Predestination

Predestination is a religious idea, under which the relationship between the beginning of things and the destiny of things is discussed. Its religious nature distinguishes it from other ideas concerning determinism and free will, and related concepts. In particular, predestination concerns God's decision to create and to govern Creation, and the extent to which God's decisions determine ahead of time what the destiny of groups and individuals will be.

Contrasted with other kinds of determinism

In Chinese Buddhism, predestination is a translation of yuanfen, which does not necessarily imply the existence or involvement of a deity. Predestination in this sense takes on a very literal meaning: pre- (before) and destiny, in a straightforward way indicating that some events seem bound to happen.

Related Topics:
Chinese - Buddhism - Yuanfen

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Predestination may sometimes be used to refer to other, materialistic, spiritualist, non-theistic or polytheistic ideas of determinism, destiny, fate, doom, or karma. Such beliefs or philosophical systems may hold that any outcome is finally determined by the complex interaction of multiple, possibly immanent, possibly impersonal, possibly equal forces: rather than the issue of the Creator's conscious choice.

Related Topics:
Determinism - Karma

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For example, some may speak of predestination from a purely physical perspective, such as in a discussion of time travel. In this case, rather than referring to the afterlife, predestination refers to any events that will occur in the future. In a predestined universe the future is immutable and only one set of events can possibly occur; in a non-predestined universe, the future is mutable.

Related Topics:
Time travel - Afterlife - Mutable

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Finally, antithetical to determinism of any kind, are theories of the cosmos which assert that any outcome is ultimately unpredictable, the ludibrium of luck, chance, or chaos.

Related Topics:
Ludibrium - Chance - Chaos

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All conceptions of an ordered or rational cosmos have determinist implications, as a logical consequence of the idea of predictability; but predestination usually refers to a specifically religious type of determinism, especially as found in the various monotheistic systems of Christianity, wherever omniscience is attributed to God, but it also appears in Islam.

Related Topics:
Religious - Determinism

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