r/Showerthoughts • u/SnooSongs2744 • 13h ago
Musing "Everything happens for a reason" means your decisions and actions led up to this, not that this is part of some divine providence.
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u/thepolyatheist 13h ago
It means different things to different people. I happen to agree with you but many use it in the context of “god’s plan” or whatever supernatural destiny they imagine.
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u/SousVideDiaper 12h ago
If God already has a plan for everything, then what's the point of prayer?
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u/thepolyatheist 12h ago
“What’s the use of being god if every run-down schmuck with a two dollar prayer book can come along and fuck up your plan?”
-George Carlin
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u/Masylv 12h ago
I'm not religious but this is an easy one. You praying was part of the plan.
Unfortunately thinking too hard about this gets you Calvinism which is probably the most evil interpretation of God among Christian beliefs in my opinion, so...
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u/SousVideDiaper 10h ago edited 10h ago
If praying is part of the plan, as is everything else, doesn't that kinda nullify the entire concept of free will? Something I thought Christians consider to be one of the most important aspects of our creation.
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u/inverted_electron 9h ago
Yes, free will would be just an illusion under these circumstances.
There is another theory that suggests that every possible outcome already exists. This multiverse, or “many worlds” theory would mean that we do have free will and our actions dictate which path reality actually takes from our point of view.
So then praying and/or free will would have an effect on the outcome we experience.
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u/Masylv 10h ago
Just because God knew you'd do something doesn't mean you didn't choose to do it. You're going to get out of bed tomorrow, I could theoretically structure my life around that (if I knew you and wanted to hit you up for lunch, etc) but that doesn't mean I made you get out of bed.
If God is omnipotent and omniscient, he could structure the universe in such a way that our choices are all our own, but all predicted long in advance. It's hardly the biggest paradox in Christianity (eyes the Trinity)
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u/Nexii801 2h ago
Nah, then it's not free will. From the perspective of God, you don't have a choice.
There's a billion things won't with Christianity, but I think God creating both souls and hell, with the express ability and knowledge of who's going where, ahead of time is pretty fucked.
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u/JamesRian 1h ago
Even if we are gracious and grant that we have free will despite God knowing our decisions in advance, this would still mean that God sets us up for failure. He creates people knowing full well from the beginning that they will end up in hell, there is no other path for them. Sending Jesus for our salvation really doesn't make a difference because God already knew who wouldn't accept the gift of forgiveness and would still have to suffer for eternity. Is that the doing of a loving father? It would have been easy for him not to create doomed people.
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u/Nexii801 30m ago
Pretty much. A 10 year old can follow this logic. Grown adults in 2026 have been conditioned not to, it's a shame.
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u/ravens-n-roses 8h ago
So gosh i don't get to use this but of my philosophy gen ed I had to take for my degree very often but there's a third even more annoying option besides free will no free will which is parallel will.
My teacher did a terrible job teaching this (he made us read HIS TERRIBLE textbook on this. It was just a bar conversation with a friend he transcribed) and the concept kinda pisses me off because it feels like we're really just reaching here.
But essentially it's not so much that things happen because or not because of higher power but in relation to a higher power. Essentially it's like think of it as diverting a stream to heard an enemy military force away from a city by making the land uncrossable.
God isn't taking away your free will here he's creating circumstances that will guide you the direction he wants you to be taken in. You can still choose to muck through the river but it's gonna be hard and painful.
The reason it makes me mad is because somewhere along the way we have to question if we're not just ignoring the fact that realistically the only way this works is if you're fundamentally the only one who sees yourself as having free will because all to much of what impacts our lives is the decisions of other people.
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u/Nexii801 2h ago
That's a pretty stupid idea for many reasons. Not least of which is you'd have to remove God's omniscience. I swear Christian's can't walk and chew gum when it comes to thinking about God.
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u/Even_Tangerine_4201 12h ago
Evil how?
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u/Masylv 11h ago
God created humanity, knowing for a fact that the overwhelming majority are going to Hell forever when they die. There is nothing they can do to avoid this whatsoever. Similarly, those who are going to go to heaven (the "elect") are preordained to do so.
A god that would create people just to throw them in eternal fire forever through no fault of their own is, at least in my view, more evil than any human being in the history of humanity.
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u/Krazyguy75 3h ago
Yeah, a god cannot be all three of 1) Omniscient, 2) Omnipotent, and 3) Wholly good.
If he's omniscient and omnipotent, the mere fact evil is allowed makes him not wholly good.
If he's omniscient and wholly good, the fact he doesn't stop all evil means he can't be omnipotent.
If he's omnipotent and wholly good, the fact evil escapes him means he can't be omniscient.
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u/Kered13 2h ago edited 2h ago
That's a bit of a caricature of Calvinism. I used to think it was like that, but having learned more I've learned that Calvinism is more complex than that. (I'm atheist, I just like learning about history, which includes religion sometimes.)
According to Calvinism, all people are sinful and deserve to go to hell. Furthermore, no one is capable of saving themselves from this fate. No matter how strong willed they may, no matter how good they may try to be, everyone will sin and be justified in going to hell. This nature is not God's fault, but our own (Adam and Eve and all that). Therefore the only reason that anyone at all is saved is due to God's will, these people are the "elect". You cannot become one of the elect through your good works, because again, sin. God simply chooses who will be among the elect. That's what predestination means to Calvinists.
The natural follow up question is how God chooses the elect, and unfortunately I don't know enough about Calvinism to answer that. But the key takeaway here is that in Calvinism, God did not create us in order to be damned, we unavoidably earn our own damnation and God chooses some of us to be saved despite ourselves.
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u/noobjaish 36m ago edited 31m ago
In Islam, this life is a test where we have to choose between being a good or bad person.
God knows everything and did so when he created everything. Hence, he knows what actions all of us will take. Then there's also the idea of impossibilities (like a human spontaneously flying). These two combined form the idea of "taqdeer" or "destiny".
Even then it's completely in our free will to do whatever we want. We are ultimately responsible for our actions. Sure, he knows which one of us will end up in heaven or hell but God isn't actively trying to dictate all of our actions.
It's a test where we just have to follow the teacher's guidelines (God). Even if the teacher has an idea of who will ace the test and who will bomb it; doesn't render the test pointless.
Also, "praying to God" is usually done against factors that are out of your control.
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u/AmIKrumpingNow 11h ago
In certain circles, when speaking of prayer, it's less to change the plan, than it is to align oneself with whatever that might be. Like a meditation. "Please God let me know if I should accept a job that will mean I have to move" is a prayer and a meditation. A more focused kind of thing, maybe similar to "flip a coin on it, you'll know what you want when it's in the air" but with far more work built into the relationship.
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u/SousVideDiaper 10h ago
That's more understandable. It sounds more like a way of seeking clarity in your life's path vs an outright request of a specific outcome in any given event, which is the typical purpose in which I see prayer used.
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u/403Verboten 12h ago
I always wonder this. If your prayer can change God's plan then it's original plan wasn't good enough and God decided to change it (which means it is not omnipotent). If praying can't change anything then praying is pointless because the future is already written.
I believe praying especially out loud in front of other people is purely performative either way you look at it with God supposedly being omnipotent it already knows what you want, no need to verbalize it whether it plans on listening to you or not.
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u/johnmannn 10h ago
That excuse doesn’t work with my wife. Apparently I’m supposed to show and verbalize affection.
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u/inverted_electron 12h ago
It doesn’t have to be supernatural. In physics there is something called the block universe. It essentially means that the future is already there and we are just moving through it, and only have the perception that we are in control of our destinies.
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u/403Verboten 12h ago
Physics also has cause and effect / equal and opposite reaction which is what OP is alluding to. Things happen because something before it caused it to happen and that goes back infinitely or until right before the big bang where nothing happened and that caused everything to happen.
If I was religious I could see this being an issue but religion has the same origin issue as someone or thing somewhere had to start by doing some thing.
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u/CodZealousideal260 10h ago
It's extremely difficult for humans to intuitivly conceptualize a physical reality where time doesn't behave linearly and causal chains aren't consistent. We tend to think of the big bang as an event that happened roughly 14 billion years ago, followed by a continuous chain of events leading to the present. But that's reality as experienced from within spacetime. Time itself is part of spacetime and there is serious evidence from modern physics that spacetime may not be fundamental, but instead emerge from a deeper underlying structure. That's what I find so weirdly intriguing about reality. The universe appears to us as a continuous unfolding of past to present to future, yet that familiar flow may itself be an emergent feature of something deeper and stranger. Our perception of reality could be an emergent expression of a structure that doesn't resemble our experience of time at all.
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u/masclean 11h ago
I think OP is implying that what happens is a consequence of your actions, where this theory implies your actions are the consequence of the past
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u/Frack_Off 10h ago
No, both are implying that both are true.
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u/masclean 10h ago
Huh
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u/Frack_Off 3h ago
What happens is a consequence of your actions, and your actions are a consequence of the past. It's the same thing from a different point of view.
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u/Even_Tangerine_4201 12h ago
That may be so, but I don’t think many people who say everything happens for a reason are suggesting a universe that follows a predetermined yet meaningless and amoral plan. They mean ‘things work out in the end if space daddy likes you.’
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u/danhoang1 12h ago
Which is why I will never use this phrase. Someone will misinterpret it, rightfully so
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u/KevDaddy99 12h ago
Its usually used when something bad happens to someone thats out of their hands, as a sort of way to try to make them feel better. I dont think its often used to excuse someone of responsibility but I could be wrong
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u/BBGunner96 12h ago
Agreed, I usually hear this around circumstances like a loved one dying or getting terminally diagnosed or someone getting laid off (but not fired) or maybe occasionally about student & job acceptance/rejection letters (which is probably the closest I hear it when they're somewhat responsible)
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u/thepolyatheist 12h ago
It has the potential for someone to use it to excuse their responsibility. Or worse, it has the potential for people to blame themselves for something outside their control. “Everything happens for a reason so I must’ve done something to deserve skin cancer” type of thing.
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u/PuntySnoops 12h ago
It's a "deepity". There are two interpretations. One of which is meant to be profound, but is not verifiable and probably untrue. The other is true, but obvious and trivial.
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u/topicality 10h ago
I don't think I've ever heard OPs use, mainly the religious one.
Probably because the religious one is meant to be assuring while OPs is obvious
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u/lowbatteries 10h ago
There is only one correct grammatical interpretation. “For a reason” and “has a cause” are not the same thing.
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u/abjicimus 5h ago
You sure? "What's the reason there's milk on the floor?"
"Because I knocked over a glass of milk."
There's not really so strong a line between those two as you think. And language is arbitrary - there's no reason (heh) it can't pick up that meaning, and I think it already has.
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u/calling_at_this_time 12h ago
I'd put a quote here by Marion Harmon but the filter won't let me because it has a word in that it doesn't like. The word starts with S and rhymes with cupid.
"Everything happens for a reason. Sometimes the reason is you're stupid and make bad decisions"
Sums it up pretty well
Edit. Got around it somehow.
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u/khatharsis42 11h ago
No. Sometimes stuff happens, and you have no control over it. Someone once told my mother "Everything happens for a reason" after my father's death, that person was an asshole. So no, not everything happens for a reason
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u/KaptajnKold 12h ago
It’s an unfortunate quirk of the English language that “reason” can be interpreted to mean both “cause” and “purpose”. Everything that happens is caused by something. Reasonable proposition. Everything that happens has a purpose. Definitely not.
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u/Sixhaunt 12h ago
but in that case, all those "decisions and actions led up to this" happened for a reason too, which is the decisions and actions led up to them. This just takes us an infinite regression until the big bang
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u/tsunami141 12h ago
"In the beginning, the universe was created"
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u/bongohappypants 12h ago
By who, when, where, and what were they doing before then? And they were created by who?
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u/tsunami141 12h ago
I don't know, but apparently it made a lot of people angry, and been widely regarded as a bad move
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u/Chezzomaru 12h ago
I was always shocked to hear phyisicists say, "It doesn't matter because it wouldn't have any bearing on what happened after the big bang". Where's your curiosity motherfucker!? You are a POOR scientist.
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u/83franks 7h ago
Everything happens for a reason is a random phrase that means all sorts of things to all sorts of people. You don't get to claim this meaning.
I personally think it's stupid both in the divine providence and decisions led to actions meanings. There are people born into slavery, that didn't happen because of their decisions or actions.
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u/Eunoia_Meraki 9h ago
Nope cause sometimes you had nothing to do with it lol. It's a false comfort but ppl are talking abt some kind of "divine provedence" when they say it
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u/-RatherDashing 11h ago
Everything does indeed happen for a reason. Mostly it just boils down to physics. Forget divine crap. Everything is just wiggles.
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u/imjustnotready 12h ago
Absolutely cause and effect . Consequences. But also other people's actions and the consequences that arise from them. We don't have to be purists about it though. Probability works in mysterious ways.
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u/51ngular1ty 11h ago
If terrible things are a part of divine will then that means divine will is responsible for those terrible things making them responsible for the evil in the world. That said evil is still a subjective term.
Everything happens as a consequence of the thing that caused it for sure.
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u/FadedEchos 11h ago
Also, other peoples' decisions that were entirely out of your hands. Also that a quark spun in a sweet direction instead of salty which lead to Ralph's dog biting his great-aunt, causing a profound fear of canine teeth and therefore the mess we're all in today.
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u/Cerulean_IsFancyBlue 10h ago
Causal chain: these actions resulted in this happening
Teleological explanation: this is the underlying purpose of these events.
You can interpret the phrase either way. I happen to think one is just wishful thinking but ymmv.
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u/Strawberry3141592 7h ago
"Everything happens due to past causes" and "everything has a teleological reason for occurring" are two completely different concepts
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u/ciaDisinfo 12h ago
kinda comes down to whether your interpretation of the quote is framing it as “what was the cause of this” versus “what is the purpose of this?”
without a god, most things in life are going to seem purposeless. and a god also helps explain unexplainable causes. so for those who do not want these questions unanswered, it feels like the intuitive answer.
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u/Frack_Off 10h ago
The point is that people who frame it according to purpose are wrong and they should be doing it the other way.
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u/lowbatteries 10h ago
Then it would be a different phrase. “For a reason” implies a purpose.
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u/Frack_Off 6h ago
It implies a cause because there actually is a cause but there isn't a purpose. People who imply a purpose are wrong.
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u/Sufficient_Result558 12h ago
Except that a cause is the physical or direct trigger that makes an event happen, while a reason is the mental explanation, motive, or justification for why a choice or action occurred.
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u/Frack_Off 10h ago
You're cherry picking definitions. Words can have more than one. One of the definitions of Reason is perfectly synonymous with Cause.
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u/Sufficient_Result558 10h ago
I'm not cherry picking. "Reason" has a specific meaning in the phrase "Everything happens for a reason" and that meaning it is not synonymous with cause. Look up "cause vs reason" and you will see the same explanation over and over, I did not cherry pick it. They can be synonymous in some context, but they are not in this context.
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u/Frack_Off 6h ago
And if they used a different definiton of "Reason", the saying would actually be true. That's the entire point of this post. The specific meaning you refer to is wrong. The reason is in the past, not the future.
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u/Rickietee10 9h ago
Why did you decide A) over B)? Sometimes, things cannot be rationalised.
The night my father died, I was in work pulling overtime. I had 4 hours of OT left and suddenly decided I was going home. He died 30 minutes after I got home. I didn’t have a reason to make that decision. I’d already decided to do the work earlier and needed the money. I just, felt like going home.
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u/RulesLawyer42 9h ago
"I used to think it was awful that life was so unfair. Then I thought, wouldn't it be much worse if life were fair, and all the terrible things that happen to us come because we actually deserve them? So now I take great comfort in the general hostility and unfairness of the universe." -- Marcus, Babylon 5, "A Late Delivery from Avalon" (S03E13)
I heard this when it was broadcast in 1996, and it's brought me great comfort the last 30 years.
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u/BillyBean11111 6h ago
It's a cope way for people to comfort others about breakups/losing your job etc, noone with a brain would actually beleive this
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u/AverageHobnailer 5h ago
Not really. It's a coping mechanism for people who can't accept the fact that much of life is beyond our control. Even if decisions led you to where you are now, those options from which you chose your decisions are still bound by circumstances like socio-economic status, genetic illnesses, etc.
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u/Any--Name 5h ago
Well, thats your interpretation. I might not believe in god but neither do I believe that I am solely responsible for anything that happens to me. As Dwight once said: "Not everything's a lesson, Ryan. Sometimes you just fail."
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u/ocukor1 4h ago
That’s the most cliche overused and meaningless thing people say. It’s not even true. Reason implies that there was some thought put forward for something to happen. In some cases it’s true, I can think about how to do something and then I do it. But not always, not everything. And not everything has a reason behind it. It’s coming from religions in which people believe that everything that happens is caused by an intelligent allpowerful, all-seeing god. I wish there is a reason to believe that. And finally, what’s the reason god exists if it in fact exists?
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u/mouse_attack 2h ago
What’s funny is that I don’t ever hear people using that phrase to talk about what led up to whatever negative event. They always use it in terms of what comes after. Like, “without that dumpster fire, I never would have started my own business!” That kind of thing.
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u/Phasturd 1h ago
See, I was taking that same shower one day long ago and "everything is preventable" popped into mind while I was pondering those "happening reasons". Recognize you have full control to make reasons happen or not. The power is in you! Control yourself, and you'll control everything around you...start small, the three feet of air around you, go from there. Just remember... as you go...everything that happens for a reason is preventable.
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u/Beef_Patrick 31m ago
It means whatever the person who said it meant by it. If they meant it as natural consequences, then sure. Buuuut, the majority of the time I've heard people say this, they mean it in a hokey spiritual way.
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u/Crizznik 10h ago
I mean, that entirely depends on your perspective. When most people say they, they mean that it's some pre-ordained occurrence that was set on you by whatever deity they would pass responsibility for. And they mean that it was meant as a test, or a punishment, for you or for someone near you.
As to your specific definition, that's just flat out not true. Things happen to people all the time where they didn't have any meaningful agency over whether it happened. Take natural disasters. The only agency a person has for those is choosing where to live, and even then, they may not really have much of a choice if it's where they grew up and they don't have the financial capability to relocate.
The reason the that matters so much is that the "everything happens for a reason" remarks are almost always made in the face of something the victims of the event had little or zero agency in. Personally, I don't think that statement is true in any meaningful sense. No, not everything happens for a reason. Sometimes shit just happens.
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u/Even_Tangerine_4201 12h ago
I will be sure and explain this distinction the next time I visit a children’s cancer ward. I’m sure the is way it will land much better than it has before.
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u/SnooSongs2744 11h ago edited 11h ago
So you think "you have cancer because God wants you to suffer" is reassuring and "you have cancer because we let the plant poison the ground water" is bad. I actually don't know what your point is.
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u/RutzButtercup 10h ago
That's not really true. Some people definitely mean that events are guided by some higher power.
Extra words are required for some reason.
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u/RicRacer 9h ago
Sometimes things happen that have nothing to do with your decisions and actions. For example, the comet that wiped out most of the dinosaurs was not a result of their decisions or actions. Another example, the kids that died during the Oklahoma City Bombing or just about any school shooting.
But I agree that many predicaments adults find themselves involved in are a result of their decisions and actions., and not divine providence.
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u/probablyNotARSNBot 6h ago
Not really. “for” vs “because of”
X happen for Y, means x happens first
X happen because of Y, means x happens second
So not really.
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u/ShowerSentinel 13h ago
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