I forget, which one are you, Larry or Moe? 
If you throw a basketball in a particular direction, it ends up in the basketball hoop. If you throw it in another direction, then it doesn’t. One action is “rewarded”, the others are not. No Santa Claus, God or cosmic judge is required.
This actually makes sense to you, doesn’t it?
Or, sure, I’m not understanding why it should also make sense to me too.
How about this…
You can’t decide if you should choose one behavior rather than another. So you throw a basketball in a particular dierection and if it lands in the hoop, you do it. If not, you don’t.
You can’t decide if you should be a Buddhist in order to sustain your existence beyond the grave. So you throw a basketball in a particular direction and if it lands in the hoop you become a Buddhist. If it doesn’t, you don’t.
Or did you mean something else? 
Do you need a “cosmic judge” to be rewarded for “good” behavior and punished for “bad” behavior?
No. It happens all the time without a judge.
I have no idea why he had to insert a Santa Claus into karma and rebirth. A “cosmic judge” is not implied by the tenets of Buddhism.
Okay, but this frame of mind is construed by me to be fabricated existentially as the embodiment of dasein. And, as a consequence of that, different individuals come to many, many, many alternative conclusions. And from these subjective assessments they choose particular behaviors that can have significant consequences for others.
And, further, from my frame of mind [no less an existential fabrication], you can’t know with any real degree of certainty whether a cosmic judge, the cosmic judge exists or not. Or, at any rate, demonstrate to others that what you do think you do know about cosmic judgments is in fact true.
Any more than the No God Buddhists can demonstrate that their own spiritual path is the most authentic. The most in sync with what is in fact true.
Or, if such demonstrations do exist, link me to them.
It’s not a question of what “I” need or “you” need or “they” need, but whether or not there is a “cosmic judge” up there or out there in the universe.
Yes, I agreed this was probably going too far…too snidey perhaps. But that doesn’t change the bottom line. Either someone chooses one set of behaviors over another because they link this to their imagined faith after death, or they don’t. And what is religion but that part of culture that is very much intent on connecting those dots.
And if Buddhists don’t call the part of universe that is factored into enlightenment, karma, reincarnation and Nirvana, a cosmic judge, what do they call it? How do they explain it?
A person studies and is rewarded by better grades than if he does not study.
A person practices a sport or hobby and is rewarded by an improvement in skill level.
An atheist is not astonished by this and feels no need to attribute the rewards to a cosmic judge.
So what changes when the word karma is introduced?
Also:
I have no reason to demonstrate an impersonal force or a personal deity behind it all. I don’t have know for certain what the ultimate cause is. If I see a pattern, then I can take advantage of it and act accordingly.
Is your life better as a Buddhist than when you were not a Buddhist?
If yes, then you are on the right path . If no, then change paths.
Not sure what you are referring to, likely something in Iamb, but you’re right, Buddhists are real cause and effect guys. It is more or less mechanistic. X leads to Y. All things with component parts must perish. Patterns of X in the mind lead necessarily to Z. There’s a bit of a paradox as to how these kinds of mechanistic processes can unravel and get to enlightenment, but consciousness can choose to disengage - via meditation or sometimes suddenly spontaneously.
But yeah there is no deity, unless you are one of those syncetistic Buddhists who also has deities. This happens much more in the East, where older religions are integrated into Buddhism
Yes, again. Karma is taken in extremely moral terms by Westerners, but actually in Buddhism it means more or less action and what it leads to. Actually in Hinduism as well. (and even in Hinduism, when you find out the attributes of deities, they need not be taken as personified characters, though that’s another can of fish that actually holds for Christianity, amazingly enough and Judaism as well.) Siddheartha may have been wrong about what he saw as inevitable processes, but he is not positing a cosmic judge at all. And in fact the whole system is not saying be a good person, be nice to people, don’t wrong them. Compassion helps you disengage from the mechanisms that lead to suffering is the idea. If anything it is an extremely selfish religion, except it doesn’t believe in a self.
It depends on the extent to which any individual Buddhist intertwines her understanding of karma into her understanding enlightenment. Then intertwining this into the behaviors she chooses in her interactions with others precipitating both positive and negative reactions. This then intertwined in how she connects these dots to the “spiritual” assumptions she makes about “I” beyond the grave.
The stuff that most interest me about religion.
With religion, the “rewards” go way, way beyond getting a better grade in chemistry or improving your skills at the chessboard. Instead, religious denominations are all about morality/enlightenment here and now and immortality/salvation there and then. How these two aspects of human interaction are fused in the mind of any particular individual.
Okay, but others insist that, when push comes to shove, not to focus in on one or another denomination’s “scriptured” spiritual path is basically to argue that anything you are able to convince yourself is true about morality here and now and immortality there and then need be as far as anyone goes. However wide the gap between what they believe is true and what they are able to demonstrate.
Though, sure, if this sounds reasonable to you, more power to you. Whatever works. Again, look at all of the truly “thought out” religious narratives we have been bombarded with over the hears here at ILP alone.
Here for example: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=195793
And here: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=195915
And here: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=195899&p=2773005#p2773005
Nothing [to my knowledge] has ever been demonstrated, but that’s not the point for those who subsume God and religion in one or another “worlds of words”.
Yeah, that’s certainly one way to look at it.
Or:
Is your life better as a Nazi than when you were not a Nazi?
Is your life better as a Communist than when you were not a Communist?
Is your life better as a serial killer than when you were not a serial killer?
Is your life better as a pedophile than when you were not a pedophile?
If that’s the main distinction you wish to make.
I was referring to the quote by John Horgan which Iamb posted and commented on :
He had tried Buddhism and come to this conclusion about karma.
I found it strange that he introduces a cosmic judge. If we were discussing evolution, for example, he probable would have no problem attributing the ‘survival of the fittest’ to unspecified mechanistic forces. But change the subject to karma and Buddhism and the thinking changes entirely.
And it’s as you describe it … no deity behind karma.
Yes, that’s it.
A Buddhist is not a good person or nice person … a Buddhist is “beyond good and evil”.
But being evil in the conventional sense is not in synch with the universe … it just leads to more rebirth and suffering for you.
He didn’t try Buddhism very hard, it seems to me. Yeah, that’s an odd quote. And yes, some Buddhists believe something like that as far as tallies of niceness and nautiness - but I don’t think I have ever encountered a Santa type entity or other cosmic judge in a Buddhist’s beliefs.
My main point is that nobody actually goes looking only for the “most authentic”, the “most in sync”, the optimal, religion or path. Nobody adopts it only after it has been demonstrated to be the best. (Maybe you are the only exception.)
People adopt what they feel is better than what they have. And they try it to see if they like it.
Neither the Nazi nor the Communist had to be convinced that it was the optimal political or economic system. Neither the serial killer nor the pedophile are looking for an optimal behavior.
Referring to what you wrote here:
I think the problem is that people are trying to fit it into the framework of fundie Christianity. Maybe they are not even conscious that they are doing it.
Being cruel will lead to attachment. It’s not a coincidence that the Buddhists don’t talk about love (as in the Judao-C tradition and also, say, t he Bhakti Hindu traditions). The compassion is not about yourself or another’s self. It is about reducing suffering, in general. You have compassion because suffering sucks and nothing is someone else. There’s no other to get pissed off at for their shortcomings. There is no self that is being gipped or mistreated. And in fact the Sanskrit word refers to what would be phenomenologically self-compassion and compassion for ‘others’.
It is not moral, it is not interpersonal, it is not being a good guy.
Buddhism argues, in my terms, that it is teaching not to keep grabbing hammers and hitting any head with them. It doesn’t matter if it is ‘your’ head or ‘someone else’s’ head, since that is a distinction based on illusions.
Compassion, in Buddhism, also entails and is entailed by there being no selves.
I would think so.
An interesting question is whether there is evidence for karma.
Certainly one can see evidence of people being “rewarded” for unethical and immoral behavior in terms of acquiring money, fame and power.
For a materialist, that would seem to be clear evidence.
Buddhists, Christians and others would say that there is more to life than money, fame and power.
He’s shifting focus. I don’t think it is conscious. We are discussing religions/spiritualities perhaps psychological therapeutic modalities would fit the category.
People do not take up Naziism with the central goal of feeling better, changing things over just what one is in direct contact with. Nor Communism. These are political belief systems which fit in another category. One does not choose pedophilia to see if it improves one’s sense of well being. It is a built in tendency and also is not in the same kind of category.
The reasons one would or would not engage in these political opinions and practices (with the political ones) or the behaviors are not the same categorically as the reasons for choosing Buddhism. Different types of goals, not just goals. Different categories of processes not just different processes.
So it is no surprise that other criteria than the single one you mentioned (and you did not preclude others which he took as assumed) is incomplete/not applicable.