... am doing now was pre-determined, then surely everything I ever will do and everything that will ever happen was also pre-determined at that time. This implies that fate does exist; that we are all just actors in some vast pre-determined play. Many people find this a difficult conclusion to accept. One of the main reasons for this is that it robs life of meaning and robs the individual of a concept of self. Cause and effect is very mechanistic. It is great to be able to predict machines' behaviour, but not our own. However, we think that cause and effect does apply, we see it and rely on it every day. Theories that deny cause and effect assume that there is a bizarre chain of consequences, or that God intervenes in some way, both unsatisfactory and contrived. Surely the simplest explanation is that cause and effect simply do exist. Is ...

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