--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb <no_reply@...> wrote: > > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "PaliGap" <compost1uk@> wrote: > > > > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "Robert" <babajii_99@> wrote: > > > > > > Karma is not a notion of any particular movement or religion... > > > > > > It is a spiritual notion and a fact of physics... > > > > But by most accounts, it's inscrutable. > > > > So why claim knowledge of the unknowable? > > Exactly. > > It's not even a "fact of physics." It's a theory, a > belief. People who believe in karma have *related* it > metaphorically to the laws of thermodynamics, as in > "for every action there is an equal and opposite > reaction," but that's just a metaphor. Cause and > effect in a limited physics sense can be proven; > cause and effect in terms of human action/reaction > and "karma" never can.
I would prefer to put this differently. I would have thought that there is no difference whatsoever between cause and effect for every day widgets and "cause and effect in terms of human action/reaction". But I think us karma believers typically add an extra dimension to the austere and blind "laws of thermodynamics": the moral dimension. So there becomes a qualitative (or "moral") measure to the action/reaction principle. That's an act of faith of course and goes way beyond physics. But nothing wrong in that per se? > What's going on when people try to say that they > "know" that some disaster was "caused" by something > or other is really, "I want you to believe that I > 'know' when in fact all I'm doing is projecting > my dislike of or hatred of someone onto them, and > claiming that God or Nature or 'karma' feels the > same way I do." It's bullshit, and I stand by my > first word, sick bullshit. Rather harsh! I see it more as a logical issue. The proposition "bad things happen to you if you do bad things" might be true. But from that, the proposition "if bad things happen to you, you've done bad things" doesn't follow. In fact my own belief is (probably) that the first proposition is true, and the second is false.
