"Everything happens for a reason"

No, it doesn't. You probably don't even put much thought in when you say that.

Do you honestly believe that everything is predetermined? You'd have to be some kind of knucklehead to believe in destiny.

If everything happens for a reason, then what's the purpose for me sitting here, on the /lounge/, while eating my kosher potato pancake?

Everything happens for a reason in the sense that there is cause and effect.

The idea that everything happens for some sort of predestined reason, on the other hand, is dumb.  It is precisely because things DON'T happen for a reason that life has any sort of meaning.

"cause and effect"
exactly.