Objection · Case 15 · Hinduism

Christianity has its own justice problems: original sin, bearing consequences of Adam’s act that no one remembers or chose, and eternal punishment for finite sins. Shouldn’t the memory objection to karma expect to come back?

One objection from the free evidence repository at apologetics.pro.

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Response

It should, and the symmetry must be engaged. On original sin, the Christian reply is that inherited consequence (mortality, a disordered nature) is not the same as inherited guilt, and many Christian traditions deny inherited guilt; but some affirm it, and for them the memory objection has force. On hell, this site does not offer a full treatment, and the objection stands until it does. Every account of suffering across generations faces a justice question. The Christian answer locates ultimate justice in a personal judge who knows each case rather than in an impersonal law, and whether that is better is for you to weigh, with the same probe applied to both sides. Edwards’s critique has also been answered at length by philosophers sympathetic to reincarnation, Robert Almeder among them, and that reply deserves a reading.

About this exhibit

This objection is to Paul Edwards, “Reincarnation: A Critical Examination”.

The philosopher Paul Edwards, a skeptic of reincarnation, pressed the point that rebirth without any memory of past lives strains the idea that present suffering is deserved punishment, since the…

Under Claim 02: Karma and reincarnation face a justice problem as an account of suffering, because a person is said to bear consequences for acts in past lives they cannot remember.