Paraprakrti said:
So you say. Still, it is not up to me. It is between you and God. Surrendering to God does not just mean saying that you do and then going off and acting materialisticly.
I already said I surrender to God. Why doesn't He tell me exactly what I need to do now to transcend karma? Or better yet, why doesn't He destroy my body so that I no longer have these evil materialistic desires?
It ultimately means renouncing worldly life.
So God wants me to stop eating now?
Tell me precisely how I need to live in order to transcend karma and get rid of evil and suffering. Also, please tell me why I should listen to you, and why God doesn't tell me how to transcend karma Himself.
God does not expect people to just jump up and do this. There is a process. If you are sincere then I have faith that God will lead you through that process.
See, if I'm being sincere, I would expect God to take away all my materialistic desires right now, destroy my Earthly body right now, and bring me up to heaven to be at one with him and be free of evil and suffering--
right now. What's the hold-up? You said that by allowing evil/suffering in the world, God only carries out our wishes, but now you're telling me I have to do favors for Him by not living "materialistically", and only
then will He carry out my wishes to be at one with Him and no longer have evil and suffering. You say this philosophy is based on reasoning, but I find this extremely unreasonable.
It is not my job to remember. Try to understand that it is either this, or we must subscribe to the 'poor me! I'm a victim' philosophy.
So you're philosophy is merely an imaginative attempt to make the best of a bad situation? Personally, I think it makes more sense simply to accept that genetic deformities are bad, it's not the babies' fault, it was caused by forces beyond our control and we just need to get by as best we can.
A real theist does not accept any application of chance or randomness. You would lean more to say that a child is born deformed by chance.
Well, sort of--I would say a child is deformed by forces of nature beyond our (current) control, forces which, on the macro level at least, are not random but patterned.
And this would negate the existence of God to you. But we say that a child is born such a way because of reason. A reason we simply have no perception of. That is our basis, reason.
I think a child is born deformed for reasons as well...the reasons you speak of might be more easily acceptable before modern science, which can now tell us which genes caused the deformities etc.
Gerani-- You say that you believe babies with deformities were born that way because they were bad in a previous life. I asked you how you know that, and you said you simply have faith in it. Now my question is, why do you have faith in the Hindu doctrine that deformed babies were bad in previous lives, and why do you not have faith in say, the Christian doctrine that deformed babies suffer for Adam and Eve's eating of the tree of knowledge? How did you decide which to have faith in, other than by mere whim?
One more question for both of you: suppose women today are healthier than women in the Dark Ages, and as a result less newborns are born deformed, and infant mortality rate is much lower. Is this because Dark Age babies did more bad things in their previous lives?
Or is it because modern medicine, food, and sanitation is better?
I suppose American babies were much better people in their previous lives than the babies of Somalia and other remote disease ridden areas...hey, why send medicine to those babies either, since we would only be interfering with God's punishment?