Month: April 2017

Hillary Clinton’s Necromancy (Spirit Guides)

Published by Papa Giorgio

I remember this from an old documentary on the Clinton’s or an old documentary on spiritism. At any rate, here are some of the latest information on Hillary Clinton’s involvement in the occult as it get’s renewed in recent news cycles. I will start first with my most recent run-into the topic via POWERLINE:

This Washington Post story about a journalism dispute between Bob Woodward and ghost writer Barbara Feinman Todd is of little interest qua dispute. However, it pertains to a remarkable story about which I had forgotten — Hillary Clinton’s imaginary conversations, during her time as First Lady, with Eleanor Roosevelt and Mahatma Gandhi.

As far as I can tell, the matter was not raised or noted by the mainstream media during the 2016 presidential campaign. I didn’t mention it either, but would have had I remembered it.

If there were evidence of Donald Trump communing with the dead, even if twenty years ago or more, the mainstream media very likely would have been aired the story. It would have been touted as evidence of Trump’s weirdness.

Clinton’s seance, which her defenders call a “psychological exercise,” is evidence of her weirdness. According to Woodward, Hillary’s ghost writer, the aforementioned Feinman Todd, told him she found the seance, which she witnessed, troubling….

The media is trying to say this was merely a physchological excersise (even SNOPES is on this band wagon), but Hillary’s ghost writer wouldn’t describe this as “troubling.” Here Bill Clinton mentions it in public:

“I know that because, as all of you famously learned when I served as president, my wife, now the secretary of State, was known to commune with Eleanor on a regular basis. And so she called me last night on her way home from Peru to remind me to say that. That Eleanor had talked to her and reminded her that I should say that.” 

A good commentary on the New Age guru that became Hillary’s confidant can be found at WOMEN OF GRACE (11-2010):

The talk all weekend was about Delaware GOP Senatorial candidate Christine O’Donnell’s confessed dabbling in witchcraft during her high school years, but where was the rage when then First-Lady Hillary Clinton was taking advice from New Age guru Jean Houston who taught her how to hold imaginary conversations with the dead?

[….]

Hillary Clinton had a long and serious relationship with New Age guru Jean Houston, the same woman who taught her how to use guided imagery to conduct imaginary conversations with Eleanor Roosevelt and Mahatma Ghandi.

Houston is well-known and even revered in New Age circles. In her own brochures, she describes herself as a “leading pioneer in the exploration of human potentials and human consciousness.” 

According to the New Age Encyclopedia, Houston claims a first grade teacher in a Catholic school treated her so harshly she escaped into some kind of profound mystical experience that was described as “pantheistic” and “monistic.”  (I guess this means it was the Church’s fault.)

Houston later married Robert Masters, the psychotherapist and sexologist who co-authored the notorious Masters-Johnson report. The Encyclopedia states that she and her husband experimented with LSD and other hallucinogenic drugs, believing that drug-induced altered states of consciousness were the best way to convey “psychic truth” to people.

Although she claims to have earned a number of Ph.D.’s, records show that she received a doctorate in psychology in 1973 from Cincinnati Union Institute, “an alternative education program,” that did not become accredited until 1985.

Needless to say, Houston has a definite New Age occultic world-view whose books attempt to teach students how to make contact with an entity called “Group Spirit” which is supposedly the collective consciousness in which we can find the wisdom and creativity of us all.

The fact that someone like this was spending long hours in the White House counseling a First Lady was first reported by CNN in 1996 when famed Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward published a revealing behind-the-scenes look at the Clintons, entitled The Choice.

In it Woodward describes Houston as an influential advisor who urged Hillary to write her book, It Takes a Village and Other Lessons Children Teach Us, and in the process “virtually moved into the White House” for days at a time to help with revisions.

Naturally, the White House hoped to keep her relationship with Houston a secret….

One should note that maybe, yes, seances were not actually done… but in New Age occultism finding a spirit guide or communing with these “spirit guides” is a path to communication with the dead (in the Christian view, these are demonic forces).

A good book on encountering such things is The Beautiful Side of Evil, by Johanna Michaelsen (the foreword is by Hal Lindsey). Johanna takes you on a personal whirlwind tour of her encounters while trying to find meaning in her young life. (As a disclaimer, I do not endorse every premise presented in that book.)

Again, such seances are not required to allow communication with entities which are known as “familiars” that had attached to the individual in question, during their lifetime. Another good example of this “spirit guide” seeking in in the following documentary:

Here is a bit more info on Jean Houston and the non-seance/seance via GOD REPORTS:

….One was Jean Houston, co-director of the Foundation for Mind Research, which studies psychic experience and altered and expanded consciousness. “She was a believer in spirits, mythic and other connections to history and other worlds,” Woodward noted in his book.

Houston describes herself and her late husband, Robert Masters, as founders of the human potential movement. In the 1980s, Houston launched The Mystery School, where students embark on a year-long study of mythic stories which are meditated upon and enacted.

“Houston believed that her personal archetypal predecessor was Athena, the Greek goddess of wisdom. She conducted extensive dialogues with Athena on her computer that she called “docking with one’s angel. Houston wore an ancient Hellenistic coin of Athena set in a medallion around her neck all the time.”

[….]

Unusual sessions in the solarium

On her visit to the White House in early April 1995, Houston proposed that Hillary dig deeper for her connections to Mrs. Roosevelt. Houston and Bateson met with Hillary in the rooftop solarium, set atop the White House with windows on three sides.

It was afternoon and they all sat around a circular table with several members of the first lady’s staff. One was making a tape recording of the session. (One can only wonder if the tape still exists and if it formed the basis for the remarkable recounting of details by Woodward.)

“Houston asked Hillary to imagine she was having a conversation with Eleanor. In a strong and self-confident voice, Houston asked Hillary to shut her eyes in order to eliminate the room and her surroundings, and to focus her reflection by bringing in as many vivid internal sensory images as she could from her vast knowledge of Eleanor,” according to Woodward’s source.

Hillary sat back in her seat and closed her eyes. “You’re walking down a hall,” Houston said, “and there’s Mrs. Roosevelt. Now let’s describe her.”

Hillary proceeded to describe what she saw.

Houston instructed Mrs. Clinton to go to Eleanor and speak to her, according to Woodward’s book.

Hillary entered into a long discourse directed toward the former first lady. Houston asked the first lady to further open up herself to Mrs. Roosevelt, borrowing a technique “practiced by Machiavelli,” who used to talk to ancient men. “What might Eleanor say?”

Houston encouraged Hillary to respond as Mrs. Roosevelt. “I was misunderstood,” Hillary replied, her eyes still shut, speaking as Mrs. Roosevelt. “You have to do what you think is right. It was crucial to set a course and hold to it.”

Regarding the first lady’s controversial role in governing the country, Eleanor reportedly told Hillary, “You know, I thought that would have been solved by now. You’re going to have to just get out there and do it and don’t make any excuses about it.”….

(Read it all)

Um, occultism is occultism. For more on this topic, see my post HERE.

“False Flag” Conspiracies All the Rage – Syria (Updated)

Published by Papa Giorgio

PROLEGOMENA

I wish to start out this post with a bit of a background on myself. As a reinvigorated Christian (recommitted Christian whilst sitting in jail many years ago), my early studies included eschatology. A subject that catches many newer Christians attention as the subject is an exciting, almost adrenaline boosting study — typically like a new Christians faith. So of course I got into the many books, literature, sites that spoke of a New World Order (NWO). One can view the very small sampling of the books I have read and still own in my library here (under the links).

At any rate, in 2000 I had a tri-fecta going on that shook me from the conspiratorial view of history more towards an accidental view of history – which was: listening to Michael Medved’s “Conspiracy Show,” where, on the full moon he would for the entire three hours of his show take calls on nothing else but conspiracies; second, all the people I was “into” warned of the dire consequences of Y2K, which never came to fruition; and third, and mainly because of the previous two, I revisited my past NWO type books and tried to confirm or disprove many of the references to historical event. This venture proved devastating for what was being proffered in these books. The most outrages statements about history were made based on the flimsiest of evidence.

AND THEN 9/11 happened… and all the weirdos came out with all their conspiracy theories. So my debunking many of the propositions laid out by the then popular “Loose Change” video for my son’s friends created an interest in getting to the facts. And so, here we are again… with all the crazy conspiracies coming out about Syria and the chemical attack by Assad.

May I say that I cannot believe I must rev-up this topic again, but so be it.

THE THEORIES

So the first indicator of the conspiracy theories surrounding the recent chemical attack in Syria that I was made aware of was this video by Ron Paul found over at ZEROHEDGE. In the video Ron Paul (a man who thinks America was behind 9/11 BTW) says there is ZERO CHANCE Assad was behind the chemical attacks. Ron Paul also said something that was echoed across the internet, which was this:

  • “It doesn’t make any sense for Assad under these conditions to all of a sudden use poison gases – I think there’s zero chance he would have done this deliberately…”

He went on to say that Assad could not benefit from this action, and instead saying the “evil” neo-cons are the only one’s who would benefit. (People do not know what the hell they mean when they use the term – BTW) So somehow, they were in cahoots with the military complex and someone on the ground in Syria to make this happen.

POLITIFACT notes this about Alex Jones and his site, InfoWars, and their take on the issue:

Chief among the skeptics was Alex Jones’ InfoWars website, which questioned the validity of the attack in an April 5 post that blamed a group called the White Helmets for arranging the attack for nefarious reasons.

The White Helmets, officially known as Syria Civil Defence, is a group of ostensibly nonpartisan volunteers who aid civilian victims of the civil war. The group has been accused of being pro-rebel, and InfoWars contends they are an al-Qaida affiliate funded by George Soros and the British government.

So Soros is behind it according to “Alex Jones types.” Dumb.

Here is the John Birch Society magazine, THE NEW AMERICAN noting motives… like they are psychologists making informed claims (psychoanalyst) who have sat with Assad for months in private sessions:

Of course, even if Damascus did use chemical weapons on civilians, it would be unlikely to admit that. But a simple analysis of motives — a basic first step in any serious investigation — would suggest that Assad had every reason to avoid the use of chemical weapons at all costs. On the other hand, jihadist rebels on the verge of annihilation had every reason to use them. After years of fighting globalist-backed jihadists and terrorists, the dictatorship in Damascus was reportedly close to victory — at least until Trump intervened by firing dozens of missiles at Syrian targets.  

(For the record, I stopped reading this magazine when they had an article saying CIA operative planted the explosives in the Murrah Federal Building.) In that article The New American notes that the “last time Syrian dictator Bashar al Assad supposedly used chemical weapons, the story quickly collapsed under scrutiny.” Unfortunately, this too is false:

The UN mission was not asked to ascertain who was behind the attack.

However, by examining the debris field and impact area where the rockets struck in Muadhamiya and Ein Tarma, the inspectors found “sufficient evidence” to calculate azimuths, or angular measurements, that allow their trajectories to be determined “with a sufficient degree of accuracy”.

When plotted on a map, the trajectories converge on a site that Human Rights Watch said was a large military base on Mount Qassioun that is home to the Republican Guard 104th Brigade

(BBC)

In other words, Assad has used chemical weapons before on his people. In fact, Ned Price, US National Security Council spokesman, said: “it is now impossible to deny that the Syrian regime has repeatedly used industrial chlorine as a weapon against its own people.” So when people talk about WHAT MOTIVE Assad (and his father before him) had in torturing, criminal subjugation, using banned and not banned chemicals on his own people over the many years… I suspect his motive now was the same then. The United Nations has blamed [prior to this attack] three of the four known chemical attacks during this 6-year conflict on the Syrian government. ISIS was to blame for one.

In one discussion on Facebook, this was said with no evidence to back up the belief:

I concur with Ron Paul on every point. It makes no political sense for Assad to do this. Assad had everything going his way. Al Quaida/ISIS was on the run–a good thing–whereas the Neo-Conservatives–McCain, Graham, Saudis, et al.–and Deep State constituents in the military needed to undo that to stay in the game. It plays right into the hands of the Democrats who have used the Neo-Cons to rid Syria of Assad for years. …

You know the saying, opinions are like butt-tholes, everyone has one. Well, that’s exactly what that is, a stinky, unfounded opinion. Emoting, really. AGAIN, it is like these people are well-trained psychologists who have sat with Assad for years in private one-hour sessions.

COUNTER EVIDENCE

I discussed evidences for the attack originating from Al-Shayrat Airfield, using eyewitness testimony, satellite and other surveillance the U.S. is using on that region, operatives, the type of gas used, etc., etc. And then I came across this TWEET:

That Tweet brought me to some Russian news reports that needed translation that showed concrete evidence that Syria had weaponized chemical materials (WMDs) at the exact same airbase that the SU-22s flew their sorties from. I got better pictures than the above Tweet. Here IT is, and click on it to enlarge it:

The top picture is from Russian news agencies of the aftermath of the strike at Al-Shayrat Airfield… take note the chemical weapons barrels meant to store agents to be used in ordinance. The picture below that top one comes from a Russian journal about the Russian military disposing of some of their chemical weapons cache. They are identical.

MOTIVES

EVEN AFTER ALL THIS, people are still stuck on Assad’s motives? I followed the most recent question in this regard with this:

He has done it before, from torturing and mutilating his own people to dropping chlorine bombs on them, to chemical attacks past and present. What were benefits and motives in all these other attacks? The same here… he only controls a third of the country and he wants this to be over — quick.

But, motives are not the question really at stake here. If you were a doctorate holding psychologist who has had many private sessions with Assad, you would be in a position to speak to motives.

What we can answer here is that there is concrete evidence that Assad’s military were the source of this (and past… sorry conspiracy theorists) attack.

For instance I would say Hitler’s motives were a mix of strict adherence to Darwinian evolution, occultism, power, etc. But when you are a polish Catholic sent to a concentration camp — motive is not important. If he were to escape and join the resistance, his only question is “who did this to me and others.”

As if madmen have motives worth calculating. Dumb.

Another person said those photos were photoshopped:

So if I understand correctly, you were part of the battlefield damage assessment team that visited the airfield after the attack and took the photos. Really that tells me that there are barrels in the photo, that photo could be one of the Syrian facilities or something from Iraq, wherever, whenever. It tells me nothing. I have two words for you, Tonkin Gulf.

Sigh. The photo’s were from Russian news agencies, as well as there being drone footage AFTER the attack. So I responded thus (I will add some thoughts in brackets):

So if I understand correctly, Russia placed these barrels there after the bombing of the airfield, then, invited Russian news services in to photo the damage [and the evidence for chemical agents] to show evidence that disputes their earlier claim that it was a [terrorist] cache [merely hit by Assad’s air-force]. [Also undermining their response to America’s “aggression,” and bringing the whole world to the side of Trump’s response.] I will use your thinking behind this: what motivation or benefit would this serve Putin?

So Russia is planting evidence to prove Trump correct? Grind me up an Advil so I can snort it.

The U.S. Military also intercepted communications by the Assad regime planning and speaking to the required experts needed in the operation of such an attack:

The US military and intelligence community has intercepted communications featuring Syrian military and chemical experts talking about preparations for the sarin attack in Idlib last week, a senior US official tells CNN.

The intercepts were part of an immediate review of all intelligence in the hours after the attack to confirm responsibility for the use of chemical weapons in an attack in northwestern Syria, which killed at least 89 people. US officials have said that there is “no doubt” that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is responsible for the attack.

The US did not know prior to the attack it was going to happen, the official emphasized. The US scoops up such a large volume of communications intercepts in areas like Syria and Iraq, the material often is not processed unless there is a particular event that requires analysts to go back and look for supporting intelligence material.

So far there are no intelligence intercepts that have been found directly confirming that Russian military or intelligence officials communicated about the attack. The official said the likelihood is the Russians are more careful in their communications to avoid being intercepted….

(CNN)

But “no, I will instead,” the typical conspiratorially minded person says, “listen to a guy who thinks the United States of America causes tornadoes in Oklahoma. (*Snort* WOW! That Advil goes right to your head!)

RECAP

  • Satellite tracking of flights and airfield;
  • drone footage supporting this was the airfield the chemical weapons were found, to wit;
  • chemical weapons found at airbase;
  • Used them three times prior;
  • the type of chemicals used hint at Assad as well;
  • eyewitnesses and intercepted communications (both covert and witnesses hit with the ordinance — no secondary explosions);
  • Russian news services broke story about chemicals on base (not the deep state);
  • Obama officials admit they did not rid Assad of all weapons like these;
  • Assad is known to lie — often — in the past (former U.S. ambassador to Syria: Assad “lies directly to your face”);
  • war has been raging for 6-years, Assad is desperate to keep his power;
  • the chemical cache on the airbase may have been from Iraq’s arsenal and so was not declared.

All this goes a long way to supporting the case that leans to the “most likely” category that Assad’s military was behind it, like the MINIMAL CASE for the Resurrection by Habermas. Since, however, EVERYTHING is explained via these theories… you can never get a concession on a point, like the meta-narrative of the Neo-Darwinian story.

GULF OF TONKIN and MORE

As for the Gulf of Tonkin incident mentioned by the above detractor, here is a quick run down of the evidence that negates the conspiratorial views of this matter (For a more in-depth dealing with this, see the U.S. NAVAL INSTITUTE’S article on it that incorporates hundreds of declassified documents):

Myth: The rationale for US intervention in Viet Nam was based on a fraud.

Fact: The Tonkin Gulf incident was not a fraud. It was the motivating force behind the Tonkin Gulf Resolution.

  • This myth is based on the false belief that US involvement began with the USS Maddox and USS Turner Joy “false” torpedo attacks, known as the Tonkin Gulf incidents.
  • North Vietnamese General Vo Nguyen Giap himself admitted that torpedo patrol boats attacked the USS Maddox.
  • The USS Turner Joy incident is more controversial, but multiple eyewitness accounts of professional sailors, both enlisted and officers, confirm the events of that night.
  • The testimony of sailors involved in the Turner Joy incident confirms the presence of at least one PT boat (visually sighted), one torpedo wake (visually sighted), one searchlight (visually sighted) and one PT boat sunk (visually sighted).
  • The Commander of the Destroyer Task Force, Captain John J. Herrick, testified before Congress that the attack on the Turner Joy occurred.
  • Captain Herrick recommended the Silver Star be awarded to the Turner Joy’s commanding officer, Commander Roger C. Barnhart, Jr. (He was awarded a Bronze Star instead).
  • The first US combat troops were committed to Vietnam in February, 1965, about seven months after the Tonkin Gulf incident.

Confirming Evidence

(VIETNAM VETERANS FOR FACTUAL HISTORY)

Again, usually this is how it works… when one conspiracy theory is proffered and then found wanting… another is used as evidence that shows the previous true. However, these conspiracy theories are also found wanting. That same person said this as well:

  • It still doesn’t answer the question, why would Assad use these weapons when he has said he wouldn’t, and he is winning?

(*BUZZER SOUND*) No, Assad only has control of a third of his country. This battle has been raging for 6-years… he wants a quick resolution to this. And chemical weapons may be an answer Assad thinks he needs. Two thirds of his country are controlled by rebels as well as Islamic State radicals. Winning? For a dictator like Assad?

There are soo many layers of bad thinking involved in these theories that sometimes you just have to throw your hands in the air. Like I am doing now.

Comments By Others

This comment comes via Facebook — by John S.

Ambassadors and others who have had dealings with Assad directly have found him to be a boldfaced liar. He is well known to lie to the face of an ambassador without any qualms. He is lying about this.

Do we find it hard to understand why he would use chemical weapons against Syrians? Yes, of course, but Assad has done this before. He is engaged in a war with many radical groups that seek to remove him from power or kill him and his family. He would do anything to stay alive and in power. He is trusting in the cover the Russians are providing for him. He could get away with lying to Obama, but now he learns that Trump is no pushover.

McCain is wrong to demand that we supply the rebels. Most of them are now affiliated with radical terrorists. The pressure to remove Assad also comes from Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Qatar. This bombing was not meant to destroy Assad, but to send a message that if he wants to stay in power there are certain rules and using chemical weapons is forbidden.

If Assad was smart he would seek our help in fighting ISIS and connecting the dots between ISIS and Al Qaeda. And he should disavow any desire for aggression against his neighbors. But he is also a puppet of Iran and so is pressured from two sides. Right now he is trusting in his previous support from Iran and Russia. That will be his undoing.

Mother Of All Bombs (MOAB) Used in Afghanistan (NEW VIDEO!)

Published by Papa Giorgio

GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast (commonly known as the Mother of All Bombs) was just used for the first time in combat. This is our largest non-nuclear bomb in the U.S. arsenal (a 21,000lb bomb). Thank you ISIS for being the prime “real world” test platform for the MOAB. God’s speed to hell. (See more at the WASHINGTON TIMES)

KEY STATS:

✦ Nicknamed the ‘Mother of all Bombs’
✦ The world’s largest non-nuclear weapon
✦ Each bomb costs around $16 million (£12.8 million)
✦ Its explosion is equivalent to 11 tons of TNT and the blast radius is a mile wide
✦ First tested by US forces in 2003
✦ It is designed to destroy heavily reinforced targets or to shatter ground forces and armour across a large area
✦ 30 feet (9 metres) long and 40 inches (1 metre) wide
✦ Weighs 21,000lbs (9,500kg) – heavier than the Hiroshima nuclear bomb
✦ Blast radius stretches a mile in each direction
✦ Leaves no lasting radiation effect

HOW IT IS DEPLOYED

✦ The bomb has ‘grid’ fins that fold into the body during carriage
✦ It can only be deployed out of the back of large cargo plane due to its size
✦ The bomb rides on a pallet – a parachute pulls the pallet and bomb out of the plane
✦ The pallet then separates so that the bomb can fall to its target
✦ The bomb’s grid fins extend to help control the bomb’s descent
✦ It accelerates rapidly to its terminal velocity and is partially guided to its target via satellite
✦ It explodes six feet (1.8 metres) above the ground
✦ The idea behind this ‘airburst’ mechanism is to spread its destructive range

|DAILY MAIL|

Evil, Logic, and Reincarnation (Groothuis and Zacharias)

Published by Papa Giorgio

The below is an extended example of the weakness of the pantheistic religions in describing reality and supporting THEIR OWN claims:

  • Douglas Groothuis, Christian Apologetics: A Comprehensive Case for Biblical Faith (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2011), 620-625.

4. The nonexistence of evil. One way to dispense with the problem of evil is to dispense with evil itself. This route is taken by various forms of pantheism, such as Advaita Vedanta Hinduism, Zen Buddhism, assorted New Age worldviews and mind-science churches such as Christian Sci­ence, Religious Science and Unity. Since all is ultimately divine, evil is unreal; it is only a problem of perception, and not a problem of objective reality. Pantheists hold that God “is beyond good and evil.” The difference between good and evil is apparent and not real.17 The more a person ap­proximates the divine Mind, the more these distinctions drop out of view. A sixth-century Zen poem puts it this way:

If you want to get to the plain truth
Be not concerned with right and wrong.
The conflict between right and wrong
Is the sickness of the mind.18

But consider this poem. It advocates “the plain truth,” which must be taken as objectively good. Otherwise, there is no reason to “get the plain truth.” The poem then offers an imperative: “Be not concerned with right and wrong,” because “the conflict of right and wrong is the sickness of the mind.” The imperative is a moral one, an injunction to “get the plain truth” by being unconcerned with the sick idea of moral conflict. The poem re­duces to this:

  1. There is no right and wrong that are in conflict with each other.
  2. One should not be concerned with right and wrong, since to be con­cerned with right and wrong is a “sickness,” which must be taken as wrong.

But statements 1 and 2 contradict each other and yield:

  1. If statement 2 is true, then statement 1 is false.
  2. If statement 1 is false, then there is a conflict between good and evil.

Despite its insistence that good and evil are illusions, pantheism still issues moral judgments and makes moral commands. As such, it is logi­cally and existentially inconsistent. These considerations should lead us to reject the idea that no objective evil exists.

5. Karma and reincarnation. Many believe that karma and reincarna­tion answer the problem of evil. The evils of this life cannot be justified if we have only one life to live. However, if we have lived before and will live again (reincarnation), the scales will balance out because karma (a law of moral assessment and administration) assigns rewards and punishments from lifetime to lifetime.19 Nevertheless, multiple problems dog this at­tempted response.

First, most forms of Buddhism and Hinduism, the two leading reli­gions that advocate karma and reincarnation, deny the existence of a substantial and personal soul (an individual, spiritual substance that en­dures through time, whether of a human or nonhuman being). Bud­dhism has many different schools, but all claim that the individual self does not exist (see chap. 23). The self is nothing but a name for a collec­tion of separable parts (skandas)—like a chariot that has no essence. There is no substance that binds the parts together in an essence. At death, the parts—which combined to form the illusion of a self—sepa-rate. If so, no personal self is available to be reincarnated, since there was no self to begin with. But if there is no personal being who exists from lifetime to lifetime, then there is no way for that being to experi­ence either good karma or bad karma, since the karma has nothing to work on.20

Hinduism displays a dizzying diversity of schools, but the form most popular in the West (Advaita Vedanta) also denies the existence of an in­dividual self.21 The one reality is Brahman, or the Absolute Self. Finite, individual selves are illusions of the unenlightened mind. Therefore—although its metaphysics of the self differs from that of Buddhism—Hinduism faces the same problem concerning reincarnation. Because it claims that Brahman is the sole reality, there are no individual selves avail­able to endure from lifetime to lifetime on which karma might attach with its various outcomes.

For there to be reincarnated subjects of karma, there must be indi­vidual, personal selves that endure and continue as themselves from life­time to lifetime. But Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta Hinduism do not affirm the existence of individual, personal selves. Therefore, these reli­gions cannot logically support the existence of selves that endure from lifetime to lifetime or which are subjects of karma. Therefore, these Eastern religions cannot logically support reincarnation. If this argu­ment succeeds, it not only demonstrates that they cannot solve the prob­lem of evil, it further shows that both religions propose essential truth claims that contradiction each other: (1) there is no self, and (2) reincar­nation and karma. Thus, both religions fail the test of internal logical consistency and are necessarily false.

Second, Buddhism and Hinduism cannot explain the system of karmic evaluation and administration. Both religions affirm that karma is a uni­versal system that evaluates the moral conduct of human beings and ad­ministers rewards and punishments appropriately. Even those versions of Buddhism and Hinduism that grant a personal deity do not claim that this deity administers the karmic system, which is deemed a brute fact. The system is thoroughly impersonal.

But how can an impersonal (meaning unconscious and nonagentive) system morally evaluate the worth of actions by human persons? Karma is a law akin to a natural law of science. G. R. Malkani, a Hindu, claims that karma “automatically produces the appropriate results like any other law in the natural domain. Nobody can cheat the law. It is as inexorable as any natural law.”22 But this law is nothing like any law of nature described by science. The law of gravity, for example, explains the regular behavior of physical objects. It has nothing to say about objective moral values; rather, it predicts the automatic reactions of material entities. But moral states are very different from material states because they are nonphysical and re­lated to human agents, who are not reducible to the physical realm, as ar­gued in chapter seventeen. When considering the moral value of an act (or attitude), we necessarily think of judgment or evaluation. Moral judgments require an evaluator, as argued in a chapter fifteen. However, the idea of karma does not include a moral evaluator of any kind. Therefore, the no­tion of karma is logically unsupportable. In addition, this problem ration­ally disqualifies the worldviews of Hinduism and Buddhism in toto, since both affirm reincarnation and karma as essential religious doctrines that turn out to be irrational and thus false.

But problems continue to mount because reincarnation and karma also require moral administration. The impersonal karmic system must meet out rewards and punishments universally and for all time to all sentient beings—a fantastically complex process of cosmic government. But it is government without a governor—a vast system of karmic coordination and implementation, but all without the benefit of a mind to plan the ad ministration or a will to implement it. Yet surely a personal and moral agent would be required for such a grand scheme of administration.

The Hindu and Buddhist doctrine of karma and reincarnation cannot solve the problem of evil, nor is their central teaching rationally warranted. Therefore, these religions are disqualified as rational worldviews.

Third, the doctrines of reincarnation and karma do not solve the problem of evil because they cannot explain the reality of evil. One of the engines of the problem of evil is innocent suffering. This is a vexing conundrum for any worldview, but karma does nothing to solve or allevi­ate it. According to karma, there is no unjust suffering. Everyone gets what he or she deserves, even supposedly innocent children. This should strike us as counterintuitive. As Paul Edwards points out, it would hardly be consoling to a mother grieving over a severely deformed child to be told by a reincarnationist minister that this death was morally deserved because of an evil committed in a previous life.23 Edwards suggests that if he were the mother and a baseball bat were available, he would clunk the person over the head and say, “You deserve your pain not because of a sin in a previous life but because you are a monster right now. You see that justice has prevailed.”24

Fourth, karma and reincarnation are not adequate responses to the problem of evil because they cannot insure that good wins out over evil in the end. The goal in Hinduism and Buddhism is to escape the realm of karma and reincarnation (samsara) and to attain enlightenment in an inef­fable realm beyond personality, individuality, morality and history (nir­vana for Buddhism; moksha for Hinduism). There is no final vindication of the cosmos and its beleaguered pilgrims. The cosmos and humanity it­self must be left behind because both are trapped in an endless cycle of futility. Life will not be redeemed; it must be obliterated. The contrast with the new heavens and new earth promised to Christians could not be more striking (see Revelation 21-22).

In conclusion, the Eastern systems of karma and reincarnation do noth­ing to solve the problem of evil. We must look elsewhere.

Thus far, I have eliminated five alternative strategies for explaining the problem of evil: atheism, a finite god, a morally impaired god, a world without evil and karma/reincarnation. We now explore ways to approach the problem from a Christian worldview.

(17) See Lewis, Mere Christianity, p. 36.

(18) Quoted in Alan Watts, The Way of Zen (New York: Vintage Books, 1957), p. 115. See also pp. 107, 147 on the Zen’s denial of objective morality. Given my argument for objective morality in chap. 15, this fact alone is enough to disqualify Zen Buddhism as a true and rational world-view. See Harold Netland, Dissonant Voices (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991), pp. 189-92.

(19) However, the goal of religions that hold to karma is not a world of perfect justice sometime in the future but the escape from the world of space and time and personality entirely.

(20) ‘See Paul Griffiths, “Apologetics in Action: Buddhists and Christians on Selves,” in An Apolo­getic for Apologetics (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1991).

(21) On the various schools, see R. C. Zaehner, Hinduism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983).

(22) G. R. Malkani, Philosophical Quarterly (1965): 43, quoted in Paul Edwards, Reincarnation: An Examination (New York: Prometheus, 1996), p. 39. This reference is to an Indian publication, not the more well-known Scottish journal of the same name.

(23) Edwards, Reincarnation, p. 45. Ibid.

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