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Post by pnoopiepnats on Oct 30, 2007 5:08:20 GMT -5
What about the people who are supposed to dish out the karma?
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Post by Sweet Pea on Oct 30, 2007 8:58:13 GMT -5
What about the people who are supposed to dish out the karma? ugh...what a job!  |
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Post by Naptaq on Oct 30, 2007 9:03:21 GMT -5
does everyone who believes in karma believe that they did something in a past life to deserve the misery of social anxiety? and if so, why should anybody care about you? just wondering... I can't speak for anyone else who believes in karma, but maybe it does. I'm not quite sure. Either way I'll have to cope with it and do my best to overcome it. Are you suggesting that a if a person has something bad happen to them and it's because of karma so it's their fault and their responsibility and we shouldn't even try to help him? I think people shuold definitely help other people, and I don't agree with the assumption that bad karma also makes you a bad person because you've been "bad" in previous lifetimes or something. Socrates said that every person does what he precieves to be the good, it's only that he doesn't know the real good is. That takes us out of the guilt about our past. How can you do better until you know better? What about the people who are supposed to dish out the karma? Dish out? Undo bad karma? |
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Post by Sweet Pea on Oct 30, 2007 9:11:33 GMT -5
does everyone who believes in karma believe that they did something in a past life to deserve the misery of social anxiety? and if so, why should anybody care about you? just wondering... I can't speak for anyone else who believes in karma, but maybe it does. I'm not quite sure. Either way I'll have to cope with it and do my best to overcome it. Are you suggesting that a if a person has something bad happen to them and it's because of karma so it's their fault and their responsibility and we shouldn't even try to help him? I think people shuold definitely help other people, and I don't agree with the assumption that bad karma also makes you a bad person because you've been "bad" in previous lifetimes or something. Socrates said that every person does what he precieves to be the good, it's only that he doesn't know the real good. That takes us out of the guilt about our past. How can you do better until you know better? i'm not saying i have come to that conclusion, but i know many people who believe in karmic debt have...whole cultures in fact. brutal indifference to those in need has been the outcome of this belief system in many cultures. i joke about karmic debt, but i don't believe in it because i don't think it stands up to close examination as a rational explanation for anything. i think it resulted from people asking the question that is the subject of this thread and trying to come up with a rational explanation for what they see in the real world that squares with their other beliefs...such as a belief in an all-powerful, all-knowing & all-seeing god/goddess. |
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Post by Naptaq on Oct 30, 2007 9:53:36 GMT -5
i think it resulted from people asking the question that is the subject of this thread and trying to come up with a rational explanation for what they see in the real world that squares with their other beliefs...such as a belief in an all-powerful, all-knowing & all-seeing god/goddess. Well I don't consider myself a Christian anymore so that doesn't really conflict with my other beliefs.. neither am I a Buddhist or a Hindu. I think it's a great time to live in, because we have a free chiose of religion or the absence of it in our lives and belief systems. Well at least in the developed and most of the developing contries.  |
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Post by pnoopiepnats on Oct 30, 2007 12:37:20 GMT -5
Dish out? Undo bad karma? There has to be people who dish out the bad things that happen. If there is karma then there has to be people whose purpose is to dish out the bad when people do bad things. |
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Post by Sweet Pea on Oct 30, 2007 17:46:39 GMT -5
i think it resulted from people asking the question that is the subject of this thread and trying to come up with a rational explanation for what they see in the real world that squares with their other beliefs...such as a belief in an all-powerful, all-knowing & all-seeing god/goddess. Well I don't consider myself a Christian anymore so that doesn't really conflict with my other beliefs.. neither am I a Buddhist or a Hindu. I think it's a great time to live in, because we have a free chiose of religion or the absence of it in our lives and belief systems. Well at least in the developed and most of the developing contries. i think we are influenced by the dominant beliefs in the culture we live in though, don't you? i don't think all of our values and beliefs are absorbed consciously. besides, i was thinking more about how we develop these beliefs culturally to begin with...not why one individual ascribes to those beliefs after the fact. |
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Post by Naptaq on Oct 30, 2007 19:54:42 GMT -5
Dish out? Undo bad karma? There has to be people who dish out the bad things that happen. If there is karma then there has to be people whose purpose is to dish out the bad when people do bad things. I don't know .. all, i think, i know, is that some physical conditions (illneses) and accidents have a certain karmic reason behind them. or certain people in our lives.. i don't think it's that random and accidental. that sob may have a karmic reason for being in my life... anywho, there's a joke i heard: a man's wife runs of with another guy, his car was stollen, the house is on fire and the man's standing there, with his house on fire, looks at the sky and says: "why me God?" and God anwsers "I don't know George, there's just something about you that pissed me off" Well I don't consider myself a Christian anymore so that doesn't really conflict with my other beliefs.. neither am I a Buddhist or a Hindu. I think it's a great time to live in, because we have a free chiose of religion or the absence of it in our lives and belief systems. Well at least in the developed and most of the developing contries. i think we are influenced by the dominant beliefs in the culture we live in though, don't you? i don't think all of our values and beliefs are absorbed consciously. besides, i was thinking more about how we develop these beliefs culturally to begin with...not why one individual ascribes to those beliefs after the fact. yeah I guess we are influenced, but to a point. A lot of people raised Christian are now atheists or agnostics. And that's happening on a large scale throughout the world. |
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Post by Sweet Pea on Oct 30, 2007 21:53:16 GMT -5
yeah I guess we are influenced, but to a point. A lot of people raised Christian are now atheists or agnostics. And that's happening on a large scale throughout the world. yes, many people in the world who were raised christian now consider themselves to be atheists and agnostics...but are still influenced by their christian upbringing in their thinking...often without being consciously aware of it.  |
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Post by Naptaq on Oct 30, 2007 23:12:43 GMT -5
yeah I guess we are influenced, but to a point. A lot of people raised Christian are now atheists or agnostics. And that's happening on a large scale throughout the world. yes, many people in the world who were raised christian now consider themselves to be atheists and agnostics...but are still influenced by their christian upbringing in their thinking...often without being consciously aware of it. oh you're throwing the old Freudian unconcious mind at me. you may be right |
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Post by annaa on Oct 31, 2007 20:07:56 GMT -5
does everyone who believes in karma believe that they did something in a past life to deserve the misery of social anxiety? and if so, why should anybody care about you? just wondering... I believe in something called the threefold law (it's a wiccan belief). Whatever you send out will come back to you three times stronger. While you may not have done something really terrible in the past life, the way things work means you'll pay for it three times over. If that makes any sense.  What about the people who are supposed to dish out the karma? I don't think you'll ever find someone whose purpose is to even the score, because as you can imagine, I believe that would then create a load of bad karma for them. It's more down to someone being in the right place at the right time. |
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Post by Astroruss on Nov 1, 2007 2:04:02 GMT -5
Well I don't consider myself a Christian anymore so that doesn't really conflict with my other beliefs.. neither am I a Buddhist or a Hindu. I think it's a great time to live in, because we have a free chiose of religion or the absence of it in our lives and belief systems. Well at least in the developed and most of the developing contries. i think we are influenced by the dominant beliefs in the culture we live in though, don't you? i don't think all of our values and beliefs are absorbed consciously. besides, i was thinking more about how we develop these beliefs culturally to begin with...not why one individual ascribes to those beliefs after the fact. I don't believe in karma, but i do believe in the natural fallibility of man/woman kind. If God and Satan don't exist, then we really are naturally evolved creatures that went terribly wrong in the world, and natural selection of species overlooked us. ;D Why did natural selection overlook us terribly wrongly evolved creatures? Hell, who knows? Needless to say, i don't find that explanation to be very likely. I was raised to be a fairly devout Roman Catholic, but also to respect the beliefs of Protestant and Orthodox Christians and of Hindus and Budhists. Probably because my Dad went to Vietnam and to this day still loves the Vietnamese. So yeah, i can agree with the idea that we inherit much of our outlook on reality from our culture. But what if your culture encourages you to look beyond your cultural values and to think about others'? Because the case could be made that Western Civ is taking that direction. We have become very open to considering the belief systems of Hinduism and its offshoot Budhism, and i'd argue now Judaism and Islam too, not to mention the Pagan/Catholic hybrid system known as Voodoo and other African derived systems popular among African Americans to this day. If cultural influences have an impact and influence much of what we think about subconciously and our outlook on reality, then you must admit we are a very strange thinking culture. |
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Post by MrNice on Nov 1, 2007 9:33:55 GMT -5
how does this make sense? what do you mean by overlook us? we are naturally evolved to be what we are now - what is it that was overlooked? Why do you say that we went terribly wrong in the world?
As far as natural selection is concerned, the fittest survive - so far we were fit enough to survive. But natural selection is not directly concerned with how you feel about whats going on, if its fair or not - only that what you feel helps you to survive and reproduce.
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Post by Astroruss on Nov 2, 2007 1:00:37 GMT -5
how does this make sense? what do you mean by overlook us? we are naturally evolved to be what we are now - what is it that was overlooked? Why do you say that we went terribly wrong in the world? As far as natural selection is concerned, the fittest survive - so far we were fit enough to survive. But natural selection is not directly concerned with how you feel about whats going on, if its fair or not - only that what you feel helps you to survive and reproduce. If evolutionary theory is true, then natural selection proceeds among all the species of the world. Natural selection selects certain species to die out in favor of new species who grow and adapt to the changing Earth. Okay, if it's true, then why did humanity be permitted to become the dominant species on the planet while simultaneously working to make the planet subject to our own wants and needs? Planetary development and tectonics doesn't work that way, my friend. If it did, then the dinosaurs and mammoths and various species of mammals and fishes would still be alive and kicking to this day. The earth would have changed to accomodate them. Did that happen? Not at all. Hell, look at it this way. You know what Oxygen is, right? Oxygen is actually a metabolic poison produced by chloryphyll producing plant species. Okay, when all this oxygen was being spit out into the atmosphere over billions of years, did the Earth suck it out into the vaccuum of space? No. Instead, many species of single celled lifeforms died out in the Precambrian era, while others slowly came to adapt themselves to actually utilize the metabolic poison filling the planet's atmosphere. The Earth does not change to accomodate life. Instead, life either dies out or changes itself to fit the new planetary circumstances. But what about us wierd little mammals known as Homo Sapiens? Do we run around in nature, living with what the earth gives us? No. We run around and adapt the planet itself to suit us. We change the planet itself, or certain areas of it for given amounts of time. We build cities, invent technology, mass produce products and adapt resources into commodities that are entirely unnatural, and literally adapt the environment to suit us as a species. Hell, man, just look at the cube! A perfect cube does not exist in nature. But what did humans do? We created the cube out of our own abilities. We quite literally re-construct nature to fit our needs and wants. No other species on Earth has ever done that, or at least to the extent we have. Jesus man, we even go to the moon! It is quite literally withing our power to escape our own planet cradle and go elsewhere! What other species can do that? Come on Lsdima, tell me!  More than anything else, this is what makes me think we are not simply physical beings that evolved out of the primordial goo of protiens and amino acids. It makes me wonder that we have a greater origin and a greater function in reality. We can re-construct a new reality, one that can be wildly different from the present one! Now i know that many people can and will disagree with me. That's fine. But so far nothing's been able to dissauade me from my sense that we are much more than the sum of our Earth parts. I think that we are meant for much more than our simple physical existance here. For better or worse, we are different! Come on, Man! ;D Think beyond what you see everyday! Use that special wonderful power of imagination we have! It's incredible! I'm telling you, people. It's all about the Cube. |
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Post by MrNice on Nov 2, 2007 7:17:24 GMT -5
what do you mean by permitted? are you implying that somehow based on evolutionary theory humans should have died out yet were miraculously saved? There is no evidence for this.
Besides why is humanity the dominant species on this planet? Because we can make a cube?
we can make a cube go to the moon - but so far the reality is the same - we survive and reproduce and those traits that allow people to do this better are retained. This is the best explanation I can find for why bad things happen to good people. Because there is no rules against it. It just happens. Why shouldn't bad things happen to good people?
Your actions have a direct result on the world and so do actions of other people. Certain things we do will increase the amount of 'good' things that will happen but no one is protected from something bad happening.
I too feel a desire to know that I am part of some greater purpose - and create all kinds of wild theories - but so far the most simple one is the most consistent with reality.
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