That is a troll forum, no point on posting there otherwise you are just adding the fuel to the fire. Found out that site years ago when they blamed finns for stealing escimos land and murdering all of them.
Surprises me how religion can brainwash a person to such extent.....
It's not a problem to believe in higher powers, but to actually brainwash yourself so hard that you start believing that everyone else is stupid for having own believes.....
Who is this 'God' person of which you speak ?
Sounds like a bit of a troll himself/herself/androgynous being ' Don't eat anything from this tree, ha ha, got you, burn in hell lol lol lol.......'
Ever read a book called Good Omens?
When Satan tempted them with the forbidden fruit, to be doing that, wasn't Satan doing God's work? What if Satan refused to tempt them? Wouldn't that have been the sinful thing to do?
Heaven, hell, ? Original sin ? Wasn't Satan originally an angel ? How did he fall from favour ?
As a Buddhist, there is no such thing as 'original sin', there is only the karma that you attract through your actions in this life. What you 'Christians' ( or Paulist's) refer to as 'original sin' is simply the accrued Khama that you have generated in previous lives. That can be resolved by your actions in this life......
Please don't believe anything I have to say about any of this stuff, religion is a purely personal issue that is up to each person to resolve for themselves. My opinions are purely my own and only apply to me. And buddism is a philosophy, not a religion. No gods...........
Karma.... Sure If you live by the sword, you'll most likely die by it too.
But I think you make your own fate. Pre-ordained events such as what Buddhists, some Christian and some Islamic sects believe in. I have a hard time believing that.
Reincarnation... I actually believe that's possible to a certain extent.
If you are the sum of all your parts and you can numerically code those parts, then everything is a numeric code. That code can repeat itself all through history. Even be contemporaries of each other. Now I don't think the person "reincarnated" by having the same codes as a person in the past life will actually be that person, but I bet the appearance and the basic disposition of the person would be very similar if not identical.
But that happening is along the same lines as having a lottery with the same winning numbers being drawn in different drawings.
This part:
"As a Buddhist, there is no such thing as 'original sin', there is only the karma that you attract through your actions in this life.
This implies that a bad person will have bad things happen to them and good things to good people. OK what is it that determines what are "good actions" and what are "bad actions"?
Say I get drunk one night, do something stupid like drive, and wind up running over and killing a little kid, this kid was going to grow into a serial killer and would have eventually killed the person that was supposed to become the 56th President of the United States and would have kept us out of a nuclear showdown with Sri Lanka had he not been murdered decades earlier.
Are my actions bad then?
Now don't tell me yes because the reason is we have no way of determining the kid was a future serial killer. We're talking about karma and its fundamental mechanics.
Timelines should mean nothing in that regard.
If there are no gods, then what defines these actions as good or bad and what is it that decides the punishment and rewards for these actions?
"Heaven, hell, ? Original sin ? Wasn't Satan originally an angel ? How did he fall from favour ? "
Uh I think it depends on what religious sect you're in. Satan is also known as the adversary. He's NOT the enemy of God so much as he is jealous of humanity and he supposedly spends all his time coming up with ways to get humans to screw up.
The more dysopean (spelling? The doom and gloom - waiting for the Rapture types) believe along the lines of that Melville Poem, Paradise Lost, being that Pride made Satan a bad guy out to take over the the whole Heaven and Hell and Earth stuff.
The way I look at it, if God was the creator of all things, that includes bad things too, then Satan is actually one of the good guys doing God's work.
But what do I know? I'm just another Blasphemous Heathen.
Racer Y, bad stuff happen's if you do bad stuff. It's not pre-ordained, it's simply down to the actions that you, with complete freedom, choose to do in that current life.
Previous kharma is simply the stuff you chose to do in previous lives. It really is up to you to choose how you behave, just learn that your previous actions will bite you in the future.
TL;DR: Whatever you do is up to you, but that does have a consequence in the future.
This subject is deep and it's late.
What is it that determines what is bad or good on that scale? Forbin's link to secular reasoning as far morality goes... I didn't really read all that into them, but what is lacking in what little I read is the realization that what one group accepts as good actions are bad even repulsive within other groups. It's probably in there somewhere. I'll try to read into it later as it looks very interesting.
Anyways, if you were a bad person in this one area because what you did in that lifetime was considered bad and then you get born into the next life where your behavior from the previous lifetime is considered acceptable, then how are you being punished for the bad deeds you did before?
What I'm trying to say is it appears that karma is a mystical concept that has set parameters for what is good and bad and how that's is dealt with. It also appears that these concepts of good and bad are based on a consensus, a human consensus. I'm not understanding how that could be when you have all these different consensuses out there defining what's good and bad for themselves.
Here's a thought.
OK Racer X, you have a lot of money 1 million dollars, you put it in my bank. Forbin comes along and robs it, taking your money.
Now here's the thing. You made that money exploiting little kids working in sweat shops. I actually set forbin up, telling him the security codes or whatever he needed to rob the bank and get the money. I did that for a percentage of the money. I needed that money to give to a relative so they could get a life saving operation. Forbin comes from a subculture where getting away with scamming someone who isn't them is a respectable thing.
It doesn't. We have no rational proof of any mystical karma, only social karma, tied to the attitudes of other people with regards to our actions. As an agnostic, I cannot entirely rule out mystical karma, but I would need some sort of scientific proof.
Also, as the wiki article states, practical applications of secular ethics rely upon game theory to gradually shift the definitions of what is good and bad. Since humans are complex and fallible creatures, this means you do sometimes see conflicts in ethical principles, or at least the practical applications thereof.
OK... so with differing standards as to what is good or bad... it's up to what other people think? Alright then, what if you could care less what other people think? Does karma apply to you then? Let me rephrase that. You could care less about what others think and you're in a position that insulates you from them making you care what they think. How does the "established" karma work in this situation?
I don't care about social karma as those values are subject to change and are determined by humanity or a division of humanity. Say I could make society care what I think and make them apply what I thought was good and bad over what they originally thought... over time it becomes accepted - sorta the game theory there.
I appreciate the atheist view on Kharma, and on it's level this theory makes sense. Not being an arsehole does serve a social function. Just look at Dayz as a 'Lord of the Flies' social engineering experiment as to what can happen without social controls of some form.
If however you take the view that it's all just a game, with high definition, a great AI, and interesting NPC's, then the Bhuddist view on Kharma makes more sense to me. It's just a way to keep score !
What I really fail to accept is this 'God' entity busy telling everyone that your 'sinful', you must be 'punished' and it's only by giving him 'money' that you can stop being 'sinful' and go and float on a cloud. I much prefer my Game Theory idea, at least it gives liff some purpose.
