Sin & Forgiveness

[miaharun]

See Rhythm, "I hope you aren't counting on karma to purify your souls of misdeeds" you fail to see the analogy of karma. You will never be purified for what you have done. I never count on karma. I just know that if I do bad deeds , bad deeds will follow me and vise versa for good deeds. I don't see why this is more silly than thinking of a higher power to forgive you for a misdeed. The question is why should you be forgiven. This was my question is my first post. Let's say karma is all crap. But why should people get away with shit. Your an atheist I believe. You don't have what right and wrong. Instead you guess. You guess and check with your conscience and then act. But what if your not a good natured person. What if it's in your DNA to do misdeeds. You will guess who cares right ? Or count on what society says. Anyway peace :-) I got some answers for my question. It is always good to have another point of view

[The Grand Nudger]

See Rhythm, "I hope you aren't counting on karma to purify your souls of misdeeds" you fail to see the analogy of karma. You will never be purified for what you have done. I never count on karma. I just know that if I do bad deeds , bad deeds will follow me and vise versa for good deeds. I don't see why this is more silly than thinking of a higher power to forgive you for a misdeed. The question is why should you be forgiven. This was my question is my first post. Let's say karma is all crap. But why should people get away with shit. Your an atheist I believe. You don't have what right and wrong. Instead you guess. You guess and check with your conscience and then act. But what if your not a good natured person. What if it's in your DNA to do misdeeds. You will guess who cares right ? Or count on what society says. Anyway peace :-) I got some answers for my question. It is always good to have another point of view

Well, what you "know", then...is fantasy.  There is no force that causes good or bad, however we define either,  to accumulate upon themselves.  Evil can and does go unpunished, and good is very often unrewarded.  Personally, I don't think karma is any more silly than belief in redemptive higher power...it just isn't any less silly, and, truthfully, isn't all that different in the context of our discussion.  Both are means by which the same purported goal is said to be achieved.  Essentially, cosmic rendition laws.  

Why should people be forgiven?  IDK, should they?  For what?  Why should people get  away with shit...again, I don't know whether or not they should, but regardless of that, they do, and similarly regardless of whether or not people should be forgiven, they commonly are.  It's a mistake to think that the world operates along the lines of what should be, to you.  That, because people shouldn't be forgiven, or because they shouldn't be able to "get away with it" (as two examples)...that they won't.  That on the basis of this "should" some force or power convenes and is made manifest.  It's a mistake, but it's a mistake common to both the notion of karma offered here, and the notions of higher powers offered elsewhere.

My being an atheist doesn't prevent me from possessing concepts of right and wrong, nor does it make any concept I have a guess.  Personally, I rarely check my conscience before I act.  If I wasn't a good person, then I wouldn't be a good person.  If my DNA predisposed me towards criminality, if it were effective, then I suppose I'd be a criminal.  If I were a bad person, or a criminal...I think that the moral ramifications of this, that, and the other thing would be on my mind even less than they are now...which is already damned near never.  Mob morality isn't very compelling to me either.  My society seems to think that being an atheist, for example, is bad.  I probably don't agree with that, eh?

[miaharun]

@ Rhythm: Your a very knowledgable person sir. I never believed there was a higher power up there. Plus I have no need to find out how it all began. I live in the present and someday I'm going to die. However what bothers me the most if justice. If I was trying to do good all my life and a tragic incident happens. Say I was prisoned for having drugs in my car which I had no idea about. Or my partner gets raped. Sometime back there was an incident in a country where a gang of people pounced on a couple and raped the girl. The boy was tied to watch and then killed the girl. it was on TV. "IDK, should they? For what?" . I guess none of us knows unless something happens to us.

[Cecelia]

Some Christians believe that you have to actually seek forgiveness of those who you harm (which is why murder is considered by some to be unforgivable). They also believe you must give forgiveness of anyone who asks for it.

Matthew 6-14 for example:
"For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their sins, your father will not forgive your sins."

Mark 11-25:

"And when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive him so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins."

And of course Matthew 7:1-2:
"Judge not that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again."

Others believe that you have to repent, and regret your sins to receive forgiveness.

If anything about the Christian concept of forgiveness doesn't make sense, it's that God had to sacrifice himself to himself in order to forgive people of the laws that he created in the first place. But I guess "For god so loved the world he drowned nearly everybody," doesn't have the same ring to it.

Forgiveness and Karma aren't all that different really. Both are beliefs that there's some cosmic force that enforces consequences.

Let's take the iphone theft example.

A Christian would believe that the thief must repent, or will burn in hell for all eternity.
A Bhudist or a Hindu would believe the thief will be bitten by his actions in this life or the next
An Atheist would believe that the thief may go to jail, or he might just get away with it, but there's no evidence of some cosmic force that enforces consequences.

Atheists tend to rely more on empathy and reasoning for their morals. I wouldn't want someone to kill me, so I wouldn't kill someone. It's kind of like the golden rule, with a simple modification that requires reasoning. For example someone may not mind if a third party took naked pictures of them, but through reasoning they can understand someone might not want them taking pictures of them in their birthday suit.

[The Grand Nudger]

@ Rhythm: Your a very knowledgable person sir. I never believed there was a higher power up there. Plus I have no need to find out how it all began. I live in the present and someday I'm going to die.

Which might explain why those narratives don;t appeal to you.

However what bothers me the most if justice.

Which explains why this narrative of karma -does- appeal to you.  

If I was trying to do good all my life and a tragic incident happens. Say I was prisoned for having drugs in my car which I had no idea about. Or my partner gets raped. Sometime back there was an incident in a country where a gang of people pounced on a couple and raped the girl. The boy was tied to watch and then killed the girl. it was on TV. "IDK, should they? For what?" . I guess none of us knows unless something happens to us.

You didn't finish the question.....if you try to do good and then something terrible happens to you...what?  Something terrible will have happened to you.  That happens.  I'm not aware, for example, of any literature that indicates a higher rate of cancer for sinners...and a lower rate for saints.   I suppose that's unsatisfying, but so what, does the universe seek to satisfy you?  This is what we might call wish-thinking.  We might think it would be nice if bad people always got what they deserved™ - that even death couldn't stop their rightful comeuppance, or that a good life will be rewarded, or at least provide protection from harm.......but that's just us dreaming, wishing.

Let me ask you this..the girl who got raped...was that her karma catching up to her?

[robvalue]

@ Rhythm: Your a very knowledgable person sir. I never believed there was a higher power up there. Plus I have no need to find out how it all began. I live in the present and someday I'm going to die. However what bothers me the most if justice. If I was trying to do good all my life and a tragic incident happens. Say I was prisoned for having drugs in my car which I had no idea about. Or my partner gets raped. Sometime back there was an incident in a country where a gang of people pounced on a couple and raped the girl. The boy was tied to watch and then killed the girl. it was on TV. "IDK, should they? For what?" . I guess none of us knows unless something happens to us.

It sounds to me like you are assuming something to be true because you are uncomfortable with the consequences of it not being true.

[The Grand Nudger]

LOL, karma is sinister in it's own right.  The consequences, if true, make me uncomfortable.  How many dogs do I have to kick in previous lives to get myself raped?  Is that a thing?

[miaharun]

[quote='miaharun' pid='1095576' dateline='1445839190']
@ Rhythm: Your a very knowledgable person sir. I never believed there was a higher power up there. Plus I have no need to find out how it all began. I live in the present and someday I'm going to die.

Which might explain why those narratives don;t appeal to you.

However what bothers me the most if justice.

Which explains why this narrative of karma -does- appeal to you.  

Let me ask you this..the girl who got raped...was that her karma catching up to her?

Yes that is what I believe. What do you believe ?

[robvalue]

If you're reborn as a new life form, with no memory or any connection at all to the previous life you were, in what way are you still "you"? At most it seems like you'd keep the same reference number in an array. But everything else is totally different and unrelated.

I don't know why you'd want to believe that "gonna get raped" follows one person to another basically entirely new person with the same serial number. Luckily there is no evidence for this being the case, I don't even understand how it's supposed to work. The universe nudges a potential rapist? "Go on, she was a real bad person in her last life. Rape her." Unless there is some weird force actually influencing people's behaviour, then the concept makes no sense.

And then... because this guy was influenced to rape by this karma force, he should be held less responsible for doing it because he was under duress. Does karma make this allowance? For this karma to work, people would have to spend a lot of time under duress to mete out this weird form of justice. So how could their life then be judged fairly at the end, to give them a karma score? Karma ends up judging itself.

[The Grand Nudger]

Let me ask you this..the girl who got raped...was that her karma catching up to her?

Yes that is what I believe. What do you believe ?

That it takes a special kind of person to believe this.....and that regardless of it's truth either way, it's absolutely disgusting, and in no way remotely related to justice. How many dogs did she kick? What else can people do that pulls down a rape sentence from Karma? If the question instead is "why did she get raped" .............I think, that it might have had something to due with her proximity to rapists, rather than the existence of magical forces. Call me crazy, I know.

I guess, here, the question I have is this. If justice (or the lack thereof) is an integral part of both why karma appeals to you, and also how it operates..where does rape sentencing fit in?