Theos-Talk Archives (January 1997 Message tl00074)

On Sun, 5 Jan 97, liesel@dreamscape.com (liesel f. deutsch) wrote:

>Tom, hope you don't mind if I need to disagree with you. 

I'm afraid that can't be tolerated.


>My concept of Karma
>isn't that sin is unforgiveable because its consequences are inevitable. If
>I believed that, what would be the use of trying to do anything right, or
>better than last time? Why not just give up? 

The effect on motivation would be just the opposite.  That the consequences
of sin are believed to be both negative and inevitable motivates one not to
sin.  By "inevitable," I did not mean that habits of sin cannot be changed,
as you seem to have understood me to mean.


>Then you say 

>>Every lesson from nature is consistent with the
>>ideas that only the fittest survive 

>Look up Lynn Margulies, who's a biochemist, I think. Her ideas are quite
>different than survival of the fittest.

Species would not survive as long as they do if the fittest did not
survive.  The more that genetic qualities that tend toward the death of
individuals are eliminated, the more that the species will survive.  The
survival of the fittest is compatible with other, more cooperative, factors
in survival. 


>About success having a deadline, I don't know. If there is a deadline, it's
>millennia away. Seems to me you're putting undue pressure on yourself.

I thought everyone knew that the end of the world was going to be in the
year 2000.