Quote Originally Posted by Tojo

Well I believe in the third choice- both. Sometimes things just happen, sometimes it's a decision.


Tojo
That leads me nicely into Carl Jung's concept of Synchronicity, put simply, sometimes there are meaningful coincidences in time and space. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronicity However we then have a choice in how we react to that occurence. In this way, things may look like "fate" but it doesn't mean our lives are laid down in somekind of astral roadmap. Looked at another way: we see a leaf on a tree, we know it will fall downwards at some point, but the time and manner in which this will happen will be affected by the environmental variables at that point in time, eg if it's windy it may go up before it comes down which would seem entirely contradictory to the laws of the universe if we applied the analogy to another situation

The Matrix, ah..... one of my all time top five movies, and not just for Trinity's tightly-wrapped-in-PVC-derriere, I like the Zen like philosophy too.

As for the "we're components in God's big computer game" idea, I saw that idea expounded by respected theoretical physicists on a recent TV prog, but perhaps these guys are really into Trinity's gluteus maximi too