Ellis, re karma:

I'm with you there, Ellis. I knew nurses who believed that their patients deserved their suffering because such was their karma. It seems that such nurses carry out their work with a less than duly compassionate heart, apparently more motivated by a self-centred desire to increase their own karmic stock (merit). It's a way of thinking that clearly lacks the compassion attributed to Buddha.

As for punishment for sin - very much like the allegedly natural law of karma, but via the personal touch of 'God' - a classic example was of the violently ranting bishop who proclaimed that AIDS was his God's punishment for homosexuality.

I'll stop there. It's all been said so many times before.