But what about "karma"?

[Rev. M. Rodimer]

So, you don't believe in God, but you believe in "Karma"?

Karma requires an intelligence to record your deeds and respond with reward or punishment. Basically, you believe in a cosmic Santa Claus, who is keeping a list and checking it twice. More likely twice per second for each human, animal, bacterium, and plant.

Not only does this demonstrate that you cannot be an atheist, as you have "faith" in a supernatural agency, but your fear of or hope for karma demonstrates that so-called "atheists" like you only pretend to have morals; you are acting in search of reward or in avoidance of punishment. Oddly, this is the very same charge so-called atheists level at Christians.

What's Karma?

Here, I'll use a resource you'll respect: http://www.skepdic.com/karma.html

Karma is a law in Hinduism which maintains that every act done, no matter how insignificant, will eventually return to the doer with equal impact. Good will be returned with good; evil with evil. Since Hindus believe in reincarnation, karma knows no simple birth/death boundaries. If good or evil befall you, it is because of something you did in this or a previous lifetime.

Karma is sometimes referred to as a "moral law of cause and effect." Karma is both an encouragement to do good and to avoid evil, as well as an explanation for whatever good or evil befalls a person.

...

On one level, karma serves to explain why good things happen to bad people and bad things happen to good people. The injustices of the world, the seeming random distribution of good and evil, are only apparent. In reality, everybody is getting what he or she deserves. Even the child brutalized by drugged adults deserves the horror. The mentally ill, the retarded, the homosexuals, and the millions of Jews killed by the Nazis deserved it for evil they must have done in the past. The slave beaten to within a breath of death deserved it, if not for what he did today, then for what he did in some previous lifetime. Likewise for the rape victim. She is just getting what she deserves. All suffering is deserved, according to the law of karma.

So, according to your belief in Karma, you should never help the mentally ill, or Jews, or homosexuals, or the sick, or the poor. As the Skeptic's Dictionary plainly states, homosexuals are homosexual and the mentally ill are mentally ill because they did bad things in a prior life and are getting what they deserve. Toddlers dying of dysentery-induced diarrhea (basically, shitting themselves to death) because they lack clean water, or born addicted to crack or with AIDS or blinded by Mommy's gonorrhea infection deserve it, because of bad karma. They did something bad in a "prior life".

That's what you believe in.

Karma is also the foundation of the Hindu caste system. You are born to a caste, as the result of your "past lives". You can only rise to a higher caste by accepting "your place in life" and being a very good Untouchable, the lowest form of human, relegated to scrubbing toilets and hauling garbage no matter how intelligent or talented you might be. Are you an uppity Untouchable? You may be reborn as a dog! Are you an ill-tempered dog? Next time you may be a cockroach!

I hope you will be a very good cockroach, because the next step down may be dung beetle.

Karma is merely a method for social control; do you think it a coincidence that the Brahmins, the top of the caste pyramid, are the wealthiest and control the priesthood?

[BelieverInGod]

Re: But what about "karma"?

Amen Pastor....

I've always imagined it as "the Karma accountant in the sky" A big fat booda sitting on a cloud with an abacus keeping track of who stepped on a bug and who didn't.

[wait_what]

Re: But what about "karma"?

That was one of the best and most in depth explanations of karma I have ever seen. The belief in it is now evil to me for many new reasons. Thank you Reverend!

[Katander]

Re: But what about "karma"?

Karma is just another superstition

[BelieverInGod]

Re: But what about "karma"?

Karma is just another superstition

Yet how many "atheists" come onto our board and claim that "Karma's going to bite us in the butt".

Yes they explain that they believe in Karma, but Hippie Karma, not the real stuff (hmm...... sort of like the Christians who believe in Jesus, but Hippie Jesus, not the real Jesus). They seem to fail to understand that even for Hippie Karma to exist, there has to be a Karma accountant of some sort.

[Katander]

Re: But what about "karma"?

Yet how many "atheists" come onto our board and claim that "Karma's going to bite us in the butt".

Yes they explain that they believe in Karma, but Hippie Karma, not the real stuff (hmm...... sort of like the Christians who believe in Jesus, but Hippie Jesus, not the real Jesus). They seem to fail to understand that even for Hippie Karma to exist, there has to be a Karma accountant of some sort.

You are right.

But please remember that "atheist" only means the individual does not believe in a deity or deities. They may very well support some other strange ideas... IE Hippie Karma or UFO's.

[BelieverInGod]

Re: But what about "karma"?

You are right.

But please remember that "atheist" only means the individual does not believe in a deity or deities. They may very well support some other strange ideas... IE Hippie Karma or UFO's.

So it's okay for an atheist to say that God and Jesus are nothing more than super intelligent aliens who seeded this earth. They can claim to be atheists who believe in God?

Atheists can also believe everyone gets their own Karma accountant as long as they say it's an alien or some other creature?

Wow, I think I met your kind at hippie fests when I was a kid. They didn't call themselves atheists though and always smelled kind of "skunky".

[Katander]

Re: But what about "karma"?

You are right again!

We are playing around with the definition of words. An Atheist does not believe in god but could believe in elves...

An Atheist who is also a Skeptic and uses Critical Thinking (what I like to think I am) would be much less likely to be a Hippie Karma Dude

For more info check out: http://skepdic.com/intro.html. This is the same website Rev Rodimer referred to when he began this thread.

[Rev. M. Rodimer]

Re: But what about "karma"?

I am reminded of a wonderful discussion of karma at Real Bible Stories.

In part,

“Do you realize what that means, John? According to your belief in Karma, you should never help the mentally ill, or Jews, or the sick, or the poor. As the Skeptic’s Dictionary plainly states, the mentally ill are mentally ill because they did bad things in a prior life and are getting what they deserve. Toddlers dying of dysentery-induced diarrhea (basically, pooping themselves to death) because they lack clean water, or born addicted to crack or with AIDS or blinded by Mommy’s gonorrhea infection deserve it, because of bad karma. They did something bad in a ‘prior life’.

“That’s what you believe in, John. Does it sound hateful yet?”

“Well, it’s . . . I can see how . . . um . . .”

Shirlee wasn’t finished. “Did you know that karma is also the foundation of the Hindu caste system?”

“What’s a ‘cast system’?” asked Ginny.

[Pastor Ezekiel]

Re: But what about "karma"?

I'm always amazed when I hear self-proclaimed Christians attribute something happening to being caused by karma. I'm sure that when some say it, they're just using it as a phrase, kind of an, "I deserved that." But there are some false Christians I know that truly say they believe in karma. They believe that what goes around, comes around.

Karma is a direct contradiction of Christianity. There is no way you can accept the message of Jesus and also accept the idea of karma. Not only is it not compatible with Christian doctrine, but it's just plain illogical.

I'll start by really explaining what karma is defined as. When you really look at it, karma is just about cause and effect. If you do good things, good things will happen to you. If you do bad things, bad things will happen to you. When you apply this to the idea of reincarnation (the origin of the idea of karma), then a person that leads a good life will be reincarnated into a higher state of being, while a person that leads a bad life will be reincarnated into a lower state of being. The way you live your life causes you to either be rewarded or punished. Nothing could be further from God's Truth(c).

Whether or not you attribute karma to reincarnation, the idea of "what goes around comes around" is not at all compatible with Christianity. Christianity teaches that we all have done bad things, and we all richly deserve punishment. We can't atone for our misdeeds by trying to do good deeds. Salvation and eternal life (the reward) is only found through Christ. No person is more or less deserving of the reward. The only ones who end up in hellfire are those who reject Christ's offer.

True Christianity(tm) believes in grace, not karma. They are two completely contradictory ideas, and you cannot logically believe in both. Karma says you get the reward or punishment that you deserve. Grace says you get the reward even if you deserve the punishment, so long as you repent and get your sins washed away in Christ's blood. Karma is a concept taught by demon-worshiping hindoos, while Grace is taught by Jesus, who temporarily suffered and died on the cross for my sins.

So when you're giving your wife or children a good Christian beating, do so because you want to be gracious, like Christ, not because you want to rack up some "good karma" in hopes that you'll somehow benefit later down the road. Jesus sees through such cheap tricks.