Theos-Talk Archives (December 1996 Message tl00395)

At 07:28 AM 12/16/96 +0000, kymsmith@micron.net wrote:

>Books like "Why Bad
>Things Happen To Good People" sell like crazy, and in turn offer, in my
>opinion, erroneous and dangerous answers such as "It is God's Will." That
>"It is God's Will" phrase is the single most responsible reason God looks
>like a despot who loves to play "teacher's pet."

An omniscient being would not have free will.


>I have to be careful not to let the karma thing trick me into believing I'm
>in the fortunate state I am in simply because I was so well-mannered in
>previous lifetimes (which it occasionally does). Is the reason I do not go
>to bed hungry my karma? Is the reason two-thirds of the world does their
>karma?  Maybe and maybe not.

I have never understood how the actions of past lives directly cause present
circumstances.  Rather than a direct link, it is more likely analogous to a
bank account, in which the benefits of using a specific withdrawal is not
directly tied to any specific deposit, but is drawn from a common pool.  It
is even more likely analogous to the results of flipping a coin many times,
where the average will approach half heads and half tails, the results of
any one flip are almost completely independent of such probability, and a
result of heads does not cause a later result of tails.