I've struggled with this question for a long time. I feel like I lean towards hard determinism (i.e. everything is the result of cause and effect and there is no such thing as free will and our pathetic human minds simply can't process all the sensations and experiences that affect our decisions). If this is the case, then yes I'd say everything happens for a "reason" but not like some cosmic/god's providence type of reason - i.e. a "meaningful reason". Stuff happens because it's determined in our causal chain and there's nothing we can do about it. However, I've also felt like it could be just chaotic randomness as well. This is definitely feasible in light of a lot of discoveries in physics. If this is the case, then there is ultimately no reason for why things happen. I had a very close friend who was murdered last year by some random guy. I had to listen to people tell me that it happened for a reason. There is no reason that I would find satisfaction in.
Yes and No, To progress through life you must make choices, Some with consequences some not. These choices with the combination of other peoples choices make an outcome for you and sometimes can be planned and sometimes can be random. Sometimes these circumstances aren't your fault and you could live a life of unhappiness or happiness depending on what happens to you. Religion spurs out of this as a way to explain the good or bad things that happen in life. Food, Environment and Social status also play a big part into how long we will live as we are animals after all.
I do believe everything happens for a reason. We might not know it at the time, but we all have a moment of "oh so THAT'S why that happened" you know.
Things are affected and change by events that happen it doesn’t mean it’s the reason for it. Sh/+ happens
Honestly, yes, I believe everything in our lives happens for a reason, be it wonderful or tragic it helps us to futher the development of ourselves, be it emotional, intellectual, spiritual etc. Every experience in life, be it bad or good is crucial for our evolution as people.
My personal beliefs are that it's 50/50. Some things that happen are just random chance but there are other things that do happen in your life for a reason.
We exist for pointless entertainment, our existence walks the edge between "why" and "why not" just waiting to be returned to a zero sum only to start from worm shit and build up all over again. Think of how boring an eternity of nothing would be? That is the answer for our existence I believe, a grand opera for entertainment. Good, bad, creation, destruction, something, nothing, life, death. All just the beginning and endpoints of a cycle that ultimately just keeps the universal string of truth undulating to and fro. My second theory is that our existence is a test, why else would you create life only to take it away if not to test what your creation does with it? We are ultimately pieces of a whole, an entity, a singularity, or a mass created us from itself possibly to better itself. I gained this idea from the old testament wherein god would not punish his creation for eternity but destroy it ever more and that makes more sense to me. Why would you punish a negative part of yourself eternally for being what it is? Destroy it, cleanse it so when you reform to whole once more you will be that much more pure. But then that asks the question, why does being more good than bad even matter? What is the point in purity to a conglomerate of all things evil and good? Maybe the god, entity, or mass we come from is simply testing itself, purifying itself? Or we could just be entertaining our collective selves through the rises and falls of the universe since it's not as if the universe seeks to find a common denominating point of good or purity judging by occurrences. The ultimate question boils down to "Why have something rather than nothing?"