Destiny! Destiny! No escaping destiny!

"...destiny is what happens. There is no thwarting of destiny. You mean to say everybody's life is totally determined at his birth? What a strange idea! Were it so, the power that determines would see to it that nobody should suffer." - Nisargadatta, I Am That

There are two great points here. First, destiny happens. We assume that everything is cause and effect, but Nisargadatta does not. It's like the sole survivor of an airplane crash who asks "what are the odds?" The answer is, one hundred percent, because that is what happened. My path is my destiny and my destiny is my path, but that does not necessarily imply predetermination or a supreme being or even some karmic law - it is just what it is.  Accept it and keep stepping!

The second relates back to theistic philosophies. There is a question of why a God would allow people to suffer and the answers range from there being no God, to God being judgmental and vengeful, to God being like a parent who, with great love, allows his children to live their own lives and make their own decisions and merely loves and supports them through whatever results. It seems to me that the notion that there is a God and that there is absolute determinism cannot coincide. If there is a God, then there must be free will. Well, unless God is a real sicko. Of course, I personally still maintain that there is no God and there is nonetheless either free will or so vastly many factors that must be taken into account to absolutely resolve determinism that it is indistinguishable from free will (think quantum mechanics and halving the distance between two objects).

"Destiny! Destiny! No escaping destiny!" from the movie Young Frankenstein