What can you say about the following claims?

[Douglas_Kraeger]

You say, “Karma is an impersonal force. It no more ‘decides’ than gravity decides that things will follow a particular path”, How does an impersonnal force make it absolutely and objectively right and god to care about others? Does not impersonnal mean,“not caring”? And you did not answer my question as to whether you would tell your (hypothetical) wife and daughters, that no one can sin against them, or violate their rights, no matter what that person does to them.
You say that karma is the moral law. How does a moral law that is impersonnal, make it objectively right to care about others and therefore wrong to not care about them?
And what about sacrifices? How does this impersonnal force know when someone is sacrificing their wants in an honest attempt to help someone else or they are just faking it to get something by deceitful means?
You have said that karma is a spiritual force, but does it have a conscience? Does it have a will? Did it exist before the big bang? What brought it into existence?
You say that karma is the moral law, but if we break the moral law, it just happens that eventually we will be punished somehow by something that does not have an intellect and does not have a conscience.
You say, " The only absolute truth is, there are no absolute truths." please try and show how this statement is not an oxymoron, a self contradiction.

 

[Abu]

Looking at the facts

Buddha finds our desires too strong, and “solves” the problem of pain by spiritual euthanasia in curing the disease of egotism and the suffering it brings by killing the patient – the ego, the self, soul or I-image of God in man. He knows greed but not God. He does not know unselfish love at all.

Christ shows us the good news of God and His love – He finds our desires too weak for He wants us to love more not less: to love God with our whole heart, soul, mind and strength,

 

[rossum]

Buddha finds our desires too strong, and “solves” the problem of pain by spiritual euthanasia in curing the disease of egotism and the suffering it brings by killing the patient – the ego, the self, soul or I-image of God in man.

You have misunderstood the aim of Buddhism. The aim is not to “kill” the self, the aim is to realise that what we think of as our ‘self’ is actually no such thing. We cannot kill what does not actually exist.

He knows greed but not God. He does not know unselfish love at all.

Spot the difference:* Love your neighbour as yourself - Jesus

• Love others as you love yourself - The Buddha

rossum

 

[rossum]

You say, “Karma is an impersonal force. It no more ‘decides’ than gravity decides that things will follow a particular path”, How does an impersonnal force make it absolutely and objectively right and go[o]d to care about others?

I do not need to know what is “absolutely and objectively” right, I need to know what is right here and now. As with my example of stoning an adulteress to death in 50 BCE and 50 CE. You have agreed that God’s morality changes so what I need to know is what is currently correct. Do I kill that adulteress today or do I let her live today?

Does not impersonnal mean,“not caring”?

In this case it means “not having a personality”; Karma is not anthropomorphised into a god. As I said, think of it as being like gravity.

And you did not answer my question as to whether you would tell your (hypothetical) wife and daughters, that no one can sin against them, or violate their rights, no matter what that person does to them.

You are using that word “sin” again. Please think a little more carefully before phrasing your questions; I have mentioned this before.

You say that karma is the moral law. How does a moral law that is impersonnal, make it objectively right to care about others and therefore wrong to not care about them?

How does a personal moral law make it “objectively right”? Again we are back to the effects of a changing morality and stoning adulteresses. Whether moral law is personal or impersonal I just need to know what I should do today.

And what about sacrifices? How does this impersonnal force know when someone is sacrificing their wants in an honest attempt to help someone else or they are just faking it to get something by deceitful means?

How does gravity know when someone is faking jumping off a cliff compared with someone who is really jumping off a cliff? You are approaching karma in the wrong way.

You have said that karma is a spiritual force, but does it have a conscience? Does it have a will? Did it exist before the big bang? What brought it into existence?

No, no, yes, irrelevant.

You say that karma is the moral law, but if we break the moral law, it just happens that eventually we will be punished somehow by something that does not have an intellect and does not have a conscience.

Karma is moral cause and effect. We act and our actions have consequences. If you kill people then you will end up for a lifetime or three in one of the hells. If you give a lot to charity then you will get a lifetime or three in one of the heavens.

You say, " The only absolute truth is, there are no absolute truths." please try and show how this statement is not an oxymoron, a self contradiction.

I do not say that, and the statement was very carefully phrased by Mark Siderits so as not to include the word “absolute”. See Mark Siderits, “Thinking on Empty: Madhyamika Anti-Realism and Canons of Rationality” in S Biderman and B.A. Schaufstein, eds, Rationality In Question (1989). Dordrecht: Brill.

I have not read Siderits but saw the quote in a piece on Nagarjuna. The “Madhyamika” in Siderits’ title refers to the religious and philosophical school of Buddhism that Nagarjuna founded. I have seen the same quote again in other places in reference to the Madhyamika and Nagarjuna - it seems quite popular. The quote is intentionally paradoxical; paradox is necessary to remind us that words are insufficient when trying to describe the fundamental nature of reality.

For a philosophical discussion of Nagarjuna and reality see the web article Nagarjuna and the Limits of Thought. The Siderits quote is at the end of section four of the article:

There is, then, no escape. Nagarjuna’s view is contradictory. The contradiction is, clearly a paradox of expressibility. Nagarjuna succeeds in saying the unsayable, just as much as the Wittgenstein of the Tractatus. We can think (and characterize) reality only subject to language, which is conventional, so the ontology of that reality is all conventional. It follows that the conventional objects of reality do not ultimately (non-conventionally) exist. It also follows that nothing we say of them is ultimately true. That is, all things are empty of ultimate existence; and this is their ultimate nature, and is an ultimate truth about them. They hence cannot be thought to have that nature; nor can we say that they do. But we have just done so. As Mark Siderits (1989) has put it, “the ultimate truth is that there is no ultimate truth.”

rossum

 

[Thing]

I do not need to know what is “absolutely and objectively” right, I need to know what is right here and now. As with my example of stoning an adulteress to death in 50 BCE and 50 CE. You have agreed that God’s morality changes so what I need to know is what is currently correct. Do I kill that adulteress today or do I let her live today?

rossum

Prophecy Of Osee

The prophet is commanded again to love an adulteress; to signify God’s love to the synagogue. The wretched state of the Jews for a long time, till at last they shall be converted.

1 And the Lord said to me: Go yet again, and love a woman beloved of her friend, and an adulteress: as the Lord loveth the children of Israel, and they look to strange gods, and love the husks of the grapes. 2 And I bought her to me for fifteen pieces of silver, and for a core of barley, and for half a core of barley. 3 And I said to her: Thou shalt wait for me many days: thou shalt not play the harlot, and thou shalt be no man’s, and I also will wait for thee. 4 For the children of Israel shall sit many days without king, and without prince, and without sacrifice, and without altar, and without ephod, and without theraphim. 5 And after this the children of Israel shall return, and shall seek the Lord their God, and David their king: and they shall fear the Lord, and his goodness in the last days.

 

[Abu]

Rossum
Love others as you love yourself - The Buddha

Trying to compare the compassion taught by Buddhism to the teaching of the Son of God shows the gulf that exists between the religion of Christianity and a philosophy that knows no God.

Buddhism teaches not to be “attached”, not to love, teaching instead an impersonal, universal feeling of compassion (karuna). This compassion is not for the welfare of the recipient, but for the liberation of the giver from the burden of self. To the Buddhist the active love taught by Christ is impossible; there can be no ego without egotism, no self without selfishness, because the self is not a real cause that might conceivably change its effect. Rather the self is the illusion caused by selfishness.

This is in very different spirit to that of Christ’s command to “love one another as I have loved you.” Where Buddha says “Look not to me, look to my doctrine (dharma)”, Christ says “Come to Me.”
Buddhism is simply silent about God and teaches a doctrine of no-soul (an-atta), that mankind has no underlying substance, self or soul.

 

[rossum]

Buddhism is simply silent about God and teaches a doctrine of no-soul (an-atta), that mankind has no underlying substance, self or soul.

Buddhism is not silent about God. Read the Brahmajala sutta, Digha Nikaya 1:“That honourable personage is the Brahma, the great Brahma, the conqueror, the unconquered, the all-seeing, the subjector of all to his wishes, the omnipotent, the maker, the creator, the supreme, the controller, the one confirmed in the practice of jhana, and father to all that have been and shall be. That honourable Brahma has created us. He is permanent, stable, eternal, immutable and as everlasting as all things eternal. We, who were created by the honourable Brahma, are impermanent, changeable, short-lived and mortal. Thus have we come into this human world.”

Brahmajala sutta, 44
I suspect that you will not like what the Buddha says about Him, but you cannot say that Buddhism is silent about God.

You are correct about the teaching of anatta, no-soul. That is why I said that we have no selves and that we are mistaken in thinking that we do. One of our tasks is to get rid of that mistaken impression.

rossum

 

[Abu]

But like the pantheistic Brahmin, Buddha did not acknowledge his dependence on the gods. They were like men, subject to decay and rebirth. The god of today might be reborn in the future in some inferior condition, while a man of great virtue might succeed in raising himself in his next birth to the rank of a god in heaven. The very gods, then, no less than men, had need of that perfect wisdom that leads to Nirvana, and hence it was idle to pray or sacrifice to them in the hope of obtaining the boon which they themselves did not possess. They were inferior to Buddha, since he had already attained to Nirvana. In like manner, they who followed Buddha’s footsteps had no need of worshipping the gods by prayers and offerings. [CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: Buddhism]](http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03028b.htm])

A feature of Buddhism is that Buddhism is a non-theistic religion. Later Mahayana Buddhism virtually made the Buddha himself into a god, but the existence of God and even the existence of an immortal soul are either denied or irrelevant in Buddhism.

Buddha himself specifically denied the existence of a conscious God. (Buddhism, Bradley S Clough, in Jacob Neuser ed. God, Cleveland: Pilgrim Press, 1997, p 57).

It is good to clarify what Christ’s Church does not teach.

 

[Douglas_Kraeger]

Buddhism is not silent about God. Read the Brahmajala sutta, Digha Nikaya 1:“That honourable personage is the Brahma, the great Brahma, the conqueror, the unconquered, the all-seeing, the subjector of all to his wishes, the omnipotent, the maker, the creator, the supreme, the controller, the one confirmed in the practice of jhana, and father to all that have been and shall be. That honourable Brahma has created us. He is permanent, stable, eternal, immutable and as everlasting as all things eternal. We, who were created by the honourable Brahma, are impermanent, changeable, short-lived and mortal. Thus have we come into this human world.”

Brahmajala sutta, 44
I suspect that you will not like what the Buddha says about Him, but you cannot say that Buddhism is silent about God.

You are correct about the teaching of anatta, no-soul. That is why I said that we have no selves and that we are mistaken in thinking that we do. One of our tasks is to get rid of that mistaken impression.

rossum

rossum, I am certain that you can tell that I have never studied Buddism, but the quote you reference above seems to make reference to someone who is “the great Brahma, the conqueror, the unconquered, the all-seeing, the subjector of all to his wishes, the omnipotent, the maker, the creator, the supreme, the controller, the one confirmed in the practice of jhana, and father to all that have been and shall be. That honourable Brahma has created us. He is permanent, stable, eternal, immutable and as everlasting as all things eternal. We, who were created by the honourable Brahma”. If He is “omnipotent, the maker, the creator, the supreme and the father to all that have been and shall be, immutable etc.”, Is this not God the creator? If He is immutable, does that mean that He is unchangeable in time, that He exists outside of time so to speak because it has no affect on Him? If He is the creator and is outside of Time, is it possible that He created time and space and karma ? If He is omnipotent and the controller,and if he has created karma, and revealed it, should we not try to understand Him and His intentions at least as much as we try to understand karma, something He created? If He is the creator, then He wills to create because to create is to bring into existence from nothing, and if He has a will that is immutable, what is that will? Why does He reveal Himself to us? Is it possible that the budda’s understanding of Him and His will is incomplete or in error? If He is not God the Creator, what does He lack that would be required of a creator?

 

[rossum]

rossum, I am certain that you can tell that I have never studied Buddism, but the quote you reference above seems to make reference to someone who is “the great Brahma,…”

In my post I said “I suspect that you will not like what the Buddha says about Him”. To clarify, the god who calls himself the great Brahma is mistaken, as are those who believe and worship him. The Brahmajala sutta explains the mistake and its origin. This sutta contains a compendium of common errors, one of which is the belief in an omnipotent creator god, as described.

Is it possible that the budda’s understanding of Him and His will is incomplete or in error?

No. The Buddha was enlightened.

If He is not God the Creator, what does He lack that would be required of a creator?

What that god lacks is correct, as opposed to mistaken, beliefs about his actual power and status.

rossum

 

[Douglas_Kraeger]

In my post I said “I suspect that you will not like what the Buddha says about Him”. To clarify, the god who calls himself the great Brahma is mistaken, as are those who believe and worship him. The Brahmajala sutta explains the mistake and its origin. This sutta contains a compendium of common errors, one of which is the belief in an omnipotent creator god, as described.

No. The Buddha was enlightened.

What that god lacks is correct, as opposed to mistaken, beliefs about his actual power and status.

rossum

I thought I responded yesterday, but apparantly my post got lost. You say it is not possible that Budda is in error or incomplete in His understanding of the Creator God, because he was enlightened. So, essentially you are saying Budda is infallible in your opinion. Correct? Or are you saying he is infallible and that is a verifiable fact? What is the evidence that proves your fact? Do you claim that you are infallible? Is it possible that your opinion that the “budda is infallible because he was enlightened” could be wrong and therefore the budda might not be infallible?

  As to your statement that I have agreed that God's moral law changes: Example; A two month old baby squeezes his hand on a trigger and his mother dies because the handgun was pointed at her. We say the baby committed no sin, because the baby could not deliberately intend to kill his mother by squeezing the trigger. Another example; same baby, same mother, twenty years later. The twenty year old young man squeezes the same trigger and his mother dies. Do you see how one action was not a sin and the second example could be, or might not be, a sin, depending. God's moral law did not change. God merely holds different people to different standards according to what he has revealed to them as right or wrong, either directly to them or indirectly through others. 
  Now to the example you site about the Jewish girl: God made the commandment, "Do not commit adultery". To show us how much He hates the sin of adultery, He commanded that adulterers be stoned to death. If someone knows this commandment and goes ahead and sins anyway, they are saying to God," I do not care what you say, I am gioing to do what I want to do". Do you see where the punishment is just when somone knows God has commanded it and deliberately disobeys? God had not yet revealed through Jesus Christ, the mercy that HE IS. Why did he not reveal it sooner? He has His reason. 
   As people were allowed to know more about God's mercy through the Blood of Christ,  God hold's them to a higher standard. This is not a change in God's law, it is a more complete revelation of it. We are allowed to see more and more if we love the Whole Truth and seek it with our whole heart, mind, soul and strength. Do you see where God's mercy can require us to be merciful to others caught in sin, if we want Him to be merciful to us who are also sinners?

 

[rossum]

You say it is not possible that Budda is in error or incomplete in His understanding of the Creator God, because he was enlightened. So, essentially you are saying Budda is infallible in your opinion. Correct?

The Buddha was enlightened so everything he said was correct.

Or are you saying he is infallible and that is a verifiable fact?

Much of what the Buddha said is verifiable. Those parts of it that I have been able to verify for myself I have found to be correct. This gives me confidence that those parts I have not yet verified are also correct and that they are worth pursuing.

What is the evidence that proves your fact?

Buddhism is a practical religion. Much of what the Buddha said was in the form, “If you want this result then do these things.” In all cases I have tested when I have done these things I got the predicted result.

Do you claim that you are infallible? Is it possible that your opinion that the “budda is infallible because he was enlightened” could be wrong and therefore the budda might not be infallible?

Of course I could be wrong, I am not enlightened. However I do have a reasonable basis for my belief – I have tested some parts and those tests have succeeded.

As to your statement that I have agreed that God’s moral law changes … God merely holds different people to different standards according to what he has revealed to them as right or wrong, either directly to them or indirectly through others.

So the existence of an unchanging moral law is at best irrelevant. What I really need to know is the changing standard to which I am expected to adhere in my current situation. From where I stand the actual actions I must follow change, hence I am in effect following a changing morality. You assert the existence of an unchanging morality but that has no impact on what God expects from me here and now. God’s expectations of me change.

This is not a change in God’s law, it is a more complete revelation of it.

It may not be a change from God’s side, but I am not God so from where I am standing it is a change. Yesterday I was expected to stone the adulteress, today I should let her go with an admonition. I am looking at this from my point of view because I need to know how I should act. From my perspective I am seeing a changing morality.

One of the characteristics of Buddhism is that it accepts the ubiquity of change. You seem to be trying to reify the changing morality we get here and now into an unchanging morality that has no real effect on us here and now. I do not accept your reifying of morality; much of Buddhist philosophy is a rejection of various forms of reification.The emptiness of emptiness is the fact that not even emptiness exists ultimately, that it is also dependent, conventional, nominal, and in the end it is just the everydayness of the everyday. Penetrating to the depths of being, we find ourselves back on the surface of things and so discover that there is nothing, after all, beneath those deceptive surfaces. Moreover, what is deceptive about them is simply the fact that we assume ontological depth lurking just beneath.

Jay Garfield, “Empty words, Buddhist philosophy and cross-cultural interpretation.” OUP 2002.
You are assuming an “ontological depth” to morality - your underlying permanent unchanging absolute morality - that does not exist. All we get is the changing morality that we have to work with day to day.

rossum

 

[alitaptap]

1. There’s no such thing as absolute truth. What’s true for you may not be true for me.

Agree. A person with red-green colour blindness, a person with ordinary trichromat sight and a person with tetrachromat sight will disagree on the colour of something. We can never know the “real” world, all we can know is what our brains get incoming along our sensory nerves.

Do you agree that being honest and generous are good and breaking an oath and rape are bad?

In general yes. I would not be honest if the Nazis came and asked about the Jewish family hiding in my basement for instance, but in general yes.

This means you agree that the concept statement *“There’s no such thing as absolute truth. What’s true for you may not be true for me “*is FALSE. Please comment.

 

[rossum]

This means you agree that the concept statement *“There’s no such thing as absolute truth. What’s true for you may not be true for me “*is FALSE. Please comment.

Truth is not morality. Morality is not truth. What I say about one is distinct from what I say about the other.

There is no absolute truth, or if there is we can never know it so it is irrelevant.

There is no absolute morality, but there is an objective morality.

Buddhism generally shies away from absolutes. They are not useful and get in the way of our task.

rossum

 

[Douglas_Kraeger]

The Buddha was enlightened so everything he said was correct.
How is the above proven? How is it different than claiming Budda was infallible in his teachings?

Much of what the Buddha said is verifiable. Those parts of it that I have been able to verify for myself I have found to be correct. This gives me confidence that those parts I have not yet verified are also correct and that they are worth pursuing.

Do you mean to say that we can verify what budda said as Him having actually said it, or are you saying we can verify that what he said was true, objectively true, and if so, who determined what is and is not objectively true? Who has the final, or original say?

Buddhism is a practical religion. Much of what the Buddha said was in the form, “If you want this result then do these things.” In all cases I have tested when I have done these things I got the predicted result.

What kind of test did you conduct? please give specific examples? How do your test results prove there is no Infinitely powerful Creator God who has ordained a moral order that gives you the same results you attribute to karma?

Of course I could be wrong, I am not enlightened. However I do have a reasonable basis for my belief – I have tested some parts and those tests have succeeded.

again what tests did you conduct? why is it not possible that you got the conclusion you were looking for, because that is what you wanted to see?

So the existence of an unchanging moral law is at best irrelevant. What I really need to know is the changing standard to which I am expected to adhere in my current situation. From where I stand the actual actions I must follow change, hence I am in effect following a changing morality. You assert the existence of an unchanging morality but that has no impact on what God expects from me here and now. God’s expectations of me change.

Irrelevant unless you are wrong and we believers are correct and then it will be relevant at your death. Correct?

It may not be a change from God’s side, but I am not God so from where I am standing it is a change. Yesterday I was expected to stone the adulteress, today I should let her go with an admonition. I am looking at this from my point of view because I need to know how I should act. From my perspective I am seeing a changing morality.

Are you saying that you do not see it as possible that God could hold an adult culpable for actions that The God would not hold an infant culpable for?
And again, you have not answered the specifics of my question concerning your hypothetical wife and daughters. Is it that hard to answer? Are you saying that you see nothing implicitly evil in someone doing terrible things to them and that if everybody else said so explicitly and expected you to behave accordingly, that you would go with the flow?
One of the characteristics of Buddhism is that it accepts the ubiquity of change. You seem to be trying to reify the changing morality we get here and now into an unchanging morality that has no real effect on us here and now. I do not accept your reifying of morality; much of Buddhist philosophy is a rejection of various forms of reification.The emptiness of emptiness is the fact that not even emptiness exists ultimately, that it is also dependent, conventional, nominal, and in the end it is just the everydayness of the everyday. Penetrating to the depths of being, we find ourselves back on the surface of things and so discover that there is nothing, after all, beneath those deceptive surfaces. Moreover, what is deceptive about them is simply the fact that we assume ontological depth lurking just beneath.

Jay Garfield, “Empty words, Buddhist philosophy and cross-cultural interpretation.” OUP 2002.
You are assuming an “ontological depth” to morality - your underlying permanent unchanging absolute morality - that does not exist. All we get is the changing morality that we have to work with day to day.

rossum

 

[rossum]

Douglas, it would help if you could differentiate between my words and yours. Use [noparse]

…

[/noparse] to indicate where you are quoting me.

How is the above proven? How is it different than claiming Budda was infallible in his teachings?

It is proven by vertifying it for myself.

What kind of test did you conduct? please give specific examples? How do your test results prove there is no Infinitely powerful Creator God who has ordained a moral order that gives you the same results you attribute to karma?

I will quote the Kalama sutta, you will often see it quoted by Buddhists:[The Buddha said:] “Now, look you Kalamas, do not be led by reports, or tradition, or hearsay. Be not led by the authority of religious texts, nor by mere logic or inference, nor by considering appearances, nor by the delight in speculative opinions, nor by seeming possibilities, nor by the idea ‘this is our teacher’. Kalamas, when you yourselves know: ‘These things are bad; these things are blamable; these things are censured by the wise; undertaken and observed, these things lead to harm and ill,’ abandon them. … Kalamas, when you yourselves know: ‘These things are good; these things are not blamable; these things are praised by the wise; undertaken and observed, these things lead to benefit and happiness,’ enter on and abide in them.”

• Kalama sutta, Anguttara Nikaya, 3.65
  That is the kind of test I conduct. Buddhism says that if you follow the Buddhist path you will obtain peace, happiness and nirvana. I have a large measure of the first two and I am working my way towards the third. I have passed a number of the earlier landmarks I was told I would find on the path so I am confident the path I am following is the right one.

Irrelevant unless you are wrong and we believers are correct and then it will be relevant at your death. Correct?

No, it is very relevant. I need to know if I should stone the adulteress to death today or let her go with a warning today. I am here and now, I need to know how I should act here and now. We have agreed that the actions your God requires from us change over time so I need to know what the actions required are here and now. Whether of not there is an unchanging basis behind the changing requirements is not my problem; my problem is what actions I should take here and now.

rossum

 

[grannymh]

1. There’s no such thing as absolute truth. What’s true for you may not be true for me.

 

[rossum]

The first absolute truth which comes to mind is that human life is sacred.

“Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and a-s-s.” 1 Samuel 15:3

rossum

 

[tonyrey]

“Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and a-s-s.” 1 Samuel 15:3

Snippets from the Old Testament can be used to prove anything - as the thousands of different Christian sects illustrate. The vindictive figure of Yahweh has nothing to do with the loving Father revealed by Jesus…

 

[grannymh]

“Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and a-s-s.” 1 Samuel 15:3

rossum

The absolute truth that human life is sacred remains whether or not the person is living or dead, being honored or dishonored. The reason that it is absolute truth or as younger people would say “objective truth” is that its validity does not depend on anything from the natural, material/physical world. Human life is sacred existed before we were born and will continue to exist after we die.

Easter Blessings to All,
granny

John 20:24-31