In Relation to Rebirth After Death, How is Karma any Different than Supernatural gods? My questions are:


How is karma any different more believable than supernatural gods passing judgement when we are talking about rebirth after the point of death - rebirth being inextricably linked to karma?

I've read a lot about how seeds of karma ripen into result, and what seem to me to be absurd cosmological realms existing under a flat earth, but then teachers have said karma is just moment to moment. Then it changes to it is not even moment to moment but a universal law like gravity.

I mean no disrespect by this, but gravity is observable whereas being born as a human and then a dog after you die because of unskillful karma is not.
Also some humans are born in such a way (severely disabled) that dogs are smarter than they are? 

Why is rebirth in human realm classified as higher when some humans suffer more than some animals and have less of an intellectual ability to reason than dogs or crows?

How are you sure this transition to lower rebirth exists, as in the hell realms which sound like really bad places that physically exist, aside from anecdotal evidence that cannot be observed through experience?
Why does no one support rebirth with any solid evidence, but claim it as a result of karma where karma is portrayed as a natural law? 

If you are claiming there is evidence, where is it and how were the observations conducted? Are you just taking this persons word for it, or can you reproduce the result? How do you know this?


Personally, it seems to me that this notion of lower rebirth at the time of death could be true but is just as likely not to be true. So the people that claim it positively exists based off it just seeming to make sense or anecdotal evidence are no different than Christians or Muslims who believe in their gods because it just seems to make sense to them. There is an essay that explains this quite well and references Pali suttas.

Rebirth is Neither Plausible nor Salient.

An excerpt that asks this a bit more eloquently than I can:


  "There is one more consideration here. Rebirth is intimately linked to the Buddhist doctrine of karma. I mentioned a couple of weeks ago (Son of the Śākyas) that the idea of being judged on the basis of your actions is one that might have come into Buddhism (and Hinduism) from Zoroastrianism. All large scale cultures seem to have a metaphysical overseer. In most cultures it comes in the form of a god who monitors your behaviour. Why do we need monitoring? In ancestral small scale societies we all knew what everyone was doing because we spent all of our time together. Privacy did not really exist. But as we became civilised and started living in larger scale communities it became impossible to keep everyone under surveillance to make sure they were keeping to the rules. Society is predicated on the idea that most people follow the rules most of the time, and if we catch someone breaking the rules we punish them somehow. One of the harshest non-fatal punishments is shunning which was practised in the early Buddhist Saṅgha for some offences (it still is). So gods like Indo-Iranian Mitra/Mithra, developed to keep a celestial eye on everyone and keep order. In non-Vedic India however the function was not divine, and not anthropomorphised, but became an impersonal built-in property of the universe, i.e. karma. However the function of karma is no different to the function carried out by judicial gods (e.g. Mitra or Zeus), or the oversight function of a mono-gods (e.g. Jehovah), and that karma is still a supernatural agency. Karma was invented to make sure that private actions have public consequences, though the astute reader will notice that the consequences are mostly private—that is divorced from the society in which the action was done—as well, since they are put-off till a future life."
How is karma any different more believable than supernatural gods passing judgement when we are talking about rebirth after the point of death - rebirth being inextricably linked to karma?

The implication here is that death somehow negates the causal nature of mind states that is observed in the present moment; along with our ability to hold grudges from one life to the next, the continuation of physical changes effected by mental states, etc. 

Karma is more believable than God, because karma is seen to work in this life on many levels - mental changes due to karma, changes to one's physical surrounding due to karma, changes in relationships due to karma, etc. The claim that this all ceases at the moment of death is just a claim. It makes sense from within a physicalist framework, but not from an experiential framework like Buddhism.

I mean no disrespect by this, but gravity is observable whereas being born as a human and then a dog after you die because of unskillful karma is not.

Sure it is... the dog observes that it has been born a dog. How else could it be observed? The mind cannot be observed through physical means, so it's a fault of our instruments, not of the process itself. Certainly not reason to conclude "therefore God".

Why is rebirth in human realm classified as higher when some humans suffer more than some animals and have less of an intellectual ability to reason than dogs or crows?

Classification is a human construct; there is no part of nature that says "humans are better". Generally, it's considered to be more difficult to be born as a human, due to the complexity and sophistication of the organism (opposable thumbs apparently mean a lot; complex brain functions, etc.). It takes specific mind states to be born as specific individuals, e.g. humans with Down syndrome, etc., but they still have much in favour of them over dogs (longer life span, opposable thumbs, a place in human society, etc.)

How are you sure this transition to lower rebirth exists, as in the hell realms which sound like really bad places that physically exist, aside from anecdotal evidence that cannot be observed through experience?

I have no reason to doubt that hell exists; it doesn't seem any less plausible than the fact that this realm exists. It seems reasonable that one's environment changes based on one's state of mind, since that is observable in this life, and it is reasonable to conclude that causality also plays a part in one's continuation after death. I am not sure that hell exists, but it seems reasonable to believe realms of that sort do.

Why does no one support rebirth with any solid evidence, but claim it as a result of karma where karma is portrayed as a natural law?

There have been many attempts to support rebirth with solid evidence, some quite convincing. E.g. the articles on this page:

http://www.medicine.virginia.edu/clinical/departments/psychiatry/sections/cspp/dops/publications-page

There is also the superior form of investigation that is meditation; through simple but dedicated practice, one can for oneself regain memories of past lives, according to Buddhist teachings.


  
  So a bhikkhu who is a beginner and wants to recollect in this way should
  go into solitary retreat on return from his alms round after his meal. Then he
  should attain the four jhānas in succession and emerge from the fourth jhāna as
  basis for direct-knowledge. He should then advert to his most recent act of
  sitting down [for this purpose], next, to the preparation of the seat, to the entry
  into the lodging, to the putting away of the bowl and [outer] robe, to the time of
  eating, to the time of returning from the village, to the time of wandering for alms
  in the village, to the time of entering the village, to the time of setting out from the
  monastery, to the time of paying homage at the shrine terrace and the
  Enlightenment-tree terrace, to the time of washing the bowl, to the time of picking
  up the bowl, to the things done from the time of picking up the bowl back to the
  mouth washing, to the things done in the early morning, to the things done in
  the middle watch, in the first watch. In this way he should advert to all the things
  done during the whole night and day in reverse order.
  While this much, however, is evident even to his normal consciousness, it is
  especially evident to his preliminary-work consciousness. But if anything there
  is not evident, he should again attain the basic jhāna, emerge and advert. By so
  doing it becomes as evident as when a lamp is lit. And so, in reverse order too, he
  should advert to the things done on the second day back, and on the third,
  fourth and fifth day, and in the ten days, and in the fortnight, and as far back as
  a year.
  When by these means he adverts to ten years, twenty years, and so on as far
  back as his own rebirth-linking in this existence, he should advert to the
  mentality-materiality occurring at the moment of death in the preceding existence;
  for a wise bhikkhu is able at the first attempt to remove the rebirth-linking and
  make the mentality-materiality at the death moment his object.
  
  
  -- Vism XII.22-4 (Nyanamoli, trans)