First, thank you for getting back to the subject of this thread.
So, that must mean that the laws of Karma and rebirth come from nothing.Techno2000:
An eternal immaterial universe needs no creator, have a look at the Kalaam argument.
rossum
Why do these immaterial entities look Asian ?
So, you have to take a teaching about our eternal uncreated God, and twist it around to show that there is no God.Techno2000:
An eternal immaterial universe needs no creator, have a look at the Kalaam argument.
rossum
The same way your uncreated God came from nothing? Your words “came from” show that your question is wrong. There can be no “came from” when the entity is eternal. There is no time when that entity did not exist.
For the same reason most European representations of Jesus look white European and not Middle-Eastern Jewish. It says more about the ethnicity of the artists than of the appearance of the entities.
There are physical laws based upon cosmological parameters that began with the Big Bang that determine gravity and the flow of water. These were set following the Big Bang and could have been very different. Gravity could have been non-existent or quite a different force than it happens to be, so there is no “must be” regarding gravity and the flow of water. There is an IS, however.
Can you demonstrate which parameter governs karma and makes it a matter of “must be” in our universe. I’ve never seen it explicated in physical laws using constants. Why do bad things happen to good people?
There are non-physical laws based in the eternal universe that determine the destinies of living beings within that universe.
Jesus was a actual flesh and blood person who has been painted throughout the centuries. How could anybody know what these immaterial entities looks like?Techno2000:
For the same reason most European representations of Jesus look white European and not Middle-Eastern Jewish. It says more about the ethnicity of the artists than of the appearance of the entities.
rossum
How did Man come to know about the laws of Karma and rebirth ?Techno2000:
The same way your uncreated God came from nothing? Your words “came from” show that your question is wrong. There can be no “came from” when the entity is eternal. There is no time when that entity did not exist.
rossum
Weird? not more so than most of life.Aloysium:
This might help …
Here’s God, actually defining what “one day” is: “And there was evening and there was morning, one day” (Genesis 1:5).
And here’s God again, directly comparing six literal days of human work to the six days of creation: “Six days you labour and do all your work … for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them” - Exodus 20:9-11.
God apparently used billions of years of evolution to finish creation, but for some reason he wants us to believe it only took six days - pretty weird, eh?
So, God’s evening and morning would not mean what immediately comes to mind, the way we normally use the terms, given that the first three days would have happened before there was a sun and moon.
So, is this a revelation from your God Brahma ?Techno2000:
No, all I have to do is to quite scripture:
rossum
Karma means different things, not necessarily the equivalent of “what goes around, comes around.” One can understand it in terms of free will, that what we do changes who we were into whom we become. That’s how most Buddhist and Hindu texts read. We are in a state of ignorance, craving for what is transient and ultimately illusory. Since what we seek, even those pleasant experiences to be found in pleasure, wealth, fame and power, cannot truly satisfy, humanity finds itself on a cycle of life and death. One of the tenets is that there is no permanent self, but that this sense is created by karma, what we do following our cravings, chasing illusion. With Nirvana, in the panthestic world view, the line of karma comes to an end as fire of desire is blown out, all is peace.
Hindu sages and the Buddha (re-) discovered them. The short answer is meditation as well as observation. “As you sow, so shall you reap” as someone said.
No, it is from a sutta so it is the Buddha reporting the words of the God. Be warned that reading the whole passage will probably annoy you. It is from the section dealing with common errors.
The laws governing destinies don’t appear to be consistent or determined “within the universe.”
I don’t doubt that something like this could be claimed about the world, but it would seem very susceptible to being reduced to a truism, in the way that – to bring this back to the topic at hand – survival of the fittest functions in the theory of evolution. How do we know something is fittest for survival? Well, it survived.
By observation. Read chapter 13 of the Visuddhimagga which gives the instructions for remembering your past lives.
So, they got this information from the immaterial entities by way of interior locution ?Techno2000:
Hindu sages and the Buddha (re-) discovered them. The short answer is meditation as well as observation. “As you sow, so shall you reap” as someone said.
rossum