On Origins of Fate

Why is it that people find it so compelling, the idea of a god (or gods)? The existence of divinity manifest? How come it permeates every culture, this idea that there is an ulterior, supernatural force guiding even the smallest facets of mundane existence? Casting aside the idea of needing an explanation for the beginning of creation or a "holy purpose for life", and focusing on how people can reaffirm faith in routine divine intervention, we can begin to answer the question.

It seems to me, that the thing that motivates this belief is the faith in the fact that everything happens for a purpose. Faith in the fact that someone is doing all this consciously deliberately for an eventually better and brighter future. This is not a necessarily negative or detrimental belief, for, as Karl Marx once wrote; "Religion is the opiate of the people." And sometimes the people need to opiated, but that is neither here nor there. The point is that the prolific idea in question is that of Fate. Everything happens for a reason. Now, depending on your theological standing, you may or may not agree with this. However, you cannot deny that the idea of "destiny" and, by extent, divine influence, is indeed prolific. To understand why it is so prolific, we must look at the common factor. Ah, and what is this factor?

Here, it is the idea of an ending. Stories where, in the end, all the strings are gathered neatly together, and the conclusion is definite. Anyone not born yesterday realizes that is not the case in the real world, but allow me to explain. The idea of an ending, of the natural progression of a story, is perpetuated by us looking at past events and seeing how "everything tied together to allow this moment". To an extent this is true, but the belief that your moment is special because of it's existence is erroneous. In any case, there is a reason that all modern "major" religious belief systems are based off scripture, aka, a giant compilation of stories. And even those religions not fortunate to make the top 5 list, still have a set of tales and anecdotes that pass from generation to generation, allowing for the idea of a story to continue to flourish.

The reason for this is that a when you tell a story (or recall any series of events, for that matter), you automatically implement the basic structure of a story; a begging, middle, and end. To do otherwise is simply rambling through a string of events, and theatrically speaking, it would be quite dry. When you relate anything, you automatically arrange your story into a beginning, middle, and end, to make it more tellable and easier to remember. And so this idea of an ending perpetuating everything from divine scripture to how you when about your daily chores allows the complete propagation of endings (and subsequently, Fate) in our lives. So while it may be simpler to accept the easy answer, to allow ourselves to believe in fate simply because it would be easy to, one must realize that the ease of accepting that viewpoint in life is an illusion created by psychology.