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Refuting the belief of Karma/Reincarnation


Alan McDougall

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Hi I have done a lot of research into this topic and will bounce off my problems with the religious belief of Karma and Reincarnation with the following questions.

My problems with Karma and Reincarnation

I believe the religious idea of Karma and Reincarnation are illogical and nonsensical and

l list my objections this belief below.

As an introduction, lets consider the following facts about this religious belief.

Were and how does Almighty God fit into this belief system?

Let’s talk about Karma, Reincarnation and Destiny.

Are you blaming Karma for the calamities in your life?

Do you wish you had known about Karma so that you could have averted the calamities?

Do you believe the Karma you accumulated in your previous life is why your life is a mess?

So tell me,

Was it bad Karma that got 3 million Jews gassed?

Is bad Karma responsible for the death of millions of African children from preventable diseases?

Is Karma the reason many African children go to bed hungry or starve to death?

Do you seriously think accumulated bad Karma is why a gay person is born into a homophobic society?

If we are to go by the definition of Karma, it is rational to conclude that dictatorship, bad governance, homophobia and poverty are all necessary wheels of Karma, and therefore they are important to life and/or karmic circle.

Now, if bad governance, corruption, greed, poverty are all integral to keeping the wheel of Karma rolling, why do we bother to fight these menaces?

Are they even menaces considering that they are needed for people to get their ‘Just Karma’?

It is sad and ridiculous that Karma seems to be widely accepted as a fact. I have come across some freethinkers who are quick to say ‘Karma is a b****’ and basically endorse the concept. Karma is just another made up bull****.

Karma is also hurts innocent people.

The belief in Karma has caused and is still causing much pain to many. If you believe people are in a bad situation because of some bad things they did in a past life, then you will be less inclined to help them.

Impaired people were and in some places still treated as the scum of the earth because in some societies, it is believed that blindness is caused by bad karma. Hindu Cast System as an example?

Reincarnation works with a belief in Karma.

The new concept or rather the western concept of Karma, which often manifests in the saying “Karma is a b****”, deals more with the belief that people get the repercussions of their actions through cause and effect, brought on by the belief that there is a natural law/order that decreed bad people would get their bad Karma on earth.

But let's assume that the soul does exist and inhabits a new body when the old one dies.

Why does the soul forget its past experiences?

What would make the soul's memories stop when the old body dies?

Why would the self - the presumed soul - not be able to remember?

Is the soul not the ultimate self?

Why would a new body limit the self's ability to conjure its own memories? And for those who claim that déjà-vu or whatever is repressed past memories, I might ask what the mechanism is for memories to be blocked or let through.

If they are blocked, how are they getting through? Why can't they all get through?

And if your old memories are lost forever, then what is the point of being reincarnated? The point of reincarnation is to extend life, but if you can't retain memories or lessons or knowledge from those past lives, how exactly have you extended your life?

It's not much better than saying you achieve immortality by living on in the hearts and minds of your friends. I want to live forever by living forever. I don't want some memory or trace of me living on.

(We'll just deal with humans for right now).

Where were all the souls before the earth existed?

Where will they go when the earth is destroyed? Will they continue to exist and be sentient, to interact in soul-land?

Then why come into bodies at all?

And then what if the ratio of bodies-to-souls is off, say more souls than bodies?

Do the souls just hang out in soul-land waiting for a new body to inhabit?

Or what if there are more bodies than souls? Are new souls born?

Or are there some people who are just automatons - functioning robots without souls at all? Could we tell the automatons apart from the real people?

Now let's deal with animals, if you accept trans-special reincarnation. Clearly some animals have different sorts of mental functioning abilities?

We can reason better, rats can discern smells better, bats can hear better. Different animals can see in different colors, very much a mental process of the mind. How does the soul make up for these things?

When we get transferred to a chicken, do we lose our ability to reason?

When we are transferred out of a wolf, do we lose the knowledge of how to hunt?

Are our souls restricted in what they can express on their host? And then of course, what's the cutoff point of creatures imbued with souls?

Do rats have souls? Bees? Roaches? Bacteria? Viruses? Replicating proteins like Mad Cow?

Even if you restrict reincarnation to just humans; at what point in the human evolutionary chain was the first soul imbued?

Now how about the idea that the creature you get to inhabit depends on how good you were in your past life.

Who keeps track?

Who is the great record-keeper that sends you to your new body?

What criteria is used? Is it objective - could it be objective? Does it make mistakes? How does it force our souls into the hosts?

Could the soul refuse? And you have to wonder; is your fate graded on a curve?

What if everyone in one generation acts perfectly and kindly and loving to everyone? Surely the less desirable bodies are still being born and need to be inhabited.

Would a couple of hugs be the difference between a hawk and a slug?

I will add more questions later depending on response?

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Is this rant serious? If you actually want to discuss it reasonably, try posting reasonably. But I gave up reading part way through. You don't want to discuss, you have a closed mind and you just want to argue.

So, comments noted. Disagree. End.

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Change Karma with God.

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The Bible refutes reincarnation in this verse: "[Just as] people are destined to die once, and after that to face judgment." (Hebrews 9:27 NIV) The Bible teaches that both believers and nonbelievers will face a judgment, though not the same type of judgment.

So make the most of this life.

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Is this rant serious? If you actually want to discuss it reasonably, try posting reasonably. But I gave up reading part way through. You don't want to discuss, you have a closed mind and you just want to argue.

So, comments noted. Disagree. End.

It is not a RANT @#$*& it is a list of questions that you can put forward your belief about the topic and rationalize the Idea of Karma/Reincarnation, and answer each question with an intelligent response from your side of the debate if you disagree.

Disagreed with exactly what great mind?

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The Bible refutes reincarnation in this verse: "[Just as] people are destined to die once, and after that to face judgment." (Hebrews 9:27 NIV) The Bible teaches that both believers and nonbelievers will face a judgment, though not the same type of judgment.

So make the most of this life.

Yes the Bible says, "It is appointed once for a person to live and then the Judgement"

New Agers do not like the idea of a judgmental God, to them God is tolerant to the point of allowing the most depraved person into the kingdom of heaven.

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It is not a RANT @#$*& it is a list of questions that you can put forward your belief about the topic and rationalize the Idea of Karma/Reincarnation, and answer each question with an intelligent response from your side of the debate if you disagree.

To be fair you have posted rather a lot of questions, I've counted at least 50...I think. There's so many I kept losing count.

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Yes the Bible says, "It is appointed once for a person to live and then the Judgement"

New Agers do not like the idea of a judgmental God, to them God is tolerant to the point of allowing the most depraved person into the kingdom of heaven.

While you love the idea of a petty and vengeful God?
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To be fair you have posted rather a lot of questions, I've counted at least 50...I think. There's so many I kept losing count.

You are absolutely right, my apologizes, as a normal member I cannot go back and prune my thread post so if it OK with you I will reduce it here to a few salient points :yes:

My problems with Karma and Reincarnation

l list my objections this belief below.

Please explain and rationalize Karma especially via reincarnation?

Where and how does Almighty God fit into this belief system?

Should one blame karma for the calamities they experience in life?

Do you wish you had known about Karma so that you could have averted the calamities?

Do you believe the Karma you accumulated in your previous life is why your life is a mess? or why you are so successful?

Was it bad Karma that got 3 million Jews gassed?

If we are to go by the definition of Karma, it is rational to conclude that dictatorship, bad governance, homophobia and poverty are all necessary wheels of Karma, and therefore they are important to life and/or karmic circle?

Impaired people were and in some places still treated as the scum of the earth because in some societies, it is believed that blindness is caused by bad karma. Hindu Cast System as an example?

By the way I do believe in a type of karma, but it happens in this mortal life, where you will repeat over and over the same mistake until you have learned your lesson or die in the process, an example of this is DRUG ADDICTION

Edited by Alan McDougall
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I think there are members here who know quite a bit about Karma and Alan's questions raised a question for me. I think I understand the causative nature of karma; you reap what you sow, if you do bad you will have something bad happen to you and the same with good. My question then is karma the explanation for every bad or good thing that happens to a person, or do good or bad things that are not tied to karma 'just happen' to people? Under the concept of karma and how it works, do only bad people get murdered for example? Or is it just that the murderer will have something bad happen to them, and it's possible his victim did not 'deserve' in a karmic sense to be killed as a result of the victim's bad karma?

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I think there are members here who know quite a bit about Karma and Alan's questions raised a question for me. I think I understand the causative nature of karma; you reap what you sow, if you do bad you will have something bad happen to you and the same with good. My question then is karma the explanation for every bad or good thing that happens to a person, or do good or bad things that are not tied to karma 'just happen' to people? Under the concept of karma and how it works, do only bad people get murdered for example? Or is it just that the murderer will have something bad happen to them, and it's possible his victim did not 'deserve' in a karmic sense to be killed as a result of the victim's bad karma?

And who/what is behind all of it? If I do a bad thing, and something bad happens to me, who manipulated events to cause that bad thing?

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There are two schools of thought when it comes to karma, Buddhist and Hindu. That is where the idea of karma comes from, not from New Agers who also don't really understand karma.

Hindu:

Every person is responsible for his or her acts and thoughts, so each person's karma is entirely his or her own. Occidentals see the operation of karma as fatalistic. But that is far from true since it is in the hands of an individual to shape his own future by schooling his present.

Hindu philosophy, which believes in life after death, holds the doctrine that if the karma of an individual is good enough, the next birth will be rewarding, and if not, the person may actually devolve and degenerate into a lower life form. In order to achieve good karma it is important to live life according to or what is right.

http://hinduism.abou...ics/a/karma.htm

Buddhist:

"The theory of karma should not be confused with so-called 'moral justice' or 'reward and punishment'. The idea of moral justice, or reward and punishment, arises out of the conception of a supreme being, a God, who sits in judgment, who is a law-giver and who decides what is right and wrong. The term 'justice' is ambiguous and dangerous, and in its name more harm than good is done to humanity. The theory of karma is the theory of cause and effect, of action and reaction; it is a natural law, which has nothing to do with the idea of justice or reward and punishment."

The way most people understand reincarnation is that a soul, or some autonomous essence of self, survives death and is reborn into a new body. In that case, it's easy to imagine the karma of a past life sticking to that self and being carried over to a new life. But Buddhist teachings are very different.

The Buddha taught a doctrine called anatman, or anatta -- no soul, or no self. According to this doctrine, there is no "self" in the sense of a permanent, integral, autonomous being within an individual existence. What we think of as our self, our personality and ego, are temporary creations that do not survive death.

http://buddhism.abou...rth/a/karma.htm

I kind of go a long with the Buddhists in that Karma is not about justice or reward, but the actions (Karma) you do in this life have consequences in this life.

My view on reincarnation is the Universe(s) recycle in a way over deep time. Maybe our energy self goes on in some way, from what I have experienced, but I can not say it is true. I'm not one to run around screaming and thumping a magic book of so called truth. My Druid path is an exploration of mysteries, because it is an exploration there are no absolutes only unfolding questions. In the end, I guess we will all find out one way or another or not.

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Your karma is who you are and your situation right now, this very moment. However, who you are right now is not something permanent. Your physical situation may change. You may have done bad things or good things in your life, but right now you may be happy and content within yourself, and in the next moment you may be angry or regretful and unhappy.

So, what is your Karma? Your Karma seems to change moment to moment. If there is a soul or self that experiences reincarnation determined upon one's Karma, what balances one's good and bad behavior and makes a final decision?

If there is no permanent soul or self, no reincarnation, and situations and moods are always changing, then I don't see the concept of Karma as existing at all.

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Without addressing any of your, rather angry "points", I like the thought of karma. Do good nice things and good nice things will happen to you. Be mean and hurtful and that's what you'll receive. No god stuff, no paying for past lives. It's just another way to try and be positive in a society and world sorely lacking in good nice things.

My advice to you, have a beer, relax, do something nice for someone. If nothing else, just because it feels good.

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And who/what is behind all of it? If I do a bad thing, and something bad happens to me, who manipulated events to cause that bad thing?

Good question JK. I don't know that anything needs to be behind it any more than there's something behind gravity, and I don't think it necessarily imples that any events are being manipulated, there might be some natural causative law that results in these bad things following the bad action. That's the rub with religious/supernatural claims like this; the details on how karma works isn't any more accessible and I'd guess requires no more explanation to the karma-believer than how an incorporeal spirit/soul interacts with the physical body/mind under other religions, let alone what that spirit/soul actually is.

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by Alan McDougall:

Hi I have done a lot of research into this topic and will bounce off my problems with the religious belief of Karma and Reincarnation with the following questions.

My problems with Karma and Reincarnation

I believe the religious idea of Karma and Reincarnation are illogical and nonsensical and

l list my objections this belief below.

As an introduction, lets consider the following facts about this religious belief.

Were and how does Almighty God fit into this belief system?

Why does it matter? I consider Karma as some kind of force. I kind of more see it something like when a drop in a body of water occurs and you get the ripples. So in a sense, I don't see where a higher thinking power plays into this.
Let’s talk about Karma, Reincarnation and Destiny.

Are you blaming Karma for the calamities in your life?

If I am, then I realize I did something to cause it and I am at fault. Then I will do what's possible to correct it.
Do you wish you had known about Karma so that you could have averted the calamities?

I don't think it makes a big thing in my life if I hadn't known about it, but I have and I think it's great I listened to it.
Do you believe the Karma you accumulated in your previous life is why your life is a mess?

Now see, sometimes you can't always say, in my opinion and observations, that Karma and reincarnation go hand in hand. I wonder if I did live before, and sometimes I feel that I have, but in the end, that cannot be proven. And when I do think about it, something inside me says it's more complicated than that.
So tell me,

Was it bad Karma that got 3 million Jews gassed?

I feel that Karma does not start anything. I think it tries to finish it though.
Is bad Karma responsible for the death of millions of African children from preventable diseases?

Is Karma the reason many African children go to bed hungry or starve to death?

Do you seriously think accumulated bad Karma is why a gay person is born into a homophobic society?

Wow, you are trying to ask questions that might have a multitude of layers to it. No, I don't think so. I seriously feel inside of me, Karma is not like that. It's not offensive it's defensive, so to speak.
If we are to go by the definition of Karma, it is rational to conclude that dictatorship, bad governance, homophobia and poverty are all necessary wheels of Karma, and therefore they are important to life and/or karmic circle.
kar·ma

ˈkärmə/Submit

noun

(in Hinduism and Buddhism) the sum of a person's actions in this and previous states of existence, viewed as deciding their fate in future existences.

informal

destiny or fate, following as effect from cause.

From: https://www.google.com/webhp?rct=j#q=karma

Again, I don't think Karma works like that. Karma is the reaction, not the action.

Now, if bad governance, corruption, greed, poverty are all integral to keeping the wheel of Karma rolling, why do we bother to fight these menaces?
Why do we have earthly laws, if people want to go by their holy books? Cannot depend on the exactness of Karma can you?
Are they even menaces considering that they are needed for people to get their ‘Just Karma’?

It is sad and ridiculous that Karma seems to be widely accepted as a fact. I have come across some freethinkers who are quick to say ‘Karma is a b****’ and basically endorse the concept. Karma is just another made up bull****.

Karma is also hurts innocent people.

The belief in Karma has caused and is still causing much pain to many. If you believe people are in a bad situation because of some bad things they did in a past life, then you will be less inclined to help them.

Impaired people were and in some places still treated as the scum of the earth because in some societies, it is believed that blindness is caused by bad karma. Hindu Cast System as an example?

Where is it, that you see people treat Karma as an exact fact?
Reincarnation works with a belief in Karma.

The new concept or rather the western concept of Karma, which often manifests in the saying “Karma is a b****”, deals more with the belief that people get the repercussions of their actions through cause and effect, brought on by the belief that there is a natural law/order that decreed bad people would get their bad Karma on earth.

But let's assume that the soul does exist and inhabits a new body when the old one dies.

Why does the soul forget its past experiences?

What would make the soul's memories stop when the old body dies?

Why would the self - the presumed soul - not be able to remember?

Is the soul not the ultimate self?

Why would a new body limit the self's ability to conjure its own memories? And for those who claim that déjà-vu or whatever is repressed past memories, I might ask what the mechanism is for memories to be blocked or let through.

If they are blocked, how are they getting through? Why can't they all get through?

And if your old memories are lost forever, then what is the point of being reincarnated? The point of reincarnation is to extend life, but if you can't retain memories or lessons or knowledge from those past lives, how exactly have you extended your life?

It's not much better than saying you achieve immortality by living on in the hearts and minds of your friends. I want to live forever by living forever. I don't want some memory or trace of me living

Yeah, so many unanswered questions. I think we are not suppose to know about the exactness of life after death for a reason. Probably too complex. I see Karma and reincarnation as part of that too. I don't hink we are suppose to know the answers. We do we have too?
(We'll just deal with humans for right now).

Where were all the souls before the earth existed?

Where will they go when the earth is destroyed? Will they continue to exist and be sentient, to interact in soul-land?

Then why come into bodies at all?

And then what if the ratio of bodies-to-souls is off, say more souls than bodies?

Do the souls just hang out in soul-land waiting for a new body to inhabit?

Or what if there are more bodies than souls? Are new souls born?

Or are there some people who are just automatons - functioning robots without souls at all? Could we tell the automatons apart from the real people?

Now let's deal with animals, if you accept trans-special reincarnation. Clearly some animals have different sorts of mental functioning abilities?

We can reason better, rats can discern smells better, bats can hear better. Different animals can see in different colors, very much a mental process of the mind. How does the soul make up for these things?

When we get transferred to a chicken, do we lose our ability to reason?

When we are transferred out of a wolf, do we lose the knowledge of how to hunt?

Are our souls restricted in what they can express on their host? And then of course, what's the cutoff point of creatures imbued with souls?

Do rats have souls? Bees? Roaches? Bacteria? Viruses? Replicating proteins like Mad Cow?

Even if you restrict reincarnation to just humans; at what point in the human evolutionary chain was the first soul imbued?

Now how about the idea that the creature you get to inhabit depends on how good you were in your past life.

Who keeps track?

Who is the great record-keeper that sends you to your new body?

What criteria is used? Is it objective - could it be objective? Does it make mistakes? How does it force our souls into the hosts?

Could the soul refuse? And you have to wonder; is your fate graded on a curve?

What if everyone in one generation acts perfectly and kindly and loving to everyone? Surely the less desirable bodies are still being born and need to be inhabited.

Would a couple of hugs be the difference between a hawk and a slug?

I will add more questions later depending on response?

I too have these questions. Good questions, I grant you that. We are aware of this one short life that is attributed to the one name we are now. To more, I think is to overwhelm you more than you can understand in you one small body.
New Agers do not like the idea of a judgmental God, to them God is tolerant to the point of allowing the most depraved person into the kingdom of heaven.
Do not speak for me. I don't hold such thoughts. The New Ager in me, knows a higher power and wonders at it. There is a whole lot more I consider, that you do not know of about me.

from GreenmansGod:

There are two schools of thought when it comes to karma, Buddhist and Hindu. That is where the idea of karma comes from, not from New Agers who also don't really understand karma.
Quite right! I have to remind myself that so many times.
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I don't think you understand karma based on reading what you wrote. You seem to have a western/new age view of what karma is, which really is just not correct.

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People have been making up nonsense that people believe out of not thinking critical for 1,000's of years.

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A key point I got from the OP revolved around the concept of a "soul". The primary faiths that believe in rebirth (Hinduism and Buddhism) don't believe in a "soul" so any questions asked based on the premise of a soul will produce irrelevant answers to reincarnation for them.

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Who says that any event is good or bad and not just a lesson? I am in a wheelchair and on other threads that asked about the karma that sees disability as a punishment route seem to have a limited view of it. Some might say that I did something in a previous life and I am being punished by being wheelchair bound in this life. I look at it completely differently and see it as a gift, seeing as I lost both parents before the age of 15 and would for sure have run away and done drugs. I doubt if I had been able to walk or runaway from my problems my life would be what it is now. I believe I chose to be disabled, that all my siblings and cousins etc. are not afraid nor discriminate against disabled people. In face one of cousins became a CNA because she was so comfortable with disabled people. I had to sit and think about things more than an able bodied person, knowing that despite my body not working my brain works just fine. I took advantage of that and earned a history degree. Took me a long time to get it riding the bus every day but I did it. We can't always know the effect we have on other people and I believe karma exists just not in the negative way the OP sees it.

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The Bible refutes reincarnation in this verse: "[Just as] people are destined to die once, and after that to face judgment." (Hebrews 9:27 NIV) The Bible teaches that both believers and nonbelievers will face a judgment, though not the same type of judgment.

So make the most of this life.

what a ****ing bummer then, if you're born a female in Afghanistan or anywhere in the Middle East right now... your one shot at life and you can be beheaded for talking to a man in public who's not in your family...

you have to be *****ing me...

edit- The profanity filter exists for a reason. PA

Edited by Paranoid Android
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Good actions create a better social environment, bad actions create a worse social environment. Thats all you need to know about Karma and should motivate you to be the best person you can be. No need for mumbo jumbo.

As for reincarnation, their seems to be rather a lot of personal anecdotal evidence to say that it is real. The Tibetans have a rather rigorous methodology for determining if a child is really the reincarnated Dhala Lama. Its certainly a lot more evidence based belief than the belief in an eternal Heaven.

Br Cornelius

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Long story short;

I had a once in a lifetime business opportunity that I was pulling together and making it happen.Just as at the critical point was coming together, a complete moron takes a dump on it just out of reckless selfishness.

Was it Karma?

No...There're plenty of complete morons in the world with nothing better to do but screw up your day or life.

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One time I stopped at a Casino just for the experience.I was playing the Slot Machines.I played this one Machine and I got "Bar", then another, and it slowly wound down to a third "Bar".Instead of locking on like it did for the others, it just very slowly slips past the "Bar".A guy watching behind me went "Geeez!".If it locked on the third "Bar" I would have won $100K.

Was it Karma?

No...Casinos are designed to hook you with false hope.

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