or not it is rambling is a matter of taste.
So thanks for your generally content-free analysis. Congratulations, I guess, for knowing who Edward Abbey is. Or am I assuming too much. At least he did most of his writing in, and about Utah.
There may be some confusion over the term "reason," just as over others like "purpose" or "accident." The slow march of science seems to show that there are previously-hidden patterns behind occurrences, and humans tendency to make stories about this, perhaps intuited, is our attempt to narrate things according to our present degree of always-partial understanding.
If things aren't within our present ken, why project the causes out onto a god or some conspiracy, when the answer may be in the opposite direction: our own ignored subconscious, which we have programmed through eons of 'immediately made, immediately forgotten' decisions (the contents of our "kettle").
Nicely put. Haven't heard the word "ken" for so long.
We are the product of a whole. And the whole is indeed a whole lot greater than the sum of its parts. And like being in a boat the middle of the sea, you are part of the sea, and can see the skies and a limited horizon and sometimes the shore, but not below where the really weird exciting stuff is going on. Like our subconscious.
So we substitute "assumption" for reason and purpose. And, there are some very creative assumptions at play in this "whole" we call the world/the universe. Some call it the Kingdom of God. Talk about dumbing down something stunningly complex.
Can you kill a subconscious the way we are killing the ocean reefs? Is that what religion is for?
I tell them that I'm doing fine watching shadows on the wall...
Leave Plato's cave? You can try.
Rationality is an illusion as pervasive as religion. Humans are not rational. You can make them believe anything by stirring up their emotions. They must then construct a rationale for their emotions. It doesn't matter how rational they think they are. Studies find that the most rational among us are the most easily fooled.
In that respect, rationalism is in the same boat as spirituality. It is an illusion but it is real. We live our lives in a holographic hallucination that is either emergent or has already happened depending on where it is viewed from. There is causality and there isn't, so we invent duality.
This brings us to Joseph and his mythology. I was rather upset to learn he made the whole thing up. The evidence is irrefutable. But what I didn't get is that almost everything we know is made up. I had a bug up my testimony about being lied to when the secular world was just as big a pack of lies.
Joe was mental for sure. You have be mental in order to create a religion. Mormonism is at least low-hanging fruit. It's fallacies are easily picked apart. The wider world of lies is trickier.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/06/2024 11:44PM by bradley.
You're right: the very title of the post contains possibly the greatest erroneous assumption--that "things" are indeed happening...that the brain-projected so-called "world" actually exists.
The definitive biography of one of the great modern Indian spiritual teachers (H.W.L. Poonji) is titled "Nothing Ever Happened." (What an ironic concession to our illusory worldview it is to write such a book!) Most such teachers don't answer questions about their history because that apparently separate person was never born, doesn't age or die, or even takes part in the dream that others have of them.
OK, everybody, put The Dancing Wu Li Masters back where you found it, and slowly back away from the table. If you're not careful, El Gato will latch onto this, and we will end up having to fumigate.
Kareem's essay demonstrates a near perfect dissociation from the ontological one mind. It is about owning the experience, which is also central to sports. Living in and with the body is reality.
Relegating that to spirit cheapens that. Obesity among Mormons is a case in point. If spirit is all that matters, why not let yourself go?
If the purpose of mortality is to descend into matter, atheists are living the most authentically. Watching the shadows dance is the point. Otherwise, why are you in the cave?
Religionists are dreamers who want to leave the cave. Maybe this desire is the rub. There is a schism between those who call the cave home and those who don't.
But to critique Kareem's essay, it indicates a certain reluctance to render unto God that which is God's. In other words, a fear of the unknown that blocks reunion with the aforementioned one mind. The soap opera goes on, as there are a million lives to live.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/09/2024 02:18AM by bradley.
> If the purpose of mortality is to descend into > matter, atheists are living the most > authentically. Watching the shadows dance is the > point. Otherwise, why are you in the cave?
In short, what if the hokey pokey is what it's all about?
It's a silly question but it makes the atheistic point nicely.
Posted by:
elderolddog
( ) Date: July 08, 2024 09:44PM
Give me one singularity in time, When I'm more than I thought I could be! When all of my dreams are a heartbeat away, And the answers are all up to me!
Give me one singularity in time! When I'm racing with destiny... Then in that one singularity of time, I will be ... I will be ... I will be free I will be ... I will be FREEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!