Edited.

Edit.

This one is lost on me.

Join the club, Paul.

edit 62.

Your premises suggest many things, but prove nothing. Belief in destiny is nothing more than proactive acknowledgement a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you continually tell yourself that you are meant to complete some task, it is highly probable that you will put forth an inordinate ammount of effort geared toward completion of said task. This effort will be conscious and/or subconscious in nature. This is not proof of a preordained set of events or destiny, it only proves that the human will can adapt to obtain nearly any desired outcome. I am on my lunch hour, so we will have to continue this discussion later.

The only thing that anyone can be sure of is death.

Hi b11ng00,

Are you saying that every action has an origin, a starting point?

Hi ice,

Lots of things are certain:
1 + 1 is certainly 2
I can certainly find a different decimal number between any two others
My offspring will certainly be human
If I throw a single die, I certainly won't get a 7
The earth certainly revolves around the sun
If you place your bare hand in a fire it will certainly get burned
Icecream certainly tastes good
etc, etc.

Cheers,
enegue

What does any of this have to do with dots and arrows???????

edit 63.

edit 64.

hey enegue,
I was refering to predestiny and being locked into a specific chain of events. However, I can eliminate the validity of your claims by removing ambiguity in my favor.

For example:

Lots of things are certain:
1 + 1 is certainly 2 (unless you are adding one set of two to another set of 2, in which case you would have one set of 4)
I can certainly find a different decimal number between any two others (I give you this one)
My offspring will certainly be human (unless you have no offspring or your wife miscarries, I pray not)
If I throw a single die, I certainly won't get a 7 (unless the die has seven sides or is otherwise numbered to include 7)
The earth certainly revolves around the sun (our sun is not the only sun in the known universe and I am sure there are suns that revolve the earth since everthing moves)
If you place your bare hand in a fire it will certainly get burned (unless you place it in the fire for mere milliseconds)
Icecream certainly tastes good (unless it is a flavor that the person tasting it despises)
etc, etc.

My point is that there is nothing for certain, but death. Even death inherenty requires life, which is the only certain relationship in regard to cause and effect. I am certain that you can remove ambiguity in your favor to render my claims invalid as well, but this is straying from my initial claim. I claim that predestiny is a physical manifestation of personal motivation and initiative, not the result of a predetermined plan carved in stone.

Hi ice,

Glad to see some activity in here again

If you are counting the sets, then there are certainly 2 sets, if you are counting the items in the sets, then there are certainly 4 items. Counting is a certain process (unless you happen to counting votes in North American presidential elections )

I am just trying to refute the premise of predestination, which is a dangerous concept. Predestination prevents individuals from being anything aside from what they are "meant" to be. If you have seen the film "Iron Giant", you can compare this to the idea that the giant is a weapon and can be nothing more and nothing less.

P.S: I am not a gun

Hi ice,

I think the concept of predestination is greatly misunderstood. However, let me see if I can explain the way I see it:

Where I am at any point in time is where I was predestined to be, otherwise I would be somewhere else. There are still an infinite choice of paths ahead of me, but the next path I choose to travel is the one I was predestined to travel, otherwise I would have made a different choice and would be travelling a different path.

Predestination is backward looking, not forward looking. For example, the predestination of Judas' betrayal of Jesus, was determined only after it was done. Prior to the betrayal, he had many choices he could have made, and was not predestined to make any of them.

Cheers,
enegue