Crystal asked:

Do we have designated purposes in life? Are you fated to do certain things with your life? Or, do you
have full control of your actions throughout life?

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In order to tackle this question we first need to do a bit of philosophical analysis. There are three quite
different ways in which you could be 'fated to do certain things with your life'.

1. Let's say the Gods on Mount Olympus have decided your 'fate', and there is nothing you can do,
   nowhere you can turn, to escape your destiny. Perhaps this is the way we should understand the
   story of Oedipus. The Gods don't need to be able to see into the future. They simply watch you and
   act accordingly. If you turn left, then whatever it is that you were going to meet up with is on the left. If
   you had turned right, it would have been on the right, because that is the way the Gods fixed it.

2. There is an all-knowing God, who can see into the future. So He already knows everything that you
   are going to do with your life. He has always known.

3. Just as there can be truths about what happened in the past or what is happening in the present
   whether we know these truths or not, so there are truths about what will happen in the future. There
   needn't be an all-knowing God who knows these truths. It is sufficient that the truths exist as
   unalterable facts.

- Now the question, whether you have 'full control of your actions throughout life' will be answered
differently, depending on whether you are considering the possibility of 1, 2, or 3.

If 1. is correct, then we have very little control over our lives. We are mere puppets in the hands of
higher powers, doing their will.

There has been much theological debate about whether as in 2. God's foreknowledge precludes free
will. God, in creating the universe, foresaw all you would be and all you would do. So a case could be
made for saying that whatever you do with your life is part of God's purpose. You make choices,
which are 'free' insofar as no outside influence is brought to bear. So you are 'in control' in that limited
sense. However, I don't find that a very happy prospect.

I find 3. the most interesting of all, because it doesn't depend on the belief in God, or Gods. This is
the theory of 'philosophical fatalism'. Philosophical fatalism is the inspiration for an argument which
has become known as the 'lazy sophism'. See if you can spot the fallacy:

1. Either it is true that I am going to get run over by a truck or it is false.

2. If the statement that I am going to get run over is true, then I will get run over however carefully I
   cross the road.

3. If the statement that I am going to get run over is false, then I will not get run over even if I walk
   slowly across the road fifty times without looking.

4. Therefore, there is no point in taking care crossing the road.

Geoffrey Klempner