Primary Ethics Curriculum
Stage 3.2A
Fatalism
(by Dr Sue Knight)
Aim
This topic invites students to think about the ancient notion of Fatalism – the idea that our
futures, our fates, are fixed and that they are determined in advance. This topic will be
built upon in the final topic for the term, Moral Responsibility.
Topic objectives
This topic aims to help students:
 Develop an understanding of the notion of fatalism, and
 To question the idea that what we do today has no effect on what happens in the
future
Resources
Students should bring a pen and paper to each class. Have them place these under their
chairs until they are needed.
Teachers will need access to a white board or easel with paper and markers
Copies of the three scenarios for lesson 2
Mini whiteboards and whiteboard markers (if possible - the teacher present may be able
to supply you with these)
Background to the topic for teachers
The concept discussed in this topic is fatalism, which should be distinguished from the
related concept of determinism.
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, under the entry for Moral Responsibility,
characterises fatalism as
"the view that one's future or some aspect of it is predetermined, e.g., by the
gods, or the stars, or simply some facts about truth and time—in such a way as to
make one's particular deliberations, choices and actions irrelevant to whether that
particular future is realized (recall, e.g., the plight of Oedipus [or Osmo])."
Determinism, by contrast, is the view that the past completely determines the future.
Imagine that you knew everything there was to know about the universe at a single
instant -- that you knew exactly where each sub-atomic particle was, and you knew their
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respective momentums and everything else about their state at that instant. If the
universe is deterministic, then you would thereby be able to predict everything about the
future, with absolute, 100% certainty, because the state of the universe at that one instant
completely determines the state of the universe at later times; the fact that this bunch of
molecules are doing this right now causes them to do that a second later.
Both these views are extensions of how we sometimes think about the world in our
everyday lives. We sometimes think there are things about the future that we can't
change, that some things are going to happen no matter what we do; fatalism is the view
that the entire universe is like that, that what we do doesn't make any difference to
anything. We also think that the world generally works by cause-and-effect, that dropping
a glass on the floor causes it to break, and we sometimes think that some of our actions
work that way -- that people make certain choices because of their brain chemistry, or
how they were brought up, or their genetic predispositions...; determinism is the view that
all our actions are determined in this way, because the history of the entire universe is one
long chain of cause-and-effect.
Like fatalism, determinism also maintains that the future is "predetermined". But, unlike
fatalism, it doesn't insist that the future is predetermined in such a way that your actions
are irrelevant to how the future is; it's compatible with determinism that your actions do
affect how the future turns out. Many philosophers and scientists believe that the world is
deterministic but not that it is fatalistic, and they have different implications for how we
understand our own actions. Lessons 1 and 2 get at this difference by asking whether
students believe our futures are fixed -- i.e. whether they are fatalists -- and whether they
believe they are determined in advance -- i.e. whether they are determinists.
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Lesson 1.
Fate and telling the future: the Delphic Oracle.
1. (5 mins) Write the question, ‘What is fate?’ on the board. Ask students to talk to the
person sitting next to them about what fate means. Some of the pairs may like to share
their understandings with the class and the teacher may like to write some of the key
words onto the whiteboard. This will provide some of the students, who don’t have a clear
understanding, with a framework so that they can engage with the following material.
2. Read the following introductory material to the class.
We are going to start this topic by travelling a long way back in time - over two and a half
thousand years - to Ancient Greece. At that time, the Greeks believed that it was possible
to tell the future - not that ordinary people could do it, but that some individuals had been
chosen by the Gods to reveal the fate of the country, its rulers, its armies and its people.
These chosen individuals were called ‘oracles’ and the most famous oracle of all was the
Oracle at Delphi.
It’s hard to be sure of the facts, but there is a story of a shepherd who noticed his goats
acting strangely near an opening in the ground. People who investigated found sweet
smelling fumes billowing from the opening. They then fell into a trance and began to
mumble prophesies, that is, to tell the future. Eventually a temple, the temple of Apollo,
was built over the opening and a woman was chosen as the oracle. The Greeks believed
that the God Apollo spoke through the oracle, using her voice to express his wishes and
advice.
The Greeks, the Persians too - in fact everyone living around the Mediterranean at this
time - had such faith in the oracle that for hundreds of years no important decision was
made without consulting her. She uttered advice on where to build cities, which laws to
pass and whether to go to war. People queued for months, and paid huge sums of money
for a chance to speak with her.
Plutarch, the Greek historian, served as a priest at the temple of Apollo, and gives us a
description of how the oracle operated. He tells us that on the morning of the seventh
day of the month, a goat was brought to the temple. It was first drenched with water to
ensure that it shivered from the hooves upward. It was then sacrificed and its liver
examined to ensure the signs were favorable, and if they were, then the oracle would
enter the inner chamber of the temple. This was a sunken room which contained a three
legged chair, straddling the chasm in the ground. A priest then handed the oracle a written
question. She took it, sat on the three legged chair and inhaled the escaping gases. After
falling into a trance, she uttered her prophesy, which the priest wrote down. Sometimes
she spoke what sounded like gibberish, which had to be translated by the priest.
Here is an example of one of her prophecies:
You will go you will return not in the battle you will perish
3. Write this prophecy on the board and ask the students what it means.
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Make sure your students are able to recognise the ambiguity. Does the ‘not’ refer to his
returning or to his perishing in battle? Once students have had time to think about it,
perhaps bracket the ‘not’ as follows: [You will go you will return not] in the battle you will
perish. Now write the sentence up again, bracketing it as follows: You will go you will
return [not in the battle you will perish]. Now ask the students, ‘How likely is it that the
prophesy will come true?’ Again, give them a few minutes to think about this. Of course,
whatever happens, the prophesy is likely to be fulfilled. (Either he will return, in which
case he has not perished in battle, or he will not return, in which case it is likely that he
has perished in battle.)
4. Continue reading the next example to the class.
Here is another example. This prophesy was given to Croesus, the king of Lydia. Croesus
had good reason to trust the oracle. He had tested her, and seven other oracles, by
sending messengers to ask the same question of each of the oracles on the same day at
the same time. The question was, ‘What is King Croesus doing at this very moment?’ The
Oracle at Delphi was the only one to get the answer right: she reported correctly that the
king was making a lamb-and-tortoise stew.
So when Croesus decided to invade Persia, he again consulted the oracle. He sacrificed
300 head of cattle to Apollo, he had gold and silver melted down into 117 bricks; which
were sent to Delphi along with jewels, statues and a pure gold bowl weighing half a ton.
Croesus then asked the oracle whether he should attack the Persians. The Delphic Oracle,
replied:
If you cross the River Halys, a great kingdom will fall.
You might want to ask the students what they would do if they were King Croesus and had
received this prophecy. eg) Hands up if you would cross the river, hands down. Hands up if
you would not cross the river. Then continue…
So Croesus and his cavalry crossed the River Halys, fought the king of Persia and his army,
and Croesus was defeated and captured.
Ask the students, ‘Was the oracle wrong?’ After they have had time to think, and to
come up with answers, you can go on.
There is a story that Croesus sent a messenger back to Delphi to rebuke the Oracle for her
bad advice, and the answer came back, ‘You should have asked which kingdom’.
What are we to make of this? Over recent years, scientists have discovered that the gas
which the oracle breathed was ethylene, known to smell sweet and to produce the kind of
trance into which the oracle is said to have fallen. The gas is formed when rocks are
squeezed together by a massive force deep within the earth, and as it is lighter than air,
the gas rises to the earth’s surface. The Greeks knew none of this. They believed simply
that the future was determined by the gods, that the fate of everyone was fixed in
advance, by the gods, and that the god Apollo told people their fates through the oracle.
5. Now ask the whole class:
 Do you believe that our futures, our fates, are fixed?
 Do you believe that they are determined in advance?
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
Have you ever thought about this?
Ask the students to think about this over the next week. At the commencement of the
next lesson you may begin with this discussion.
Sources:
William J. Broad, 2007. The Oracle: Ancient Delphi and the Science Behind Its Lost Secrets. New
York: Penguin Press.
‘Oracle’ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle accessed 16/10/11.
Interview with John R. Hale on the Delphic Oracle, ABC Radio National The Ark
9 January 2005 http://www.abc.net.au/rn/relig/ark/stories/s1266794.htm accessed 16/10/11.
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Lesson 2.
Understanding Fatalism: ‘The Story of Osmo’; modern examples;
questions to think about:
 Does what you do today have an effect on the future; and
 If what we do today does make a difference to what happens tomorrow (or
sometime in the future), then does that mean that we are free to determine our
own futures?
1. Start this lesson by recapping the questions for the end of last lesson:
 Do you believe that our futures, our fates, are fixed?
 Do you believe that they are determined in advance?
Give students a few minutes to think and talk about these questions, as a whole class.
Make sure they make an effort to support their views with reasons. Quite different views
are likely to be expressed, and there is no need to attempt to resolve disagreements. This
is just an opportunity for students to begin thinking about these issues and to voice some
initial views. (Maximum 5 minutes)
2. Now continue by saying something like this: Before we go any further, we need to
make sure we understand exactly what it means to say that our futures are fixed in
advance. I am going to read you a story from a philosopher called Richard Taylor**. It’s
called, The Story of Osmo. We are then going to watch an animated version of it (provided
you have the technology and access to Youtube).
Students are blocked from YouTube in the school but teachers are able to access it, so you
will need to ask the teacher in the classroom to set that up for you beforehand. Showing
this video is optional. If you are going to use the video, make sure you read the story first,
because the narrator speaks quickly.
Here is the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSwohuiQA2A
3. Read the following story to the class.
The story goes something like this:
Once upon a time there was a girl who received messages from God. These messages
were all about an ordinary man called Osmo. Because these messages came from God,
the girl thought she should write them down. Eventually she published them as a book,
with the title, The Life of Osmo, but it attracted very little attention because it was quite
boring.
Some time later, a high school teacher in Indiana, in the US, whose name was Osmo, finds
the book gathering dust in a library. He is struck by the opening sentence: ‘Osmo is born
in Mercy Hospital in Auburn, Indiana, on June 6th, 1965, of Finnish parents, and after
nearly losing his life from pneumonia at the age of five, is enrolled in the St James school
there.’ Osmo reads on, and discovers that the book accurately describes his life in every
respect, with each chapter in the book corresponding to a year in his life. Then it occurs to
him to go to Chapter 26, as he has just had his 26th birthday. He is astonished to find that
what the book says is true: it rains on his birthday, his wife doesn’t give him the binoculars
he wanted, that he gets a pay rise shortly afterwards, and so on. But, Osmo thinks, that’s
impossible. These events, have just happened, and the book has dust on it.
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Then he decides to flip to the end of the book, and is horrified to see that there are only
29 chapters. He reads the following: ‘Osmo perishes when the plane he has taken from
O’Hare airport in Chicago crashes on the runway at Fort Wayne.’ That was the end of the
book.
‘This is ridiculous’, Osmo thought. ‘Even though the rest of the book seems to be true, I
can make sure the plane crash never happens - I’ll just never catch a plane from O’Hare
airport to Fort Wayne.’ Three years later, Osmo boarded a flight from O’Hare to St. Paul
and went berserk and tried to highjack the plane when the pilot announced that the flight
was being diverted to Fort Wayne. Osmo, attempting to divert the plane to another
airport, instead caused it to crash into the runway at Fort Wayne.
Osmo was unable to escape his fate.
** Richard Taylor, 1992, Metaphysics (4th Edition). Englewood Cliffs NJ: Prentice Hall pp.58-60.
When Taylor uses the concept of God here, it's not because he (necessarily) believes that
God exists, but as something more like a literary device. Saying that the prophecy comes
from God is an easy way of (a) guaranteeing that the prophecy is true, (b) explaining how
there could be such an accurate prophecy, and (c) giving the prophetess a very good
reason to believe that the prophecy is true. But saying that God exists within the world of
the story doesn't mean that He (sic) exists in the real world; Primary Ethics is, of course,
neutral on the second claim.
4. Introduce the next discussion like this:
Even today, lots of people think that we are like Osmo; that our fates are fixed.
going to look at some examples to help us think some more about this.
We’re
The class should be split into three groups. Each group is given one of the following
scenarios (print scenario cards from the Ethics Teacher Resource Centre) to read and then
discuss using the questions as a starting point. The groups will then share their thoughts
with the whole class. Groups should be given approximately 5 mins to discuss.
Discussion plan 1. Does what we do make a difference?
i.
In 1990 more than 1,400 Muslim pilgrims were killed in a tunnel near the holy city of
Mecca, in Saudi Arabia. The tunnel went from Mecca to another holy site called
Mina, and was able to hold 1000 people at a time. At the time of the tragedy, there
were 50,000 pilgrims in the tunnel. Some people suffocated; others were trampled to
death.
Saudi Arabia’s King Fahd said that the deaths were ‘the will of God’. ‘It was fate’, he
said. ‘Had they not died there, they would have died elsewhere and at the same
predestined moment’ (AFP, July 2, 1990).

Do you think King Fahd was right?

What reasons do you have for your answer to this question?
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ii.
During the bombing of London in World War 2, some people argued as follows:
Either I am going to be killed by a bomb or I am not. If I am, then rushing to a bomb
shelter won’t do any good. And if I’m not, then rushing to the bomb shelter is a waste
of time.

Are they right?

If you were in their place, would you think in the same way?

Why or why not?
Expected response: It’s got to be more dangerous outside the bomb shelter; you
increase your chance of survival if you take cover. What you do makes a difference.
iii.
Ali has a maths test tomorrow. She thinks, ‘Well, I’m either going to do well or I’m not.
If I’m going to do well, there’s no point in studying. And if I’m not going to do well,
then there’s no point in studying either. So tonight I’ll watch TV instead.’

Do you think that Ali has a better chance of doing well if she studies tonight,
rather than watching TV? Or won’t it make a difference whatever she does?
Expected response: It does matter what Ali does - she has a much greater chance of
doing well in the test if she studies.
5. Take feedback from each group, ensuring they give reasons for their answers.
6. Move on to the following whole class discussion:
It is important to reinforce the guidelines of the discussion: only one person may speak at
a time (you might have a ball that serves as a conch and can be passed to someone else
when the person has finished speaking).
i. If Osmo had refused ever to get on a plane, could he have avoided dying in a plane
crash? Expected response: Yes
ii. Do you think that what you choose to do today can have an effect on what happens
tomorrow, or do you believe that your choices and actions have no effect on the future?
Can you provide an example to support your ideas?
iii. Briefly brainstorm possible effects for some of the choices that we make every day,
such as:

starting the day with a healthy breakfast, or

borrowing your brother’s skateboard without asking
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Time permitting, this could be turned into a game - everyone standing in a circle the
teacher poses the scenario: you borrow your brother’s skateboard without asking. The ball
is then thrown to a student who has to think of a possible effect eg) your brother takes
something of yours to pay you back, they then throw it to someone else who thinks of
another possible effect.
Write some of the key ideas raised onto the board so that the students who are finding
this concept challenging can re-read it and follow the thread of conversation.
iv. Do you think that Osmo could have avoided his fate?
v. Someone who thinks that our actions cannot affect the future, that whatever we do the
outcome will be the same, is called a fatalist. Would you describe yourself as a fatalist?
7. Finish off this topic by asking the following question:
If what we do today does make a difference to what happens tomorrow (or sometime in
the future), then does that mean that we are free to determine our own futures?
~~~END OF TOPIC~~~
©
Primary Ethics Limited 2011
The materials in this booklet are protected by copyright in Australia.
Except as provided by the Copyright Act 1968 (Cth), no part of this
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permission of Primary Ethics Limited.
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Scenario Cards (Lesson 2, Part 1):
In your group read the following information and discuss the questions below.
1. In 1990 more than 1,400 Muslim pilgrims were killed in a tunnel near the holy city of
Mecca, in Saudi Arabia.
The tunnel went from Mecca to another holy site called
Mina, and was able to hold 1000 people at a time. At the time of the tragedy, there were
50,000 pilgrims in the tunnel. Some people suffocated; others were trampled to death.
Saudi Arabia’s King Fahd said that the deaths were ‘the will of God’. ‘It was fate’, he
said. ‘Had they not died there, they would have died elsewhere and at the same
predestined moment’ (AFP, July 2, 1990).

Do you think King Fahd was right?

What reasons do you have for your answer to this question?
In your group read the following information and discuss the questions below.
2. During the bombing of London in World War 2, some people argued as follows:
Either I am going to be killed by a bomb or I am not. If I am, then rushing to a bomb
shelter won’t do any good. And if I’m not, then rushing to the bomb shelter is a waste of
time.

Are they right?

If you were in their place, would you think in the same way?

Why or why not?
In your group read the following information and discuss the questions below.
3. Ali has a maths test tomorrow. She thinks, ‘Well, I’m either going to do well or I’m
not. If I’m going to do well, there’s no point in studying. And if I’m not going to do
well, then there’s no point in studying either. So tonight I’ll watch TV instead.’

Do you think that Ali has a better chance of doing well if she studies tonight, rather
than watching TV? Or won’t it make a difference whatever she does?
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