Humans have a sense of destiny, predetermination or fate. In Tantric teachings, karma was the creative process of Shiva (Cosmic Consciousness) playing with his own energy, Shakti (Creative Principle), manifesting the forms of the universe.  

Buddhist Philosophy anticipated modern science 2500 years ago with the understanding of a continuous universe in which each event has antecedent causes and all events are linked in a meshwork of interactions. The Buddhists used the term “Karma” to refer to the interaction of the mesh of causation with the mind. In common use, karma refers to the bundle of tendencies that a person manifests in a lifetime. Karma causes the person to accumulate other bundles of deeds, good and bad, that influence their status after birth. 

The best of modern scientific thinking appreciates karma as the great network of cause and effect without giving it a proper name. Sometimes, Karma is called the “laws of physics” and the “laws of nature.” Karma can be appreciated in the scientific sense of cause and effect but has the extra dimension of neuronal involvement and a monitor image of events that appears in consciousness. In a first approximation sense, karma refers to a continuous mesh of causes and effects. The case has been overstated that the "laws of physics" are immutable and enduring truths. Laws are  human inventions. We would be more accurate if we referred to the "best approximation and best descriptions for now."

Karma is a useful idea. An updated version would define karma as a continuous emergence of events in the mind from antecedent conditions. Mind events and world events are meshed and are indistinguishable when you look closely, but in real-life terms, a normal human brain makes a strong distinction between external events and internal events.

An infant is born with Karma,  a set of antecedent conditions and innate tendencies that will help to determine the experience, identity and behavior of the child. We now attribute about half of the child’s karma to his or her genes and the innate tendencies programmed by the genes into brain structure and function. Another large chunk of karma comes from the physical environment in which a child develops. Genes and the physical environment interact to produce individuals who share common properties and who have a range of differences. You might guess that the behavior and teaching of parents, siblings contribute to Karma as do schools, peer groups and the cultural environment of the child. Young humans copy the speech and behavior of those they live and play with. Parents provide guidance and custodial support of children. Peers provide social learning. Schools provide the most ephemeral learning of facts and skills.

The moral sense of Karma includes cycles of causation that more or less follow the path of reward and punishment. There is no judge overseeing human transactions, but an implicit order of cause and effect. Good deeds tend to cause more good deeds; bad deeds tend to cause more bad deeds. Bad deeds tend to be punished even if the punishment is indirect and delayed. Good deeds tend to be rewarded even if the reward is indirect and delayed. Harming others tends to create a disturbance in your own mind that will continue to disturb you, probably for the rest of your life.

One of the reasons that bad deeds are often punished in the end is that humans have a long memory for harm done to them, their relatives and friends. Humans have an innate sense of  “justice” that involves revenge and retribution. When one person harms another, an account is established in the minds of the concerned audience and the account is long-lived; it may be passed on for generations until the account is settled. When laws are broken, police and courts take on the karmic role and hold the account to be settled.

With or without lawful processes, the karma of revenge and retribution continues to play a determining role in every society. Most humans feel that there is a natural justice that supercedes the effort made by even the most diligent and fair of justice systems. The innate form of natural justice is an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.

Revenge is natural and to be effective must match the wrong that was committed. If an offender is killed for a minor offense, the killing will be perceived as excessive and a new cycle of revenge is established. Relatives and friends will want to kill the person who avenged the first offense and when they do, a recurrent cycle of revenge is established. Human conflict has a tendency to persevere and escalate and this is a law of Karma.

The wrath of nature has long been viewed as a moral force punishing wrongdoing and as an instrument of a vengeful god or gods. Planet Earth can be appreciated as the stage for a recurrent drama involving many players in a tight, interactive play. There is no overseer, but there is a continuous sequence of causes and effects. Rewards and punishments may be among the effects.