Destiny vs Free Will.

'There is no purpose to life, but it’s not an accident.' — Richard Dawkins.

In Thornton Wilder’s THE BRIDGE OF SAN LUIS REY the characters were doomed to meet their deaths in the collapse of the bridge as a logical outcome of their lives and personalities. "Is there a direction and meaning in lives beyond the individual's own will?" was the question posed by the author, which is basically fate vs. free will. As a matter of fact, every time a number of people die or get injured in an accident a mind-boggling question raises its ugly head — did some superior force make it happen accidentally on purpose?

Some people believe there’s a cause for everything; others say it’s just a blind chance. I’m inclined to think that chance is an unperceived necessity.

Everything is predetermined, but man has been granted free will — says one of the most unsettling concepts inferred from the Bible.

Either of these statements creates a contradiction.

If we blame everything on blind chance, there’s no guilt, redemption or reward for being virtuous, since there’re no logical consequences of your acts, but a kind of dice rolling. On the other hand if predetermination is a pivot around which our universe revolves, no matter what we do the result would be the same. So in both cases why bother?

Unless, of course, you trust in reincarnation and fear your sins and evil deeds in this life (Karma) will be visited on you in the next one. At least, to my eye, there seems to be more logic and justice in the last option. One way or another we all believe in something superior to us, even if it’s just a blind chance.

I tend to draw analogies between everyday life and physical processes, so our individual world lines are strikingly similar to Brownian motion (stochastic process) — the random movement of particles suspended in a liquid or gas. The way we mill around isn’t very different from the particles’ chaotic shimmying, while gas or liquid as a whole is actually driven unconsciously by some purpose. So is humanity, probably.  ‘They come, they destroy, they corrupt’ . ‘It all ends once, everything before that is progress’ . The definition of mankind that hits home.

What's more, sometimes light/white is Lucifer’s glitter, and dark/black is wisdom and depth.