A British couple who had been planning to fly on Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 that crashed in Ukraine spoke of the sick feeling
they experienced on hearing the news. They were told there were not enough seats on the plane for them and their baby so they switched to a later KLM flight. Ten other British passengers were not so fortunate and were feared to be among the 295 people killed when the Malaysia Airlines plane was shot down on the Russia-Ukraine border.
A motorist was killed and another injured when the Columbia Gulf natural gas pipeline in northeast Louisiana exploded near an interstate highway. Two men from Fayetteville, Alabama, were traveling east in a pickup truck on Interstate Highway 20 when the pipeline exploded.
Extreme examples, maybe, but they are examples of what can happen on any given day. How does one explain these events? Is it fate, destiny, good or bad luck, God's will, or is it just random chance?
The idea of fate as an impersonal force that predetermines all events was to the ancient world as it is to the modern world, a philosophical or theological concept rather than a popular notion. For Greece, the nearest approach to such an idea was an allotment made to an individual either by the gods together or by Zeus alone. The individual could not escape the portion of misfortune contained in it, though he might increase misfortune through his own folly. The Iliad states that it was the moira of Achilles to die soon after he had killed Hector, but he had his choice, for he might have preferred to stay quietly at home, in that case to enjoy a long but inglorious life.
In Greek mythology, the Fates were three goddesses who controlled the metaphorical thread of human life. The Moirai were conceived as very old women spinning the fate. From the time of Hesiod onward they were given individual names, Clotho (Spinner), Lachesis (Allotter) and Atropos (Inflexible). Different tasks were assigned to each, Clotho held the distaff; Lachesis the spinning of the thread, and Atropos who measured its length. The distaff being the staff for holding flax, or wool, from which the thread is drawn in spinning by hand. The Moirai's primary function was to assist at a birth and then and there determine the career of the child, as the Moires still do in modern Greece. The Roman Fates were the Parcae, the female personifications of destiny consisting of Nona (Greek equivalent Clotho), Decima (Greek Lachesis) and Morta (Greek Atropos). The Germanic Fates were the Norns.
Fate is a fixed decree by which the order of things is prescribed or predetermined; the immutable law of the universe and inevitable necessity. Fate can also be defined as the unforeseen and unpredictable conditions considered as a force, which shapes the events and fortunes of humans and are generally considered to be opposing circumstances, against which it is useless to struggle. Whereas, fatalism is the attitude of mind which accepts whatever happens as having been bound or decreed to happen. There is often confusion between fate and chance. The proposition it happened by chance
means that there appeared to be no intrinsic necessity for a coincidence, which is different from saying that something happened of necessity, by fatal design. Among all nations it has been common to speak of fate or destiny as a power superior to gods and men; swaying all things irresistibly.
Is it free will or determinism that shapes the lives of humans? The free will problem attempts to address the central question of whether humans are free in what they do or determined by external events beyond their control. Determinism holds that whatever happens is determined by antecedent (prior) conditions, where determination is generally conceived as causation by antecedent events and circumstances.
Determinism implies that at any time, the future is already fixed and unique, with no possibility of alternative development. Therefore, determinists deny the existence of chance, although they concede that our ignorance of the laws of all relevant antecedent conditions make certain events unexpected and, therefore, apparently appear to happen by chance. If actions and choices are determined, some conclude that free will is an illusion.
References
Encyclopedia Britannica, Volume 9, Published by William Benton, Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc.
The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, Cambridge University Press