There was this one time when my bro and I got into a friendly debate about the existence of God and religion, or maybe the absence of one.
As an agnostic, my bro doesn't believe in God from any specific religion, but believes in karma instead.
So there were some very solid arguments presented in our banter; among them was that if there is truly a God -- who is omnipotent and omniscient -- and if anything and everything only happen with his prior knowledge and according to his will, then it's kinda unfair for Him to be pissed and rain us down with shit if we do bad things that are not in compliance to His terms and conditions, right? Because He knows beforehand that we're gonna do it, right? And He wills it, or allows it to happen, right? Then why punish us for it? If He doesn't want it to happen, He can simply make it so and it'll never would've happened, right?
All I could say in return was that the gift of free will is a luxury not afforded to any other creatures in creation. With it, we are given choices, to be good or to be naughty. Choosing good despite all the available temptations will guarantee you to be in His good side, with an eternal good life in heaven as your reward. And even if we choose naughty, there are plenty of chances to repent and ask for forgiveness before we leave this mortal plane. And if we time the repentance just right, we can theoretically be naughty all our lives and still go to heaven. Sweet!
What about the shit rains and punishments, you might ask? Well, those are just His way of testing us whether we're still cool with Him even if we got crap luck throughout life. If we are, we'll be dining in Heaven in the eternal afterlife, which I don't need to remind you is waaaaay longer than the average human lifespan. Suffer 70 years and be gloriously happy for eternity is still a good deal to me.
On the other hand, we have the school of karma. No God here to govern things, just the give and take karma 'balance' arrangement. So you do good, you get good in return, and if you do bad, you get shit thrown at you. My problem with this system is that even bad intentions count as bad deeds. So you might be daydreaming and somehow idly think about being naughty, and suddenly you're neck deep in shit. And that's before you even carry out the deed. Imagine what could happen if you actually go through with it. For me, this ain't exactly fair balance, because I never see people swamped with good things just by thinking of doing good and not really doing any.
Plus, there's the reincarnation. Afterlife made tangible.
If you do really good in this life, you get to live really well in your after -- or perhaps we should say next -- life. By that logic, those filthy rich corrupt officials must have been really really good in their previous incarnation, and that's why they get to enjoy this life with the privilege of throwing crap on others. What bothers me is if they were really good before, how in fuck's name they got to be so messed up now? Where did all those goodness disappear to? And how come when the rest can get buried in crap just for thinking bad stuffs, these guys get off scot free for actually doing bad stuffs? How much are they paying karma to look the other way?
And in the karmic rule, if you fail miserably in this life, you have to redo it in the next, and more often than not as a lower level creature. So if you are consistent enough in failing, you can actually start out as a leader of men and end up as a butt-worm after several reincarnations or so.
Given the available choices, I'll take my only-shot now-or-never do-or-die one incarnation under God. At least I know I won't have to repeat indefinitely, and might just got lucky enough to end up in Heaven after a successful repentance... And I seriously don't want to end up as a butt-worm. :D
But I got this nagging feeling that for questioning and writing all these, I will have to spend some time purging myself in hell... x_x
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