It's Fated That You Should Shut Up

Every time you attribute events to fate, destiny, divine planning, or any sort of pre-determination you are refusing to acknowledge the literally countless factors which ultimately influence every minuscule event in the universe. Nevermind that some of these factors are exponentially more evident than others, (heart surgeons are generally more effective at prolonging lives than the people who made sure the beds were cleaned prior to the patient's arrival, not that this isn't also a factor) some people will always inflate their egos as much as possible by assuming the cause/effect relationship exists only for their benefit. These are the kinds of people who just KNOW (deep down in their souls!) that grandma survived the heart surgery not because of the surgeon's skill, the timely ambulance arrival, or the sterility of the hospital accommodations, but because they were not fated to die just yet.

Yes, that's right. God saved grandma from almost certain death because he's not done with her yet. He's given her an extra year or so of rapidly dwindling health so that she can continue to fit into the divine plan by accruing social security checks and voting Republican (not because she's old, God just hates change. Things were going just fine when he sent Jesus down here, why mess up that system now by giving minorities rights, restricting pollution, and funding science?). This idea of fate is really one of the saddest, most egocentric lines of thinking any individual can believe in. No wait! Let's step this up a bit, (superegocentric, I guess) because there are actually people who believe, against all all understandings of the concept, that they influence or change fate.

Let me preface this next bit by saying that anybody who is at all familiar with ancient Greek theater knows how ludicrous this concept of altering fate is. If the name Oedipus rings any bells then you already know that if fate exists there's no getting around it. If you were fated to ace a test anyway, then all the good luck rituals (false idols!) and karma enhancing acts (Godless heathens!) you performed were really just a waste of time. All the studying was a waste too when you get right down to it. You could have shown up drunk and vomited all over the test, but fate would still have allowed that the end results were exactly the same.

But let's shift this back towards religion because God doesn't care about the education or sobriety of children. What He cares about is the loyalty of the ignorant pig-apes He created in His image to populate an otherwise perfectly balanced worldwide ecosystem. Let's say for just a moment that there is some sort of plan that we can't possibly know, but everything is fated to work out as He has it planned. If such is the case, your free will is just a useless figment of your imagination, nothing anyone has ever done really matters, nor will any action ever taken. When God appeared before Abraham and told him to kill Isaac, Abraham could have just said "Fuck yourself," (like any sane parent) and we would still all be exactly where we are today, praying for the same God to change His same perfect Divine Plan.

Now I'm no philosopher, (though I do occasionally think things through so I have a leg up on the majority of people who practice religion) but if God answers your prayers doesn't that mean that either A) It was part of His plan all along and your prayers were completely useless, or B) The Divine Plan is subject to change if you just get on your knees and ingratiate yourself hard enough? What happens when people pray for things that are in direct opposition to each other like in wars or sports events? (because God really cares which of His jacked-up pig-apes can catch a ball and then obtain enough momentum to knock the other freakishly large pig-apes aside as they hurl their inflated torsos at each other) Does God just tally up your prayers to decide who wins? Is that why people you're close to die even though you prayed extra hard for their recovery? Because there were just more people praying for them to die? Or was it just their fate to die and leave you in emotional pain?

What's that? Prayer and subservience to a metaphysical force aren't worth a damn compared to observable cause and effect relationships? That's kind of a cop out, don't you think? You can't know what God's thinking or planning any more than you can disprove fate or his love of my still living relatives. Just shut up and enjoy the ride, because our understanding the world was never part of His plan to begin with. God likes his pig-apes sheepish.