If you believe in karma does that make you spiritual or religious?

What comes to you is a result of your state of consciousness in the present moment.

Now in spite of his awful past record, I believe if he had reformed, got sober, found religion, changed his life and learned to love others, this fate would not have befallen on him.

Karma is a metaphysical concept. It links positive and negative actions to an individual with the idea that balance will be had eventually.

For something to be positive or negative requires a value assessment. This is innately subjective, as only a subject can make such an estimate. If there is no god doing the assessing then its all individual perspective on whether something is good or bad becuase there would be no universal judge to decide on the action in question. This would remove the balancing part as how could a system of contextual wrong-ness and right-ness ever achieve balance. The answer is it couldn't, so without objective morals you have no god less karma, with subjective morals only a god+karma solution would work. Without a value assessor you have no way to balance outside of objective morals, objective morals is a sad concept that can be picked apart easily so lets not go down that road.

I see no way for a natural Karma to exist, you either loose the value assessment, or the idea that it will eventually balance, I believe the loss of either characteristic renders the concept no longer Karmic. Either you water down the Karma to not really be Karma just steal the label or its metaphysically reliant on an assessor, a judge.

I think the value of the concept is a psychological one at best, it gives people something they can believe in to justify inaction in situations where action could cause them greater suffering.

Even if a universal judge could decide on every single action ever performed and come to a consistent moral solution, as well as tally up the exchange and then add in whats needed to balance . . . its a giant cluster F, and when you see the results of the world you must be smoking something dam good to come to the conclusion that this judge being is a benevolent being (either that or you live a charmed existence, oh how I wish I where you some days)

What I see is a world with no universal judge; a world of relative morals; a world of people trying to use flawed logic precipitated on incomplete information selected with confirmation bias to render some sort of equity for their lot in life.

I also see honor. I see people make a difference every day by drawing a mental line in the dirt that they will not cross and will not see others cross without a challenge. I respect those people, I call them doers, they are the opposite of shruggies. They see wrongs and do something about it, no Karma needed, no thanks needed. Why do they do it? Because its the right thing to do dammit!

Actually, I think it makes you superstitious.

I don't consider myself superstitious, but you can say I believe in karma, though to me it's not exactly karma.

I wouldn't know how to evaluate this objectively, but based on my personal experiences and observations it seems abundantly clear to me that my thoughts and feelings have a huge impact on the actions of other people and animals. Anyone who has been involved in sales or public speaking knows this... well... maybe some people are able to feign their mannerisms and expressions in a way that masks the effect of their true thoughts and emotions.



I agree that this fate would be fare less likely to befall him - but isn't it possible that one of his exes might have just been so broken by the past that she would have been committed to revenge no matter how much he'd reformed? This reminds me of the woman in blues brothers. I agree that his fate was not inevitable, but I also think when people mistreat others, those others may hold resentment (and act on it) regardless of whether the first person reformed. Do you disagree?