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"Everything happens for a reason"
A kid got cancer...for a reason.
Someone died in a car accident...for a reason.
A woman wants a child but is infertile...for a reason.
Is it normal I think "Everything happens for a reason" is completely retarded?
Yeah I agree, it's bullshit: meaningless crap to make the person saying it feel better and perpetuate the fantasy that this world is other than random and worst of all, insulting to the person & family of the kid with cancer, the car accident victim and the infertile woman.
The only response I've ever been able to come up with is to throw it back by asking another question, ie, what reason is that? Be warned, you'll get some crap about religion or karma, but nothing that is any help whatsoever.
Thank you for your reply. I was starting to think that I was the only one who thought like this.
The stuff I listed has not happened to me, but for example: if I ever have a child, and my child dies of cancer. And someone tells me that it happened for a reason, I could see myself just losing it.
A child getting cancer isn't random, a woman being infertile isn't random, these are reactions. A child gets cancer because of being exposed to or consuming carcinogenic substances, genetic predisposition, high levels of background radiation, and more possibilities. Possibly similar causes for a woman to be infertile along with more possibilities. The people in these scenarios are causes and the things that hypothetically occured are reactions. The phrase doesn't mean everything happens for a lesson or some vengeful spiritual force hellbent on punishing people, which is what it appears the both of you believe it to mean. In the grand scheme of the universe there isn't a good or bad, right or wrong. Simply action and reaction, cause and effect. Morals, values, societal constructs, they don't exist outside our insignificant planet. Now that doesn't mean that there isn't a lesson or lessons to be learned from everything that happens. However the things you take from these events is up to your unique interpretation. What you are able to see, comprehend, deduce, and then use from them is at the viewers discretion. It's when you try to combine these two separate aspects, one being action and reaction and the other being the lessons into one and believing the reason for the event was only for the obvious life lesson that brings to the frustrated state you're in.
Some things do legitimately happen for a reason and other things are random and meaningless save for the meanings we draw as a result of the lessons learned from our experiences. It's not one thing or the other, but a combination of both.
Please give an example of something bad that happened "legitimately" for a reason, what was that reason was and who/what decided it was "legitimate" to arrange for it to happen?
When a man who is spousal abuser and a cheater is diagnosed with prostate cancer I see it as his Karma and something he completely deserves, something that he would see as "bad" of course, but I would see as having "legitimately happened for a reason".
I'm in love with a man who is a survivor of an abusive relationship, he's ex-military and has previously worked in law enforcement so he's no wimp, but he was still a victim and a survivor of a relationship with a woman who beat him and cheated on him regularly. If I found out tomorrow that his ex-wife was dying of cancer I would interpret it as her Karma and something she fully deserved and it would be horrible suffering yes, but suffering of which she was deserving nonetheless.
This matter is subjective of course, plenty of people will disagree with me and brand me as heartless, but I ain't gonna change. Karma is a bitch, but that's why I love her!
I'm not buying it.
Plenty of bad things happen to good people who don't "deserve" it. So when someone brings up one or even multiple examples of bad things happening to bad people, that is called cherry-picking.
When I say "I don't believe that everything happens for a reason," that does not mean that I don't acknowledge that cause-and-effect relationships exist in life. Cause-and-effect relationships DO exist. For example, say someone is drunk and walks carelessly into the middle of a busy road and gets hit by a car (unable to stop). The person dies from this event. That is an example of a cause-and-effect relationship. Cause: being drunk. Effect: death.
This unfortunate event had nothing to do with karma or a higher reason.
I think people like to believe in karma or believe that an event happened for a reason as a source of comfort, and I get that, but that doesn't make these beliefs accurate.
That's utter nonsense: prostate cancer isn't caused by the person being a spousal abuser: plenty of non-abusive men get it. What's karmic about women with breast, ovarian or cervical cancer? Or children with brain cancer?
I hate to put a pin in your balloon, but plenty of abusers have quite happy health lives and many non-abusers don't. Karma does not exist, its a cop out belief: have a look at the countries where it's widely believed - rife with exploitation, violence, rape, extreme poverty, slavery, child abuse and corruption because belief in karma leads to inaction on social issues which could be changed for the better. After all, if karma is balancing everything out, we don't need to do anything, do we?
Just who benefits from that belief RoseIsabella? It wouldn't happen to be the privileged and powerful, would it?
*yawns*
This is just more of your hatred for religion, and personally I find it rather boring. I'm not really interested in discussing what specifically causes cancer of any kind for the purposes of this post, because I want to stay on topic. I personally think when something bad happens to a bad person it's a good thing and when it happens to a good person it's sad. You can say or think whatever you want I don't care. It's beyond old and tired when your go to point is this atheism stuff.
What would be an example of something that happened for a reason, and what would be an example of something that happened "randomly"?
Thinking along those lines is nuts. We get that from religion. A plane crash kills hundreds of people. Well there must have been a reason. Bull shit!!
If u think like this then its true, I'll fuck u up, life will fuck u up, life inimical, it will do what ever it can to go against you for specific reasons(don't get me started). Therefore if you think like how u explained, u will never achieve great or extraordinary things as you practically become a slave to life, u end up living in doubt and despair because you let life control u and become bewildered to it. Don't let life choose what you do! You choose what life does!You must find complete control, anything is possible in life!
"retarded" is a bit too strong a condemnation if it deals with something specific. Assuming there is a cause-and-effect link without being able to define that link (for now) is a basic survival tool. You have to assume there is a link before you'd be open to discovering what it is. (best not walk around with big ass iron rod pointing to "god" before science can explain lightning)
However, the link must be tested and in the end defined for what it truly is or isn't. Otherwise you end up with rules "by god" not to be questioned like forbidden pork meat. Might turn out wrong, might turn out to be a completely different reason, but sometimes a baseless link can help your genes to survive till enlightment.
However (!!) applying this to something non-specific or -worse- disconnecting it from any outcome, that nullifies the whole thing.
You cannot define a link between opposite causes and equally opposite effects, you get a meaningless truism, boiling down to "Stuff happens".
Butterfly effect fool! You sound narrow minded and depressed. I would not like to be friends with you.