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Die fröhliche Wissenschaft (Rob) - 01 August 2012 12:55 PM
And so? Does any of that make karma real?
You apparently don’t even know what kamma is, either definitionally or in theory. So why would you want to assert something you have little and or partial view in?
Interesting…
Define for me what “jaberwonky” is, and then I will endeavor to make up evidence for how it is really, real.
It has teeth that bite and claws that catch, and is different from the Jub Jub Bird and the Fumerious Bandersnatch.
Are you being factious or serious? The discussion was “it would be nice if there was a secular alternative to karma”. I gave a reply.
Are you asking me to explain the third law of motion in relationship to the thought of karma instead of just looking it up for yourself?
Or
Is there some other point you are trying to make here?
That actually wasn’t what I was looking for an alternative to. I was looking for an alternate venue for talking about emptiness. And more than just taking about it, that’s a waste of time if you never have the direct experience yourself. Secular meditation groups are an idea, but they don’t draw nearly as many people as Buddhist groups do. Even if they did I still think its good for people who are looking for religion or spirituality to encounter this so I think formal Buddhism is still a good thing even if it isn’t the form that I would choose. Though at the moment it is really the only choice, there are no secular meditation groups that I know of in my area.
Epaminondas - 14 August 2012 07:00 AM
The concept of’ Karma’ equals confirmation bias.
What goes around comes around, only if you cherry pick the evidence and remember the hits and forget the misses.
Not really what the Buddhist concept of karma is about, read my posts on the first two pages or the post of Burt’s that someone quoted, I don’t feel like explaining it again every time someone makes the same strawman argument.
[ Edited: 14 August 2012 08:08 PM by Matt Polofka ]
The concept of Karma is the straw man, and I have listened to burt the mystic for years here, so….you need not explain anything again.
Pure metaphysical flapdoodle, Karma and God, regardless of who is proposing them. Throw the Cosmic Consciousness idea in there as well.
A concept is a refinement from a collection of unrefined ideas (i.e. abstract thoughts and ideas). Concepts that in itself doesn’t hold any position unless it is, at the very least, being EXPRESSED by someone ideally with a proper WORKING DEFINITION as the initial point of assertion.
The Straw Man fallacy is committed when a person simply ignores a person’s actual position and substitutes a distorted, exaggerated or misrepresented version of that position. This sort of “reasoning” has the following pattern:
Person A has position X.
Person B presents position Y (which is a distorted version of X).
Person B attacks position Y.
Therefore X is false/incorrect/flawed.
This sort of “reasoning” is fallacious because attacking a distorted version of a position simply does not constitute an attack on the position itself. One might as well expect an attack on a poor drawing of a person to hurt the person.
Seems like you and a few others here have a habit of using ambiguous terms as a descriptor for your *cough* WOO-SHIT assertions for something you are totally oblivious to (hardly suprising), which makes it all the more so… flapdoodle. Doh!
Stitching ambiguous terms together and name droppings (like jana) in a sentence in hopes to impress the choir alone doesn’t help your argument any. Wait… WHAT ARGUMENT?!
Flushed…
Try better baiting skills since it seems that is the only thing you know how to. But hey, thanks for the strawman.
‘Could you please explain, in words that I can understand, how what I posted on the concept of karma is mystical, woo, flapdoodle or etc.’
burt, you believe in a priori or cosmic consciousness. That my friend is pure BS, and you know it. Only mystics believe in such flapdoodle. There is not one shred of evidence supporting that concept, and you know that as well.
What is the difference between cosmic consciousness, Karma, and/or some types of God?
At some point all of this metaphysical, quantum spirituality, cosmic consciousness stuff comes together in some similar form doesn’t it? It amounts to some type of guiding force in the universe with some purpose…....and we all know what that means in the end.
The concept of Karma is the straw man, and I have listened to burt the mystic for years here, so….you need not explain anything again.
Pure metaphysical flapdoodle, Karma and God, regardless of who is proposing them. Throw the Cosmic Consciousness idea in there as well.
A concept is a refinement from a collection of unrefined ideas (i.e. abstract thoughts and ideas). Concepts that in itself doesn’t hold any position unless it is, at the very least, being EXPRESSED by someone ideally with a proper WORKING DEFINITION as the initial point of assertion.
The Straw Man fallacy is committed when a person simply ignores a person’s actual position and substitutes a distorted, exaggerated or misrepresented version of that position. This sort of “reasoning” has the following pattern:
Person A has position X.
Person B presents position Y (which is a distorted version of X).
Person B attacks position Y.
Therefore X is false/incorrect/flawed.
This sort of “reasoning” is fallacious because attacking a distorted version of a position simply does not constitute an attack on the position itself. One might as well expect an attack on a poor drawing of a person to hurt the person.
Seems like you and a few others here have a habit of using ambiguous terms as a descriptor for your *cough* WOO-SHIT assertions for something you are totally oblivious to (hardly suprising), which makes it all the more so… flapdoodle. Doh!
Stitching ambiguous terms together and name droppings (like jana) in a sentence in hopes to impress the choir alone doesn’t help your argument any. Wait… WHAT ARGUMENT?!
Flushed…
Well done!
Try better baiting skills since it seems that is the only thing you know how to. But hey, thanks for the strawman.
From my informal observations of the world, I see no relationship between virtue and any kind of reward for that behavior. Rain falls on the just and the unjust alike. Sometimes the virtuous suffer more than the ignoble. The kindest person I ever knew went nuts every two years and got tossed into the mental ward, where she was occasionally raped. I explained to her that virtue was its own reward, but she disagreed with me and killed herself. Maybe I should have explained reincarnation, so she would have been more resigned to her lot in life.
That’s one of the big problems with doing good. The gains from particular instances of not doing good are generally far more obvious.
I’ve been working for a long time on a secular justification for doing good. It seems to me that it requires both a sense of oneself as an exemplar to others, quite independent of any intention to be, and a sense of the worth of others as a fulfillment of one’s own worth. Obviously, I’ve got a lot of work yet to do. Nonetheless, the key element is some kind of faith, or at least suspended disbelief, that fallible humans will manage to become gradually less fallible.
I’ve been working for a long time on a secular justification for doing good.
You don’t think, as a general rule, that if you are nice to other people it is more likely that they will be nice to you, and that if you are a jerk to other people it is more likely that they will be jerks to you? Isn’t that our common experience, for the most part? Isn’t that enough of a secular reason for doing good?
I’ve been working for a long time on a secular justification for doing good.
You don’t think, as a general rule, that if you are nice to other people it is more likely that they will be nice to you, and that if you are a jerk to other people it is more likely that they will be jerks to you? Isn’t that our common experience, for the most part? Isn’t that enough of a secular reason for doing good?
I’ve posted this before, but what the hell: A Sufi tale:
A poor shopkeeper needed permission from the city where he lived to carry out some work or other on his shop. An exception to a local ordinance was required. He petitioned the Mayor. The Mayor was a very proud man, a social snob who felt that he didn’t need to respond to such types so he ignored the petition. The shopkeeper sent a second request, and then a third with the same result. Finally, in his fourth request he added the sentence “If you need a reference for me you may request one from the Governor as he is under an obligation to me.” Reading this, the Mayor, wishing to curry favor with the Governor he quickly satisfied the shopkeepers requirements. Later, at an official banquet attended by the Governor, the Mayor spoke to him, mentioning how he had helped the man out. He continued, wondering how it could be that such an important person as the Governor could ever have come to be under an obligation to a mere shopkeeper. The Governor replied: “I’ve never heard of this person before tonight, but I am under an obligation to him because he is a human being.”
With Karma you have an all knowing universe that distributes experiences in a ethical way based on how you behave. Everything that is happening to us right now is ethical considering our past lives and everything that happens in the future is ethical considering everything in this life. Just like everything God decides is ethical with respect to whatever is considered in those contexts. With Karma, God is the unassailable laws of the cosmos, perfect. Unlike Karma however God encompasses the concept of grace, or perhaps the easiest way through the Karmic mess, which is perhaps why God is much more popular than Karma. I find alot in common with the two though.
Karma is natural, it is an act in doing, There is no mysticism, it has nothing to do about a god, or all knowing anything. It is an observation that people who take the time to notice, see in people that in their acts of doing something, what they do effects there environment around them. . When you do good the end result of doing good, the action in it has a direct effect or indirect effect or could have no real effect. And when you do bad the end result of doing bad, the action in it could have a direct effect or an indirect effect or it too could have no real effect. There is no guarantee, because there could be other karmic forces at play, and usaly are. Life is not simple. People who take the time to observe, realize that, what you do, what you say, and how you act can have bad or good consequences on others, and sometimes come back to bite you. You end suffering,( I would rather use the word dukkha instead of suffering, but its a complicated word). by trying to give rise to good karmic actions rather than bad.
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