When one claims that they do not believe in fate, they are saying that they don't believe in the fact that their future is predetermined at birth. So it's not that they don't believe in fate, instead they believe that they control their future, or basically fate, with the decisions they choose to make throughout the span of their entire life. Then there are those who claim that they do believe in fate, which usually means that they believe their future is predetermined. That no matter what, they were put on this earth for a reason.
             Both of these views of fate are shown through two different characters in the play, Oedipus, The King, written by Sophocles. One of the two characters is Teiresias, a blind prophet who informs Oedipus of his predetermined fate. Teiresias is a character that believes in predetermined fate, the idea that all individuals are put on this earth for a reason. One way Teiresias shows this belief in predetermined fate is by telling Oedipus, "I say that you are the slayer of the man whose slayer you seek."(pg. 85) Teiresias is basically telling Oedipus that he is the slayer of Laius, whom Oedipus is looking for. Then Teiresias says to Oedipus, "And you have been an unwitting foe to your own kin, in the shades and on the earth above. The double lash of your mother's and your father's curse shall one day drive you from this land in dreadful haste, with darkness then on the eyes that now see true." (pg. 87) Teiresias is informing him that he has a very dark fate that awaits him, that will become true.
             When Teiresias says this to Oedipus, he is still not yet reveling him of what exactly his fate is. Though as Oedipus commands Teiresias to leave out of anger, Teiresias would then say lastly to Oedipus that, "A blind man, he who now has sight, a beggar who now is rich, he should make his way to a strange land, feeling the ground before him with his staff. And he shal...