Why I Don't Believe In Karma
84Not long ago, I had a conversation with a friend where he proclaimed a firm belief in the idea that "if you do good things, good things will happen to you." Further prying revealed that he did indeed have a strong belief in Karma. This is something that I could never buy into. So, I offered a counter-example, "Well, how do you account for an infant's death? A baby is born and after living for no more than a few days, he dies of an illness. Something bad happened to him, yet, he did nothing wrong. How do you explain that?"
Of course, I was fed a completely unsatisfying answer, "I believe in Karma but I don't think it always applies." So, basically, I'm being told that when you do good things, sometimes good things will happen to you and when you do something bad, bad things might happen to you.
Before I continue, there is one thing I should make clear. I think there is a definition of Karma that can be kept completely secular. I'm referring to the concept that by doing good things for others, they are more likely to do good things for you. The same would hold true for negative actions. Nothing supernatural is involved. However, the Karma I'm referring to here is the supernatural definition of Karma. The one that says it is a law of nature that you will be rewarded for good, moral actions and punished for bad ones. This supernatural Karma is what I believe is non-existent.
Let's imagine for a moment, a world without Karma (difficult, isn't it?). In this world, there is no balance between good and bad, meaning that doing good things does not ensure a stream of goodness coming your way. On the same token, you won't necessarily "get whats coming to you" for doing bad things. Therefore, the combination of good and bad that you or anyone experiences is based solely on the nature and actions of what surrounds you. So, sometimes when you do good things, good things will happen to you and sometimes when you do bad things, bad things will happen to you. Sound familiar? It should, because that is the exact same world being described by my friend who supposedly believes in Karma (sometimes).
As if it is necessary, besides the above example, there are plenty more reasons to discount the existence of Karma. For one, it intrinsically necessitates objective morals. If Karma is to apply to everyone, there must be some universal definition of good and bad. I think anyone can realize that morals are subjective. For example, one person may see homosexuality as evil and unethical, while others (me included) see it as a personal choice that does not in anyway present a moral quandary. On top of that, I believe morals can not exist without humans. Karma requires morals and morals were created by people. Therefore, Karma could only have been created by people. Unless someone has magical powers and was able to create an invisible, universal system to punish the "bad" and reward the "good", this is impossible.
Ultimately, as if it's not already clear, I do not believe in Karma. Just based on personal experience it doesn't seem to hold true and I think by its own nature, it is impossible.
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I agree about Karma. It dont exist. Just like the bible where it says "You reap what you sow." I never reap what I sow. Espically love and helping others!!!!
You will reap your rewards in heaven Fred.
This is an interesting article, but it exhibits a very common western misconception of Karma. It is inappropriate to regard Karma as a universal force of morality, although that is often how it is understood in a Christian culture that believes in heaven and hell.
In order to understand Karma, one first must understand the interconnectedness of all things. In other words, no action or thing exists in completely in a vacuum from the rest of the universe. Every action you do sets off a subsequent chain of events, which further sets off other chains of events. Assuming that all things are connected, one can safely assume that a chain of events that you started will eventually come back to you, although not necessarily in a form that you recognize. It stands to reason that positive actions with positive intentions more often lead to positive chains of events, and vice-versa. In general, the more often positive actions are committed, the more often positive results are seen, which eventually come back to you.
Karma cannot account for every result in the world. There are plenty of things which are outside of our control... natural disasters, accidents, etc. Nor can one say that something negative happening to them is necessarily as a result of his past Karma... tell that to the victims of the Holocaust. Still, it stands to reason that the more positive actions you perform, the more positive chains of events will occur and vice-versa.
karma is basically a threat.. same as relegion .. believe or else.... I didnt care about karma and stuff before and funny enough life was kinda calm and worked just as crappy as it does now .. actually its slightly worse now as I take the time to think about people feelings and the whole karmic balance/back lash.... and all it does is yep you got it.. a big fat ZERO
Yvonne... thank you for your feedback, but I don't feel you truly understand Karma.
As I previously stated, Karma is not a cosmic force. Karma is essentially the law of cause and effect. Every action you do is creating Karma, because it sets off various chains of events. Due to interconnectedness, the amount of positive karma you create through positive intentions sets of positive chains and vice-versa. The phrase "what goes around comes around" doesn't mean that some divine force will punish you for your misdeeds. However, the more negative karma you create in the world, the more potential you have that the negative chain of events you started will come back to you. Not every good or bad thing that happens to you is a result of past karma.
Karma is a philosophical law based on human social interaction rather than a cosmic law, as you seem to be insinuating.
Hi, Just wanted to add that you have missed out the fact that Hindus believe in re-birth. This means that your past lives (although not consciously active)do play an active role in your present one. This is the explanation for the condiitons at birth (rich poor, healthy etc). It also explains why a new born baby would suffer - because of past karma of the child/coupled with the karma(past) & present actions of the parents (i.e. neglegence etc)
I don't believe in Karma either. I believe that we live in a dangerous yet wonderful world and random things just happen for no reason whatsoever. Humans have only created these 'theories' about life to try to make some sense of our crazy existence.
karma is a crock of crap!! i feel how fred does. fred deserves love for all he has given, if he desires love on earth before he dies and he is a good person then technically 'karma' should have rewarded him by now because he is deserving. reap what you sow is if you put love in you should get love back. karma has failed many people! i see good people that just want to be loved and willing to do anything for this type of happyness only to find that life keeps shitting on them, nice people are easy targets for people who use and abuse. goodhearted people are getting screwed, and because they are good the only thing they can do is roll over and take the abuse. people who win in life, love, money, sucess, are very competitive.... it truely is a dog eat dog or survival of the fittest out there... alot of these life winners who have it all are not nice people, just menipulative caniving souls who somehow always mannage to get there way and dont nessicarily deserve it.
and to TaRa, shame on you for telling fred he will reap what he sows but in heavin [what after he is dead?] that is crap! he deserves love while he is still alive! him finding his soul mate after he is dead wont mater much now will it. everyone wants to be loved while they are still alive. this world is very lonely and cold without love. i feel bad for fred. karma has failed the majority of us living folk!
Mark - what you've described is a quasi-spiritual version of the secular karma I described above. Obviously, if you do good things for people it is more likely that good things will happen to you.
Also, I'll point out that since writing this article, my views have changed a bit. I do now believe that an objective morality exists, however it is derived from logic not from any supernatural source.
I have readied all of the comments above and still don't understand. Karma and logic will never go together because you all made good points. I think karma is just if you believe it or not just as if you believe in God or not (whatever religion) I can up with many things that say karma is not real example what’s going on in the world today. How women and kids are dying for no real reason. Then I can say karma is real, if you do your research it go's back to the life you lived before. The thing is and this is the only question I have. Why be punish for something you don’t know you did??? Karma is not real it has no base to it.
Karma is on all levels (pop culture/ ontologically/metaphysically incompatible with Christianity. It may be consistent with Dharma, I don't have sufficient understanding of the concept.
Additionally, I just want to say that I love the fact that you went after the concept of Karma. I wish though, that you actually went after the "secular" Karma. To exegete the concept as a "force of nature" would really involve going back to the original manuscripts and have some knowledge of the original language. As I'm sure we can agree that once translated, the original message may be compromised with varying degrees of possible depending on whether it's an ancient language, etc...and I certainly don't know much if anything about the original texts on which it is based.
On the other hand, people do like the idea of what i refer to as "lazy justice/lazy reward". If someone has wronged you, you need not deal- Karma will take care of it. If you want to increase your good Karma, then do good. I'm pretty sure it's also up for debate as to whether or not it's a linear scale with intergers or if two separate and distinct scales exist. I believe the former is the preferred by most of the population as it allows the good to extend past the bad and therefore negating it.
Playing my cards immediately- I accept the concepts of grace and mercy as well as justice. (Grace=possibility of getting a reprieve we don't deserve, while mercy= possibility of not getting the wrath we DO deserve.) Separate is the concept of justice in which someone who is (usually) non-repentant getting what they're going to get.
In justice, generally, I take no delight in seeing the accused receive their sentence. (exceptions aside, such as 1st degree murder, etc...). To me it's sad because an unrepentant heart is always unquieting in my opinion. On a more personal level, even "someone who doesn't get caught" usually makes not one, but a series of bad decisions in their life that come back to bite them at some point. This is not Karma. Additionally, I believe that confrontation is often a great thing. Many a score has been settled by talking and it just takes one party to initiate. I also personally have no concerns about a good throwdown- I say step up to the plate and be confident enough to defend your position. (polite phrasing for "grow a set").
And lastly, I forgot to put in the fact that fighting is sometime unavoidable when it means standing up for what is right after exhausting other options or preventing further damage. Bin Laden was never gonna gonna get taken out by Karma...*however* he was taken out...he can no longer hurt me or anyone else- and YA... I'm good with that.
"Morals are obviously objective".
Morals are a part of culture. What one culture considers heinous may be considered acceptable in another. History is proof of that and so is the modern age. I'm not trying to bash a belief in "Dharma" or anything, I'm just stating the facts about culture. Sure, Karma and Dharma cannot be disproved, as proving a negative is near impossible, but they can't be proven positive either. Dharma and Karma are parts of a religion. By default, that's belief, not objective fact. Fact and belief will always be different. Of course it's possible for there to be objective morals, but by the look of the world, that chance is slim at best. Anything is possible, but things can be extremely unlikely. That's just the way I see it. I used to believe in things like Karma and objective morals, but I'm just going to say that what you see and experience can easily change that.
Hey, it is really really great to see people share thoughts on their aspects of beliefs. It is understandble why an infant would die. But I often think that people refer to death as something really horrible and unpleasant. But I mean who knows what really happens afterdeath. What I believe is that death is an transformation. The body isn't alive anymore but the soul is still conscious. Why does death have to be something really bad? I mean how do people know it's what we have perceived it as? All I am saying is that maybe the infant's family isn't ready for the newcomer and that the infant would have been better off with it's soul in a place where there is only peace and quietness.
Some people just want to have something to believe in. Karma is a good example. Things happen to us every single day of our lives. We don't know what will come/what to expect. If I go to a store right now, and steal something.. I can't just say to myself, "Oh, now karma's going to come get me!" And then BOOM, 20 years later, I get into a bad car accident... I can't just say, "20 years ago, I knew karma was going to come and get me. It's all because I stole from that store." No, that's just ridiculous. Those things happen to us. It's not karma. Karma isn't real. We just want to blame it on something. What I do believe in, is, 'EVERYTHING happens for a reason.' Because everything DOES. There are reasons for everything. Absolutely everything.
Julie, you hit some very good points that I agree to, but I feel you are a little off based. You shouldn't even rejoice when someone gets a 1st degree murder by your statement. What if a person is wrongly convicted or received the worst punishment possible because of his or her circumstances? Every situation is different, unique, and unexplainable.
I don't believe in karma,however I do believe in God,I have seen with my own eyes what he do.Yes I am a good person,but do good things happen to me? No,expecailly not in love,but the bad things I do,I seem to recieve payback for them without a doubt.So I guess it goes like this.... Bad things happen to good ppl and Good things happen to bad.
I don't expect good things will happen when I complete a “good” act. I believe in Karma in a different way I guess. I believe we create, through our actions, what "Socially Acceptable" is. We act out our lives believing nobody sees our dark side or imperfections. Then we expect perfection from others. We believe we are better liars than we really are. We see through each other better than we can lie. Then we pass this behavior along to others and they do the same thing.
Everything we do effects our environment and those things come back to us later in life through different circumstances because we taught the world it was acceptable. The Karma happens because nobody taught the world anything different. The only way to make the world become better is to become better than the world is teaching you to be.
You become “god” when you quit letting the world create you and you start creating the world better. This is what I've experienced anyway...
I can look back into my childhood and look at the decisions I've made and how they affected others. I only learned how my actions affected others after I was affected by similar actions. I don't go through the world trying to make a trade with everyone. Karma doesn't work that way from my experience.
Bad things happen to me all the time and I really try my best to treat others as I would myself. A lot of the worst things that happen to me are due to my own ignorance. I’ve burned others and I have been burned. When I was younger I taught the world that my behavior was acceptable and everyone else taught the world how to be through their actions. The youth of the world now is a reflection of the past. What they believe will create the future. It doesn't matter if we pretended to be good because the future will tell us if we were or not. I think Karma is like saying "Don't pooh where you eat, blame it on the dog, then complain about the taste of the food".
Opiner09 3 years ago
You're doubts of Karma are well grounded and logical.
However, your assessment of universal morals is flawed. Morals are obviously objective, but that doesn't mean that some "being" hasn't codified the concept of morals. Hinduism has already considered this issue, so you don't have to waist any brain cells trying to reinvent the wheel. The codification of morals, what is right and what is wrong, is called 'dharma'. Dharma, in simple terms, is the 'moral law'. Hinduism obviously has its theory as to who created the dharma. So if that religion is correct, then we have the answer. However, the religion may be wrong on who or what created it. If Hinduism is wrong, it still doesn't prove that dharma doesn't exist; it just proves Hinduism is wrong about that concept. So, it's very possible that dharma exists, but we don't know who or what is responsible for its creation.
Moreover, Hinduism attempts to interpret the dharma. Once again, the religion may be inaccurate. There are many priests who believe they know a lot about it, but of course even they can not be 100% certain. So, it's possible that dharma exists, but we don't know its exact specifications.
I'm not arguing dharma exists, I'm just saying it is theoretically possible that a universal (supernatural) moral law could exist without it being created by humans or even known by humans. After all we lived most of our human history without even realizing many scientific truisms (i.e., medicine, electromagnetism, etc.).