Originally Posted by ordinaryguy
I hope so, but sometimes I wonder. Every time there's a major natural disaster somebody starts railing about how it's God's punishment for our evil ways. It's easy to forget what a short time ago it was that all natural phenomena were thought to be the actions of gods, spirits, demons, witches, poltergeists, and so on.
Part of the problem is that we seem determined to manufacture an "explanation" for everything that happens. The option of leaving something unexplained and accepting it as such seems never to occur to us. How often do you hear people say "everything happens for a reason", or "if it's meant to be, it will be"? I'm increasingly inclined to accept that some things, maybe even most things, happen for no "reason", they just happen, and it's up to us to deal with it according to our attitudes, beliefs, habits and preferences. In this sense, reasons aren't causes, they're interpretations.