project WORLDVIEW worldview theme playing card #11 description         copyright 2013               Home   

 diamond WV Theme ...             #11A / 11B             ...individual <---> knowledge

FATALISM / FREE WILL

I believe that events are fixed in advance so that humans are powerless to change them, and that individuals don’t control their own destinies. Whether you call it “God’s plan” or “the will of God” -- or call it determinism and involve factors beyond human control including natural laws, genetic endowment, the (predictable) response to environmental stimuli, etc. -- like you I believe that our life’s course is fixed as part of the larger scheme of things. (Note: An opposing viewpoint is free will: that humans have the power to freely choose between alternatives and shape their destiny. Appreciation of quantum mechanics and chaos theory has led many scientists away from the notion that events always unfold in rigidly determined, predictable ways, as they once held.)