The old 'We don't have a god in Buddhism, so karma isn't punishment' BS rises again

That was raised by the second of two people I blocked last week on the DebateReligion subreddit. The first was a "just asking questions about definitions" Hindu troll, one of a general subtype of social media trolls who always claims the burden of proof is totally and solely yours.

Anyway, Mr. Rootin Tootin or whatever his name is, apparently blocked me from replying to his second response to him. (I'm not genius-level yet on Reddit, so I don't know how you block commenting if you're not the OP, which I don't think he was, but I digress.) 

So, I updated my first sub-response with what would have been my sub-sub-sub-response, then blocked him. But, again, I digress.

His big claim was that because Buddhism has no deity, karma can't be considered punishment.

Bullshit. If you're reincarnated as something "worse," and there's a metaphysical law, which karma is, as to WHY you're reincarnated as something worse, it's punishment. It's not for your health.

Sidebar: How do Buddhists claim that there are reincarnations as something "worse" if everything here is illusion? Better yet: How do they claim that reincarnation is real, or the karma behind it is real, if everything here is illusion?

Now, I know that at this point, some Buddhist sage, like Jesus telling the young rich man that he's not far from the kingdom of god, is going to tell me I'm not far from enlightenment.

And, he or she would be right: I'm enlightened as to just how much petard-hoisting bullshit you spout.

Anyway, back to the Reddit nutter. He talked about "Lord Buddha" this and that. Sounds kind of deity-like to me, and of course that's an issue of note in taking a good critical comparative religion look at the varieties of Buddhism. (And, we haven't even talked about Pure Land and similar, which rejects reincarnation vs a one-off afterlife.)

Part two on Rootin Nutter? His talk about "Lord Buddha" and this life made it sound like we were currently living in a Buddhist version of reincarnation like the stereotypical Christian versions of heaven skewered by Mark Twain and others. That, in fact is part of why I blocked him. I didn't want to waste time even trying to wade through that much blather. I wish I had copied his nonsense before blocking him. Seriously, it came off as an (alleged) Buddhist version of something Twain caricatured in "Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven."

Part three on Rootin Tootin Nutter? Sounds like he (surely a guy) was awfully "attached" in the decidedly no-no in Buddhism sense to this current reincarnation.

This is likely to be the start of a miniseries, with separate posts addressing other problems with karma and reincarnation in both a theistic religion and a nontheistic one.

While you're here, though? Reincarnation has other problems, biological, metaphysical, logical and more, whether you're Hindu or Buddhist, or Jain, or New Ager or whatever.

Oh, Buddhism was a religion when I first blogged about that, still is a religion, and still still is. 

And, karma is still as offensive as hell. Pun intended in a non-funny way by this secularist.