REINCARNATION: IS IT LOGICAL?

The co-ideas of karma and reincarnation have become fantastically popular in the West. Theologian Douglas Groothuis wrote that:

·       About a quarter of Americans now believe in reincarnation and karma. (Christian Research Journal, Vol 39/Number 04, 28)

How do we account for their growing popularity? Groothuis cites two factors: Hope in life after death and a mechanism that guarantees cosmic justice.

Groothuis also cites logic problems associated with karma/reincarnation. For one thing, karma lacks the ability to justly and wisely weigh all of the evidence:

·       Since Hinduism and Buddhism lack belief in a creator and designer who run the universe, they cannot appeal to such a being to know and evaluate morality and assess the proper rewards and punishments for the next life….Karma requires moral knowledge and moral evaluation in order to ensure that an entity is placed properly in its next life. (30)

However, since karma is impersonal it is incapable of “moral knowledge and moral evaluation.” Justice requires wisdom, and karma is unable to deliver.

Karma also lacks the muscle to administer its just rewards. Groothuis writes that:

·       Such administration requires a vastly powerful agent to bring about these moral results. (22)

Perhaps even more problematic to the notion of reincarnation is that Hinduism and Buddhism do not acknowledge the existence of individual souls, which can be reincarnated. Hinduism, for example, maintains that:

·       To consider oneself as distinct from another self or from the Brahman [universal consciousness or being] is to be deceived, to be bewitched by maya (or illusion). The only reality is Brahman, which has no qualities at all… If all is one and if duality is an illusion, then there are no particular selves that are different from other selves or from Brahman. If so, then there is no material available to be reincarnated. (30)

Groothuis insists that Buddhism also rejects that idea of individual enduring souls:

·       Buddhism teaches that humans are aggregations of changing parts and, thus, they have no enduring soul… necessary to establish continuity between one lifetime and another one so that karma has something on which to attach. (31)

In view of these logical problems, it is disappointing that the West has largely rejected the Source of a real Hope and Justice – a God who is able to provide them, a God who has made salvation immediately available to any who call upon Him:

·       “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” (Matthew 11:28-30)

Why is His yoke easy? There are many reasons for this: He knows us personally and gives us just what we need; He never leaves us; He loves of so much that He has died to take away our sins and to reconcile us to Himself.

HOW TO ANSWER THE CLAIMS OF MORAL RELATIVISM?

Our deeds are children of our beliefs. In "Mao, The Unknown Story," biographer Jung Chang estimates that Mao had exterminated 70 million of his own people to implement his communist ideal.

Why had he been willing to pay such an horrendous price?

According to his biographer, Mao was a self-centered moral relativist:

* Mao’s attitude to morality consisted of one core, the self, “I,” above everything else: “I do not agree with the view that to be moral, the motive of one’s action has to be benefiting others. Morality does not have to be defined in relation to others … People like me want to … satisfy our hearts to the full, and in doing so we automatically have the most valuable moral codes. Of course there are people and objects in the world, but they are all there only for me.”

* “People like me only have a duty to ourselves; we have no duty to other people.” “I am responsible only for the reality that I know,” he wrote, “and absolutely not responsible for anything else. I don’t know about the past, I don’t know about the future. They have nothing to do with the reality of my own self.” He explicitly rejected any responsibility towards future generations. “Some say one has a responsibility for history. I don’t believe it. I am only concerned about developing myself … I have my desire and act on it. I am responsible to no one.”

His beliefs were a hammer bludgeoning to death millions.

This makes me ponder how we might effectively challenge these all-to-common relativistic, postmodern beliefs of our youth. It is just too tempting and costly to believe that we can create our own morality designed to serve our desires.

We must be able to demonstrate that there exists objective moral laws, which are as real as our laws of physics. These are laws to which we must conform, like gravity, which will punish us if we throw ourselves off a 10-story building. Likewise, moral laws will punish us if we defy them and inflame our conscience.

Perhaps surprisingly, the vast majority of researchers have demonstrated that we are wired for these laws which manifest at specific developmental stages.

However, if this wiring is purely bio-chemical, some will argue, "I need not conform to this wiring. I can override or defy it. I can drop a pill or dull their impact. I will be master of my own ship."

Most will not take moral relativism that far. They will merely pursue their own desires as their suppressed moral voice repeats, "You are doing wrong."

But is it wrong? How can a bio-chemical reaction be wrong? It just is, isn't it?

We would not say this about gravity. Instead, we would have to admit that gravity exists apart from our thoughts about it.

Here's the question I wish to pose -

* "Is it possible that our moral wiring is like our eyesight? Our eyes are not just biochemical. They perceive a very real external reality. Can it also be that our moral sentiments, our conscience, serves as a portal to an external reality - a world of karma?"

If so, then you are ready for another question -

* "If karma represents the imposition of justice and justice requires the weighing of many subtle factors, Who must be doing the weighing?"

Not all Atheists are Moral Relativists

Not all atheists are moral relativists – people who believe that morality just exists in our minds and decisions. The atheist, secular humanist, Max Hocutt provides a good example of moral relativist thinking:

·        To me [the non-existence of God] means that there is no absolute morality, that moralities are sets of social conventions devised by humans to satisfy their needs…If there were a morality written up in the sky somewhere but no God to enforce it, I see no good reason why anyone should pay it any heed. (Understanding the Times)

Hocutt understands that without God, there is no possible basis for objective moral law, apart from our subjective thinking. In contrast to this, a small group of atheists are moral realists and believe that there is an objective moral law that pertains to all of us, irrespective of our thinking. In other words, even if every human being thought that it was okay to torture babies, it would still be wrong according to moral law, which transcends human thinking (although humans are generally tapped-into moral law.)

So far, the atheistic moral realist and the Christian agree, at least until we examine further and ask, “Is this moral law personal or impersonal? Is there a God standing behind it or just a natural force such as Karma?” 

This raises several critical problems:

1. If there is impersonal karmic moral law, how is it enforced? How can impersonal forces ensure that karmic justice is served? How can these forces make the critical assessments required by justice in order to deliver the right verdict and punishment? (It is important to understand that moral realism doesn’t negate relativistic factors such as personal history, culture, intelligence, ability and the various personal situations. Moral realism merely asserts that that there are objective moral principles in addition to the relative circumstances.) Instead, it would seem that only an intelligent Being could do so!

2. How did these beautifully elegant, immutable and universal laws – both physical and moral – arise and what sustains them? There is absolutely no theory to account for how they might have arisen naturally!

3. Moral laws are different from physical laws because they carry moral authority. While we can avoid the effects of gravity in a number of ways, like flying in a plane, it does not seem that we can avoid the implications of violating moral laws. There is no pill or scientific breakthrough that will allow us to torture babies without consequence. It’s just plain wrong, whatever the circumstance or innovation! There is no way to avoid the “karma” involved in such an action. Instead, it seems that a moral Being necessarily stands His moral laws to enforce them in a way distinct from His physical laws.

Even Hocutt seems to acknowledge this:

·        If there were a morality written up in the sky somewhere but no God to enforce it, I see no good reason why anyone should pay it any heed.

Hocutt acknowledges that a moral law without a Law-Giver is no law at all. Against this wisdom, some moral realists will claim:

·        I don’t require a Law-Giver or punishment in order to obey moral law. It is enough for me to know that it is objectively wrong to torture babies.

However, by rejecting the Law-Giver from this equation, the moral realist encounters additional problems:

1. Even if there is an objective moral law, what makes it right to obey it? And why should we obey it? For the Christian, the answer is direct and easy. We love God and want to obey Him because He has earned our love by dying for us on the cross, removing any enmity between us. We are therefore safe and secure in Him. Besides, God is the source of all moral truth, and we are wired with that truth. Consequently, as we follow Him, we find that His judgments accord with what He has placed within our heart. As a result of this, rebellion is futile, because when we rebel against God, we also rebel against the truth He has placed within us. Therefore, there exists no legitimate basis for any moral judgment that would contradict Him.

2. If we really hear what the moral says, we will hear it saying, “If you violate me, you have transgressed and deserve to be punished.” Guilt and shame reinforce this judgment. Therefore, it is not as simple as the moral realist makes it out to be. Moral law is more than just knowing something to be wrong.

3. The moral realist also has to grapple with his rationale to follow the law. Why not simply ignore it if it just came about naturally. However, as with all other laws of “nature,” these are necessary gifts for human thriving. If we fail to ask where they came from, we are like the man who receives a gift in the mail and throws away the card, not wanting to know to whom he should now honor for his gift.

The laws cry out “God!” Frank Tipler, Professor of Mathematical Physics, would agree:

• When I began my career as a cosmologist some twenty years ago, I was a convinced atheist. I never in my wildest dreams imagined that one day I would be writing a book purporting to show that the central claims of Judeo-Christian theology are in fact true, that these claims are straightforward deductions of the laws of physics as we now understand them. I have been forced into these conclusions by the inexorable logic of my own special branch of physics.

The Hiding Place of Paradox

People – even smart ones – say paradoxical things. Take Albert Einstein for example:

• The scientist is possessed by the sense of universal causation…There is nothing divine about morality; it is a purely human affair. His religious feeling takes the form of a rapturous amazement at the harmony of natural law, which reveals an intelligence of such superiority that, compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection. (The World as I See it, 29)

While Einstein regards “the harmony of natural law” as a reflection of “an intelligence of such superiority,” he dismisses moral law as “a purely human affair” – a thing we made up! Why this sharp distinction?

The moral law is also harmonious. Just consider several observations:

• When we live according to the moral law we find written on our hearts (Rom. 2:14-15), we are healthier and happier, as indicated by many surveys.

• When we violate this internal law, we suffer from guilt, shame, and alienation.

• When we confess that we have violated this law, we feel relieved and relationships are often restored.

Even atheists or agnostics have traditionally recognized this moral law. Buddhists call it “the law of karma” – what goes around comes around. However, they lack an explanation of any mechanism that explains how justice is fairly delivered. (The delivery of justice is no easy thing. It requires understanding and an appreciation of all the facts.)

Also, we can defy physical laws. While flying in an airplane doesn’t cancel out gravity, it certainly allows us to defy its natural consequences. However, morals laws seem to be even more coercive. It would seem that God is investing them with His own transcendent authority, since there isn’t any way to defy their impact. We not only know that rape is wrong, we also know that there is no remedy, like an airplane overcoming gravity, that will overcome the damage that this act inflicts on us (and others).

Even though Einstein was only willing to attribute “an intelligence of such superiority” to the physical laws, why did he fail to follow through with the implications of his observations? In other words, “What kind of intelligence is necessary to account for these incredible, harmonious laws? Do impersonal forces like gravity possess this kind of intelligence!”

Clearly not! As great and awesome as gravity might be, it can do only one thing – attract! It can’t tie my shoes, write a line of poetry, or even scratch my back. In other words, the laws of nature do not seem to be the place to find this intelligence. Instead, as rain comes from clouds, intelligence comes from personal, willful minds.

Why do we often experience an aversion to thinking further about this subject? A dear cousin told me a story that continued to profoundly trouble her. Ironically, it was a story about a miracle, which she had initially attributed to God, even though she’s an agnostic. Initially, she felt great joy that her problem had been so miraculously solved and also that there was a God who was looking out for her. However, immediately after this, she was overcome by a feeling of great dread. It was this feeling that she couldn’t explain. I gave her my interpretation:

• You immediately understood that if there is a God who loves you, He also has expectations for you, and we want to remain the captain of our own ship.

The explanation hit home. She recognized that she had been fleeing from God. Her discomfort was the background radiation.

We live paradoxical lives because we prefer paradox to an encounter with a morally demanding, sometimes even punitive God.

Hilary Clinton, Human Rights, Gay Rights, and God

Secretary of State, Hilary Clinton, is evidently not a moral-relativist or a multi-culturalist. She has stated that “gay rights are human rights, and human rights are gay rights,” and she’s so sure about this that she’s imposing this equation on the rest of the world.

This means that human rights - moral absolutes – ought to take precedence over the laws and traditions of the rest of the world. However, in order for this to be so, human rights must partake in at least three characteristics. They must be universal, immutable, and authoritative. In fact, all of these characteristics require transcendence – something or someone that exists beyond the laws of time and space, matter and energy. Let me try to illustrate why this is the case:

UNIVERSAL: If human rights weren’t universal, Clinton would have had no basis to insist that other nations make rooms for these “rights,” especially in light of the fact that they violate the laws and traditions of these nations. However, if human rights aren’t universal, she would need to qualify her position by stating something like this:

• “Gay rights are human rights only in the West but not in Africa or in Muslim nations,” or “They are human rights as long as they don’t violate your own traditions.

However, by claiming that gay rights are human rights, she is claiming that they trump anything that might contradict them - any teachings from any religion or any culture. (The USA is making this assertion a universal one by denying US foreign aid to any nation that will not provide gay rights, even when they violate their culture or religion.)

We now have to ask, “What makes a law or a right universal?  It can’t be based on a law or power source operating within the universe under its limitations. Just think about any energy source – a radio station, for example. The further you remove yourself from it, the weaker the signal.

Why don’t human rights and other laws operate in this manner? Why do they not generate more influence at one point of the globe than another? If they are closer to their source, we should expect that they would exercise a great influence, that is, unless their source is transcendent and therefore can impact the universe uniformly. It depends on the existence of transcendent laws – laws that operate uniformly throughout the cosmos –laws that are not subject to the influences of time, matter, energy, space and relativity. Laws and rights cannot be expected to act uniformly if they are based within the cosmos.

IMMUTABLE: In order for Clinton to make her assertion, human rights must be immutable –unchangeable. She is not simply saying that human rights trump any laws to the contrary just for today or this week. Instead, she is saying that there is something timeless about them. While our laws and cultures change, Clinton’s assumption is that human rights do not change.

This is partially why human rights are more inalienable than national laws. They are unchangeable because they are based upon something greater, which is also unchangeable.

However, Clinton failed to articulate what or who it must be that is the basis for our human rights. In fact, this question demands articulation. We live in a world of molecules-in-motion. There is nothing in the physical world that is not changing or moving. We are even told that there the molecules in a steel plate are moving around – even deteriorating. What then can be the basis of moral absolutes, including human rights?

Our Declaration of Independence provides the one possible answer: We have been endowed by our Creator “with certain inalienable [unchangeable] rights.” If human rights were granted by governments, then governments can also deprive us of these rights. However, Clinton speaks as if these rights transcend government, culture, and human society, but without explaining what makes them inalienable or transcendent.

If human rights are based upon our culture, laws, or even evolution, they would rest upon a shifting foundation, which would mean that they too are changing and relative to our differing foundations. If so, then Clinton would not be justified in telling Nigeria – and their conditions are different than our own - to adopt gay rights, lest they lose American foreign aid. Such a requirement would be nothing short of cultural imperialism.

Instead, there is only one adequate foundation for immutable human rights, and that is an immutable Being who is greater than all cultures, religions, governments, majority-rules, and historical precedence.  Also, in order to be immutable, He must also be transcendent – beyond the created universe, which is enmeshed in the changes of time, space, energy, and matter. This is a universe in which every molecule is in motion.

However, some will appeal to impersonal laws as a basis for human rights. After all, gravity is universal and immutable. Why then can’t there be impersonal moral absolutes? Why can’t they operate impersonally as a karmic principle or law?

I’ve already alluded to the fact that the existence of our physical laws, like gravity, can’t be used an argument for non-transcendence or naturalism. Instead, these laws bear unmistakable qualities that set them apart from the things that we find within the cosmos. They too partake of universality, uniformity and immutability. However, moral absolutes partake of a quality that goes beyond the qualities of the laws of physics. They are authoritative.

AUTHORITATIVE: Underlying Clinton’s assertion is also the idea that human rights must be authoritative. They should require our submission to them. To put it another way, let’s assume that there exists human rights that are universal and immutable. This in itself isn’t adequate to persuade us to live according to them. Something immutable and universal might lack clout or sanction. In other words, why should anyone allow these human rights to trump their own traditions if they are not authoritative?

OK, gravity is universal and immutable. But we need not live according to its “dictates.” We can defy gravity in many ways. We can fly in a plane or even blast into outer space where we can float freely, outside of gravity’s grasp. Perhaps we might even build an anti-gravity machine. And why not? Would there be another wrong with this idea?

However, no one will suggest that we build an anti-human rights machine or establish a zone where the requirements for human rights wouldn’t penetrate. This, of course, is ridiculous. But what makes it ridiculous? If we can get-around the force of gravity, why not also human rights?

Intuitively, we know that human rights and moral absolutes carry an authority that gravity lacks. It’s an authority that impresses itself upon our conscience and even our identity. It’s also an authority that makes pragmatic sense to us. We legislate laws in accordance to this authority and require obedience, and they work to build better societies.

We also know that there is an absolute Authority Figure who stands behind our intuitive sense (Romans 1:18-32; 2:14-15). And He is essential. Arthur Leff, atheist and professor at the Duke School of Law, wrote of His necessity:

·        The so-called death of God wasn’t just His funeral, but was the elimination of any coherent ethical or legal system…As it stands now, everything is up for grabs…Napalming babies is bad, starving the poor wicked, buying and selling people is depraved—but, ‘Sez who?’ God help us.

Leff is right. We can have absolute, universal, and immutable moral principles, but if there is no God whose moral authority stands behind them, why bother! Human rights must have this Authority supporting them. Without this supreme Authority, there exists nothing higher than our various contending ideas and desires. Besides, if human rights were merely the result of an impersonal and unintelligent karma, there would be no reason at all to not try to find a way around them, as we do around gravity.

However, Clinton would not condone any attempt to get around gay rights. But why are these human rights? Is the lifestyle of a polygamist, a pedophile or a beastophile a human right? Why then should we even consider gay rights human rights? Every major religion fails to recognize such “rights.” Perhaps Clinton needs to confer with God about this! However, I think that she would find this consultation less than satisfactory.

Medicine and Compassion Require an Adequate Rational Foundation

The way we think is the way we live. Our philosophies and worldviews are the foundation upon which we build our houses of caring, chaos, or confusion. This very apparent truth can be demonstrated in any area of human endeavor. To illustrate the causal power of our philosophies, let’s just take the area of medicine.

Indian scholar Vishal Mangalwadi states that India had pioneered a number of ancient medical advances including cataract surgery and plastic surgery. However, the study and practice of medicine had only a brief duration in India. Mangalwadi explains that medicine and even compassion lacked an adequate cognitive rationale in his India. This is partially because India’s doctors were also regarded as “gurus” who couldn’t be questioned:

• This attitude toward knowledge could not create and sustain an academic culture where peers and students could challenge, reject, and improve the medical techniques they had received. Thus, India had intellectual giants but our religious tradition failed to build academic communities. Individual genius, knowledge, and excellence in technology are insufficient to build a medical center. (The Book that Made Your World, 311)

Mangalwadi also claims that Indian religions couldn’t provide an adequate rationale for compassion – a necessary pre-condition for the practice of medicine:

• A person’s suffering was believed to be a result of her or his karma (deeds) in a previous life. In other words, suffering was cosmic justice. To interfere with cosmic justice is like breaking into a jail and setting a prisoner free. If you cut short someone’s suffering, you would actually add to his suffering because he would need to come back to complete his due quota of suffering. (312)

Although Buddhism says a lot about compassion, its message is conflicted:

• The Buddha had to renounce his own wife and son to find enlightenment. He saw attachment as a cause of suffering. Detachment, therefore, became an important religious virtue…Those whose commitment was to their own spiritual enlightenment did not have the motivation to develop a scientific medical tradition. (312)

Our ideas have wings:

• The idea that the state should pay surgeons to serve the poor came to India with the Bible. Secularism hijacked the biblical idea, but it provides only the form, not the spirit. It is possible to bring a mango plant from India and grow it in Minnesota. One might even get a few crops. But under normal circumstances, the tree will not survive and certainly not reproduce. (314)

Secularism might be able to grow a mango tree in its own soil, but will it survive? Indian medicine wasn’t able to survive in its cognitive climate. Secularism claims to promote compassion, but can its own beliefs cause it to survive?

It certainly doesn’t seem that secularism has a firm enough basis for compassion. It doesn’t have a high view of humanity. Materialism and naturalism – components of today’s secularism – regard humanity as just another animal, albeit more intelligent. However, some of us – babies, the mentally handicapped, the delusional - aren’t as intelligent as some animals. Consequently, these are becoming expendable in the West.

Besides, if we are regarded as no more than cosmically-purposeless animalistic bodies, then there remains no reason to not treat us as such. Consequently, in secular societies, there was little hesitation to exterminate dissidents and those regarded as racially inferior – a virtual caste system.

Moral relativism eliminates the possible existence of any human or inalienable rights – any basis for a Bill of Rights. Morals simply become human inventions which change and are rescinded arbitrarily at will, according to the need.

Secular multi-culturalism is born out of moral relativism. It acknowledges that we have no rock-solid basis upon which to judge other cultures or to defend our own. Therefore, in contradiction to its purported philosophy, the secular West has allowed the establishment of Shariah courts, which rule against the very rights the West has committed itself to uphold.

Such moral confusion can provide no adequate foundation for the rights that we enjoy – rights that have promoted the West.

Malcolm Muggeridge, the late British journalist and former secular humanist, observed:

• “I’ve spent a number of years in India and Africa where I found much righteous endeavor undertaken by Christians of all denominations; but I’ve never , as it happens, came across a hospital or orphanage run by the Fabian [communist] society, or a humanist leper colony.” (314)

Why not? Could it be that their philosophy/religion is inadequate for such?