So I have been thinking about this one a lot lately. Picture this....
You have a brand new deck of cards, fresh out of the wrapper. You spread them out, injecting an initial bit of randomness to them. After gathering them up, you shuffle them; either you use the classic bridge shuffle, hand to hand shuffle or, for those of us that are too lazy, you use a card shuffling machine. When you are satisfied with the deck, you set it down. Now the question begins.
Are the order of the cards, and the order in which they will be played out, determined by Fate or by Chance? What I am saying is, when you get your first card, whatever it may be, is that card dealt to you because you were meant to have it, or because it was the proverbial luck of the draw?
On the one hand, you could say that Fate created the initial random distribution of the cards by establishing the friction between them as they were being spread out. Fate was the determining factor in just how many times you shuffled, because you only stopped when your hands got tired (or the batteries ran out). Fate made you sit in the chair that you are in, because all of the others were taken, leading to the card that you are dealt.
On the other hand, Chance dictated the cards cohesion to one another, preventing certain cards from varying too far. Chance was in the driver’s seat because it determined when the cards slipped from your fingers while shuffling to fall upon the rest of the deck. Chance let you get there in time to sit at the last seat at that table.
So, I guess the question really boils down to the individual.
Some people place all of their hopes, their faith, in the belief that there is a benevolent, omnipotent being (for lack of a better term) that is out there, somewhere, watching over them. This being, who is neither He nor She but Both, only has the best of interests of them, and won't let something bad happen without having a reason for it. Everything that happens happens by this Being's will, for good or bad.
Others rely not on what they believe to be an ephemeral, imaginative creation, the purpose of which they perceive to be to keep the masses in line. They prefer to believe that they are in charge of their Destiny, and that reality is created by those who reside in it, not by excusing all of their errors or accolades. They say that they accept responsibility for everything that they do, good or bad.
Which one is right? When I was a kid, I knew a family that had a little girl. She was hit by a car and dies 3 days before Christmas.
Was that Fate or Chance?