"As you sow so shall you reap" This is the Law of Karma.

This is what I assumed you would mean, but if its some cosmic thing unique to you well thats fine.

Its still pretty much no different than any other unprovable, untestable, unmeasurable belief.

You speak your Dharma, I'll speak mine.

Most people misinterpret karma. Pop culture is to blame.

It generally means the net effect of your words and actions.

Dharma involves the words and actions that work to undo the negative outcomes of karmic actions. It is not a cosmic thing out to get anyone. It is not a substitute for the Will of God. It is basically a reference to the negative outcomes that effect ourselves and others. There is nothing magical or mystical about it. Psychology can describe it.

I think you are oversimplifying, and it also ties into reincarnation which gets right back to mumojumbo territory.

I personally LIKE the concept better, but I also like Christianity over Islam, that doesn't mean its real.

Oh my god!
Four bingos agree,
and knowing:

Personal morals
Come a lot more from within
Than from the outside.

Oversimplification is often a side effect of Internet forums, but you are correct. Reincarnation does come into play. You consider it [Karma and reincarnation?] mumbo jumbo. Do you mean to say that it is meaningless?

Yes, both are mumbojumbo.

Reincarnation is just another afterlife, and equally unprovable and untestable.

Karma is trying to find some sort of other explanation for why we act as we do, it sounds nice and generally fuzzy, far less dogmatic than Western religions, but its still just another why doing good is better than doing evil.

bingo!

...sorry, I couldn't help myself :)

in an ethical context, it doesnt matter if reincarnation (or eternal return, which is nietzsche's transposition of the idea) happens in fact or not--it can be seen just as easily as a regulative idea. like most regulative ideas. reincarnation/karma (which seem linked to me) is about retribution, but it requires no dad-like god person to carry it out. you do it to yourselves.

if an ethical system is built around regulative notions, it seems to me irrelevant whether they are testable or not.

i'm agnostic and i definately have my own moral code. however, i am fully aware that, as with many other things about myself, that has been shaped by how i was brought up and seeing as how i was raised catholic, it's had it impact on it even if i reject the main premises of that religion.

Hmm. My take on reincarnation was this,

- will you remember your past life (apprently not)
- will you have a similar body (apparently not)
- will you have a similar personality (hmm maybe?)

So it seems to me, that if I am reincarnated.... well heck. I don't care. I may as well come back as a bug. It'd be a different creature the way I see it.

OK, y'all win. Are you happy?

More importantly, was that your goal?

huh. well, if that's a serious question then what seems at issue here is whether you understand human beings as capable of self-regulation/self-limitation.
positing the requirement for some Eternal Set of Norms implies that you dont think we can regulate or limit ourselves.
this is a political problem.
this is a conceptual problem.

This is a human problem.

Why do we wonder
About what's right and what's wrong?
Because we are go(o)d.

My whole idea on life is to just live it well. I have one shot at it, then I'm buried & done for. For me, this means being successful by choice. I have no fear of a hell, and Earth is my "Heaven". If this means working my ass off untill I am 50, and then living great till I die, then so be it. I kind of have an idea of revenge. I am nice to everyone except the man whom isn't nice to me. I judge myself, and often have what many people would consider "low moral standards" I work hard so that I can make it to the top. I won't push anyone off the ladder, but I will pass them in a heartbeat; its all about my one shot at life, and I am not about to screw it up.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not a complete arsehole, I am a pretty nice fellow, and I do help people, Its just that in the big picture, myself comes first, and if I have something left over to help someone else, they can have that.

I do not think that one must have a religion to create morality. Philosophers and thinkers like Immanuel Kant and John Rawls logically deduced how one can logically develop a moral system. Kant's categorical imperative and universalization of maxims leads one to find the same morals we value. Universalization is roughly: If two people are A and B, it must be possible that both A and B are allowed to do the same things, regardless of who or what A and B are to be a universal maxim.

This is like Rawls' "Veil of Ignorance" where the only way to create a just society is to let everyone be selfish, so long as they are incapable of distinguishing who they are. Simplified idea of this: you are to slice up a cake without knowing when you are to get your piece. If you make a larger slice for yourself there is every possible chance that someone else can take it before you. Therefore, you must not make the pieces uneven but make each piece the same size in order for you to get the biggest piece possible.

My personal ideal: one's will ought not interfere with another person's will, this is a positive (good) will. This is terribly simplistic and I can poke holes at it all ready but that is the basic way to say it. It is based on the idea of positive and negative connections one can make with people and things. Positive connections need not be good things, and negative connections need not be bad things. The goal is to make positive connections as one is enriched by the positive connections in one's life, to my understanding. Even bad things suffered can in a way be positive for one if one learns from it or takes the right messages.

This is not true. That is to say that it is not NECESSARY.

Social laws (combined with sound, social policies) are sufficient enough to inspire the vast majority of any country's citizenry.

I know that I often drop the anvil on America but the truth is that the U.S. has the social laws WITHOUT any social-political example with which to inspire its' people. Therefore, your question is a pertinent and just one.

Dawkin's has interesting things to say on this topic. I must say I havnt come up with or encountered an adequate rebuttal to what he says, at least not to my satisfaction.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=uwz6B8BFkb4
His position is we have a shifting "moral zeitgeist". The religious end up cherry picking morals out of their chosen scripture, and discarding the rest in accordance with the current moral standards of humanity. As it shifts, so will the morality of the religious. They will discard previous chapters or verses in their scriptures which no longer mesh well with the current state of the "moral zeitgeist". To the religious person, this just seems like they are evolving in their understanding of the meaning of the text, but it is really the "moral zeitgeist" shifting. The religious then moves along with, albeit sometimes more slowly.

I think most Christians of days gone by, would probably look at the christian youth of today and proclaim that they are going straight to hell.. based on nothing but the types of clothes they wear and music that they listen too: even if it would be considered conservative by todays standards.

So, no... You dont need religion to be moral. Morality is determined more by social pressures. Religion gets ITS morals from the same social pressures, and from the people who comprise it.

Yes. But that applies in the context of social example from the top down. This is what I was trying to say about the social-political example.

There exist a whole lot of very poor people in the U.S. for example, with no way out of their delemna. Not an honest, law-abiding way, that is. These people see the filthy rich and want to know ... "WHY"? The majority of these people come to the conclusion that there is no moral obligation to follow, hence anything goes. It's no wonder that when the police catch thieves (and tell them "crime doesn't pay") the bad guy goes off to jail wondering that if crime doesn't pay, what does? What does morality mean to people who are destitute, living within the gaze of millionaires?

Capitalism? You can have it.

"I will not hurt you
if you'll only not hurt me"
is still culpable.

Maybe we're evil;
I like to believe we are not.
I try to be good.

I feel vibrations
from my universe and phone
and have no answers.

Nagdeo...That was beautiful OCM...

I will put that on my refrigerator if thats ok with you.

/ end of side note... no disrespect intended to the thread.

I think the turtle that ferried the scorpion across the river, and the scorpion for that matter, would have something to say about that. Sometimes the that story I am alluding to is told with a fox, sometimes a wolf, I heard it as a turtle. It all depends on which elder told it to you or what Star Trek episode you happened to watch.


Like Fast Forward said, good and evil are subjective to points of view. In my philosophy good and evil are very subjective terms. Willing connection is the real definition for positive and negative influence on another. Example: your lover is a masochist. Is causing your lover pain wrong if s/he willingly wants it? Yet that same connection is wrong to another person that does not enjoy pain. The only real judgment is by willing connection.


I like this one. Are you getting these from somewhere, or are you making them up?

How interesting.
Augi wants to play with me!
I'm making them up.

Ask anybody.
You cannot google these things,
they are only here.

May we play some more?
Search "all posts" and then decide.
I welcome input.

Forgive me from editing your post...I have tried NOT to take anything out of context.

However, the facts show that you are WRONG.

See link: http://www.generousgiving.org/page.asp?sec=4&page=161

"16. Low Percent Gives High Percent: Religious observers (only 38 percent of all Americans) give two-thirds of all charitable dollars in the United States. (The Gallup Organization)"

I'm not doing the math, but you can figure it out for yourself.

I think we have created societies to a point that the need for religion as a moral compass is moot. The main point of religion since its invention has been hope. Social morality came as a by product of the invention and has stuck ever since. Society has evolved enough that morality can be maintained outside of the religious construct.

Well put, Eddy.