Personally I believe that fate exist and that everyone has a reason to do things. My motto for fatalism is that everything happens for a reason, whether good or bad, but they happen for the greatest result. Now I just don't apply the term to an individual but a group or if it affects someone else, sure that someone wasn't drafted to the war, but someone else did and they died, but there death affected someone else for the better. We all have a role whether it affects us in a good way, bad way or if it affects another good or bad, but in the end it happens for the greatest result. Anyone else?
One could think of all the movement of energy originating from a source, which most consider the big bang. Since all we are is energy, one could think our existence is purely a domino-like construct of that origin, and from that origin, all things are fated to be. Which would mean we have absolutely no control over how we progress, decision being an illusion created by our being mere phenomena of energy moving throughout space But this is not the sort of fate you are referring to. Personally, I hold fast to Absurdism as most accurately describing our situation, and I believe many of the fundamental aspects of that philosophy either counter or are indifferent to fatalism, since it is a philosophy of the great "maybe...".
No, I don't believe in fate. That said, I believe that the vast scale of humanity means that we don't get to actively decide our futures; we're caught in millions upon millions of coincidences and accidents and luck well beyond our control. We can only control small aspects of our lives. Our lives are changed by the slightest things that can influence us more than apparently enormous things. I don't believe in fate, but I also don't believe in free-will (in the sense of being able to do more than what your circumstances allow for you without a great deal of luck.) In my mind everything happens for a reason. That reason is that everything that has happened in the past shaped the world, enabling that one circumstance out of a trillion to come to fruition.
Whoever heard of a fatalistic farmer? (I know it's an obscure reference and not too appropriate, but I couldn't help it.)
The concept of fate makes my right eye twitch a little bit. To think that everything you do is pre-planned, from the mundane to the extraordinary... no, just...no. [sound of eye twitching] Sometimes things are chance, sometimes they're accidents, and sometimes they happen for a reason. [TANGENT]I, for one, am pretty sure we're not alone. We just need to find a way to find the aliens. (And maybe a Basic Universal Translation Tool.)[\TANGENT]