PAGE-4: Is God To Blame? related to moral, hinduism, kamma, christian

kasm

Aug 17 2005, 12:15 AM

QUOTE(moonwitch @ Aug 8 2005, 06:17 PM)

Ok, how can Jesus win a war when he's not even born? Because before the creation of what we call Earth, there was no Jesus. Because he was born in the year 0AD. There were maaaaany millions of years before that, before his birth.
.....
I as a young child was abused well into my adolescent life, I don't blame "satan", nor do I blame a deity, I blame the one who did it, my dad.

I only want commet on the above points:
1. You were replying to

QUOTE

In the beginning, before creation, there was a war in heaven where satan took a third of th angels and fought Jesus. Jesus won.

In fact who mentioned that is a believer in the Bible and Jesus. Christians believe that Jesus incarnated as a man about 2000 years ago but He is one of the Trinty "the Son" or the "Word" who was from the beginning. See The Bible John [1:1]

QUOTE

The Bible :John 1
1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 The same was in the beginning with God. 3 All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.

2. I agree with you that the abuser [if he did it ] who is to blame and be accountable in the judgement in the life after death as the relegions believes and my ancesstor the Ancient Egyptian too [Even though I am Australian but I am Copt i.e the abroginal of Egypt before the Arabs] .

Brionne

Aug 17 2005, 05:52 AM

I think we're the ones who cause the pain to ourselves...

wild20

Aug 17 2005, 06:18 AM

But Biscuit, you fail to realize that the subject we have now jumped to, is needed to clarify things. I think I have given good evidence that
Jesus is in fact Michael. If there are any more objections, then fine, otherwise, let us carry on with the normal debate. You guys are bringing up good points that we are the cause of our evil nature. But it DID originate somewhere and that is what the debate is about. The debate here is to help people realize that God's name is cleared from the list and that He is fair. He always will be fair. And further more, He cannot be proven unfair. As a Christian, we know that God is a loving God. He gives us the freedom of choice. Again. If you look at the world, you wonder how there can even be a God that cares. But look at God, and you will wonder how there can't be a God that cares. Thanks guys for debating. We continue if you like.

biscuitrat

Aug 17 2005, 01:58 PM

QUOTE(wild20 @ Aug 17 2005, 12:18 AM)

Evil is not one of forces that was created with the beginning of the world. As a evolutionist, I can't believe that good and evil were there from the beginning. I believe it originates from your heredity and your environment. If you're exposed to violence from an early age, you can choose to reciprocate it or avoid it depending on your experiences with it. You act because of what you know, not because an evil force is guiding you. It's the same with several other "sins".

SharpShooter22

Aug 17 2005, 03:02 PM

God is Great I love god i dont blame him for anything that has happened he lets us make our choices and our ways of life but when it is his time to help i think he will but he only helps we its the right time to help.But no one should blame god for anything.

Joshua

Aug 17 2005, 03:28 PM

QUOTE(biscuitrat @ Aug 16 2005, 06:50 PM)

But see, the whole aspect of throwing your blame into a figure that may or may not exist is lame to me. Why wouldn't you believe that it's your fault that you...say...lied, cheated, and stole from/to other people? Technically, regardless of who put you up to it, it was you that did the act. Therefore you should be held for punishment, not God or Satan, Babe Ruth, or a yeti. You always have some limited control over yourself in the form of common sense and morals - not only Christian morals.

And for all of you guys: This post isn't about where Jesus came from (and the whole "he is always here watching us" thing is kind of creepy) or what he did on earth. It isn't even about Jesus. It's about God, and not only a Christian God, although all our debates seem to lean that way. So ease up on that aspect of it. I'd like to hear more about it from other religions - I know that Hinduism preaches for you to do your dharma (duty) from birth to death, to be a good person to others, and to devote your life to good deeds. It'd be interesting for once to have more than an atheist/Christian P.O.V on this.

And yet what you are implicitly denying is that there is an ultimate moral law. If such things as lying, cheating, stealing, etc... are wrong, then there must be an ultimate moral law that makes such things wrong.

I am saying that we are all utterly at fault for our actions, and not only that, we deserve to die an eternal death for them. The difference doesn't lie in being any less guilty, it lies in having your punishment paid for you.

There are some problems implicit in the very basics of Hinduism and Buddhism concerning payments for past lives. For one thing, what sins were you paying for in your first life to determine from whence you started? And if life is cyclical and the reincarnations have no beginning, why is there an end? The utter nirvana according to it is complete desirelessness, so then is there not even the desire to see evil ended?

Ravi Zecharias mentions in his book Jesus Among Other Gods on page 122:

QUOTE

The incredible aspect of this teaching is that the more painful one's existence, the more certain that the previous life is successfully paying its dues. So that when one picks up the body of a little child, deformed from birth, kamma is in operation. One might not wish to admit this, but that is the existential reality of this teaching.
Some years ago, I was told of a group of missionaries and their families who had been killed in a bus accident near a village in a Buddhist country. Within minutes, the bus was ransacked and the bodies pillaged for loot. The reason-those who died were only receiving their kamma, and there is nothing wrong in taking what is left from one who is paying his or her dues.
If every life is a payment for a previous life, one also wonders why Buddha was so reluctant to allow women into the sacred order and decreed that the rules for governing them be far greater. In fact, even a woman who had been in the order for years owed greater reverence to a man who was just an initiate. If kamma is in operation, why were these rules superimposed, assuming a virtue of higher order placed upon some? Unless of course, a woman, by virtue of being a woman, inherited a greater kamma.
What becomes evident is that the pantheistic ship comes apart on the reef of evil. One cannot affirm the absence of a self while individualizing nirvana, and one cannot talk about the cessation of suffering without also giving the origin of the first wrong thought. Buddhism has an intricate set of rules and regulations because it needs them. As a nontheistic path, it is a road strewn with kamma. It recognizes evil and then, fatalistically, shuts its eyes to it, seeking escape.

Here's some more on Hinduism specifically from page 119-120:

QUOTE

As I have stated, pantheistic religions have attempted extensive answers, and sometimes those answers are terribly confusing. The difficulty with Hinduism is that it has no monolithic answer to the problem of suffering. By declaring everything in the physical world to be nonreal, illusory, changing, transitory, it ends up with philosophical problems beyond measure. And, of course, one is compelled to ask, What has brought on this "illusion" of evil, if everything is part and parcel of the divine reality? They do try to answer that.
There is a classic passage in the Bhagavad-Gita in which Krishna counsels young Arijuna, who is on the battlefield, facing the possibility of killing his own half brothers. He struggles and cannot bring himself to do this. Krishna, comes as his chariot-driver, talks to him about his duty. This was his duty, to fulfil his caste's responsibility as a warrior. This is the way life moves on. But he told Arijuna not to fear to do his duty, for all good and evil are fused in the ultimate reality, Brahman. In Brahman, says Krishna, the distinction breaks down. That which appears evil is only the lesser reality. In the end, all life, all good, all evil, flow from God and back to Him or it. "Go to war and do your job." This convergence of everything into one absolute reality forms the hub of the answer to the question behind the question. One can see how a sense of fatalism dominates when all reality is inexorably and inevitably unfolding.
There is a humorous story told of India's leading philosopher, Shankara. He had just finished lecturing the king on the deception of the mind and its delusion of material reality. The next day, the king let loose an elephant that went on a rampage, and Shankara ran up a tree to find safety. When the king asked him why he ran if the elephant was nonreal, Shankara, not to be outdone, said, "What if the king actually saw was a nonreal me, climbing up a nonreal tree!" One might add, "That is a nonreal answer."
While these are seen as fables, there is no way for classical Hinduism to deal with the problem of evil. To deny that evil is real does not diminish wickedness, nor does it daunt the heart's desire to seek purity. So much of Hindu worship is steeped in purification rites. That is why the entire corpus of popular Hinduism is filled with the forms of worship, fear of punishment, means of obtaining God's favor, etc.
But why are these hungers themselves seen as real? In fact, one of Hinduism's strongest criticisms of Christianity and the reason given for refusing its validity is the Hindu's reference to the days of the British Raj and to the evil of the exploitation of the subjugated. One cannot have it both ways; evil cannot be both illusory and concrete.
Hinduism explains this perception of evil as induced by ignorance. But that only pushes the question one step further. If all is one, and plurality is an illusion born out of ignorance, then who is the source of the ignorance but the one? And if the one is the source of the ignorance, then the impersonal absolute in the one is an absolute that lacks true knowledge.

Well, there's your opportunity to start talking about Hinduism

Now what are your thoughts on it?

biscuitrat

Aug 17 2005, 06:00 PM

But there's no excuse for doing evil deeds or unlawful deeds. The laws I follow are my own morals, my common sense, and my country's laws. Well, most of them anyway. And Zacharias talks about "kamma". This is incorrect - it should be karma, probably.

A brahmin is the ultimate caste because they are humble, they do good deeds, and they're content with themselves. My family has been brahmin for as long as I can remember - however, this doesn't influence me in any way. It's part of who I am, and I can't change that. What I can change is what I'll do tomorrow. There's this really annoying person in my Latin class. Should I truly tell him he doesn't have any real friends and that most of the people that know him talk to him out of sympathy? Who would say such a thing? It's merely common sense acting and telling you what is good and what is bad. For example, if you're taking a test and you don't know the answer, but the person next to you has left their paper uncovered, would you look if you knew you weren't going to get caught? Most people would say "no" because they feel they have the dignity and the self-control to be able to take care of themselves without anyone telling them that their sins "are someone else's".

Those are my primary reasons for not believing evil is something that's created. It's merely a state of being, not an aura. Being psychotic, being hellbent on something, or being told to do something by a higher power (could also be a government thing) are things we exclude from our definition of evil because they can't help themselves. Or can they?

In the state of mental patients, doing simple chores is hard enough. But what about thinking (easily one of the harder functions of the nervous system)? There's so much gray matter and areas we don't even know about. And yet they affect our senses in so many ways. Take Andrea Yates for example - she believed her children were heathens, and the "Devil" told her to drown them. She lived close to where I live now, so I heard more than my share about it. Yet, she was in trauma mentally. Regardless of the fact that she was a Christian, that was a violent sin and a brutal story. Yet she couldn't help it - her mind clouded her judgement and because of the stress on it, she committed the crime. And she was no stranger to death.

I'll conclude it here. It's your mind, not anyone else's. Be strong and stand up for yourself - if you did a crime, let people know that it was you and no one else. Not God, not the Devil, not any form of creature can enter your brain and tell you how to live your life. What happens to you happens to you alone because of your actions. 'nuff said, it's your fault so confess it.

Joshua

Aug 17 2005, 06:49 PM

CODE

That's right, it's never right to do evil, no matter what good may come of it, Romans 3:8 makes that quite clear. We all deserve eternal punishment in the Lake of Fire. God cannot condone evil. Someone has to pay the penalty for it. God does NOT waffle on sin. However, out of love for us He has given us a chance to have Him pay that penalty on our behalf. This is the Gospel message. Furthermore, we are NOT the same people we were before accepting that payment, for He makes us new people, as Christ says in John 3:7, we are born again. We are changed that so we live to obey God rather then ourselves. Maybe this is where the misunderstanding is occurring? The problem with following the rules of men is what if you're a person like Jeffrey Dahmer who thinks evil persions are perfectly right, moral, and follow common sense? Who are you then to tell him he's not living right? A country's laws may involve you getting sent to prison for 20 years like some have in our court systems. There have been men on the death penalty who've lost years of their lives for no reason, is that ok? What I'm saying is there has to be a higher standard by which to judge what is right and what is wrong.

In Hinduism it's called, Karma, in Buddhism it's Kamma, and Zecharias addresses that:

QUOTE

Buddhism also invokes the doctrine of karma and reincarnation. The opening lines of the Buddhist scriptures say that every individual is the sum total of what he or she thought in his or her past life. One of the collections of Buddha's discourses is called the Anguttara Nikaya. Here are some thoughts:

QUOTE

My thoughts [past and present actions] is my only property, kamma is my only heritage, kamma is the only cause of my being, kamma is my only kin, my only protection. Whatever actions I do, good or bad, I shall become the heir.9

(Take note that the Pali language of the Buddhist scriptures has a different sound to some words that have become common in English from Hinduism. Kamma, for example, carries the meaning of karma.)

CODE

A brahmin is the ultimate caste because they are humble, they do good deeds, and they're content with themselves. My family has been brahmin for as long as I can remember - however, this doesn't influence me in any way. It's part of who I am, and I can't change that. What I can change is what I'll do tomorrow. There's this really annoying person in my Latin class. Should I truly tell him he doesn't have any real friends and that most of the people that know him talk to him out of sympathy? Who would say such a thing? It's merely common sense acting and telling you what is good and what is bad. For example, if you're taking a test and you don't know the answer, but the person next to you has left their paper uncovered, would you look if you knew you weren't going to get caught? Most people would say "no" because they feel they have the dignity and the self-control to be able to take care of themselves without anyone telling them that their sins "are someone else's".

And it doesn't bother you that people are considered to have less rights and be of a lower caste with less worth then you simply because they were born poor? That's the way they teach it over in India. The poor are expected to carry the weight of society simply because of the circumstances of their birth. This then is explained as them being born poor in this life because of sins in the past life.

Hinduism teaches that ultimately there is no good or evil but that the two meet in Brahmin, I already posted what Zecharias had to say on the issue earlier. The views of Buddhism and Hinduism involve what to me seems a very depressing root of their beliefs. You just keep trying to live better and live better through each life until ultimately you get good enough to just disappear

Pretty fatalistic... and depressing.

I don't recall ever saying that Christianity involved saying the sins are someone else's, we're responsible for them, and unless we accept Christ's payment on the cross for them, we will be justly punished by God for those sins.

CODE

Those are my primary reasons for not believing evil is something that's created. It's merely a state of being, not an aura. Being psychotic, being hellbent on something, or being told to do something by a higher power (could also be a government thing) are things we exclude from our definition of evil because they can't help themselves. Or can they?

You know what that is effectively relating to? Atheism

You'll notice the mention of "dancing to one's DNA" where atheism says everyone is just following their own special path and there is no ultimate good or evil. Here Zecharias quotes Richard Dawkins of Oxford, one of atheism's champions, on page 113:

QUOTE

In a universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won't find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe we observe has precisely no design, no purpose, no evil, and no other good. Nothing but blind, pitiliess indifference. DNA neither knows nor cares. DNA just is. And we dance to its music.5

QUOTE

Do you see what happened? The skeptic started by presenting a long list of horrific things, saying, "These are immoral, therefore there is no God." But to raise these issues as moral issues is to assume a state of affairs that evolution cannot afford. There is just one way to arrive at a morally compelling ought, given the assumptions of naturalism. What then does the skeptic do? He denies objective moral values because to accept such a reality would be to allow for the possibility of God's existence. He concludes that there really isn't such a thing as evil after all.
This is supposed to be an answer? If DNA neither knows nor cares, what is it that prompts our knowing and our caring? Are we just embodied computers, overvaluing our senses? If our feeling have no bearing at all on the reality of this question then maybe ours is the artificial intelligence and the computer's is the intelligent one, for it has no feeling; it has only information. Computers do not "care" and do not "grieve over evil," and are, therefore, closer to reality.
Is this what we have come to? We must be warned that there are no brakes on this slippery slope once we step onto it. The denial of an objective moral law, based on the compulsion to deny the existence of God, results ultimately in the denial of evil itself. Can you imagine telling a raped woman that the rapist merely danced to his DNA? Tell the father of young Adam Triplett that he is merely dancing to his DNA. Tell the victims of Auschwitz that their tormentors merely danced to their DNA, and tell the loved ones of those cannibalized by Jeffrey Dahmer that he merely danced to his DNA. So dance along!
How repugnant! This is not a dance! This is the escapist's foot on the throat of reason, grasping for rationality while denying the logical points of reference exist. In effect, while seeking an answer to the question of evil, he ends up denying the question. In fact, I put this theory to the test with some students at Oxford University. I asked a group of skeptics if I took a baby and sliced it to pieces before them, would I have done anything wrong? They had just denied that objective morals exist. At my question, there was silence, and then the lead voice in the group said, "I would not like it, but no, I could not say that you have done anything wrong." My! What an aesthete. He would not like it. My! What rationality-he could not brand it wrong. I only had to ask him what then remains of the original question, if evil is denied?

CODE

In the state of mental patients, doing simple chores is hard enough. But what about thinking (easily one of the harder functions of the nervous system)? There's so much gray matter and areas we don't even know about. And yet they affect our senses in so many ways. Take Andrea Yates for example - she believed her children were heathens, and the "Devil" told her to drown them. She lived close to where I live now, so I heard more than my share about it. Yet, she was in trauma mentally. Regardless of the fact that she was a Christian, that was a violent sin and a brutal story. Yet she couldn't help it - her mind clouded her judgement and because of the stress on it, she committed the crime. And she was no stranger to death.

But what I think you're missing is that simply claiming to be a Christian doesn't make you one nor put you under God's protection as one of His children. Christ said we'll know His disciples by their love for others, and I have often proved, love does not harm others. Therefore those who harm others are not logically Christians.

CODE

I'll conclude it here. It's your mind, not anyone else's. Be strong and stand up for yourself - if you did a crime, let people know that it was you and no one else. Not God, not the Devil, not any form of creature can enter your brain and tell you how to live your life. What happens to you happens to you alone because of your actions. 'nuff said, it's your fault so confess it.

So first you say there's no such thing as evil and then you say to take responsibility for what evil you do? You can't have it both ways, evil can't be both illusory and concrete, which is it?

The Bible says that the only way to Christ and eternal life is BY confessing you are wrong and in need of salvation. The first step is to admit that noone but you is responsible and that God alone can save you.

You're not far from the kingdom of Heaven.

wild20

Aug 17 2005, 06:55 PM

Okay Biscuit, lets turn the tables. Please explain to me why humans were devoloped with a natural sense of right and wrong, and no other animals have it. When we do something wrong, we know we have done it. No other animals does. A ability to know right and wrong is not learned. Scientists agree. It is a "pre-programed" ability. And let me ask you another thing. Where did the organsm that we are all from come from? This will help sort things out. Thanks!

biscuitrat

Aug 17 2005, 07:47 PM

QUOTE(Joshua @ Aug 17 2005, 12:49 PM)

Ugh. I would never be a Christian because I'm too fond of my religion's freedom of movement and thought. Just because the Bible says that all who do not accept God are heathens and sinners doesn't mean I want to plummet to an age without such freedoms of religion and love to accept a religion I question. When I die, I'll go somewhere I can respect, somewhere I deserve, be it hell or a Hindu's heaven, I'll be content because I lived my life the way I wanted to, without fear and with constant pursuit of knowledge and understanding. I've yelled at everyone that's come to my door because they have the indecency to try and convert me against my will, as if I'm some form of animal that's begging to be trapped, tamed, and shown around the world. There is a right way, morally, of doing things, and there's the wrong way. But I've discovered there's a Christian way as well that recalls the Bible in every aspect of life - I could never entrust the morals of my life to a book. Ever.

About evil, now. There's no such thing as a full-fledged evil force. Evil, as an adjective, describes something malicious, foul, or horrible by any stretch of the imagination. It's illusory, just as good is.

I never appreciated the caste system because of the status of the "untouchables" and the poor. There are many such people in India and in helping a few with food or clothing (we gave them my old clothes and some of my old toys), you can help heal yourself. Life is full of changes and choices, and within cultures, these things are either more hidden or more open.

QUOTE

Hinduism teaches that ultimately there is no good or evil but that the two meet in Brahmin.

Brahmin is a caste, not a place.

I also don't believe that everyone should be forced to be punished for an eternity for choices they could have corrected in the present. That logic is just too harsh. That's why I like to think there is a reincarnation spiritually, so you can correct those errors before you progress to a heaven, cleansed. Damning a person to a lake of fire forever isn't my idea of a fair option.

@Wild - Animals have this too. Dogs and cats and several other pets can sense emotional changes in their masters. They have an innate ability to know that something isn't going as it should, and they provide an emotional pillow for us. As an aspiring vet, I have no idea what causes this or how it comes to be, but it's something I've wanted to research. After all, regardless of the fact that they're animals (as we are), who's to say they can't know what is right and what is wrong?

I'm going to assume this is part of imprinting. When a child is young, they are educated on what is right and what is wrong. Therefore, they know that if they do something bad, they will be punished and with enough punishments behind them, they'll resolve to avoid that bad part. It would have to be the same way with animals. When I trained my dog, I had to make sure she kept focus on me as a child would to its parent. Gradually both child and puppy would learn the right and wrong way of doing something and accept a reward for it. For a puppy, it would probably be a small treat, but for a child, it's the realization that what they did made someone happy or pleased - this is a positive response that they will want to reciprocate.

That's my logic for now.

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Is God To Blame? - Who is to blame for the pain around us?

Is God To Blame? - Who is to blame for the pain around us?