Post Hoc Ergo Procter Hoc
Do you think everything happens for a reason?
As human beings we have this need to see or impose patterns on our lives. It’s the feeling that a ‘higher power’ does or should somehow have influence over our journey through life. When we have this feeling we often employ the Post Hoc Ergo Procter Hoc fallacy. This is Latin for After it therefore because of it. By using this approach we can see retrospective reasons for things happening which didn’t actually exist at the time.
As an example, I used to apply this fallacy to my first meeting with Janet. I went to work at the Unemployment Benefit Office after a spur of the moment decision to go to the job centre. This happened because I had an argument with my Dad who accused me quite rightly of making no effort to find a job. For many years afterwards I thought that the reason he said something was to get me to go to the job centre at the precise time I needed to so that I would meet Janet. When it’s written down it looks tenuous at best and ridiculous at worst, primarily because it is! What happened was a fortunate and random combination of events that led to our marriage.
It’s actually quite egotistical of us as a species to believe in their being a universe that exists in the form it does because people are moved around like pawns on a chessboard. It ties in, I suppose, with the anthropocentric beliefs that we are a divine creation above and separate from other animals. The truth is that we evolved alongside them and are no different in essence. You might just as well look at Albus, our cat, and see that we were meant to go to Cats Protection on a particular day to choose him. I doubt he sees it like that!
So, be grateful for your good fortune and fight through your bad fortune, but remember it’s all random however much you employ the Post Hoc Ergo Procter Hoc fallacy.
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David Pearce - Popular Culture and Personal Passions 
Am not so sure really. That one imposes post hoc reasoning where it does not exist, does not – in and of itself – negate the possibility that a higher power can (and perhaps does) “get involved” at least on some level.
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You’re right of course. It’s easy to get tied in semantic knots on this issue! However, my belief/instinct is that we live entirely random lives, so any post hoc reasoning doesn’t fit in with my view. I have to acknowledge that my view could be wrong and there’s a 50/50 chance it is(!) but I genuinely can’t get my head round the 3D chess that would be involved in putting billions of people in particular places at the same time in order to avoid any of their predestined outcomes spoiling the predestined outcomes of any other people!
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Yes, am not envisaging pre-destined outcomes here, I agree wholeheartedly there. It is more a case of a kind of synergy for me. I think it’s more like perhaps there is a “choose your own adventure” world where you might be given a bit of help now and again. I suppose that might even more complicated than the 3D chess version of the universe though – ha ha! In any case, it is harder for me to imagine it IS completely random. I recognise of course that the counter to that is that we just want to impose any kind of system onto random events – so there’s that too.
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I know my kids used to love the choose your own adventure books. It’s definitely a thought 🤔 That might make more sense 🤔
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The way my wife and i got together was completely random. I went to a gig with a friend and his wife, and HIS friend came with us, took a photo and posted it on Facebook, which one of HIS friends then saw, which turned out to be my wife, who had lived on the same street as me (on and off) for years! She commented and we got talking. Completely random.
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