• Question Quesday: Do You Believe Things Happen For a Reason?

    Question Quesday

    Yeah, that’s right, Quesday. That is the day between today and tomorrow that starts with the letter, “Q” so that it fits nicely with the word “Question.” Now that we got that out of the way, someone recently asked me this question for Question Quesday: Do you believe things happen for a reason?

    Great question and by “for a reason,” I’m going to assume they meant for a reason other than the natural cause and effect reasons. Because of course things happen for reasons. The reason I woke up this morning is because my alarm on my phone woke me up and the reason it did was because I set it to do that so that I could get to work on time. Obviously everything happens for some reason, but I think what is really being asked here is whether or not there is some grand intelligence or puppet master directing the reasons behind everything.

    I’ll get into that in a minute, but first I want to also discuss something a co-worker told me the other day that is somewhat related. She asked me how things were going today and I told her that things were going really well. Interestingly enough, she then informed me that God must be helping me out today. Personally, I would much rather God help out some starving children or someone who is about to be murdered or raped or something rather than help me have a good day at my day job. I’ll take the bad day if it allows the grand puppet master of the universe an extra second to save lives or lessen someone’s severe suffering. But what do I know? I’m just a godless atheist.

    Getting back to the original question, when people ask if things happen for a reason, they already know the truth. They are asking the question because something shitty happened to them and they want some kind of reassurance that there is some divine plan for this shitty thing and that they will somehow get their own personal pot of gold as a reward for enduring this shitty thing. But there is no pot of gold. We make our own pots of gold.

    When shitty things happen, we make our own reasons for why they happened and when shit happens… and shit will happen, we have to create our own reasons to move forward and make things better. I support making things better and when things get bad… and they always do from time to time, we are the ones who have to work hard and help each other to make things better. Sometimes we can’t always do that alone. Sometimes we need the help of friends and strangers to make things better or to give us reasons to make them better.

    There is no such thing as karma and God doesn’t exist. There is no grand intellect with a master plan for why you had a shitty day today. The only pot at the end of the rainbow is the pot we create. When something shitty happens, turn that shit into fertilizer. Use it to help you grow as a person… or don’t. It is entirely your choice, but you only have one life to live so decide if you want that shitty thing to make that life shitty or use it to make that life better.

    Okay, that’s all I got for Question Quesday. If you have a question and Google can’t help, feel free to e-mail your question to me at DangerousTalk@gmail.com and put “Question Quesday” in the subject line. Thanks!

    Support this blog: Please consider using the Dangerous Talk Affiliate Link when buying from Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/?&tag=dangtalk-20

    Category: depressionfeaturedGodPurposeQuestion Quesday

    Tags:

    Article by: Staks Rosch

    Staks Rosch is a writer for the Skeptic Ink Network & Huffington Post, and is also a freelance writer for Publishers Weekly. Currently he serves as the head of the Philadelphia Coalition of Reason and is a stay-at-home dad.