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My Uncle was just killed a week ago in a car crash. This got my mind thinking a lot about death and Fate vs. Chance. So what are your veiws on death. And can you die earlier or later then you really should?

My idea of Fate/Destiny is pretty hard to explain. The closest way I've seen it portrated is in an episode of Fraiser. Those familar with the series, its the one where he decides to go speed dating.

Anyway, in the episode, he sits down, and before he goes speed dating, he debates leaving what he has on, or putting on a sweater. The episode then plays out to where he
a) leaves what he has on, and misses the speed dating, meets a girl and has a great time
b) changes, makes it to the speed dating, and has a terrible time.

Overall, thats the way I see it. Everything is all laid out for us, the only difference we make is choosing how we experience it, and how we get there.

On death, I am a firm believer that you die when you are supposed to. Not before or after.

And Im sorry for your loss.

The thing is... how can you possibly tell if the person has died earlier or later than they should have? I have to take an Agnostic stance here; it isn't possible for us to know this, partly because it is based on an unprovable set of presuppositions about the world. Perhaps it better to just accept death when it happens rather than play mindgames about whether or not someone was *supposed* to die at a particular time. Regardless of wheter or not it was supposd to happen, it happened. End of discussion, eh? That's all there is to it from this one's standpoint.

On the larger question of fate as a whole, though, that's not all there is to it. But we're not talking about fate as a whole in this thread... heh.

sweatdrop I forgot to mention free will.