Quote from: lisagurl on September 10, 2007, 07:39:16 PM

Quote{this doesn't even take into consideration the idea of karma}

Now if you want to include beliefs we would be leaving Philosophy and entering spiritual. So many religions have a smörgåsbord of "after life" and dogma attached to sin.

Define these terms for me, I'm addled...

actually, karma is a belief derived from what are called Dharmic Schools of Philosophical Enquiry. That is a conventional term for the Schools of Thought.

Some religions may or may not fall into [such] a category; but to artificially make the blanket assertion that *we* are l;eaving the field of philosophy, according to your understanding of some terms, is a little absurd I think.
The topic title includes the term, whether in scare quotes or not, past "sins", which indicates at least one school of thought pertaining to consequences of action. Which is inherently contained in the very word 'karma'.

None of the Above

Quote from: NickSister on September 06, 2007, 03:37:09 PM
as biological beings can we say we are the same person that we were 10 or 20 years ago, how much of that person remains? How much has our brainstructure changed, how much of our body has been replaced through cell regeneration, how much of the material contained in our body is still the same stuff from earlier in our lives?

I don't think we are physically the same being we were 10 years ago in that we are not made of the exact material we were made of before, we are not mentally the same. All we have are some patterns (structural and genetic) that have been replicated and modified using new material. It is almost as if the us in the now is built on the foundations of someone else.

So if you still say we are responsible for the actions of who we were and all that physically remains of who we were is a pattern, I think it could be valid to extrapolate this to our ancestors. We are built on the patterns passed down by our ancestors so maybe we are responsible for their actions too. If we are not responsible for their actions then why should we be responsible for who we were?

no. your dna will change slightly because of free radicals, etc., but by and large your cells are replaced according to your specific genetic strand. you should get comfortable thinking that your structure continues over time. you are not responsible for the actions of your ancestors. to say otherwise to either of these two points is not really healthy.

Quotekarma is a belief

Philosophy is is a system based on reason and logic with proof, not a mere belief.