What is Destiny and Does it Exist?

I am not interested in the standard, question-begging explanations of where the alleged false belief in destiny comes from. Of how and why we fall under the illusion that there are things we are destined to do, or the illusion that we possess a destiny. "There must be a reason why the world is the way it is, it can't just be an accident." Or, "There must be a reason why I am here, in the world, it can't just be an accident." So the explanation proceeds, we are led to invent a reason that exists 'out there' — perhaps a reason that God knows — all the while totally unaware that 'the reason out there' is merely a creature of our own imagination.

A more contemporary, but no less question-begging explanation is the idea that we are story-telling creatures, that we feel impelled to construct a coherent narrative that makes sense of the events and the decisions in our lives. As in the previous explanation, the sense of destiny is supposedly revealed as nothing but an illusion, an invention, a prop. The fact that you or I might find it difficult or impossible to live without that invention does not make it any less an illusion.

Both styles of explanation may be described as reductive: There is no such thing, in reality, as destiny. The belief in destiny has a cause. But the description of that cause does not involve the concept of destiny. In the same way, the belief, in the Middle Ages, that there were such things as witches who possessed supernatural powers derived from the Devil had a cause. Understanding that cause does not require that we believe in the actual existence of witches. The belief in destiny is false, just as the belief in witches is false.