Destiny, Freewill, and Luck

Neil Gaiman's The Sandman:Destiny

Do you believe that everything is pre-destined? Or that what will happen is supposed to happen anyways…That a supreme-being is behind all of these? But the teachings told us that God gave us freewill to do and think what we want. Do you believe in luck? If you don’t, then you must believe in destiny and if you do, you don’t believe that we can do what we want, and if you don’t believe freewill, you don’t believe in the teachings, and if so, do you believe in God?

I decided long ago that I will not argue with faith, because faith is what we believe as true and not always the truth itself. But at least let me state my belief in these things.

We are organic ‘creatures’ and I feel I can think whatever I want, do whatever I like and I am not controlled by any evident force and electronic/mechanical devices. Therefore, I have freewill.

Do I believe in Destiny? I think I don’t. If we have freewill, then we can make our own destiny, and if we can change it, then it’s not pre-destined. We often associate destiny for things or events that we don’t have control. And not able to control these things don’t mean it’s supposed to happen anyways. It’s just others are the ones controlling it.

Luck is the most difficult thing to prove and disprove. Why? It’s because of a lot of lucky people around us. For some who don’t believe in luck, they will say it’s their ability that brought them success, but how can we explain it to those who are more able persons that were unfortunate and failed? I think I need to disprove luck to coincide in the previous statement that we’re the one who makes our own destiny. Luck made by intervention is fraud. Human intervention is the simplest explanation but it’s no luck, we call it cheating. However, I think it’s not just human intervention that brings luck but also Divine intervention … and this brings me back to square one, the argument of God’s Existence.

God’s existence solves everything. Every argument of faith, every argument today that cannot be resolved due to a never ending debate of almost everything about faith. If God exists, these inquiries about destiny, freewill and luck will never end up into a continuous loop. If God exists, I can freely permit to be called ourselves creatures without reservation. He could be the God who gave us freewill to make our own destiny, and the God who intervenes to give luck for the selected few. But not until God’s existence is proven, this inquiry as well shall never have its conclusion.