Left: Is there any reason for this?
The belief that everything happens for a reason is popular because it meliorates pain, loss and misery in life by asserting that that which is bad is not gratuitous but necessary, unavoidable, and will - ultimately - be for the best possible good, if not for us immediately, then in terms of the big scheme of things.
But the first problem with the belief that "everything happens for a reason" is that reason is always ascertained retrospectively after a phenomenon has already occurred. The fact that something happened is considered to be "proof" that it had to happen. This is not only shoddy logic which inverts laws of causation so that cause follows from effect rather than vice versa, this is also basically a useless belief, because it can never tell us anything new, expand our knowledge of ourselves or the world, or even prove that the proposition that "everything happens for a reason" is reasonably true. It's the question of whether we can ever know the truth of a Kantian synthetic-a priori proposition that neither follows from a posteriori sensory experience, nor offers a predicate that is contained in the subject ("reason" isn't necessarily implied by "happening" or vice versa). But how could that ever be the basis for knowledge?
Let's take the deterministic stance and assume that it were possible to know that "everything happens for a reason". If reason is that which is logically consistent to the mind, then we could somehow interpret circumstances to correctly predict what should reasonably and rationally follow from them (by finding causes from effects and then using those inverted causational patterns to correctly predict new causes and effects), and we could then say that everything does indeed happen for a reason. Not only would this enhance the quality of our lives and improve our knowledge and understanding of life, existence and the universe, but it would actually prove the proposition itself that things happen for a reason. But this could only happen if the proposition became instead an analytic-a posteriori proposition in which the proposition is both observable and evident in the universe and also that the predicate justified the subject. But as far as we know, this is not possible (* read footnote on why). Instead we're left with the paradox of having to believe in the inherent reason of the universe, which is ridiculous, because reason is something apparent and clear to the mind, since it must by definition be logical. If its truth cannot be ascertained logically but only through mere belief, then it's no longer reason. It's basically just a watered down version of religious belief and remains a synthetic-a priori proposition that is impossible to prove (and is thus actually useless for knowledge, contrary to what Kant might say).(**)
Many of us mistake cause for reason and use these terms interchangeably. As far as we know (or can know), everything is the effect of a cause. That which exists is the effect of accumulated causes and those effects themselves become causes for later effects, and so on. This we know - or rather, what we know can only be known by this (because we don't know if there may or may not be things in the universe that may exist without ascertainable causes, as in, perhaps, a quantum universe or in black holes or other things we don't really understand). But to say something doesn't just have a cause but a reason to its existence is to say that there is a meaning and a purpose and even perhaps an aspect of universal consciousness (some god-type thing) to all causes so that they not only produce effects, but produce effects that must exist, effects that are indispensable for the overall picture, effects which therefore must be good because their existence is dictated by reason. In other words, to believe in reason is to believe that all things happen according to a kind of teleological script in which - for mysterious reasons beyond our knowledge - everything has a purpose so as to help bring about a denouement to that teleology. The key word here is "for". To say everything happens "from" or "as a result of" a reason is virtually the same as saying it results from certain causes. That's fine. But to say things happen "for" a reason means that that which has happened must have happened because its existence is dictated by reason and must therefore be the cause of future effects that also must exist. In short, you must believe that we live in the best of all possible worlds, and that all that happens must ultimately be good, because it all follows a reasoned script.
But then we're left with an absurd situation in which the most unconscionable crimes of history, like the Holocaust, must have happened because they happened for a reason. If it had never happened, then that reason behind it would never have been satisfied. An essential piece of the universe's ultimate purpose would never have been in place and therefore if no Holocaust had happened, this would've been a bad thing. So the Holocaust had to happen, because that which has reason cannot not exist, since it's part of the overall mysterious way of things. Therefore, if you believe that everything happens for a reason, then you believe that it's good that the Holocaust happened. And slavery. And Hiroshima. And Pol Pot.
After all, if everything happens for a reason, reason must be good, since we cannot believe that that which necessitates the existence of all things could be bad, because all that exists - including ourselves and our precious little lives - is born from it and is a part of it. Therefore life cannot be bad, considering how valuable it is to us and how much we cherish it. It's all we know, it's all we are, therefore it's all that is of value to us. Even that which we consider bad is defined by all that is antithetical to life and existence (what we define as bad is that which leads to death or pain, which is basically a step toward death). Therefore existence is good ipso facto. So then if reason is thus necessarily perceived as good, this brings up the question of whether unspeakable bad can form a part of the good (and a pretty hefty chunk of it at that)? Can there be reasonable acts of violence, oppression, torture, pain, suffering, misery, death, destruction, injustice, malice and evil? What is this edifice of reason built upon? If that which is good can harbor so much bad, then that which we consider bad mustn't be bad in essence, since it all serves the good. But then that means I shouldn't consider Hitler or the Holocaust bad. And yet I do. This leads to moral nihilism by which everything is equally good or equally worthless (which means all that you cherish, the love of and for your family, the importance and value of your life, your belief that everything happens for a reason, etc., is also worthless). So ultimately, the idea that everything happens for a reason - and the idea that there is an inherent moral value of "good" or "bad" in the universe - seems in fact unreasonable.
Why do so many of us then have difficulty accepting that things may not happen for any reason whatsoever, that there may well be no purpose or meaning to any and all actions, and that all phenomena are random, coincidental, gratuitous? It's basically just a new form of the age-old Fate vs. Free Will debate. Belief in fate absolves you of responsibility for your actions, and all actions. It gives you the comfort of believing you live in the best of all possible worlds, and it instills an optimism toward life in the belief that everything - including all the bad things - are ensuring life and the universe improve in steady increments as everything nears closer and closer to its teleologically perfect end state. Because, ultimately, a belief that everything happens for a reason is a belief that there is one great reasonable state toward which everything progresses and at which all the icky stuff will have long ended and fulfilled their part in the playing out of a reasonable universe which supposedly needs the Archduke Ferdinand to be shot, that film you watched last night to be made, and those icebergs in the Bering Sea to float at a southwesterly direction at a rate of 6 nautical miles on Tuesday morning.
Furthermore, fatalistic belief not only reassures you that the mistakes you made were unavoidable, that you had no choice in the matter, but it also expiates monstrous deeds and absolves the criminal of his or her crimes. Maybe you feel comforted that whether you think you should have taken that job offer or not, you ultimately had no choice in the matter, and it happened for a reason, and so it was good you didn't take it because that's precisely what had to happen because some other good will come of it instead, therefore you can let your mind and conscience be at ease; but that comfort turns sour when you apply the same principle to Josef Mengele. What good could you believe would possibly eventually come from systematically blinding, torturing, mutilating and crippling children through some of the most monstrous experiments ever committed? You wonder then who wrote this reasoned script and whether it has any merit worth dedicating belief to, let alone respect.
Beyond philosophy, quantum physicists already seem to have found that a reasonable structure to things is not possible - or at least not within the grasp of our knowing. Take the slit experiment that shows how light quanta act paradoxically like both particles and waves (so that a photon seems to occupy more than one space at the same time, something for which we don't even have the linguistic tools to express or understand), or Schrodinger's Cat (alive and dead at the same time until the box is opened and a witness enters into the experiment, demonstrating that there is possibly an infinite number of parallel universes that we can never see), or Heisenberg's uncertainty principle (you can only know either the position or the velocity of an elementary particle like an electron at any one time, never both, indicating that we can never know exactly how the elemental building blocks of the universe do, did and will act). There are things that seem they can never be known, factors that can never be detected, and therefore a reasoned and rational complete model of the universe that can never be attained.
So instead, we'll continue to believe in the morally repugnant and logically shoddy belief that everything happens for a reason, so as to satisfy our selfish complexes, mollify our regrets, ameliorate our insecurities, and decorate our ignorance.
Is it more reasonable then to believe the universe is random? Chaotic? A result of chance? And if the universe is random, then does this make Free Will possible? Can there be any moral framework to such a universe? Would such a universe mean that we would be savage animals all lustfully pursuing our own selfish interests - as religious people and other fatalists believe? This topic will be next.
* Let's assume that everything does happen for a reason. So if a lizard ran out from under a rock to catch a beetle and was then pounced on and eaten by a bird of prey, this wouldn't just be a case of cause (sighting of beetle), effect (running out from safety of rock to hunt it) which then becomes the cause of another effect (bird of prey swooping down for the kill). This scenario would instead be: beetle must be seen by lizard which then must come out from under the rock so the bird of prey must eat it because the phenomenon of the bird of prey eating the lizard happens "for" something else that must happen (as dictated by reason). If we were to believe this then we end up with a kind of Zenoan paradox so that every single factor must have yet more countless numbers of preceding causational factors dictated by reason, and each one of those factors must have yet more factors that multiply exponentially with every step back. And then every step back must have another intermediary step in between those steps and then other intermediary steps between those intermediary steps ad infinitum so that if the universe were dictated by reason, knowledge of that reason would be impossible because it would forever bring up more reasons behind those reasons and so on all the way down to the levels of how the rain that fell on Manila in 1683 and the envelope that was opened by Tsar Nicholas II in 1897 and the comet that passed by in 13,000 B.C. all had an effect on not just the lizard and the beetle and the bird (and everything else in between the lizard beetle and bird - the sunlight, the shadow, the bacteria, the air, the wind, the position and movement of every grain of sand, etc.), but on everything else as well, all the way down to each and every cell and molecule and atom and even all the elementary particles like quarks and leptons (to which Heisenberg's uncertainty principle applies) involved in how everything at any given nanosecond plays out, all of which is beyond knowledge (as far as we know). So the entire history of the universe - everything that ever happened down to a virtually infinite regression of factors and events - should have culminated perfectly in the lizard being eaten by the bird of prey at that particular locus in space and time and that particular locus with the beetle and lizard and bird interacting perfectly with everything else in the universe at that time. But then the same Zenoan paradox comes up in relation to time: how do you measure the exact time of an occurrence down to the seconds and milliseconds and nanoseconds etc.? What is that moment, and how can you establish any one instance in which everything/something happens at once? Furthermore, don't the laws of relativity tell us that our perception of time is relative to the speed of light, and that what one person sees differs from the other, depending on their speed and position and movement at that particular "moment"? So a "now" of mine might not necessarily be your "now" and what you see may be totally different from what I see at any given point. This might not be too significant a factor at low speeds at which a lizard and a beetle and a bird move (even though it is still a factor, albeit minuscule), but it is a huge factor when dealing with massive (cosmological) and minute (quantum) phenomena. In short, there would be no mind or supercomputer powerful enough to ever figure out all of the variables involved, because they would be virtually infinite and any polynomial equation would take virtually an infinite amount of time to figure it all out. Add to all this the uncertainty principle of Heisenberg, which makes knowing the position and velocity of an elementary particle literally impossible. And if you can't figure those most fundamental factors (like the path and behavior of leptons etc.), then knowing whether everything abides by reason is impossible as well.
** But the elenctic inversion of this argument could also be applied to maintain the truth of the proposition that "everything happens for a reason" by inductively claiming that because all factors haven't yet been discovered, the truth of this proposition is not disproved but only (and eternally) delayed until it is proven by the discovery of all the factors at some distant hypothetical moment in time! It's like saying that until you can disprove the universe exists in the belly of a giant pink unicorn, the universe could conceivably still exist in the belly of a giant pink unicorn. This logical loophole (born of the fact that our knowledge is incomplete) is essentially where all religious belief exists.
