Theodicy and the Limiting Case

[ehbowen]

And, in questions of morality, the limiting case all too often involves Nazis....

From a discussion on dietary ethics which got a little off the rails:

I don't quite understand what you mean by that. Why would Nazis want people to be accountable for their actions regardless of their motives? That's what I am advocating for, for constant and universal application of moral standards upon all people, for all time. Men, women, young, old, straight, gay, able or disables, it doesn't matter. What is evil for a homeless man in the streets of Mumbai is evil for a billionaire in LA; what is evil for an active duty marine in Syria is evil for a housewife in Tennessee. It doesn't matte if your life is very hard, or very easy, you still have to behave according to the same moral guidelines. Don't steal, don't kill, don't rape, don't terrorize people, don't promote addictive substances without informing people what you are selling, etc.


Men like Himmler and Eichmann though that the end justified the means; in their mind, it was OK to kill millions of people to create a Utopian society for the German people.

I'm saying that it isn't. That the ends do not ever justify the means. No goal is noble enough to warrant doing evil to achieve it.

No, you do what's right, even if it kills you. There's never a justification for breaking moral laws, regardless of what economic, medical, social, or political motive you might have for doing so.


Perhaps you misunderstood my comment because I used the word "chafe?" I can see how that might lead you to think I am dismissing it as a hindrance, which was not my intention. Rather, I was just pointing out that I find it to be a rather large obstacle to vegetarianism and other strict codes of moral conduct.

If you promote vegeterianism, aesceticism, celibacy, or other such restrictions, people will throw the problem of evil at you

"Why should I be good if it hurts me? I don't benefit from being good, but I do from being evil. What gives?"

To which my response would be that what gives, is that the world is a crapsack hellhole, and that you should be good even if it hurts you because righteousness is it's own reward.

Sorry, I wasn't being precise enough. I was specifically referencing your statement that:

People should be able to decide what they do based on their own values and conscience, not be put under pressure from outside forces.

...and what the expected outcome is if those "values and conscience" are distorted. So if my own values are taken from Hollywood movies like Hooper and I feel that I ought to be able to drive 95 (miles an hour [US], not kph!) after having five or six beers to loosen up, you're saying that no "outside forces"...including those with a badge and a gun...should be able to pressure me otherwise?

Ender, unless you want to be dropped into a universe with a single rational inhabitant (yourself), there are always going to be "outside forces". Now, I think that there are ways to manage the interaction of those outside forces. Once such is Federalism; if everything worked properly we would have fifty functional laboratories of democracy which could attune themselves to the needs and desires of their residents. But the big push in recent decades has been to do away with that and make every initiative...from both the Left and the Right...nationwide. If we were truly following the Constitution, Obamacare wouldn't even have been an issue....so California wants a cradle to grave welfare state and finds a way to make it work, then let others follow their example. Texas goes full-on laissez-faire capitalism? Let's see if that works.

I'm coming close to putting words in your mouth and I'm sorry, but forty years ago I realized that I was at about the same point and boiled it down to this basic fact: I want to be my own god. I want to do what I want to do and be told it's all good, but at the same time I want to tell others that you need to do what I want you to do...or else! Obviously, when you boil it down like that, it's untenable with two or more gods in the same room. So there has to be an ultimate standard.

If you want to continue this conversation we can go deeper into detail about what we each think that ultimate standard is and should be. While it's true that mine is based in Christian thought, it's not taken strictly from the writings of either the Old or the New Testament...it's rooted in my understanding of the heart of the Living God which was, yes, expressed in those writings but, being alive and ever expanding, knows that the challenges and situations we face these days are not the same as those which faced the ancient Hebrews.

One of the principles which I do believe my God holds to is, "government by consent of the governed." But I also believe that an election is held every night. So long as you choose to wake up in this world, with all its problems and pains, over one of the alternatives in your dreams, you are consenting to His ultimate Sovereignty. I'm not saying that it makes you in any way, shape or form a Christian, Jew, or anything else...but it means that you are subject to being judged by His standards. Again, of course, In My Opinion.

[Hariti]

Sorry, I wasn't being precise enough.

I wasn't being precise enough either; when I said "outside forces" I was specifically thinking of non-personal outside forces; "natural evil" if you will.

People are often put under pressure by poverty, disease, disability, starvation, or other outside forces that aren't directly and intentionally caused by human actions. These things are just bad quirks of the universe, and often befall innocent, good hearted people, and sometimes they cause those people to do bad things for their own betterment.

A man might commit theft or even murder if he is starving, or might be pressured to otherwise break his conscience in other ways; a starving vegetarian might choose to eat meat, not because he thinks it is right, but because he doesn't want to die. A man stranded on a desert island might even resort to cannibalism to survive.

Likewise, a person who is extremely poor might kill or rob another man so he can care for his children; maybe he couldn't afford heating in the dead of winter, and was afriad his children would freeze to death; he needed money badly, but there were no licit jobs in his community and no way to leave that community. So, he resorts to doing something he knows is wrong, and truly doesn't want to do, because he feels like he is being forced to do so.

Or, consider the case of a woman. A mother. She is a devout Catholic, and believes that adultery is sinful, but she needs money, perhaps to buy medicine for an elderly parent? Nobody is willing to give her any charity, and she can't find a job; so, she resorts to prostitution to get the money and medicine. That doesn't mean she wanted to sell her body, does it?

To tie it back to the thread that brought us here; what about a person who is lactose intolerant, suffers from Celiac disease, and is allergic to nuts? Such a person would be in a position where being a vegetarian would be much harder than normal. If they ate meat, it wouldn't necessarily be because they wanted to do so, but rather because of the unfair and injust pressure they were under.

Cases like this are ones where the problem of evil becomes most apparent; how can we be asked to be good, when being good might literally get us killed? How can we have freedom of conscience, or free will, if our only options are to suffer or sin? That's the kind of outside pressure I was talking about; the blind, cruel, merciless kind of pressure that pervades our world and encourages people who would otherwise, if given the choice without any outside factors, do the right thing.

In my personal opinion, it is still evil in all those cases to do evil deeds; the end doesn't justify the means, and doing evil to save yourself or to save other people is not acceptable. I do think that in such cases, however, judgement should be lighter, and that the people doing those things should be treated as victims themselves; victims of fate, of temptation, of Evil with a capital "E" ... victims of the inherently flawed, decaying, corrupted nature of material creation.

My answer to WHY the world is so fucked up is long and complicated, and deserves a post or even a thread of it's own; suffice to say that I don't think that God wants it to be that way, or planned it that way, or that such a corrupt world is the way it should be. I think other powers royally derailed the intended plan for this world a long, long time ago.


So, yeah, I totally agree with your original post; I am not saying people should be able to do what they think is right without human interference; if people, like Himmler or Mengele for example, are doing things that causes death and pain to others, and using a twisted sense of morality to justify their actions, they should be stopped by other people whose morality is intact. If people are doing things that the vast majority of the world sees as evil, they shouldn't get a free pass just because "they think they are the good guys."

[Yei]

I can see this developing into a very interesting moral argument, especially as I have just realised that we pretty much have exactly opposite moral/ethical belief systems. I'd like to examine your statements from the other threat, but I feel it would be better to do it here than there as my interest is highly philosophical rather than dietary.

What you have to remember is that lots of people, myself included, beleive that morality is A) Objective and not contingent upon circumstances B) Universally applied to everyone and C) Dictated by a higher power.

How does this affect people of other faiths? Do you believe that everyone, regardless of religion, must follow the morality of your gods? Do you believe that your gods have the right to enforce their moral precepts on people who are not their worshippers, regardless of the interests of other gods? And if this is not the case, how can morality be objective or universal?

For such people, there can be no exceptions; if something is evil, it is evil, regardless of why people are doing it. That's the way I view meat; I understand the killing of animals to be equal to the killing of human beings, and as such I cannot condone eating meat under any circumstances.

To use an extreme example, even literal starvation wouldn't justify killing an animal for food. It is morally better, in my understanding of the world, to let oneself perish than to kill another innocent being to save yourself.

If you walk through a garden on a bright summer morning, and a honeybee stings you, who is responsible for the bee's death? Are you, for being there? Is the bee responsible for its own death? Is the queen bee responsible? Who killed the bee?

It seems to me that your philosophy is setting people an impossible task. If you extend harm to animals beyond meat eating, then even living in a building is immoral. Homes, businesses, transport networks were all built over the homes of animals, some of which go extinct as a result. Animals die on the roads, and human industry slowly kills rivers, forests, and even the ocean itself. Even vegetable agriculture necessitates the death of animals in one form or another. I just don't see how human beings can avoid participating in this, regardless of their personal beliefs or interests.

I find this especially vexing, as other animals clearly do not follow your moral beliefs. Obviously, most predators literally have to eat meat to live. It is essential for them. But even herbivores can be violent and aggressive. Territorial fights are common to many species, and some of the most dangerous are herbivores. The most dangerous non-human animals in Africa are hippos and buffalo (or mosquitoes). Other animals kill each other, all the time, in horrific and brutal ways. Some kill for food, others for mates, some for territory. Sometimes they just kill. And, though few actively hunt people, some are even willing to do this to humans. This isn't even getting into the nasty shit that parasitic animals do to each other. Like those wasps that lay their eggs in living spiders, and whose larvae eat the arachnid from the inside out. Are these animals morally judged for their 'moral failure'? And if not, why not?

I am not trying to marginalize women, or disabled people (I happen to have several major chronic medical problems myself!), or poor people. I am trying to save the lives of animals. I think that all people should try to minimize the suffering they inflict on others, rather than minimize thier own suffering. I know that's a hard pill for people to swallow, and that many people find it outright abhorrent, but it's what I truly beleive.

It's better to be a starved, diseased, selfless aescetic who is barely surviving, than to be comfortable and happy on the backs of the suffering of other living things.

The reason I am saying all this is because I want to make it clear that it's not a personal thing; I am not trying to attack you or Jennet. I am not trying to say that your disabilities and health problems aren't real, or that they don't matter. The lifestyle I promote isn't one that is particularly enjoyable or healthy.

I'm not entirely sure how your position could possibly be constructed as anything other than a personal attack. You have basically stated that people should be suffering, starving aesetics, or they are actively choosing to do evil. Since you are Hindu, I assume that you believe in karmic reincarnation (I may be wrong about this), which means you believe that people will be punished for this behaviour in their next life. Also, there is no reasonable excuse for this behaviour (such as a dietary problem). And since your moral system is both absolute and divinely mandated, you must believe that it is also just. Do you believe that someone like Jennet should be punished because she has to eat meat?

I'm not trying to attack you with this, but I'm not sure you have thought through the full implications of your moral position.

Just because I am willing to eat a sub-optimal diet and live with the health consequences of doing so, out of moral conviction, doesn't meant that I should try to make everyone else do the same. I know that, and I am fully ashamed of my zealous and bombastic behavior.

I thought that you ate a sub-optimal diet because you were completely apathetic to the value of food?

Even my Gods, who promote vegetarianism, wouldn't be cool with trying to force it on people.

Wait, I thought you said that these moral precepts were universal? So now they are universal, but not mandatory? How does that work?

[Swapping out trackback code - SP]

[Yei]

Now, let's deal with this one here.

People are often put under pressure by poverty, disease, disability, starvation, or other outside forces that aren't directly and intentionally caused by human actions. These things are just bad quirks of the universe, and often befall innocent, good hearted people, and sometimes they cause those people to do bad things for their own betterment.

A man might commit theft or even murder if he is starving, or might be pressured to otherwise break his conscience in other ways; a starving vegetarian might choose to eat meat, not because he thinks it is right, but because he doesn't want to die. A man stranded on a desert island might even resort to cannibalism to survive.

Likewise, a person who is extremely poor might kill or rob another man so he can care for his children; maybe he couldn't afford heating in the dead of winter, and was afriad his children would freeze to death; he needed money badly, but there were no licit jobs in his community and no way to leave that community. So, he resorts to doing something he knows is wrong, and truly doesn't want to do, because he feels like he is being forced to do so.

Or, consider the case of a woman. A mother. She is a devout Catholic, and believes that adultery is sinful, but she needs money, perhaps to buy medicine for an elderly parent? Nobody is willing to give her any charity, and she can't find a job; so, she resorts to prostitution to get the money and medicine. That doesn't mean she wanted to sell her body, does it?

Cases like this are ones where the problem of evil becomes most apparent; how can we be asked to be good, when being good might literally get us killed? How can we have freedom of conscience, or free will, if our only options are to suffer or sin? That's the kind of outside pressure I was talking about; the blind, cruel, merciless kind of pressure that pervades our world and encourages people who would otherwise, if given the choice without any outside factors, do the right thing.

In my personal opinion, it is still evil in all those cases to do evil deeds; the end doesn't justify the means, and doing evil to save yourself or to save other people is not acceptable. I do think that in such cases, however, judgement should be lighter, and that the people doing those things should be treated as victims themselves; victims of fate, of temptation, of Evil with a capital "E" ... victims of the inherently flawed, decaying, corrupted nature of material creation.

I have a huge problem with this moral system. In all your examples it is the poor who have to confront the bulk of moral temptation, and therefore are the ones who suffer the consequences. There is no mention in your examples of the ultimate causes of the poverty or suffering of those who feature in the examples. What about those people who create poverty through policy? Do they carry no responsibility for these 'sins' if their polices are the things that caused it. All the blame for these moral failings falls on those who have the least choice.

This reminds me of all those situations where poor and oppressed people fight for their rites but get cast as 'evil' for their actions, even if they were completely reasonable in context. Hell, even if they are admirable (I'm thinking of the Dakota Access pipeline protests), the disenfranchised are so often condemned with this morality, sometimes retroactively, that it almost becomes a tool of oppression. Not to mention the implication of victim blaming.

And since when is prostitution evil?

My answer to WHY the world is so fucked up is long and complicated, and deserves a post or even a thread of it's own; suffice to say that I don't think that God wants it to be that way, or planned it that way, or that such a corrupt world is the way it should be. I think other powers royally derailed the intended plan for this world a long, long time ago.

Then why are your gods still expecting people to follow an absolute, pre-determined, set of moral beliefs? If the gods know that things are going wrong, why not adjust their expectations to suit the changing conditions?

So, yeah, I totally agree with your original post; I am not saying people should be able to do what they think is right without human interference; if people, like Himmler or Mengele for example, are doing things that causes death and pain to others, and using a twisted sense of morality to justify their actions, they should be stopped by other people whose morality is intact. If people are doing things that the vast majority of the world sees as evil, they shouldn't get a free pass just because "they think they are the good guys."

Hugely hypothetical question here: but do you think it would be possible to have stopped the Nazi's while keeping one's morality intact? What does that even mean in a practical sense, and would it actually be effective?

[Hariti]

Do you believe that everyone, regardless of religion, must follow the morality of your gods? Do you believe that your gods have the right to enforce their moral precepts on people who are not their worshippers, regardless of the interests of other gods?

Very much so, yes. I believe that the Godhead, Brahaman, Bhagavan, the Supreme Person; the one being that is above all things, created the entire omniverse and everything in it, including all the other gods, demigods, and demons. So, any God who exists, regardless of whether or not they are worshiped in India, Greece, Norway, Japan, Mali, Mexico, or anywhere is is subordinate to that power.

Secondly, I believe that some Gods are flawed, imperfect, or outright evil. Only the supreme being is above moral reproach; the lesser goodly gods, the Devas, serve the will of the Godhead, but they aren't perfect beings, they are just as capable of failure as mortals are. The evil Asuras, who are effectively evil Gods, are fundamentally the same in nature as the Devas are. The difference is their individual character and personality.

So, when people worship Gods other than the Devas, they may or may not be getting correct moral advice; some Gods are closer to right than other gods are, although Krishna states that all religion eventually leads back to him, and that all religions have some truth in them. It's just a matter of degrees.

Even a religion that is opposed to Hinduism in a large number of ways, such as the Mexica religion for example, shares enough basic moral and ethical tenets that it's followers benefit from practicing it.

Hindu morality is far more about what you do than what you believe; it's a praxic faith. A good person is a good person, regardless of who they worship or what they believe. Conversely, an evil person is an evil person regardless of how devout they might be. The villains in many Hindu myths and legends are actually masterful Yogis and are very spiritual; they try to use their spiritual powers for evil, however, and are thwarted by the heroes.

Fundamentally, Vishnu and Shiva don't care if you worship someone else, they still expect you to behave according to the moral laws that they themselves follow. Laws that they did not invent, but rather received through their knowledge of the ultimate truth from which they, themselves, originate.

So, naturally, this extends to other Gods as well. Shiva doesn't care that there are beings who are, like himself, considered to be Gods, who possess similar power to himself, who have different morals. Those beings are wrong and he is right, because the source of his moral convictions comes from cognate knowledge he possesses of the nature of the universe. Any God who disagrees with him either doesn't have that knowledge, or chooses to ignore it in favor of self aggrandizement.

There is only one Bhagavan, one Brahman, one Ultimate Truth, and that being created a set of moral laws that are designed to liberate mortal souls from the material world. The consequences of breaking those laws are the same for everyone and everything, and so the agents of the Supereme, the Devas, try to promote those moral laws for everyone equally. Ignoring them results in negative consequences for everyone, even if they don't know it or believe it, because everyone who exists, from Gods down to insects, exists within the confines and constraints of the created reality.

If you walk through a garden on a bright summer morning, and a honeybee stings you, who is responsible for the bee's death? Are you, for being there? Is the bee responsible for its own death? Is the queen bee responsible? Who killed the bee?

In that case, both I and the bee would be affected, and we would both incur Karmic reactions to what happened. It would damage both my own path toward liberation as well as the path of the bee toward that same ultimate goal. It doesn't matter who is "responsible" because Karma is an amoral force that exists intrinsically in the omniverse and incurs action and reaction upon living beings.

It seems to me that your philosophy is setting people an impossible task. If you extend harm to animals beyond meat eating, then even living in a building is immoral. Homes, businesses, transport networks were all built over the homes of animals, some of which go extinct as a result. Animals die on the roads, and human industry slowly kills rivers, forests, and even the ocean itself. Even vegetable agriculture necessitates the death of animals in one form or another. I just don't see how human beings can avoid participating in this, regardless of their personal beliefs or interests.

You are correct, it is impossible to avoid Karma completely, except for extreme cases of asceticism where people divorce themselves from society entirely (like Jain monks).

That is why reincarnation exists. You come back to pay your Karmic balance from previous lifetimes, and if you incur less Karma than you repay, your net balance of many lifetimes is positive. Given enough cycles of death and rebirth, you can become free of Karma, but it won't happen in one lifetime.

The goal is to minimize, with extreme effort, the amount of Karma you incur in a given lifetime, and to do as many selfless deeds as you can.

Hinduism isn't an ideology that exists to give an easy answer to life's questions; it presents a long, hard, painful road to liberation, that requires you to be thankelessly good in an evil world. Living beings do suffer, have suffered, and will suffer, and only by fighting against overwhelming odds can you ever escape from that cycle. The world, reality itself, is stacked against you; the material world is a deathtrap designed to keep mortal souls contained within.

Now, you might ask yourself "what kind of God would make such a world?" and that would be a fair question. The answer, however, in the Hindu understanding, is that no God did so.

Rather, the universe simply arises as a consequence of the existence of the Godhead. It is not an intentional construct, it simply incarnates as the result of the existence of the divine. And, since it exists, the Gods have to manage it as best they can; they order it, they create stars and planets and mold the chaos that is reality into something potentially habitable.

The Gods are stuck here too. All the planes of heaven and hell are part of the material world, not the higher reality in which the Bhagavan exists. They are, just like Karma, gravity, thermodynamics, space, and time, fundamental artifacts of the omniverse.

Traditional Hindu cosmology posits that, from the unconscious dreams of the Bhagavan, the universe emerges. In this infant universe, there is nothing but a great sea of endless water, and on that sea is a lotus, where Vishnu dwells. He is the only God in the chaos of the universe, and so he creates Brahma to bring order to the chaos. Brahma goes forth and makes the stars and planets, and orders the universe into tiers of heavens, hells, and the middle world that is the earth. Brahma brings forth children, who become the various tribes of Gods, the Asuras, Devas, and others come from his sire.

These beings all have free will; some choose to align themselves with Vishnu and Brahma, who want to bring order to the chaos of the universe and liberate the mortal souls trapped within, while others choose to revel in that chaos and seek to carve out petty positions of personal power in the created world. This is the source of conflict in Hindu mythology, and the source of much of the misery that exists in the material world; the conflict between the beings who align themselves with Godhead and the beings who align themselves with ignorance, suffering, and Karmic reaction.

So, Hindus don't claim that the universe is good, or just, or pleasant to live in. Nor do we claim that the Gods we worship made the universe the way it is, as some sort of test of our resolve. Rather, we understand the universe as a sort of sinking ship, a hot mess that's only getting hotter, and the Gods are trapped right here in the same boat we are. Their goal is to help us, and themselves, GTFO and get back to the Godhead from which we emerged. The only way to do that is to rid our souls of the pervading corruption of the material world that manifests itself as Karma.

Any God, any person, and ideology that isn't on board with us is going to get hurt, not by us or our Gods, but by the universe itself. The demons, people, and Gods who oppose the morality of the Godhead are hurting themselves as much as they are hurting other people. There is only one exit from this craphole omniverse, and we know how to get there.

Of course, Hinduism does have an apocalyptic tradition; eventually, as the world degrades over time, the Gods will be forced to violently re-order the cosmos. It simply gets to the point where escape is impossible; no matter how good you are, no matter how hard you try, no matter how many lifetimes you live, you can't avoid Karma at all, and are eternally stuck in reincarnation. At that point in time, at the end of the Kali Yuga, the Devas will wage war against their enemies, defeat them, and reset the world back to where it was when Brahma first ordered it ~4 billion years ago.

So, if Hinduism seems impossible to you right now, that's probably part of the reason; we are currently in the middle of a Kali Yuga, and Dharma is getting harder and harder to maintain every year. The systems that exist that make Karma impossible to avoid, like the ones you mentioned in your post, are merely symptoms of that degradation of reality. It will continue to get harder, before it gets better, but it will eventually get better.

I find this especially vexing, as other animals clearly do not follow your moral beliefs. Obviously, most predators literally have to eat meat to live. It is essential for them. But even herbivores can be violent and aggressive. Territorial fights are common to many species, and some of the most dangerous are herbivores. The most dangerous non-human animals in Africa are hippos and buffalo (or mosquitoes). Other animals kill each other, all the time, in horrific and brutal ways. Some kill for food, others for mates, some for territory. Sometimes they just kill. And, though few actively hunt people, some are even willing to do this to humans. This isn't even getting into the nasty shit that parasitic animals do to each other. Like those wasps that lay their eggs in living spiders, and whose larvae eat the arachnid from the inside out. Are these animals morally judged for their 'moral failure'? And if not, why not?

I think I see the problem here; you seem to think that Karma is moral judgement. It isn't. It just happens. It's a natural force that blindly lashes out at living beings. The Gods do not judge people or animals for being evil, the universe does, and it does so with destructive and unfair results.

I wrote about Karma extensively on another thread, perhaps that could help you understand my views somewhat better:

https://ecauldron.com/forum/non-pagan-religions-and-interfaith-discussions/conceptions-and-misconceptions-about-karma/msg218073/#msg218073

You see, Hinduism does have a universal morality, and that morality does come from a higher power, but that morality is descriptive rather than prescriptive. The Gods didn't arbitrarily decide what was right and wrong, rather they realized what was right and wrong due to their connection to the Godhead; they are able to see which activities cause negative Karmic reaction and which ones don't, and they encourage people to avoid the ones that cause bad Karmic outcomes.

The Gods aren't being assholes and saying, of their own invention, that wild animals should be punished for killing each other. That would be unfair! Rather, they are saying that wild animals are punished for killing each other, by Karma, and that there isn't a damn thing that they can do to stop that process from happening.

It's out of their control; all they can do as powerful (but not all-powerful), good (but not all-good), wise (but not all-knowing) beings is try to reason with beings that can be reasoned with; humans. They share what they know with us and encourage us to follow the rules they have formulated, based on observation of the nature of the universe, to escape from the situation we are in.

They can't reason with animals and say "hey, stop what you are doing, you are hurting your own soul!" so they wait until those animals are born as humans and try to rescue them then. In the mean time, they encourage humans not to hurt animals because that just slows the whole process down for all parties involved.

I'm not entirely sure how your position could possibly be constructed as anything other than a personal attack. You have basically stated that people should be suffering, starving aesetics, or they are actively choosing to do evil.

Yes. People can only escape from the mortal world through self-regulation, and that self regulation often incurs even more suffering upon them. It's terribly unfair and unjust, but it is the way I think that the universe operates. Reality is, to put it bluntly, evil and oppressive.

And since your moral system is both absolute and divinely mandated, you must believe that it is also just. Do you believe that someone like Jennet should be punished because she has to eat meat?

...and no, I don't think it is just; there is such as thing as unjust punishment, and that's what happens to people like Jennet. They fall victim to the crapsack nature of the universe.

If she eats meat, then Karma (which is NOT just) will punish her for doing so, either in this life or one of her future lives. OTOH if she does not eat meat, then her own body (which is NOT just) will punish her for doing so by making her physically and emotionally sick.

Neither of those things are good, or just, or right. In a just world, Jennet wouldn't have the health problems that she has, and would be able to choose whether or not to eat meat based only on her own free conscience. Also in a just world, there would be no force of Karma going around brutalizing people for actions they took in a past life. The world is not just; the world is the enemy.

You are assuming that because the Gods, who are good, are then ones who codify the laws of moral behavior, they must be responsible for punishing people who break those laws. They aren't, at least not in Hindu cosmology. Vishnu says it's wrong to eat meat because Karma will punish you for doing so, not because HE will punish you! He doesn't control Karma, and he is just trying to keep you from accidentally incurring Karma upon yourself.

My Gods wouldn't look at someone like Jennet as a criminal; they would look upon her as a victim of Karma, and of the material world. If she were punished for her meat-eating, that would be a tragic, unfortunate, undesirable outcome, and one which my gods would seek to rectify if they could.

Do you believe that someone like Jennet should be punished because she has to eat meat?

No. I don't think she should be, and nor do my Gods. She should not, in a fair universe, be punished for doing what she needs to be happy and healthy.

Rather, I think that she will be punished, despite the fact that such an outcome is terribly unfair and unjust, because in this world, neither I nor my Gods hold the reigns. Rather, in our world Karma is judge, jury, and executioner, and it gives no quarter to anyone. In fact, the whole point of my religion is to avoid getting hit with Karma long enough to get out of the material world.

It's like being trapped in a cage with a bear; regardless of whether or not you are a good person, the bear is still going to maul you if you piss it off, but maybe if you know enough the bear's behavior, you might be able to get out of the cage without getting killed.

That's how morality in Hinduism works; the Gods have codified a system of behavior that allows one to avoid being brutalized by Karmic retribution. That system is universal because Karma itself is universal and doesn't have any regard for context. It's good because it helps you to ultimately escape from Karma and return to the Godhead, where there is no suffering.

So, no I am not personally attacking Jennet. I am not saying she is a bad person. I am saying that according to my own metaphysical view of the operation of the universe, her actions and the actions of everyone else who eats meat are self destructive. Eating meat brings Karmic retribution, and Karmic retribution causes your soul to be stuck in the material world for an even longer time. Since the material world is fundamentally flawed and full of suffering, that is an undesirable consequence, and eating meat is therefore a bad thing to do, for your own sake.

There are lots of other things that can incur Karma, and I am sure that my own Karmic budget is going to take many, many lifetimes to balance. I am no better than Jennet or anyone else, and I am not looking down on her for eating meat.

I was trying, rather bullheadedly, to warn her that eating meat is going to incur bad Karma. Which, in hindsight, was rather rude and preachy.

Hinduism teaches that, to escape material creation, you have to actually desire to liberate yourself. It's something that has to come willingly from within, not something you can force on other people. Trying to make someone save themselves is ineffective "I demand that you stop doing this thing because it's hurting you, and I want you to care about your own soul!" doesn't actually make people care about it; if they don't believe in Karma or Reincarnation, they aren't going to take you seriously.

So no, it's not mandatory, because it only actually works when its voluntary. It's about learning lessons over the course of many lifetimes; even if other people force you to be good for an entire life, as soon as you are reborn, if you didn't actually want to do the right thing in your previous life, you will go right back to incurring bad Karma.

[Hariti]

I have a huge problem with this moral system. In all your examples it is the poor who have to confront the bulk of moral temptation, and therefore are the ones who suffer the consequences.

The poor aren't being blamed for the system they exist in, any more than they are being blamed for gravity or inertia. You have to exist within the context you exist within.

Rather, what I am saying is that even if you are poor, your actions still carry the same consequences as the actions of people who aren't under outside pressure. If you commit murder, Karma's response to that is that you must be killed in a later life. It doesn't matter if you were a homeless man killing for food, or a billionaire serial killer killing for pleasure. You still killed someone, and you have to pay the price for doing that.

However, none of that has to do with blame. I would most certainly blame the person in the latter example for their actions, whereas in the first example the blame would fall on other forces. The human response to these two scenarios should be quite different; in the second scenario, one should try to help to pay for what he has done, and to clear his conscience and teach him to be better. For the first guy, who killed because he wanted to kill, the proper response would be to make sure he never hurts anyone again by putting him in prison for life.

In both cases, the act itself, the act of killing an innocent person, is the same, and the cosmic result of that action is the same as well. However, the temporal response of one's fellow man to these two disparate scenarios need not be identical.


So no, I don't blame people for being evil when they are between a rock and a hard place, but that doesn't mean that what they did was somehow less evil. No matter why you do it, snuffing out a human life is always an abhorrent act, double so if that life was innocent.

Even if you are starving, even if you have a family to care for, that doesn't change the immutable fact that a human is dead because of you. A life, gone; a soul, reborn; a family, robbed. No context can ever wash away the fundamental wrongness of that action.

Even if it could, Karma still wouldn't care. You would still have to die, violently, at a later time, and so you would still be hurting your own soul. As such, it would still be bad thing to do, from a Hindu theological perspective, because it would prevent you from escaping the material world.

There is no mention in your examples of the ultimate causes of the poverty or suffering of those who feature in the examples. What about those people who create poverty through policy? Do they carry no responsibility for these 'sins' if their polices are the things that caused it. All the blame for these moral failings falls on those who have the least choice.

This reminds me of all those situations where poor and oppressed people fight for their rites but get cast as 'evil' for their actions, even if they were completely reasonable in context. Hell, even if they are admirable (I'm thinking of the Dakota Access pipeline protests), the disenfranchised are so often condemned with this morality, sometimes retroactively, that it almost becomes a tool of oppression. Not to mention the implication of victim blaming.

Obviously, the people and/or forces that cause other people to get pressured into doing evil are more at fault than the ones whom they put pressure on.

Why do you think eating meat causes Karma in Hinduism? Most people don't actually kill the animal themselves, does that make them guiltless? Not remotely. In fact, the other people you cause to do evil, the worse it becomes for you. The farmer is less guilty than the butcher, who is less guilty than the one who eats the meat, who is less guilty than the one who sell the meat. Why?

Because each of those people is actually causing the one below to do evil; would farmers kill so many animals if there was no demand to buy meat? Not likely. Would butchers be buying meat from farmers if nobody was eating meat? Of course not. Would people be eating so much meat if nobody sold it? No, because it would be less accessible. So, all the Karma incurred by each of these act is transferred equally upward to the ultimate responsible party.

So to for poverty, and war, and oppression; the people who causes these things suffer Karma orders of magnitude larger than the people on the ground. A murderer must die only once for his crime; a man who forces millions of people into poverty, and so indirectly causes millions of murders, must die millions of times for what he does.

Even disease and other "natural" phenomena are ultimately the fault of other beings. Hinduism posits the existence of demons and evil Gods who cause most of the "natural evil" in the universe, and these beings are subject to Karma as well, and eventually will have to pay the price for all the pain they cause.

And since when is prostitution evil?

I never said it was. I was talking about freedom of conscience; people often do things that they believe to be evil, not because they want to, but because they are pressured into doing so.

The example I gave was of a theoretical Catholic woman who believes prostitution is evil; whether or not it actually is evil is immaterial to the point I was making. I was saying that such a person might genuinely hate the idea of selling their sexuality and still do it anyway because of outside pressures such as, for example, having children to feed or an aging parent to care for.

[Hariti]

Then why are your gods still expecting people to follow an absolute, pre-determined, set of moral beliefs? If the gods know that things are going wrong, why not adjust their expectations to suit the changing conditions?

Because my Gods aren't powerful enough to do that; unlike in most other religions, Hinduism does not assert that the Gods we worship have total control over reality. They are constantly struggling against other forces and powers, and in many ways the universe is stacked against them.

Hindu morality is basically "How not to get screwed over by Karma: A guide" by the Gods. They can't change which things cause Karmic retribution, they can only guide you around those things.

"Hugely hypothetical question here: but do you think it would be possible to have stopped the Nazi's while keeping one's morality intact? What does that even mean in a practical sense, and would it actually be effective?"

I will get back to you on that one, I've already spent an hour on this thread!

[SunflowerP]

I can see this developing into a very interesting moral argument, especially as I have just realised that we pretty much have exactly opposite moral/ethical belief systems. I'd like to examine your statements from the other threat, but I feel it would be better to do it here than there as my interest is highly philosophical rather than dietary.

*** MOD HAT ON ***

Yei, It's not enough to just say you're responding to content from another thread, even when that other thread has already had another of its posts linked to. You still need to make sure your trackback code can be clicked so as to take any reader back to the post from which the quotes you're replying to came. Because having a link back to quotes in a different thread is even more essential to the purposes of our Quoting Guidelines, and because you have something of a habit of failing to provide all the proper trackbacks required, this time I'm issuing a warning, with strike. BUT, I note that this habit comes into play only when you're trying to do something 'advanced' with quotes, and it's generally something that, if you'd got everything just so, would have been better than doing it in a basic way. That's very much the case here - everything else about how you did it is exemplary (bringing your response to this thread, explicating that you were doing so and why, etc), and had you also included the correct trackback code, it would have been an excellent example of how to make effective use of TC's software. So instead of the general, 'if you need clarification, feel free to contact a member of staff,' I'm specifically inviting you to PM me - if you wish to do so; this isn't in any way required, just an offer - for a discussion of fancy quoting footwork. It's probably worth mentioning that our quoting guidelines don't require you to have a trackback to any post in this thread (it's very rare for that to be the case, but it's so this time), since you don't quote the text of or reply to anything in this thread; your reply is to a specific post in the other thread, but for this thread's purposes constitutes a general reply to the theme of 'take the theodicy/philosophy to the Philosophy subforum'. I'm guessing that your use of the trackback to what you presumably saw as the most relevant post in this thread was an attempt to comply with the quoting rules as you understood them. I'll replace that trackback with the correct one once I post this. Sunflower TC Forum Staff

[Yei]

I want to make it clear at the outset that I’m not intending to criticize Hinduism of Hindu beliefs as a whole. However, I have a few particular issues with the way you present certain aspects of karma, which will be explained in my responses.

Very much so, yes. I believe that the Godhead, Brahaman, Bhagavan, the Supreme Person; the one being that is above all things, created the entire omniverse and everything in it, including all the other gods, demigods, and demons. So, any God who exists, regardless of whether or not they are worshiped in India, Greece, Norway, Japan, Mali, Mexico, or anywhere is is subordinate to that power.

You are incorrect about this. I cannot speak for the gods of Greece or Norway, but the Godhead concept is NOT a part of Mesoamerican thought. Instead, Mesoamericans recognize a universal sacred power, known as Teotl in Nahuatl (other groups had different names for this phenomenon. The Mixtec called it peh). However, this is not your ‘Godhead,’ as Teotl is a force, not a being, supreme or otherwise. So the gods could not interact with this Godhead, it simply doesn't exist for them.

Secondly, I believe that some Gods are flawed, imperfect, or outright evil. Only the supreme being is above moral reproach; the lesser goodly gods, the Devas, serve the will of the Godhead, but they aren't perfect beings, they are just as capable of failure as mortals are. The evil Asuras, who are effectively evil Gods, are fundamentally the same in nature as the Devas are. The difference is their individual character and personality.

This does not lead me to conclude that karma must be universal or that it can be taken as objective. I mean, this ‘Godhead’ is remote and you have to go through mediums (gods and devas), all of whom have their own interpretation and biases. Furthermore, Hinduism is a very diverse religion, and people within that religion have their own interpretations. Thus, not all followers can even agree on the basic tenants of the religion. If there is so much disagreement, how can you know if its moral precepts are actually universal and objective or not? Even if they were, how could you definitely prove it, unless you yourself were also an unbiased observer?

So, when people worship Gods other than the Devas, they may or may not be getting correct moral advice; some Gods are closer to right than other gods are, although Krishna states that all religion eventually leads back to him, and that all religions have some truth in them. It's just a matter of degrees.

Even a religion that is opposed to Hinduism in a large number of ways, such as the Mexica religion for example, shares enough basic moral and ethical tenets that it's followers benefit from practicing it.

Mesoamerican and Hindu religions may share some basic principles, especially with respect to the practical application of common sense laws (no murder for example). However, don’t let this obscure the deep and fundamental differences that exist between them. There is no Godhead in Mesoamerica, there is no karmic reincarnation, and no dharma. Hinduism on the other hand lacks the tonalpohualli, tlazolli, and nextlahualli, which are very important in Mesoamerica. Even our views on existence are different (you seem not to value it much). As a consequence, activities that are necessary and beneficial for Central Mexican religions would be considered karmically bad in Indian faiths (or rather, the particular Indian faith you practice. I am aware that other Indian religions have different opinions on the issue). This is a fairly fundamental difference.

Hindu morality is far more about what you do than what you believe; it's a praxic faith. A good person is a good person, regardless of who they worship or what they believe. Conversely, an evil person is an evil person regardless of how devout they might be. The villains in many Hindu myths and legends are actually masterful Yogis and are very spiritual; they try to use their spiritual powers for evil, however, and are thwarted by the heroes.

Fundamentally, Vishnu and Shiva don't care if you worship someone else, they still expect you to behave according to the moral laws that they themselves follow. Laws that they did not invent, but rather received through their knowledge of the ultimate truth from which they, themselves, originate.

So, naturally, this extends to other Gods as well. Shiva doesn't care that there are beings who are, like himself, considered to be Gods, who possess similar power to himself, who have different morals. Those beings are wrong and he is right, because the source of his moral convictions comes from cognate knowledge he possesses of the nature of the universe. Any God who disagrees with him either doesn't have that knowledge, or chooses to ignore it in favor of self aggrandizement.

If Vishnu and Shiva don’t mind other gods, then why do they expect them to follow their moral convictions? Even if they do, it doesn’t matter. Your belief system depends on the idea of karmic reincarnation. If that works for followers of your religion that’s fine. However, it cannot exist for followers of my religion (and I suspect many others), as there is no form of Karmic reincarnation. It simply does not apply.

There is only one Bhagavan, one Brahman, one Ultimate Truth, and that being created a set of moral laws that are designed to liberate mortal souls from the material world. The consequences of breaking those laws are the same for everyone and everything, and so the agents of the Supereme, the Devas, try to promote those moral laws for everyone equally. Ignoring them results in negative consequences for everyone, even if they don't know it or believe it, because everyone who exists, from Gods down to insects, exists within the confines and constraints of the created reality.

Your Brahaman may have created a set of morals for his followers, and if you have agreed to that covenant than that’s good for you. However, your gods have only been promoting the moral laws for people in South and Southeast Asia. Historically they have not been present in other parts of the world, including the America’s. This is because the gods I worship are not part of this covenant and by extension, neither am I. We have different duties and responsibilities to fulfill to each other. These obligations are clearly very different from Hindu, so I’m not sure why you think karma affects everyone.

You are correct, it is impossible to avoid Karma completely, except for extreme cases of asceticism where people divorce themselves from society entirely (like Jain monks).

That is why reincarnation exists. You come back to pay your Karmic balance from previous lifetimes, and if you incur less Karma than you repay, your net balance of many lifetimes is positive. Given enough cycles of death and rebirth, you can become free of Karma, but it won't happen in one lifetime.

The goal is to minimize, with extreme effort, the amount of Karma you incur in a given lifetime, and to do as many selfless deeds as you can.

This system, as created by your gods, might be fine for you. But that does not make it universal or absolute, and I don’t see why it has to be either. Considering the sheer diversity in Hindu thought, I would not be at all surprised to find interpretations that follow a more flexible concept of karma. So why is it you assume that it is absolute?

And how does this deal with actions that have both ‘good’ and ‘bad’ consequences? For example, using force to protect another human from harm. What about two separate actions (one ‘good’ and one ‘evil’) which nevertheless have linked consequences. How would it handle organ donation? Does karma distinguish between mutilating a corpse and life-saving surgery? Or immunization? Is it a violent violation of a human body, or a life-saving intervention? There are actions that exist in life where the positive and negative results of them are so intertwined that they cannot be distinguished from each other. How would you measure the karmic effect of such an action? Can karma even be measured at all? And if it can’t, how can you know that it is objective.

In addition, how does this karmic system avoid getting into a ‘karmic trap.’ If we take a predator for example. Well, if someone is a predator, they will always be at that level, they will never be able to escape beyond that point. Predators have to eat meat (unless you expect the animal to commit suicide, and would suicide incur negative karma?), and so would always be accruing bad karma. I’m not sure how a predator would gain good karma to escape this position, and so anyone who got to this point would never be able to get any higher. Now, this problem would be obviated if there were different standards of karma for different animals. Indeed, it could be argued that by eating prey, a tiger is maintaining its dharma, and this would be a good thing.

None of this of course, would be a problem is karma had a contextual element, and meant different things in different situations.

Traditional Hindu cosmology posits that, from the unconscious dreams of the Bhagavan, the universe emerges. In this infant universe, there is nothing but a great sea of endless water, and on that sea is a lotus, where Vishnu dwells. He is the only God in the chaos of the universe, and so he creates Brahma to bring order to the chaos. Brahma goes forth and makes the stars and planets, and orders the universe into tiers of heavens, hells, and the middle world that is the earth. Brahma brings forth children, who become the various tribes of Gods, the Asuras, Devas, and others come from his sire.

These beings all have free will; some choose to align themselves with Vishnu and Brahma, who want to bring order to the chaos of the universe and liberate the mortal souls trapped within, while others choose to revel in that chaos and seek to carve out petty positions of personal power in the created world. This is the source of conflict in Hindu mythology, and the source of much of the misery that exists in the material world; the conflict between the beings who align themselves with Godhead and the beings who align themselves with ignorance, suffering, and Karmic reaction.

And I want to again make it clear that I don’t have a problem with the Hindu interpretation(s) of their own religion. In fact, I find it to be quite interesting. My problem comes when you claim that its principles, especially those of karma, are universal and absolute. As I’ve said before, other religions have their own views on these matters, and they are every bit as legitimate as yours.

So, if Hinduism seems impossible to you right now, that's probably part of the reason; we are currently in the middle of a Kali Yuga, and Dharma is getting harder and harder to maintain every year. The systems that exist that make Karma impossible to avoid, like the ones you mentioned in your post, are merely symptoms of that degradation of reality. It will continue to get harder, before it gets better, but it will eventually get better.

Hinduism doesn’t seem impossible to me. I am a polytheist, and I don’t deny the existence of other gods. What I have a problem with is your insistence that there are absolute rules that affect everyone, which contradicts the theology of almost every other religion. Throughout history thousands of people have dedicated their lives to the service of a multitude of gods and have gotten to know them. Why are you so dismissive of their achievements?

I’m not entirely sure you are aware of what your stance implies. I know that you would not knowingly denigrate another religion. However, you have basically stated that all other religions and their metaphysical understanding of the world is wrong and illegitimate, and that gods who promote different principles, morals, and theologies are either ignorant or arrogant liars.

I think I see the problem here; you seem to think that Karma is moral judgement. It isn't. It just happens. It's a natural force that blindly lashes out at living beings. The Gods do not judge people or animals for being evil, the universe does, and it does so with destructive and unfair results.

I wrote about Karma extensively on another thread, perhaps that could help you understand my views somewhat better:

https://ecauldron.com/forum/non-pagan-religions-and-interfaith-discussions/conceptions-and-misconceptions-about-karma/msg218073/#msg218073

You see, Hinduism does have a universal morality, and that morality does come from a higher power, but that morality is descriptive rather than prescriptive. The Gods didn't arbitrarily decide what was right and wrong, rather they realized what was right and wrong due to their connection to the Godhead; they are able to see which activities cause negative Karmic reaction and which ones don't, and they encourage people to avoid the ones that cause bad Karmic outcomes.

Maybe this comes from limitations within the English language. I have the same problem when describing some Nahua concepts such as Tlazolli. However, that explanation doesn’t quite do it for me. You say that karma isn’t moral. Yet every example you have provided is clearly based in human morality. Looking at that link you have provided examples of robbery and murder. In this threat you have repeated theft and added an example about prostitution (I am also curious as to why an impersonal force like karma recognizes a human construct such as property right). You also use moral terms like ‘punishment,’ ‘guilt,’ and you also have an expectation of a future retribution. To cap it all off present your gods as moral teachers rather than as manifestations of a spiritual cosmos.

It's out of their control; all they can do as powerful (but not all-powerful), good (but not all-good), wise (but not all-knowing) beings is try to reason with beings that can be reasoned with; humans. They share what they know with us and encourage us to follow the rules they have formulated, based on observation of the nature of the universe, to escape from the situation we are in.

Only with some people. Your gods and their teachings are notably absent from large parts of the world, including Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Far East Asia, and the Americas. People in these regions have different relationships with their spiritual agents.

They can't reason with animals and say "hey, stop what you are doing, you are hurting your own soul!" so they wait until those animals are born as humans and try to rescue them then. In the mean time, they encourage humans not to hurt animals because that just slows the whole process down for all parties involved.

Why not?

You are assuming that because the Gods, who are good, are then ones who codify the laws of moral behavior, they must be responsible for punishing people who break those laws. They aren't, at least not in Hindu cosmology. Vishnu says it's wrong to eat meat because Karma will punish you for doing so, not because HE will punish you! He doesn't control Karma, and he is just trying to keep you from accidentally incurring Karma upon yourself.

I think I have a problem understanding this because it is not clear to me exactly how gods work in Hinduism, and to be honest I find it confusing. See, in my religion, gods are part of the cosmos itself. Therefore, it is perfectly logical that they would have some ability to change it. Thus, I find it very confusing that Hindu god cannot. You have described them as very powerful, so why are they so unable to manipulate and change the cosmic situation?

That's how morality in Hinduism works; the Gods have codified a system of behavior that allows one to avoid being brutalized by Karmic retribution. That system is universal because Karma itself is universal and doesn't have any regard for context. It's good because it helps you to ultimately escape from Karma and return to the Godhead, where there is no suffering.

So, no I am not personally attacking Jennet. I am not saying she is a bad person. I am saying that according to my own metaphysical view of the operation of the universe, her actions and the actions of everyone else who eats meat are self destructive. Eating meat brings Karmic retribution, and Karmic retribution causes your soul to be stuck in the material world for an even longer time. Since the material world is fundamentally flawed and full of suffering, that is an undesirable consequence, and eating meat is therefore a bad thing to do, for your own sake.

There are lots of other things that can incur Karma, and I am sure that my own Karmic budget is going to take many, many lifetimes to balance. I am no better than Jennet or anyone else, and I am not looking down on her for eating meat.

In all honesty, I can see that you were not intentionally attacking anyone. But again, your position had that connotation of dismissing other religion’s and their theologies by subordinating them to your own. I don’t want to harp on about this, but I feel it needs to be stated. Perhaps I am more sensitive than most, as my own religion has been subject to outsiders persecuting it in relatively recent history (and to be honest, the present). Remember, this is only a problem for me when you claim that karma is universal.

You have to exist within the context you exist within.

I agree. I, and people of other religions, exist within our own contexts as much as you exist within yours.

Rather, what I am saying is that even if you are poor, your actions still carry the same consequences as the actions of people who aren't under outside pressure. If you commit murder, Karma's response to that is that you must be killed in a later life. It doesn't matter if you were a homeless man killing for food, or a billionaire serial killer killing for pleasure. You still killed someone, and you have to pay the price for doing that.

However, none of that has to do with blame. I would most certainly blame the person in the latter example for their actions, whereas in the first example the blame would fall on other forces. The human response to these two scenarios should be quite different; in the second scenario, one should try to help to pay for what he has done, and to clear his conscience and teach him to be better. For the first guy, who killed because he wanted to kill, the proper response would be to make sure he never hurts anyone again by putting him in prison for life.

I think that you would not discriminate against someone because of this. However, in some societies this line of thought has caused problems before. I know that India has a problem with the Caste system, and we sometimes see a related phenomenon with certain forms of evangelical Christianity under the prosperity doctrine. The consequences of this line of thinking can be very serious.

Why do you think eating meat causes Karma in Hinduism? Most people don't actually kill the animal themselves, does that make them guiltless? Not remotely. In fact, the other people you cause to do evil, the worse it becomes for you. The farmer is less guilty than the butcher, who is less guilty than the one who eats the meat, who is less guilty than the one who sell the meat. Why?

Because each of those people is actually causing the one below to do evil; would farmers kill so many animals if there was no demand to buy meat? Not likely. Would butchers be buying meat from farmers if nobody was eating meat? Of course not. Would people be eating so much meat if nobody sold it? No, because it would be less accessible. So, all the Karma incurred by each of these act is transferred equally upward to the ultimate responsible party.

Wait, can we take a closer look at what is happening here. First of all, what is it that actually confers the ‘bad karma’ in this situation? Is it killing animals, eating meat, or contact with death, or all of the above? If it is killing animals, then would it be acceptable to eat meat from an animal that died naturally? If it is eating meat, then why would meat sellers be affected? Contact with death might do it, but then vegetables wouldn’t be exempt either. I know though, that you would chose option D) all of the above, which brings us to the question of cause and effect. How does karma parse out cause and effect in the notoriously confusing area of social studies? How does it know, as you suggest, that the meat seller is the one who is the ‘most’ responsible? Are they not simply responding to an economic demand? And if people want meat, does that make them the ultimate cause? Or are they simply responding to complex economic developments that create new dietary options? How do government subsidies affect karma?

Does the government then bear ultimate responsibility? Or do the people who ultimately fund such subsidies? What about a culture of meat eating? Does the culture get bad karma, or the people who are part of that culture? Would this mean that a vegan living in a meat-eating society is automatically gaining bad karma? Conversely, would a bad person gain good karma just from living in a ‘good’ culture? Either way, wouldn’t either undermine the importance of Free Will in Hinduism?

What I’m getting at is that your take on karma has some serious logical questions that it seems to struggle with. It is a supposedly impartial force that just exists, and is objective and takes no heed of context, yet is able to parse out and assign out corruption despite the relationship between these actions being distant, convoluted, or else completely indirect. None of these are necessarily problems if karma is a more nebulous force, but it doesn’t make all that much sense as you present it.

I never said it was. I was talking about freedom of conscience; people often do things that they believe to be evil, not because they want to, but because they are pressured into doing so.

The example I gave was of a theoretical Catholic woman who believes prostitution is evil; whether or not it actually is evil is immaterial to the point I was making. I was saying that such a person might genuinely hate the idea of selling their sexuality and still do it anyway because of outside pressures such as, for example, having children to feed or an aging parent to care for.

To be fair, I was being a little cheeky. I know that you wouldn’t condemn prostitutes or prostitution. However, there is a point here about objective morality. Objective morality more often than not seems to adhere to the ideology to which the holder subscribes. And they all suffer from similar problems. The individuals that hold these beliefs are subjective themselves, and they all get their information from contestable sources. So even if there is an objective reality, we would never be sure what it is. Also, so many of them are different. What makes your objective reality more true than a Christian making similar claims about their world view?

Because my Gods aren't powerful enough to do that; unlike in most other religions, Hinduism does not assert that the Gods we worship have total control over reality. They are constantly struggling against other forces and powers, and in many ways the universe is stacked against them.

So your gods can’t. We have different gods.

[Hariti]

You are incorrect about this. I cannot speak for the gods of Greece or Norway, but the Godhead concept is NOT a part of Mesoamerican thought. Instead, Mesoamericans recognize a universal sacred power, known as Teotl in Nahuatl (other groups had different names for this phenomenon. The Mixtec called it peh). However, this is not your ‘Godhead,’ as Teotl is a force, not a being, supreme or otherwise. So the gods could not interact with this Godhead, it simply doesn't exist for them.

I believe you may have misunderstood my comment; I did not say that other religions believe there is a Godhead, or that a Godhead is part of those religious systems. Rather, I stated that I personally believe that the Gods of all other religions are subordinate to the single Godhead described by my religion. This is a description of my own personal belief, not a description of the beliefs of Norwegians, Mesoamericans, Greeks, or anyone else. I am not describing how they view their Gods, I am explaining how I, as a Hindu, view their Gods and the place of those Gods in the cosmic order.

I, personally, believe that Thor, Zeus, Tlaloc, and other such beings literally and really exist. I also believe that they are, like the Devas I worship, finite and created beings whose existence can be traced back to the Godhead. This belief is not UPG; rather, it's a very common position within Hinduism and is backed up by verses from our holy scriptures.

You asked me how my moral system, which I believe to be universal, deals with the issue of other Gods. I answered that question; it deals with them by saying that they are wrong; what Odin, or Isis, or Tlaloc says is right or wrong is inconsequential, because those beings do not have access to the Godhead in the same way that Vishnu or Shiva does (if they did, they would be saying the same thing as Vishnu and Krishna). Tlaloc may be mighty, and wise, and may have good intentions, but the areas where his morality do not align with the morality of the Devas are the result of error on his part.

So, I am not "incorrect." I have correctly stated what I beleive to be true, and what is generally accepted as true by the majority of Hindus. I may be wrong, but that's not something that you can prove; you can't prove that your Gods are autonomous actors who are equal with my Gods, any more than I can prove that my Gods are morally superior to your Gods. We have different supernatural and metaphysical views of the nature of the Gods. Which of us is right? That's impossible to know.

I am a Hindu; I accept on faith that Krishna has perfect knowledge about the nature of reality, and that he honestly and accurately conveyed that knowledge in the Gita. So, my beliefs are largely dictated by scripture; if the Gita says that all Gods are created beings who are beneath the Godhead, then I believe that all Gods are beneath the Godhead, even Gods from other culture who don't actually have any such concept. Perhaps these Gods are lying to their followers, perhaps they simply don't know their own nature; either way, I take Krishna at his word, and when the teachings of another religion or deity contradict that word, they lose ipso facto.

Is that a position I can back up with "hard" evidence? No. I can't prove that Krishna actually wrote the Gita, let alone that what he says therin is accurate. However, that is true of all religious assertions; a Heathen cannot prove the existence of Odin; a Christian cannot prove the Resurrection nor divinity of Jesus; a Muslim cannot prove that Mohammed was the Seal of the Prophets.

Religion doesn't operate on hard facts, and if you base your moral beliefs upon the teachings of your religion, as I do, then those beliefs can never be validated nor invalidated.

This does not lead me to conclude that karma must be universal or that it can be taken as objective. I mean, this ‘Godhead’ is remote and you have to go through mediums (gods and devas), all of whom have their own interpretation and biases. Furthermore, Hinduism is a very diverse religion, and people within that religion have their own interpretations. Thus, not all followers can even agree on the basic tenants of the religion. If there is so much disagreement, how can you know if its moral precepts are actually universal and objective or not? Even if they were, how could you definitely prove it, unless you yourself were also an unbiased observer?

You can't know if they are. I never claimed to have personal gnosis of what is right and wrong; I said that I believe that my morality, taken directly from scripture, is objective and universal. At no point did I claim that I could prove the objectivity or universality of my moral beliefs. I take Krishna at his word because that's the central teaching of Hinduism; of course the Gita could be false, or Krishna could be wrong, or could be lying, but a text-based, tradition-based, faith-based religion only works when you don't ask those questions. I believe what I believe because I believe it; like so much in religion, it's a matter of personal faith and conviction.

Mesoamerican and Hindu religions may share some basic principles, especially with respect to the practical application of common sense laws (no murder for example). However, don’t let this obscure the deep and fundamental differences that exist between them. There is no Godhead in Mesoamerica, there is no karmic reincarnation, and no dharma. Hinduism on the other hand lacks the tonalpohualli, tlazolli, and nextlahualli, which are very important in Mesoamerica. Even our views on existence are different (you seem not to value it much). As a consequence, activities that are necessary and beneficial for Central Mexican religions would be considered karmically bad in Indian faiths (or rather, the particular Indian faith you practice. I am aware that other Indian religions have different opinions on the issue). This is a fairly fundamental difference.

I am not downplaying the differences. Krishna says in the Gita that all religious activities benefit the practitioner, and that all religious beliefs bring you closer to the Godhead. That's not my personal view, that's a direct statement from my God made in my holy scripture. I'm in no position to contest that statement, because Krishna is an enlightened immortal Deva and I'm just a mortal man.

That said, your statement that the differences as severe is very true; there is a reason that Krishna also says that the best way, the quickest way, the most effective way to the Godhead is through him and him alone. Other religions are effective, but they are less effective than Hinduism. That is because of the differences you outlined in your post; Mesoamerican religion does, incidentally, discourage some actions that lead to bad Karma, but it ignores or even promotes many other actions that do the same.

If Vishnu and Shiva don’t mind other gods, then why do they expect them to follow their moral convictions? Even if they do, it doesn’t matter. Your belief system depends on the idea of karmic reincarnation. If that works for followers of your religion that’s fine. However, it cannot exist for followers of my religion (and I suspect many others), as there is no form of Karmic reincarnation. It simply does not apply.

They expect other Gods to follow their morals because they know, through divine gnosis, that they are right. They have direct and personal knowledge of the nature of reality and the Godhead, and they know the best way to get from the former to the later. Other beings do not have this information, and so the Devas seek to spread enlightenment to them, for their own benefit.

Your Brahaman may have created a set of morals for his followers, and if you have agreed to that covenant than that’s good for you. However, your gods have only been promoting the moral laws for people in South and Southeast Asia. Historically they have not been present in other parts of the world, including the America’s. This is because the gods I worship are not part of this covenant and by extension, neither am I. We have different duties and responsibilities to fulfill to each other. These obligations are clearly very different from Hindu, so I’m not sure why you think karma affects everyone.

There is no "covenant." The nature of reality, according to my beliefs, simply is the way it is. Neither I nor my Gods ever agreed to Karma, or the material world, we are simply stuck here, and all other Gods are stuck here too. Just because Odin, or Zeus, or Thoth doesn't know about the existence of the Godhead or the nature of the universe doesn't mean they are somehow outside of that paradigm.

I think that Karma affects everyone because my Gods say it does, and I trust my Gods; it's a simple as that. It think Krishna is enlightened, good intentioned, and honest, and when he says things in the scripture, I take those things as true automatically. The same goes for Shiva, Durga, Brahma, Ganesha, and the other Devas I worship; if they say something is true, then I accept it as true.

The Gita doesn't say "Karma only affects people who worship Me," nor does it say "Karma only affects people who believe in Karma." It says that Karma affects all living beings in the material world, and it says that Gods are living beings trapped in the material world. Ergo, my religion teaches that every man, woman, child, animal, God, demigod, angel, devil, or demon that may exist is affected by Karma. The fact that many of those people (and Gods) don't seem to know about Karma doesn't exempt them from its effects.

This system, as created by your gods, might be fine for you. But that does not make it universal or absolute, and I don’t see why it has to be either. Considering the sheer diversity in Hindu thought, I would not be at all surprised to find interpretations that follow a more flexible concept of karma. So why is it you assume that it is absolute?

I literally don't understand this question. How does, or would, other people having different beliefs relate to whether or not my beliefs are absolute? Do Christians cease to believe that Christ's message is true just because many people don't believe it? Do Muslims cease to take the Koran as literal truth simply because other people think differently? For all of human history, there have been different religious beliefs, that in no way prevents a religion from asserting that it's beliefs are the right ones and that the others are wrong.

I think the Gita is right. I think that Krishna is right. I think that any other being or source that says things that contradict what the Gita says is wrong. If other Hindus don't accept the Gita, then I think that they are wrong. If other Gods don't accept the Gita, I think that they are wrong, too.

And how does this deal with actions that have both ‘good’ and ‘bad’ consequences? For example, using force to protect another human from harm. What about two separate actions (one ‘good’ and one ‘evil’) which nevertheless have linked consequences. How would it handle organ donation? Does karma distinguish between mutilating a corpse and life-saving surgery? Or immunization? Is it a violent violation of a human body, or a life-saving intervention? There are actions that exist in life where the positive and negative results of them are so intertwined that they cannot be distinguished from each other. How would you measure the karmic effect of such an action? Can karma even be measured at all? And if it can’t, how can you know that it is objective.

Once again, I don't claim to know, in a testable, evidence based way, that any of my beleifs are true. Nor do I claim personal supernatural Gnosis. I read texts, I study the traditional interpretation of those texts, and I take what the Gods in those texts say as truth. I'm not a Gnostic.

As for the Karmic consequences of specific actions, that can be determined by studding the texts and seeing what, if anything, the Gods have to say about them. There is no "formula" for which actions cause Karmic reaction; Karma reacts to everything, and the nature of that reaction varies from one action to the next. Some actions net netural reactions, some actions net positive reactions, and some actions net negative reactions. Which does which is something the Gods tell us through scripture, not something we decide for ourselves formulaically.

In addition, how does this karmic system avoid getting into a ‘karmic trap.’ If we take a predator for example. Well, if someone is a predator, they will always be at that level, they will never be able to escape beyond that point. Predators have to eat meat (unless you expect the animal to commit suicide, and would suicide incur negative karma?), and so would always be accruing bad karma. I’m not sure how a predator would gain good karma to escape this position, and so anyone who got to this point would never be able to get any higher. Now, this problem would be obviated if there were different standards of karma for different animals. Indeed, it could be argued that by eating prey, a tiger is maintaining its dharma, and this would be a good thing.

What makes you assume that an animal is always reborn as a member of its own species? You don't have to gain good Karma to be reborn as a member of a different species. A tiger may have bad Karma, yes, but if it's reborn as a Human or other sapient being it has the chance to lose that Karma. I think you are assuming that there is a strict hierarchy of life forms, with certain Karma being required to reach a "higher" species. While it is somewhat true that having bad Karma makes it more likely that you will be born into poorer conditions, and good Karma makes it more likely that you will be reborn into better conditions, that's not a strict or constant rule.

A person with Good karma can be born into a bad situation, while a person or animal with bad karma can be born in a good situation. You don't get all the consequences of Karma dumped on you all at once, they are stretched out over many lifetimes, and the circumstances of your birth aren't always Karmically dictated.

Also, even if you are reborn as a wild beast, you will still lose Karma naturally when bad things happen to you, such as being killed by another animal. Living several lifetimes as a prey animal would make up for most of the Karma it incurred during a lifetime as a predator.

As for your speculation about different standards of Karma for different animals; yeah, sure that would be more fair and would work, but I feel I must reiterate that Karma is not fair. It is not meant to be fair. In fact, it is not meant to be anything at all; it is an accident of the material universe, not an intentionally imposed system of justice. The Gods merely explain how to escape it, they don't decide how it works. They describe, not decide, what is good and what is bad. That is how I understand the world to work. It doesn't matter if I think tigers should have a different Dharma from humans, because what should be the truth has no bearing on what I believe the truth actually is.

And I want to again make it clear that I don’t have a problem with the Hindu interpretation(s) of their own religion. In fact, I find it to be quite interesting. My problem comes when you claim that its principles, especially those of karma, are universal and absolute. As I’ve said before, other religions have their own views on these matters, and they are every bit as legitimate as yours.

Other religions may be "legitimate" in that they work for their believers and are beneficial for people. They also may have the same (lack) of evidence for their beliefs as I do for my own. That doesn't mean that I have to accept that their teachings are factually true.

What I have a problem with is your insistence that there are absolute rules that affect everyone, which contradicts the theology of almost every other religion. Throughout history thousands of people have dedicated their lives to the service of a multitude of gods and have gotten to know them. Why are you so dismissive of their achievements?

Why am I dismissive? I don't think I am. I have stated repeatedly that I think that there is great value in all religious expression.

However, that doesn't mean that all religions are factually right. My own religion teaches that there is only one Godhead; one truth above all other truths; one way to God that is faster and more sure than other ways. Worshiping other Gods might be useful, but that doesn't automatically mean that the moral and ethical teachings of other Gods are equal to the teachings of the one supreme Godhead.

However, you have basically stated that all other religions and their metaphysical understanding of the world is wrong and illegitimate, and that gods who promote different principles, morals, and theologies are either ignorant or arrogant liars.

Hinduism teaches that the vast majority of beings are ignorant. Ignorance is a large part of the Hindu understanding of the universe; it pervades material reality and clouds the minds of the begins who dwell there, including the minds of Gods. There is only one truth, and not all Gods are aware of that truth.

Saying that Odin, Tlaloc, or Ra is ignorant of the universal truth isn't mean as an insult against them. I respect those beings as very powerful entities who have a great deal of knowledge, but they are still just (in my understanding of what Gods are) mortal beings trapped in the material world, and in that context, the ultimate truth of the Godhead is very hard to access or comprehend. The only reason that Vishnu can understand it is because he has direct access to the consciousness of the Godhead; he can read the source code of the universe, or DNA if you prefer; he can look and see what makes it tick, and he can only do that because of his unique relationship with the act of creation.

Most Hindu gods only know the nature of reality because they were told. Not all the Devas were born with perfect knowledge, rather, it was taught and passed down through a sucession of teachers from one God to the next, starting with Vishnu and/or Shiva who learned it from their connection with the Godhead.

Maybe this comes from limitations within the English language. I have the same problem when describing some Nahua concepts such as Tlazolli. However, that explanation doesn’t quite do it for me. You say that karma isn’t moral. Yet every example you have provided is clearly based in human morality. Looking at that link you have provided examples of robbery and murder. In this threat you have repeated theft and added an example about prostitution (I am also curious as to why an impersonal force like karma recognizes a human construct such as property right). You also use moral terms like ‘punishment,’ ‘guilt,’ and you also have an expectation of a future retribution. To cap it all off present your gods as moral teachers rather than as manifestations of a spiritual cosmos.

Yeah, English makes it hard to present a lot of Hindu concepts. What is Brahman? What is Karma? What is reality itself? Those are very hard to convey without at least somewhat misrepresenting them by using English words that were designed to describe western religious ideas.

When I say that Karma isn't moral, what I mean is that it isn't consciously trying to punish evil or reward good. It is trying, so much as an impersonal mindless force can "try" to do anything, to react to every action in the universe, between conscious beings, with an identical action. If a thing kills, it must be killed, if a thing saves a life its life must be saved; if a thing does an action that causes distress, such as stealing property, the same action must be done to it and it must experience the same distress.

Imagine the universe as a simulation; Karma would be a very simple bot that automatically responds to certain things, like for example, the bots that censor text on a lot of sites. It isn't smart, it isn't really conscious or aware of anything, it's just repeating a task over and over. An action happens, and karma does its best to replicate that action in reverse.

The question of why Karma works the way it does, or "who programmed the bot" is one that is very complex, and one that doesn't have a clear or easy answer in Hindu scripture. What is clear is that Karma is here, and we all have to live with it. I use terms like punishment for Karma because I don't know how else to describe what it does; it reacts and responds to actions, with the intent of creating balance, but it rarely if ever accomplishes that goal. It's a flawed system.

Only with some people. Your gods and their teachings are notably absent from large parts of the world, including Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Far East Asia, and the Americas. People in these regions have different relationships with their spiritual agents.

Yeah, that's because my Gods have finite power. They are constantly competing with other beings who don't have the same goal that they have for the world or humanity. The fact that Hinduism is not (very) present outside of India has nothing to do with the message being limited to an Indian audience, and everything to do with my Gods being unable to spread their teachings outside their home turf. Reading Hindu myths makes it clear that spreading Dharma even within India was quite a task for the Gods, and took them many attempts. There were multiple instances where they gave divine knowledge to humans and they lost it within a couple of generations and had to re-receive it.

If Vishnu had unlimited power, he would just reveal himself to the world directly, and teach everyone how to avoid Karma, but he doesn't have that kind of power. He had to constantly fight against evil Gods and demons who seek to spread lies and misinformation so they can profit from the suffering of other beings. That type of revelation would mean open warfare between the Gods and their enemies, and would cause massive upheaval and suffering on earth.

As for why the can't talk to animals, it's because animals lack the higher mental functions needed to fully grasp the philosophical and metaphysical teachings of the Gods. Most animals don't even have language or symbolic though, let alone the level of abstraction needed to understand something a complex as religion.

I think that you would not discriminate against someone because of this. However, in some societies this line of thought has caused problems before. I know that India has a problem with the Caste system, and we sometimes see a related phenomenon with certain forms of evangelical Christianity under the prosperity doctrine. The consequences of this line of thinking can be very serious.

Yeah, the caste system is a nasty, nasty thing. No argument from me! I do think, however, that any religion can suffer from that kind of abuse if people intentionally manipulate it's teaching without the original context. Hinduism, when taken as a whole by an educated and literate public, should never lead to this kind of thing. The Varna system is clearly not a strictly hereditary system, nor is it a system that is meant to put people above other people in the social order. The only reason it was taken that way was because the common people couldn't read the scriptures that the priests and politicians were abusing.

I mean, I'm sure it wouldn't be hard to get some nasty ideas and social practices out of Mesoamerican religion, if you went looking for an excuse to exploit people, which is how the Caste System originated.

I think I have a problem understanding this because it is not clear to me exactly how gods work in Hinduism, and to be honest I find it confusing. See, in my religion, gods are part of the cosmos itself. Therefore, it is perfectly logical that they would have some ability to change it. Thus, I find it very confusing that Hindu god cannot. You have described them as very powerful, so why are they so unable to manipulate and change the cosmic situation?

Ugh. I have such a hard time explaining what "Gods" are in Hinduism, because it requires some knowledge of what people and animals are, and what the universe is, to make any sense. And I find those to be incredibly difficult to explain because Hindu understanding of these things is so very counter to traditional Western notions of them.

To put it as best I can without writing a few thousand words about it, the Gods are people. Very smart, very powerful, very long lived people. Some of them were created when the universe were created, some of them existed before the birth of the universe, some of them were born through sexual reproduction, and some of them were created by other Gods non-sexually.

In all cases, Gods are personal, sapient beings with both souls and bodies. Some of their minds can transcend the material world, some of them cannot, but all of them have physical bodies which exist within the material universe, and which experience sensory information from the material world the same way human beings do.

The Gods existence is fundamentally tied to the existence of the material world, and they serve as the link between the Godhead and other living beings. They were the first living beings to exist, and are the only ones to have direct access to the Godhead. They live in another dimension of the material world, and can travel physically to this world OR incarnate here as avatars.

They each have their own personality, their own likes and dislikes, their own hobbies and interests, and their own strengths and weaknesses. They do not really represent aspects of the universe; they might be "gods of X" but that's something they choose, not innate to their being. Agni is the God of fire because he creates fire, and likes dealing with fire, not because he is from fire.

The Devas are the beings most often referred to as Gods in Hinduism, but in reality they are not any different in substance from the Asuras, or the Diatyas, or the Adityas; the difference is in their disposition; the Devas use their considerable powers to encourage mortal beings to return to the Godhead, from whence all souls emerge, while the other tribes of Gods don't do so, and even actively oppose that agenda. In reality, using "God" to refer to "Devas" and "Demon" to refer to these other beings is a modern convention, and one that is largely done out of convenience. Beneficial God and Determental God would probably be better terms for them, though you could argue that demi-God is actually more accurate still.

These are flawed beings. Mortal beings, who can die and be reborn. Beings whose powers are fundamentally limited, as is their knowledge and their goodness. Some are better than others. We worship the ones who fall more on the good side than bad, and who all share a singular agenda of liberating living beings from the universe.

Eh. I doubt any of that makes any sense. I'm going to use an analogy to see if I can make it make more sense.

Imagine a computer simulation. This simulation includes all the laws of physics, down to the minute detail, and simulates every atom and photon in the universe, and the forces that interact with them. This simulation doesn't just have one universe, though, it has several, layered on top of one another, with each simulation being more randomized than the other, more chaotic at the bottom and less so at the top. This is a material universe in Hinduism.

In this universe, there are beings which are, through the laws of the simulation, able to move and act independently. These beings are piloted from outside the simulation, by AI systems housed on the same computer. Yeah, basically, AI playing a VR video game that exists on the same computer as them, that's a pretty good analogy. The game and the AI were both programmed by the same person, who is ALSO an AI, and also housed on the same computer. Except that this AI is much, much more advanced, and isn't even aware that it has created the other AI or the simulation; they are products of it's subconscious, like the dreams of a human brain. This master AI is constantly, every second, creating billions of simulations inhabited by trillions of sapient AI beings, all without even knowing it is doing so.

The master AI is analogous to Brahaman, the Godhead, in Hinduism; it generates every person, animal, and deity, and it creates the material world they exist within, but it does so without being consciously aware that it is doing so; the scale on which it exists is simply too massive to take direct notice, and the way it thinks and perceives reality is rather non-anthropomorphic and arcane.

Where did it come from? Inconsequential, and unanswerable. Brahaman may have always existed, or it may have created itself, or be creating itself constantly, or perhaps and causality aren't really relevant in the context in which it exists. What does matter is that there are trillions upon trillions of souls that exist alongside the Godhead, and which are in a state of eternal perfection and bliss. In Hinduism, getting back to this state of being is the ultimate goal.

So, to go back to the computer analogy; inside each of the simulations, there are some AI personalities who are more powerful than others; they can see that they are in a simulation, while other beings can't, and they can travel at will between the various layers of the simulation. They can create and control multiple simulated bodies at once. These are the Devas and Asuras and other Gods; they aren't different in nature than the humans and animals who are also there, just more powerful.

Some of these Gods, the most powerful ones, can actually look outside the simulations and observe the wider context in which they exist; they can see what is happening to other beings, when they die and are reborn, as well as see how Karma (which I compared to a simple bot earlier; that assessment still works here) reacts to their actions. They can also see the Godhead, and the many souls who are with it, and the many universes it is creating. Using their superior intellect, and their access to this information, they formulate a plan to get out of the system and back to the Godhead; they notice that if you have no karma, when you die, a new body isn't assigned, and instead you escape. So, they begin to encourage other beings to avoid Karma.

After a while, the simulation begins to break down; the evil beings from the lower levels of the simulation want to take over the higher levels, and tempt the beings who live there into doing things which benefit them in the short term and ignoring Karma. This alarms the Gods who want to help everyone escape; they are hesitant to avoid using force to put the evil beings back in line, but after thousands of lifetimes, it becomes clear that they will have to do so. So, there is a massive war, and the ones who are aware of the Godhead ultimately win. They use their combined power to reboot the simulation back to the way it was when they were first created, and start again from scratch. Eventually, after many cycles of repeating the process, the whole simulation is liberated. When that happens, the Gods use their combined power to force the simulation to shut down and liberate themselves.

Once this happens, and the Gods and morals are all back with the Godhead, the Gods realize that there are identical analogs to themselves in every other simulation. Not just one Vishnu in one universe, but a billion Vishnus in a billion universes, each with the same goal. They respond by linking themselves, by unifying into single overarching, cosmic Visnhu with bodies in each universe. Bear in mind that this is only the strongest of the Gods; Shiva, Vishnu, Durga, and a few others. Most of the lesser gods just go back to the Godhead at the end of the universe like morals do. As a consequence, there are probably millions of Indras and Hanumans with the Godhead right now.

The goal of the Gods who don't go back to the Godhead, but exist alongside it as independent cosmic actors is still, fundamentally, to liberate souls from these universes and bring them back to the bliss of the Godhead. The godhead is constantly creating universes, and the Gods are constantly trying to liberate the souls who get trapped within those universes.

Sorry for the wonky (and inconsistently applied) analogy, but I hoped it helped you to understand what the Gods, and people, and the universe, and the Godhead, and Karma actually are to a Hindu.

The gods are much more like us than they are different, while the Godhead is remote and arcane. However, the Godhead is the one with the real power, who can create and destroy universes, and does so without really being aware it's even happening. The gods only have limited power, and can only really operate on the universal scale, not the multiversal scale, and can't just rewrite the laws of the universe on a whim. Even if they could, they would have to fight against evil gods who are just as powerful and who have a very different goal for the universe. They can restore, destroy, and maintain the universe, but truly redesigning it is beyond their power. Nor can they stop the Godhead from making more material worlds ad infinitum.

One might walk away from Hinduism thinking that the Godhead is the villain here; but really, it's not the villain because it's not a person at all in the traditional sense. It creates the world, and probably creates things like Karma within the world, but it's not conscious that it's doing so. It's sort of a ball of barely conscious energy and thoughts that exists in a state of perpetual bliss alongside the people who escape reality, and which constantly is jettisoning out universes.

Wait, can we take a closer look at what is happening here. First of all, what is it that actually confers the ‘bad karma’ in this situation? Is it killing animals, eating meat, or contact with death, or all of the above? If it is killing animals, then would it be acceptable to eat meat from an animal that died naturally? If it is eating meat, then why would meat sellers be affected? Contact with death might do it, but then vegetables wouldn’t be exempt either. I know though, that you would chose option D) all of the above, which brings us to the question of cause and effect.

OK, off of metaphysics and back to theodicy:

So, what's going on here isn't ALL of the above. Contact with death, in and of itself, is not an action that's going to bring you bad Karma. Eating meat and killing animals, however, will do so.

Eating meat does so because Karma reacts to actions taken toward a corpse. So, if you butcher a corpse, or cook a corpse, or chew up and ingest pieces of a corpse, Karma is going to try to cause those things to happen to your own corpse later. Which, indirectly, leads to more death down the line because that's where corpses come from.

Killing is much more straightforward. If you kill something, Karma "wants" something to come along and kill you later. Tit for tat, and eye for an eye, causing one death causes your own death later. That's bad enough, but it gets even more unfortunate because you getting murdered (to pay for murdering) means that the person who murdered you then needs to be murdered as well (unless it is the same person who you murdered before) and this can quickly explode in a chain reaction of Karma. One murder never stays one murder!

Karma might be a dumb force of nature, but it's rather good, perfect in fact, of understanding the nuance involved in cause and effect. Karma knows, intuitively, when someone's actions have intended or unintended long term consequences. That's why meat sellers get bad Karma; they might not kill the animal, they might not even tough the corpse, but they still encourage other people to do those things by offering chopped up bits of murder victims as a product for sale.

And if people want meat, does that make them the ultimate cause? Or are they simply responding to complex economic developments that create new dietary options? How do government subsidies affect karma?

That's the thing about Karma, it reacts to all of these things. Subsidizing the meat industry? Bad karma. Purchasing meat at the store? Bad karma. Any action that indirect causes harm to anther being (including dead beings)? Bad karma.

As for why Karma reacts to actions taken toward a corpse; I honestly know how to explain that one. Hinduism has some complex ideas about dead flesh, and how it relates to the soul that once inhabited said flesh. Even in death, until the body decomposes completely, there's still some connection between the soul and the flesh, at least until the soul is reborn.

Does the government then bear ultimate responsibility? Or do the people who ultimately fund such subsidies? What about a culture of meat eating? Does the culture get bad karma, or the people who are part of that culture? Would this mean that a vegan living in a meat-eating society is automatically gaining bad karma? Conversely, would a bad person gain good karma just from living in a ‘good’ culture?

Culture can't get Karma; it only effects individual sapient beings. A vegan in a meat eating society won't get bad Karma (for that specific thing) unless they are buying, selling, or butchering dead animals, or killing living ones.

It is a supposedly impartial force that just exists, and is objective and takes no heed of context, yet is able to parse out and assign out corruption despite the relationship between these actions being distant, convoluted, or else completely indirect. None of these are necessarily problems if karma is a more nebulous force, but it doesn’t make all that much sense as you present it.

Perhaps impartial isn't the right way to describe Karma. It's a liminal, semi-conscious, arcane, force that inhabits the universe and is woven into it's fabric. It has a sort of internal logic and even "thought" in the most basic sense, but it is single-minded, non-personal, and totally unaware of the concept of right and wrong. It simply seeks to balance every action with a single, equal, opposite reaction directed toward the actor.

To be fair, I was being a little cheeky. I know that you wouldn’t condemn prostitutes or prostitution. However, there is a point here about objective morality. Objective morality more often than not seems to adhere to the ideology to which the holder subscribes. And they all suffer from similar problems. The individuals that hold these beliefs are subjective themselves, and they all get their information from contestable sources. So even if there is an objective reality, we would never be sure what it is. Also, so many of them are different. What makes your objective reality more true than a Christian making similar claims about their world view?

It's no different. They have their books, their sources, their traditions, that say one thing, and I have my sources that say another. I choose to believe my sources over their own; part of it is, I will not deny, because I want to believe something that confirms by own biases and subjective values. It's also because I have a relationship with the Gods I worship, and I genuinely trust them to be honest with me. I beleive that Krishna actually wrote the Gita, and I fully trust Krishna. I have no proof, only faith, and Christians have the same feelings toward their God.

Either they are right, I am right, or neither of us is right. I can't say which case will turn out to be true in the end. Perhaps there is no god at all, or perhaps morality is subjective, or perhaps the Christian God or some other God, who I do not know is supreme.

I'm not so arrogant as to claim infallible, perfect gnosticism. I beleive my Gods are right; it makes sense to me, it feels real and genuine, but I don't know they are right.

Either way, wouldn’t either undermine the importance of Free Will in Hinduism?

Free will is important because, in Hinduism, one can always choose to start avoiding Karma. No matter how bad you have been, no matter how much Karma you have incurred, you can always start being better. There's no point of no return; you can choose to keep going with the natural flow of the universe, and suffer for the rest of time though death and rebirth, or you can choose to make a difference. Stop killing, start saving lives; stop stealing, start giving to charity; stop abusing people and start sheltering them.

Without free will, we would be screwed, because as I hope this post has conveyed, the Hindu gods aren't able to get us out on their own. They give use directions to the way out, but we have to follow them and not be led astray by "Demons" or Karma, or simply by bad people who don't care about the consequences of their actions.

[Darkhawk]

I believe you may have misunderstood my comment; I did not say that other religions believe there is a Godhead, or that a Godhead is part of those religious systems. Rather, I stated that I personally believe that the Gods of all other religions are subordinate to the single Godhead described by my religion. This is a description of my own personal belief, not a description of the beliefs of Norwegians, Mesoamericans, Greeks, or anyone else. I am not describing how they view their Gods, I am explaining how I, as a Hindu, view their Gods and the place of those Gods in the cosmic order.

I, personally, believe that Thor, Zeus, Tlaloc, and other such beings literally and really exist. I also believe that they are, like the Devas I worship, finite and created beings whose existence can be traced back to the Godhead. This belief is not UPG; rather, it's a very common position within Hinduism and is backed up by verses from our holy scriptures.

I will note that I have seen a Hindu state that the concept of "godhead" is specifically Hare Krishna and not shared with other branches of Hinduism, though honestly given the diversity of Hinduism I'd be mildly surprised if it were only Hare Krishna.  (He is a practicing priest and a lay educator on Hinduism to Americans, though.)

[Yei]

I believe you may have misunderstood my comment; I did not say that other religions believe there is a Godhead, or that a Godhead is part of those religious systems. Rather, I stated that I personally believe that the Gods of all other religions are subordinate to the single Godhead described by my religion. This is a description of my own personal belief, not a description of the beliefs of Norwegians, Mesoamericans, Greeks, or anyone else. I am not describing how they view their Gods, I am explaining how I, as a Hindu, view their Gods and the place of those Gods in the cosmic order.

I assure you that I fully understood your comment. The point I was making is that, irrespective of your beliefs, the Godhead concept is absent from many, if not most other religions. The concept, and all other Hindu beliefs which stem from this original concept, are often noticeable by their near complete absence (if one is looking of course), and by the presence of alternative metaphysical beliefs. So why do you believe that it must play a role?

I, personally, believe that Thor, Zeus, Tlaloc, and other such beings literally and really exist. I also believe that they are, like the Devas I worship, finite and created beings whose existence can be traced back to the Godhead. This belief is not UPG; rather, it's a very common position within Hinduism and is backed up by verses from our holy scriptures.

I’d find that very surprising. From what I’ve seen of Hindu’s debating their religion on line they love to disagree with each other about their beliefs. If we got a few here to answer questions, I’m sure we’d get a disproportionately large number of responses.

You asked me how my moral system, which I believe to be universal, deals with the issue of other Gods. I answered that question; it deals with them by saying that they are wrong; what Odin, or Isis, or Tlaloc says is right or wrong is inconsequential, because those beings do not have access to the Godhead in the same way that Vishnu or Shiva does (if they did, they would be saying the same thing as Vishnu and Krishna). Tlaloc may be mighty, and wise, and may have good intentions, but the areas where his morality do not align with the morality of the Devas are the result of error on his part.

I’m not sure that Tlaloc can be considered wise, or to have intentions good or bad. He’s not a god who is especially interested in moral teachings. This may seem like a diversion, but I’ve got a point here. Its not a case of there being a few minor differences. The foundations of these religions are completely different. Trying to put Mesoamerican gods into a Hindu context is like trying to measure distance in kilograms.

So, I am not "incorrect." I have correctly stated what I beleive to be true, and what is generally accepted as true by the majority of Hindus. I may be wrong, but that's not something that you can prove; you can't prove that your Gods are autonomous actors who are equal with my Gods, any more than I can prove that my Gods are morally superior to your Gods. We have different supernatural and metaphysical views of the nature of the Gods. Which of us is right? That's impossible to know.

If it is impossible to know, why are you so sure? You have no more evidence than anybody else. How do you know your gods are not the liars? Or, more likely, their information is relevant to a specific context.

I am a Hindu; I accept on faith that Krishna has perfect knowledge about the nature of reality, and that he honestly and accurately conveyed that knowledge in the Gita. So, my beliefs are largely dictated by scripture; if the Gita says that all Gods are created beings who are beneath the Godhead, then I believe that all Gods are beneath the Godhead, even Gods from other culture who don't actually have any such concept. Perhaps these Gods are lying to their followers, perhaps they simply don't know their own nature; either way, I take Krishna at his word, and when the teachings of another religion or deity contradict that word, they lose ipso facto.

Other religions also have texts and scripture. Hinduism does not have a monopoly on theology. Not does it have to be false or misleading. It can just be particular to a different context.

Is that a position I can back up with "hard" evidence? No. I can't prove that Krishna actually wrote the Gita, let alone that what he says therin is accurate. However, that is true of all religious assertions; a Heathen cannot prove the existence of Odin; a Christian cannot prove the Resurrection nor divinity of Jesus; a Muslim cannot prove that Mohammed was the Seal of the Prophets.

Religion doesn't operate on hard facts, and if you base your moral beliefs upon the teachings of your religion, as I do, then those beliefs can never be validated nor invalidated.

That is not necessarily the case. It is certainly true that religious theories are always somewhat fuzzy. However, it is entirely possible to see evidence of their presence/activity in the world. Perhaps this is easier for me, as my religion is heavily connected to the natural world, and so I can see Mesoamerican religious concepts play out in reality. Indeed, one of the main reasons I became a Mexica Reconstuctionist is because it has a surprising amount of applicability in the real world. Therefore, the theology can be used to understand the relationships that play out in complex situations where cause and effect are hard to determine directly. Furthermore, it can even be used to make general predictions, so long as one does not hold to it too closely to absolute truth. The mark of a good religious theory is that it would still work even without divine powers, which is how we end up with Atheist Pagans.

One could also explore comparative mythology under the theory that if different religions come up with similar concepts, there might be something underpinning their beliefs. Although, I am somewhat reluctant to take that road as important nuances can get lost if done improperly. But I digress.

You can't know if they are. I never claimed to have personal gnosis of what is right and wrong; I said that I believe that my morality, taken directly from scripture, is objective and universal. At no point did I claim that I could prove the objectivity or universality of my moral beliefs. I take Krishna at his word because that's the central teaching of Hinduism; of course the Gita could be false, or Krishna could be wrong, or could be lying, but a text-based, tradition-based, faith-based religion only works when you don't ask those questions. I believe what I believe because I believe it; like so much in religion, it's a matter of personal faith and conviction.

Two things. First, there are other options than Krishna being either wrong or a liar. It could be that his teachings were intended for a specific audience. Krishna could have gone to Mexico to tell the Toltecs how to follow his karmic doctrine. He chose not to do that, I’m guessing because they were not the intended audience for his message.
Second, text-based religions question themselves all the time. Christians, even very devout ones, will engage in Biblical criticism. I’d even go so far as to say they are notorious for it. The same is true of Islam, Buddhism, and also Hinduism. I’d be surprised if Judaism did not have similar traditions. Even non-text-based religions undergo reforms. One could even argue that questioning religion is a normal part of faith.

Also remember that these texts were written by people (Krishna probably didn’t write it himself), and those people would naturally write about the particular context they lived in. They are unlikely to have written about Aztecs, or Vikings, or Maori, because they didn’t know them. Therefore, even extending the theology in these texts to these groups is taking it beyond its original scope.

I am not downplaying the differences. Krishna says in the Gita that all religious activities benefit the practitioner, and that all religious beliefs bring you closer to the Godhead. That's not my personal view, that's a direct statement from my God made in my holy scripture. I'm in no position to contest that statement, because Krishna is an enlightened immortal Deva and I'm just a mortal man.

First, I disagree that all religious activities benefit the practitioner. I’m sure we could find a few that don’t, if we really wanted to. Second, the Gita is not the direct word of Krishna, unless you are alleging that he wrote the text himself. A priest or theologian had to write it. Then the text would inevitably be modified, either through revisions or even just translations. And in any case, you haven’t accounted for context. When Krishna says all ‘religious activities’, he could very easily have meant ‘all religious activities in the Hindu religion.’ He wouldn’t have needed to state this outright, because what other religion would his followers think he was talking about? (Ok, maybe Buddhism.)

That said, your statement that the differences as severe is very true; there is a reason that Krishna also says that the best way, the quickest way, the most effective way to the Godhead is through him and him alone. Other religions are effective, but they are less effective than Hinduism. That is because of the differences you outlined in your post; Mesoamerican religion does, incidentally, discourage some actions that lead to bad Karma, but it ignores or even promotes many other actions that do the same.

There is no "covenant." The nature of reality, according to my beliefs, simply is the way it is. Neither I nor my Gods ever agreed to Karma, or the material world, we are simply stuck here, and all other Gods are stuck here too. Just because Odin, or Zeus, or Thoth doesn't know about the existence of the Godhead or the nature of the universe doesn't mean they are somehow outside of that paradigm.

They are outside the paradigm. Remember, it is not simply a case of these religion’s not saying much. They have specific beliefs that directly contradict karma. It is not possible for these views to co-exist if they are taken as universal. And this even goes against one of the tenants of your religion, that ‘all religions have some truth.’ These other religions cannot have the specific beliefs that they have, and yet still have some truth as defined by Hinduism.

I think that Karma affects everyone because my Gods say it does, and I trust my Gods; it's a simple as that. It think Krishna is enlightened, good intentioned, and honest, and when he says things in the scripture, I take those things as true automatically. The same goes for Shiva, Durga, Brahma, Ganesha, and the other Devas I worship; if they say something is true, then I accept it as true.

Isn’t this just an appeal to authority?

The Gita doesn't say "Karma only affects people who worship Me," nor does it say "Karma only affects people who believe in Karma." It says that Karma affects all living beings in the material world, and it says that Gods are living beings trapped in the material world. Ergo, my religion teaches that every man, woman, child, animal, God, demigod, angel, devil, or demon that may exist is affected by Karma. The fact that many of those people (and Gods) don't seem to know about Karma doesn't exempt them from its effects.

Of course, the Gita wouldn’t say that. The audience was people who believed in karma already (so Hindus and related Indian religions). Why would it need to specify? The absence of similar texts in other cultures should be taken as evidence that its message was not intended for those people.

I literally don't understand this question. How does, or would, other people having different beliefs relate to whether or not my beliefs are absolute? Do Christians cease to believe that Christ's message is true just because many people don't believe it? Do Muslims cease to take the Koran as literal truth simply because other people think differently? For all of human history, there have been different religious beliefs, that in no way prevents a religion from asserting that it's beliefs are the right ones and that the others are wrong.

I think you misunderstood my point. I wasn’t taking about faith in relation to other religions. I was referring to a diversity of thought within a religion. The point is that Hindu’s believe many things, so appealing to Hindu tradition for justification (as you have done a few times throughout your post) rings hollow.

I think the Gita is right. I think that Krishna is right. I think that any other being or source that says things that contradict what the Gita says is wrong. If other Hindus don't accept the Gita, then I think that they are wrong. If other Gods don't accept the Gita, I think that they are wrong, too.

Believing something is not justification for that belief. People believe all sorts of things, some of it inspired, some nonsense. People can believe that the moon is made of green cheese, that doesn’t make it true. Now, when it comes to religion, we can accept theological evidence in the form of teachings, texts, and the like. However, this principle applies equally to the theological material of other religions. Individual texts and theological points may be contested, debated, and accepted or rejected on their merits. We even see this process happening within religions. Christians initially had to decide which books of the Bible they would include in their official version. Meanwhile, Muslims have Hadiths, of which they fiercely debate the merits.

Once again, I don't claim to know, in a testable, evidence based way, that any of my beleifs are true. Nor do I claim personal supernatural Gnosis. I read texts, I study the traditional interpretation of those texts, and I take what the Gods in those texts say as truth. I'm not a Gnostic.

As for the Karmic consequences of specific actions, that can be determined by studding the texts and seeing what, if anything, the Gods have to say about them. There is no "formula" for which actions cause Karmic reaction; Karma reacts to everything, and the nature of that reaction varies from one action to the next. Some actions net netural reactions, some actions net positive reactions, and some actions net negative reactions. Which does which is something the Gods tell us through scripture, not something we decide for ourselves formulaically.

Doesn’t this contradict your statements about karma earlier? You first stated that it is objective, but now you are telling me that the karmic effect of each action has ‘no formula’ and that the nature of a karmic reaction varies from one action to the next? Does this mean that circumstantial factors play a role? If they do, then it would resolve pretty much all of the issues and questions that I have about it as a principle. In addition, it sounds like a process which people would actually use to evaluate the morality of their actions, and that gives it applicability in the real world. But it doesn’t really jive with your earlier take on the concept.

What makes you assume that an animal is always reborn as a member of its own species? You don't have to gain good Karma to be reborn as a member of a different species. A tiger may have bad Karma, yes, but if it's reborn as a Human or other sapient being it has the chance to lose that Karma. I think you are assuming that there is a strict hierarchy of life forms, with certain Karma being required to reach a "higher" species. While it is somewhat true that having bad Karma makes it more likely that you will be born into poorer conditions, and good Karma makes it more likely that you will be reborn into better conditions, that's not a strict or constant rule.

I did not say that an animal was always born as its own species. Nor did I s ay that there was a hierarchy of life. I did make the assumption that your karma was more consistently applied, and that karma accumulated in one life would always affect the next. I made this assumption because I interpreted your claims of objectivity to also mean that karma was applied consistently. Thus, getting more karma would make you lower, and loosing karma would move you higher. I can see that I was in error here.

A person with Good karma can be born into a bad situation, while a person or animal with bad karma can be born in a good situation. You don't get all the consequences of Karma dumped on you all at once, they are stretched out over many lifetimes, and the circumstances of your birth aren't always Karmically dictated.

Then, may I ask, what factor is principally responsible for one’s rebirth? I know that it isn’t karma, or free will. So, what does it. Furthermore, how does this mesh with the idea that karma is objective?

Other religions may be "legitimate" in that they work for their believers and are beneficial for people. They also may have the same (lack) of evidence for their beliefs as I do for my own. That doesn't mean that I have to accept that their teachings are factually true.

You don’t have to accept them as true, factually or otherwise. No one is asking you to do so. Additionally, although I cannot speak for all religions, my own does not require you, or any outsider, to conform to it. Furthermore, it doesn’t make specific, huge, unprovable claims about the status of gods or theology in other religions. I claim no mutual exclusivity and oppose such claim from other religions.

Why am I dismissive? I don't think I am. I have stated repeatedly that I think that there is great value in all religious expression.

You believe that there is value in all religious expression yet have called other gods liars or ignorant and stated that their metaphysical beliefs are all false. By extension, all their followers, included priests and theologians were ignorant, and couldn’t figure out the ‘truth’. That is not finding value in religious expression.

Saying that Odin, Tlaloc, or Ra is ignorant of the universal truth isn't mean as an insult against them. I respect those beings as very powerful entities who have a great deal of knowledge, but they are still just (in my understanding of what Gods are) mortal beings trapped in the material world, and in that context, the ultimate truth of the Godhead is very hard to access or comprehend. The only reason that Vishnu can understand it is because he has direct access to the consciousness of the Godhead; he can read the source code of the universe, or DNA if you prefer; he can look and see what makes it tick, and he can only do that because of his unique relationship with the act of creation.

Except it is an insult against them. Not so much because you called them ignorant (insults are not a deal breaker here), but because your position completely ignores the nature of the gods (well, Tlaloc. I don’t know about Ra or Odin), and the actual beliefs of the people who worshipped them.

Yeah, English makes it hard to present a lot of Hindu concepts. What is Brahman? What is Karma? What is reality itself? Those are very hard to convey without at least somewhat misrepresenting them by using English words that were designed to describe western religious ideas.

When I say that Karma isn't moral, what I mean is that it isn't consciously trying to punish evil or reward good. It is trying, so much as an impersonal mindless force can "try" to do anything, to react to every action in the universe, between conscious beings, with an identical action. If a thing kills, it must be killed, if a thing saves a life its life must be saved; if a thing does an action that causes distress, such as stealing property, the same action must be done to it and it must experience the same distress.

Believe it or not I don’t have any trouble understanding the general principles of karma (though I do have some questions about the nuances and variations in the concept). That’s not really the point I am making, and its presence in Hinduism doesn’t really pose any problem for me. Its only when you insist in the universality and objectivity of the belief, which when taken together subjugates other religions and their theologies to the concept. However, I understand that this point needs more explanation.

First, we must acknowledge that the concepts of universality and objectivity are linked. I’ve already explained many of the issues that come assuming universality of Hindu ethics. If it is not universal, then there is no problem. But the metaphysics of other religions cannot exist if karma is universal. The claim of objectivity serves to support the idea of universality. After all, if karma is not universal, it cannot be objective. However, objectivity is a slippery word, and it can have several meanings. I oppose its use on several grounds. The first, is that the term objective is inherently problematic. It can often be used in a way to divorce the speaker from their words. Take the statement, ‘Its an objective fact that men are better than women.’ Here the term objective means that the speaker can claim that it is not their opinion, but some immutable fact of the universe, and therefore they don’t have to take responsibility for being a sexist (in this particular case). Furthermore, the claim to objectivity is a form of preemptive defense intended to deflect criticism. If a fact is ‘objective,’ any criticism of it must be false, and therefore can be deemed wrong without justification. I’m certain that you did not intend anything like this. Nevertheless, the connotation remains.

Following on with something more relevant, I suspect that by objective you meant it in a more scientific sense, to mean neutral or impartial. As a consequence, it would have to be applied in a consistent manner, without regard to context. I think that this position isn’t really supportable. Many ideas that we think of as objective turn out not to be so under scrutiny, or else are so narrow in focus as to practically eliminate its applicability. This is why I keep throwing weird moral questions at you. They might seem like petty diversion, but there is a point; that it is extremely hard to demonstrate that karma would behave objectively in these situations.

In addition, I’m not sure that claiming karma as an ‘objective’ force is really consistent with general Hindu thought. I actually looked this up. I haven’t had a chance to get into the nitty-gritty, but I found some important nuances that you haven’t addressed. For example, I read that intent is an important part of karma. This would mean that the same action could have different effects on karma depending in the intent of the person who took the action. Considering the importance of free will in Hinduism this perspective makes sense, and helps morally unclear situations to become clearer, by giving us a frame of reference for actions. Yet you don’t address this part of karma, and that’s a pretty big omission.

I also discovered that there was a difference in the interpretation of karma between more theistic and less theistic Hindus, with the more theistic ones believing that the gods can have an influence on karma. Obviously, this is more of a sliding scale, but at the furthest end there are Hindu’s that believe karma is entirely the product of the gods. Philosophical traditions, such as Advaita (If I recall correctly), believe that although karma is impersonal, it has to be administered by a god. Additionally, I found out that some Hindu’s even believe that some gods exist outside of the karma system. Speaking of different versions of Hinduism, I even learned that there are some philosophies that reject the idea of rebirth.

This seems to extend even to Hindu perspectives on animals. A significant part of our discussion was about karma and animals, and you clearly stated that animals can gain karma. However, several points I read stated that, although animals may suffer from karma accumulated in past lives, they don’t generate any new karma, as they don’t have full free will.

I also investigated some Hindu beliefs on diet (by which I mean I spent 10 minutes on Wikipedia). I found that, although vegetarianism was strongly recommended by Hindu scriptures, the prohibition against meat was not as absolute as you portray it, and exceptions were acceptable for people with health issues (such as injury or pregnancy), or special dietary requirements. Now, the article did not mention how this would affect one’s karma. Nevertheless, it suggests that context does affect how karma is received. I read a few other points that had similar sentiment.

Point being, Hinduism is a diverse religion, and its take on karma is similarly diverse. Asserting that it is an objective force does not reflect this variety.

Yeah, the caste system is a nasty, nasty thing. No argument from me! I do think, however, that any religion can suffer from that kind of abuse if people intentionally manipulate it's teaching without the original context. Hinduism, when taken as a whole by an educated and literate public, should never lead to this kind of thing. The Varna system is clearly not a strictly hereditary system, nor is it a system that is meant to put people above other people in the social order. The only reason it was taken that way was because the common people couldn't read the scriptures that the priests and politicians were abusing.

I mean, I'm sure it wouldn't be hard to get some nasty ideas and social practices out of Mesoamerican religion, if you went looking for an excuse to exploit people, which is how the Caste System originated.

You’ll get no argument from me here.

Ugh. I have such a hard time explaining what "Gods" are in Hinduism, because it requires some knowledge of what people and animals are, and what the universe is, to make any sense. And I find those to be incredibly difficult to explain because Hindu understanding of these things is so very counter to traditional Western notions of them.

To put it as best I can without writing a few thousand words about it, the Gods are people. Very smart, very powerful, very long lived people. Some of them were created when the universe were created, some of them existed before the birth of the universe, some of them were born through sexual reproduction, and some of them were created by other Gods non-sexually.

Very interesting, but completely different to Mesoamerica. In my religion gods are part of the metaphysical makeup of the universe and are not even remotely close to being human (although they occasionally act as such in mythology). They don’t really even have physical bodies or real names. This is yet another reason why grouping them with your gods doesn’t really make sense.

Eh. I doubt any of that makes any sense. I'm going to use an analogy to see if I can make it make more sense.

No, it makes sense.

Imagine a computer simulation. This simulation includes all the laws of physics, down to the minute detail, and simulates every atom and photon in the universe, and the forces that interact with them. This simulation doesn't just have one universe, though, it has several, layered on top of one another, with each simulation being more randomized than the other, more chaotic at the bottom and less so at the top. This is a material universe in Hinduism.

All very interesting. But the computer simulation analogy is limited in some respects. First, it cannot really account for free will. If everything, including people and gods, are just part of a dream, how can they have will independent of the dreamer? Second, how is it possible for one inside this dream to know what conditions are like outside of the dream? To continue the computer theme: how can a computer program leave the computer? I mean that question literally.

Eating meat does so because Karma reacts to actions taken toward a corpse. So, if you butcher a corpse, or cook a corpse, or chew up and ingest pieces of a corpse, Karma is going to try to cause those things to happen to your own corpse later. Which, indirectly, leads to more death down the line because that's where corpses come from.

Killing is much more straightforward. If you kill something, Karma "wants" something to come along and kill you later. Tit for tat, and eye for an eye, causing one death causes your own death later. That's bad enough, but it gets even more unfortunate because you getting murdered (to pay for murdering) means that the person who murdered you then needs to be murdered as well (unless it is the same person who you murdered before) and this can quickly explode in a chain reaction of Karma. One murder never stays one murder!

Karma might be a dumb force of nature, but it's rather good, perfect in fact, of understanding the nuance involved in cause and effect. Karma knows, intuitively, when someone's actions have intended or unintended long term consequences. That's why meat sellers get bad Karma; they might not kill the animal, they might not even tough the corpse, but they still encourage other people to do those things by offering chopped up bits of murder victims as a product for sale.

The killing part is fairly clear. But what’s this other stuff about meat sellers? Does an individual selling meat actually encourage people to eat meat? This is the reason I brought up the question of culture. I can see how thousands of butchers may encourage people to eat more meat. But how does an individual get attributed the responsibility for this? There could be hundreds or thousands of factors that determine why an individual choses a particular meal. How do you attribute such an action to one factor or another? Remember that the person ‘selling’ the meat may not be a butcher but is more likely to be a fairly anonymous and interchangeable group of people working in a supermarket. I’ve shopped at supermarkets before and the people there cannot really be said to encourage anything. Furthermore, would any karma affect people who made containers for meat? Would it only affect them if they knew what the containers were explicitly for? In the modern world of outsourcing, it is all too common for companies not to know details about their own supply chains, let alone employees. Do truck drivers who transport the meat get karma for their role in ‘promoting’ meat eating. It is not as easy to attribute cause as you seem to think. But let’s move on to this statement:

Karma knows, intuitively, when someone's actions have intended or unintended long term consequences.

This is actually a hugely problematic statement, as it means that all consequences of an action will have their karmic effect on the actor. Where does it stop? The consequences of an action could theoretically be unlimited. Could then, the karmic consequences of an action be infinite? A greater problem is that good actions may have bad consequences and bad actions may have good consequences. Furthermore, as every action happens in a different context, two people could take exactly the same action, and yet have it result in completely different karmic outcomes. This would break the link between moral action and karmic responses.
Furthermore, in my brief reading about karma, I didn’t encounter any description that quite matched this. Of course, yours ignores intent. But the other descriptions I read stated that karma would only be gained from the result of ones actions, or from the actions of people who have been directly influenced to take an action (such as a subordinate obeying orders, or giving advice to a friend). None of them stated that indirect consequences of an action could influence karma over the long-term.

That's the thing about Karma, it reacts to all of these things. Subsidizing the meat industry? Bad karma. Purchasing meat at the store? Bad karma. Any action that indirect causes harm to anther being (including dead beings)? Bad karma.

Two things. First, an action such as a government subsidy may not be intended as a subsidy for the meat industry specifically. It could be a general agricultural subsidy. It might not even be intended to help the meat industry but might help it indirectly by making feed cheaper. How far away does it need to be before karma stops affecting it?
Second, that word ‘harm.’ Harm is such an elastic word that you could stretch it all the way to Saturn and back again. Anything under the sun, moon, stars, earth, and everything else, could cause harm. Good actions could cause harm, and bad actions might not. Again, this would result in the link between actions and karmic consequences to be broken. 

[Hariti]

I will note that I have seen a Hindu state that the concept of "godhead" is specifically Hare Krishna and not shared with other branches of Hinduism, though honestly given the diversity of Hinduism I'd be mildly surprised if it were only Hare Krishna.  (He is a practicing priest and a lay educator on Hinduism to Americans, though.)

The concepts of Bhagavan, Atman, and Brahman are certainly not unique to the Hare Krishna movement, and "Godhead" is used as a loose grouping of those concepts by many Vaishnava sects. The notion of a single, supreme, unconscious (or sometimes conscious) being that generates all of existence is a central shared doctrine of all the major theistic sects of Hinduism. There are atheistic sects, and a very small minority of folk Hindus who practice "hard" polytheism, but that's a tint (probably less than 1%) portion of Hindus.

It's true that not all Hindus use the term "Godhead" to describe the concepts I am discussing, but the concepts themselves are still present in most forms of Hinduism, including Shaivism, Shaktism, and Smartism.

I'm not sure why your friend would say that it's just a Hare Krishna concept. Perhaps he is unaware that other Vaishnava groups exist outside of the Hare Krishna movement? Do you know what Branch of Hinduism he follows?

It's a very common thing for Hindus in the west to try and speak from a position of doctrinal authority, because they know that most westerners aren't aware of the diversity that exists within Hinduism. In fact, I would go so far as to say that no branch of Hinduism hasn't tried to pass itself off as "the" Hinduism to naive westerners. Shaktist, Smartists, Shaivists, Vaishnavists, Tantrics, and many smaller groups all have done this, and it's lead a lot of people in the USA and Europe to have the skewed idea that Hinduism has an orthodoxy.

[Hariti]

I've got to be honest, I'm a little burned out from this discussion. I might come back to it later and post responses, but right now I'm too tired.

Trying to address every possible interpretation of every nuance of Hindu theology is literally impossible. There are dozens of sects, hundreds of holy texts, thousands of concept, and millions of individual practitioners.

The diversity of belief regarding even a single concept, like Karma or Reincarnation, would require an entire book to address to a sufficient level of detail. Trying to unpack it all here for several major concepts (we've discussed the nature of reality, religious exclusivity versus exclusivity, morality and the problem of evil, the nature of the Gods, Karma, reincarnation, and a few other things as well!) is simply too exhausting to continue.

I could write ten thousand more words and you would still have more questions; valid questions; because no response I can give you is going to cover every little detail of what I believe or why I believe it, let alone what other Hindus believe and why. It's just too much. I'm not a trained apologist!

[Darkhawk]

I'm not sure why your friend would say that it's just a Hare Krishna concept.

The context was a tweet in which he was responding to someone who was attempting to argue that Hinduism as a whole has a "godhead" concept.  Not a lot of space for detail in a tweet, though he made another in the same thread noting that erasing the diversity (and sometime mutual hostility) contained within the religion(s) of the Indian subcontinent was not on.