theist what do you think of this

I don't understand the distinction you are trying to make.

It is not necessarily so cut and dry as, "If you kill, you will be killed",.
It also does not necessarily imply rebirth.

Karma is the manifestation of consequences as a direct result of cause and effect.

Anything beyond that treads into the realm of the dogma of a specific religion.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

But the concept of karma stems from Buddhism and Hinduism, which both teach the "kill and be killed" version of karma.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

Karma (or kamma) literally means simply "action" and infers, as a part of the whole, the results of that action - nothing more.

Anything more than that, like I said, is dogma.

Buddha most certainly did not teach that karma was that simple and straight forward.

Majjhima Nikaya 136 begins to shed some light on it, but it is much more complex than even this discourse.
Majjhima Nikaya 136

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

Not, not even the good stuff is necessarily attributed to God. The prevalent Jewish mindset in the OT (and possibly still today) was that if you were wealthy, in good health, had a large family, and just general good fortune, it is because God had blessed you with it. If you were poor, sick, barren, and/or just generally fortuneless, it is because God had cursed you. The reason God would bless or curse you always had to do with faithfullness, or infidelity. Thus, the authors of the Old Testament imbued their literature with this kind of thinking. All evil things that happened to the Jews, or to others (sometimes by the Jews) happened because God had cursed them (or in the case of Jews doing evil to others, God commanded them to do so to be the workers of His will on earth) for unfaithfulness to the Covenant He had made with them. Good fortune was always attributed to God on account of faithfulness to that Covenant.

We understand that this mindset was prevalent during the time that these books were written, but recognize that only the underlying theme of the mindset was true (ie, God blesses those who are faithful to Him, and punishes those who do not), but that this theme does not always play out in terms of physical blessings or curses. In other words, a wicked man may still be wealthy, and in good health, and sire many children, and a good man may be poor, sick and unfortunate. In our understanding, this is because now we understand God's blessings/punishments as being spiritual, rather than physical.

Thus, when we read those passages, we don't read it at face value, but take from it the idea that if we go against the will of God, and even against our own natures which are the product of the mind and will of God, then we will be unhappy, and that if we are faithful to God, faithful to truth, then we will be happy, and this is the truer reality of God's blessing.

It isn't about convenience, it's about scholarship. It's important to understand the mind that writes in order to understand why what is written was written.

So, for example, let us imagine that the flood mentioned in Genesis did happen. The author of Genesis says that the reason the earth was flooded is because humans were exceedingly sinful (unfaithful to God), and so God punished mankind. However, what may actually have happened was that there was a natural disaster (or even a disaster that was caused by human actions) which destroyed the great majority of human and animal life (a global flood, in this hypothesis), and that after all was said and done, in retrospect and reflection, the prevailing mindset of "Misfortune is a curse from God for sin" attributed the catastrophy to being an action of God against man for man's sinfulness.

The Catholic Church addresses this merely by saying that these kinds of things that are recorded in the OT are inconsistent both with the God as revealed in the NT and with a strictly logical theology (as dealing with the nature of God), and that we can account for this inconsistency by looking to the human authors of the OT books, and the over-riding mindset of their culture.

 

Case closed. You owned that argument.


Edit: Hey... didn't you recently back me up in the "God is Impossible" thread? Isn't that weird how you did one deed that had consequences to another person, and then you turn around and a person is doing something that has similar consequences for you? What a cool turn of events. There should be a name for that...

 

I have been known to call it "God"...
like right here, for example...
...and this closely related thread.

 

True thats what the word literally means..but so what if it literally means "action"....also I never said it was that simple and straight forward...its just a short summary

That Buddhist scripture only points out that not all people who kill and do bad deeds go to hell, and vice-versa...which is true...I don't really see how it contradicts what I've said....

The Buddha still agrees that there are the results of good and bad deeds....meaning that a person who kills others in some future time, be it this lifetime, the next lifetime, or a thousand lifetimes in the future, will have to exhaust that karma...thats all The Buddha is saying

"Now there is the person who has killed living beings here... has had wrong view. And on the dissolution of the body, after death, he reappears in a happy destination, in the heavenly world.9 But (perhaps) the good kamma producing his happiness was done by him earlier, or the good kamma producing his happiness was done by him later, or right view was undertaken and completed by him at the time of his death. And that was why, on the dissolution of the body, after death, he reappeared in a happy destination, in the heavenly world. But since he has killed living beings here... has had wrong view, he will feel the result of that here and now, or in his next rebirth, or in some subsequent existence."

He's saying precisely what I'm saying...so basically "kill and be killed" summarizes it up...because if you kill in some future time you will have to exhuast that karma

 

geeser -

No argument of God's violence can persuade a theist otherwise. God is mysterious, if you remember, acts as he wills, and most often, punishes the faithless.

Unflinching faith is pre-requisite, especially for Christians and Jews. Moses exclusion from the promised land is an example.

 

Ayodhya;1232056] Moses exclusion from the promised land is an example.

*************
M*W: The story of Moses and the Exodus has long been disproven by archeologists and biblical scholars.

 

God will kill everyone who will oppose him.

 

actually death visits everyone equally - the difference is that for an atheist death is like the jaws of a mother cat for a rat ..... and for a theist death is like the jaws of a cat for its kitten

 

lg,

Nope. Death is simply the cessation of personal existence. Exactly the same for theists and atheists.

 

I agree it is the same phenomena - just like its the same mouth of a cat that has the kitten or the rat it

 

lg,

Nope. The belief that somehow the most tragic event that can befall a person is magically turned into a gateway to paradise is the biggest con ever to be devised by man.

Wakeup - when you die you will cease to exist.

 

on the contrary, by dint of direct perception of god (by the established processes of course) the truth of the matter becomes directly perceivable even in this life for the successful practioner - your statements about the nature of death are complete speculations based on a poor fund of knowledge and experience (one could also say that the stories that one's mother tells regarding the fact that one has a father are also fallacious - on the strength of being a confidence statement of course)

 

Lg,

And yet again you have not demonstrated that such a perception is possible or different to delusion.

You mean like the fact that of the billions of people that have died not a single one has been shown to have any further existence after death. My fund of knowledge is based on a 100% success rate of zero observation of existence beyond death. Your claim of course has zero credibility in both terms of observation or practical demonstrable mechanism.

But really, let’s face it; this has nothing to do with any perceived absence of experience or knowledge on my part but everything to do with your gullibility and inability to distinguish fantasy from rational probability and credibility.

 

Cris

yes I have - I have indicated that it lies in the process - much lie the correct application of the appropriate process enables one to determine whether something is fool's gold or real gold

obviosuly you are doctoring the readily available evidence (namely denying the claims made by scripture and saintly persons) if you want to say "not a single one"

please tell how you collected the statistics on mortality through out the entire world and through out entire history

if your knowledge and experience is biased or incomplete, then naturally this will bear a result in your ruminations on "rational probability"

 

Lg,

Quite rightly so because none have shown they contain any truth.

Don’t need to. I’m certain that if anyone could show that someone had came back from the dead we’d most definitely here about it. If you think I’m wrong then please quote a single exception to my assertion.

Not so. You merely have to show any single scrap of real evidence to show that anything you claim has any semblance of credibility. Until then your claims are simply irrational and cannot be distinguished from delusion.

If you want to be believed you need to do more than make baseless claims of authority from the assertions of dubious mystics.

 

Cris

type one error

actually what i am chasing is for you to be introspective and examine the authority (the general principles) you apply to determine the truth behind the statement "every one dies" - its a kind of lead in to the fallibility of empiricism

there are numerous claims made by saintly people and scriptures to the contrary - of course if you automatically throw such cases out, particularly without examining the premises, you have your classic type one error

if you want to make credible claims of rationality you have to establish that you are not determining the nature of the probability water in an arid desert

 

Lg,

Why? People die and never return. There is nothing to indicate anything else.

And the alternative is believing fantasies are true. I don’t see that that is any kind of step forward.

LG, they are pure fantasies based on an ancient past of incredible ignorance about how the universe functions. They have no more value now than asserting that the Lord of the Rings stories are true. You need to bring yourself up to date and stop trying to hold on to those past ignorant mystical religious fantasies that no longer have any value.

Look to yourself first since the evidence for anything supernatural at the moment is absolute zero, and your whole argument is dependent on it being true – and you accuse me of lack of credibility?