Why you should think that the Natural-Evolution of species is true

[rossum]

Where are your peer-reviewed observations of the existence of a “law of Karma”?

A person commits a crime. They are arrested, found guilty and punished for their action. Actions have consequences. That is karma. Just have a look at the crime statistics for numerous observations of karma in action: “Instant Karma’s gonna get you”

 

[rossum]

Your logic escapes me here:
Gravity doesn’t decide what is good and evil - karma does.
Gravity doesn’t judge every human being according to his deeds and then dispense justice in this life or the next - karma does.
Gravity isn’t the judge, jury and executioner of human lives - karma is.

Karma doesn’t decide who is heavier and who is lighter – gravity does. Are you telling us that gravity is alive because it can measure weights? Different masses are treated differently by gravity; how does it know to do that?

Your “judge, jury and executioner” is projecting the Abrahamic God (who is all three) onto a non-Abrahamic religion, where those concepts do not fit.

Gravity is non-living, yet can distinguish between heavy and light. Karma is non-living, yet can distinguish between good, neutral and evil.

If you insist on something alive, then one of the five components that make up a human being is our own personal accumulated karma (saṃskāra). In that sense, the living thing that drives our karma is ourself.

 

[Rubee]

A person commits a crime. They are arrested, found guilty and punished for their action. Actions have consequences. That is karma. Just have a look at the crime statistics for numerous observations of karma in action: “Instant Karma’s gonna get you”

I see, no peer-reviewed research. We can safely then say your throwing that out there every time someone makes a religious point is a non-argument. The next time you demand peer-reviewed anything, first start with linking the peer-review research on karma. It’s called intellectual honesty.

As to your stated proof:

1. What was the ‘instant Karma’ or the Karmic justice for those who enslaved millions of Black people for centuries? What of those who get away with murder and other crimes? What of those who are wrongly convicted? I’d like to see your proof that Karma works in those cases too. Something more than just your belief that they ‘eventually get theirs too’ or that those wrongly oppressed eventually find their just recompense at some point (for example, victims of murder, slavery, genocides, and wrongful convictions).
2. Does Karma only work for countries with the rule of law where might isn’t automatically right?

 

[Aloysium]

Instant Karma

Karma is an apparent order that arises from the reality that the Ground of all being is Love, which is a Divine Act of charity, that created beings like angels and humankind are endowed with a free will, and that how we act determines our relationship with God, which is to say who we will ourselves to be. It can be understood as the law, whose trespass will result in judgement. Ultimately, this boils down to Augustine’s clarification, “Love and do what you will.” And, Paul’s sermon that without love, all that we do, and hence are, is nothing.

It’s instant, because everything we experience happens in its moment - an ever-changing now, that is our journey in time, having been given a chance for redemption and salvation from the consequences of our original sin. It’s said the what goes around comes around in time, because sin affects who we are, increasing the brokenness within ourselves and in our relationships. We not only leave ourselves open to retribution by others, but to an eventual fall and emptiness, when the good we have followed, at the expense of love, reveals its transient and illusory nature.

 

[Rubee]

Gravity is non-living, yet can distinguish between heavy and light. Karma is non-living, yet can distinguish between good, neutral and evil.

The crucial difference being of course that ‘heavy’ and ‘light’ are scientifically valid measurements of observable material things. ‘Good’, ‘neutral’, and ‘evil’, are unscientific. So, no: Gravity and Karma? Apples and Oranges. What are the peer-reviewed observations that morality is anything more than a human idea? I’m pretty sure there’s more than ample science behind the notion that ‘heavy’ and ‘light’ are real things beyond our own minds.

Your “judge, jury and executioner” is projecting the Abrahamic God (who is all three) onto a non-Abrahamic religion, where those concepts do not fit.

Judge, jury, executioner is necessarily implied by any idea of moral choices having metaphysical consequences.

Cause and effect is one thing: I hit you, you feel pain. My hand lands on your skin, and your biology reacts a certain way. No problem. That’s science. But, "I hit you and physically unrelated bad things happen to me somewhere done the line" is thoroughly unscientific and unobservable. For a person who has spent such efforts pushing science as the arbiter on this thread, you sure seem to struggle remembering what it is when you make your metaphysical Karmic claims.

 

[rossum]

What was the ‘instant Karma’ or the Karmic justice for those who enslaved millions of Black people for centuries?

Instant Karma is karma that works in your current lifetime. Delayed Karma is karma that works in a future lifetime.

Some slave owners had Instant Karma, killed in a slave revolt, say. Others had (or will have) their karma delayed.

 

[rossum]

The crucial difference being of course that ‘heavy’ and ‘light’ are scientifically valid measurements of observable material things.

Are angels scientifically measurable? This sub-discussion started with me asking if gravity could affect angels.

If good and evil are not observable, then how do religions function?

 

[Metis1]

Are you really that naive and gullilbe? If you have any spiritual radar at all, try turning it on.

And an ad hominum attack such as with the above is how an observant Catholic should act? And then you attack some Catholic theologians you disagree with as “undermining the faith”.

I’ve seen enough.

 

[Aloysium]

In that sense, the living thing that drives our karma is ourself.

And, it is our self that is created as an individual, unique expression of humankind, which was created, as has been revealed and makes rational sense, beginning with one first person, who was then made two. From nothing, utilizing the information that is brought together in the creation of other forms of life, the person came into being, from the “dust” that is matter.

Here’s a visualization of how that matter works, in constructing and maintaining the physical form of living organisms.

Each individual living entity is a unity in itself, subsuming all this “information” into the making of what it is as itself, in relation to everything it isn’t.

That people can actually believe that human existence just happened, karma and all, is more remarkable to me than the belief that somehow the physical processes involved in life are the result of purely chemical interactions, rather than an imposed order upon them; and that is nowhere close to being a possibility, to my mind.

 

[edwest211]

In order to make progress, scientists have to take apart the genome like an intelligently designed device.

 

[Rubee]

This is very interesting. So I specifically asked for this:

I’d like to see your proof that Karma works in those cases too. Something more than just your belief that they ‘eventually get theirs too’.

And then you proceeded to deliver a whole bucketload of your belief about them ‘eventually getting theirs too.’

Some slave owners had Instant Karma, killed in a slave revolt, say. Others had (or will have) their karma delayed.

1. What are your peer-reviewed observations that slave owners had other lives after they died?
2. What are your peer-reviewed observations that anything beyond physical cause and effect results from moral behaviour?
3. What are your peer-reviewed observations that “good”, and “evil” exist outside human conceptualization?

Are angels scientifically measurable? This sub-discussion started with me asking if gravity could affect angels.

If good and evil are not observable, then how do religions function?

I’m not the one who was going round demanding “peer-reviewed observations” for religious claims. This is the standard you apply to others, that you then casually throw away when it comes to your own totally unsupportable metaphysical claims like Karma, morality, and reincarnation.

Either you are honest and stop using this dishonest gotcha in discussions with others about God or you show us your peer-reviewed, measured, scientific research on these ideas. I repeat: It’s a little thing known as intellectual honesty.

 

[rossum]

I’m not the one who was going round demanding “peer-reviewed observations” for religious claims.

Some religious claims can (at least potentially) be peer-reviewed. Instant karma is one. Miraculous cures by saints, as reviewed by the Catholic Church is another.

Other religious claims are not reviewable. That Moses is in the Christian heaven and not the Jewish equivalent for example.

 

[Edgar]

And an ad hominum attack such as with the above is how an observant Catholic should act?

This is a good excuse to avoid answering my questions regarding your modernist exegesis.

And then you attack some Catholic theologians you disagree with as “undermining the faith”.

Your “Brady Bunch” view of Church theologians is rather childish.

 

[Aloysium]

In order to make progress, scientists have to take apart the genome like an intelligently designed device.

That would be the genome and everything that goes with it to make life happen at a cellular level.

Kicking off a couple of snowflakes from the tip of the iceberg that is the physical dimension of the person, here’s an interesting video, for those who have the time and inclination to learn:

In order to reconcile the biochemistry of life, and the ToE model, the cause of all the physical processes involved in life must be the random activity of atoms. Chemical interactions, most definitely describe what occurs at the smallest levels of our existence; the question is whether the intrinsic properties of atoms, their random interactions, rather than an order imposed upon them, is sufficient to explain what led to what we are learning about the nature of living forms.

For “evo-Catholics” what would assist in this conversation is to state outright, how it is that God is involved in evolution. Before that, it might be a good idea to include a definition of how you understand the term. What do you believe specifically, He has done? Other than it is what has been taught to you, and you may have taught others, why should anyone believe that your explanation is more valid that one that states that He created Adam, literally in a swirl of the dust from the ground?

 

[Fatima-Crusader]

This might be a stupid question, but how does God guide evolution? Since it is random

 

[edwest211]

“But it is important to note that, according to the Catholic understanding of divine causality, true contingency in the created order is not incompatible with a purposeful divine providence. Divine causality and created causality radically differ in kind and not only in degree. Thus, even the outcome of a truly contingent natural process can nonetheless fall within God’s providential plan for creation. According to St. Thomas Aquinas: “The effect of divine providence is not only that things should happen somehow, but that they should happen either by necessity or by contingency. Therefore, whatsoever divine providence ordains to happen infallibly and of necessity happens infallibly and of necessity; and that happens from contingency, which the divine providence conceives to happen from contingency” ( Summa theologiae, I, 22,4 ad 1). In the Catholic perspective, neo-Darwinians who adduce random genetic variation and natural selection as evidence that the process of evolution is absolutely unguided are straying beyond what can be demonstrated by science. Divine causality can be active in a process that is both contingent and guided. Any evolutionary mechanism that is contingent can only be contingent because God made it so. An unguided evolutionary process – one that falls outside the bounds of divine providence – simply cannot exist because “the causality of God, Who is the first agent, extends to all being, not only as to constituent principles of species, but also as to the individualizing principles…It necessarily follows that all things, inasmuch as they participate in existence, must likewise be subject to divine providence” ( Summa theologiae I, 22, 2).”

 

[Bradskii]

This might be a stupid question, but how does God guide evolution? Since it is random

It’s not random.

 

[Bradskii]

An unguided evolutionary process – one that falls outside the bounds of divine providence – simply cannot exist…

Straw man. Evolution does not deny God.

Maybe you can point to where someone has said it is unguided…

 

[Rubee]

Some religious claims can (at least potentially) be peer-reviewed. Instant karma is one. Miraculous cures by saints, as reviewed by the Catholic Church is another.

I never asked for potential since that’s not what you demand here: you ask for actual peer-review observations and that’s precisely what I asked for; exactly as you do to the others.

Secondly, NO> It is NOT “potentially” peer-reviewable.

How could you peer-review Karma? First peer-review morality as a thing beyond a human meaning-making mechanism, then peer-review that specific unpleasant things happening in someone’s life are exactly because they did a specific thing that went against the peer-reviewed morality, even tho there’s no direct physical cause-effect connection between the two events.

 

[Edgar]

Karma doesn’t decide who is heavier and who is lighter – gravity does. Are you telling us that gravity is alive because it can measure weights? Different masses are treated differently by gravity; how does it know to do that?

You seem to be digressing. According to your belief system, karma is simply a mindless force (as mindless as gravity, in fact). Therefore the life and future of every human being lies in the hands of a cold, mindless, lifeless force.
Contrast this with Christian belief, in which the life and future of every human being lies in the hands of a living, loving God.
.

Your “judge, jury and executioner” is projecting the Abrahamic God (who is all three) onto a non-Abrahamic religion, where those concepts do not fit.

You’re right - “judge, jury and execution” doesn’t fit becasue karma is actually more than those three things. Judges, juries and executioners don’t set the rules of morality - the goverment they work under does that, so it’s more accurate to describe karma as “government, judge, jury and executioner” … not bad going for a lifeless, mindless force!

Karma is non-living, yet can distinguish between good, neutral and evil.

Pray tell … how can karma - which is a mindless force with no intelligence or even life - possibly know what is “good, neutral and evil”?

Only a living being with advanced intelligence could have any conception of what is good, neutral and evil. Non-human animals have intelligence, but they have no conception of morality, yet you believe a non-living force (ie, something much lower than even the lowest animal) is the universal master of morality???

If you insist on something alive, then one of the five components that make up a human being is our own personal accumulated karma ( saṃskāra ). In that sense, the living thing that drives our karma is ourself.

Karma existed before human beings, n’est ce pas?