Karma - Buddhism Versus Reality

The follow quote taken from "Basic Buddhism: The Theory of Karma" explains the Buddhist Karma:

QUOTE
Karma is the law of moral causation. The theory of Karma is a fundamental doctrine in Buddhism. This belief was prevalent in India before the advent of the Buddha. Nevertheless, it was the Buddha who explained and formulated this doctrine in the complete form in which we have it today.

1. What is the cause of the inequality that exists among mankind?
2. Why should one person be brought up in the lap of luxury, endowed with fine mental, moral and physical qualities, and another in absolute poverty, steeped in misery?
3. Why should one person be a mental prodigy, and another an idiot?
4. Why should one person be born with saintly characteristics and another with criminal tendencies?
5. Why should some be linguistic, artistic, mathematically inclined, or musical from the very cradle?
6. Why should others be congenitally blind, deaf, or deformed?
7. Why should some be blessed, and others cursed from their births?

Either this inequality of mankind has a cause, or it is purely accidental. No sensible person would think of attributing this unevenness, this inequality, and this diversity to blind chance or pure accident.

In this world nothing happens to a person that he does not for some reason or other deserve. Usually, men of ordinary intellect cannot comprehend the actual reason or reasons. The definite invisible cause or causes of the visible effect is not necessarily confined to the present life, they may be traced to a proximate or remote past birth.

According to Buddhism, this inequality is due not only to heredity, environment, "nature and nurture", but also to Karma. In other words, it is the result of our own past actions and our own present doings. We ourselves are responsible for our own happiness and misery. We create our own Heaven. We create our own Hell. We are the architects of our own fate.
UNQUOTE

To summarise, Buddhism believed that every action you do will generate a reaction back to yourself. It is a one-to-one karma.

But in reality, karma is not necessarily one-to-one. In fact, most of the time, it is not. It has a multiplier effect. An ancestor's migration has an impact on his descendants. A ruler has an impact on a country. A religion's founder has an impact over millions or billions of people over a long period of time. The reaction to an action spreads by the natural laws of propagation. It can be for good or for bad. There is even a mathematical theory call Chaos Theory to explain how a very small change can have big consequences. All these are observable and true in the real world.

Buddha attributed the obviously observable lack of one-to-one karma in the real world to an unproven process call reincarnation. If you cannot trace the reaction to an action in your present life, then it must be caused by an action in your past life. If your action has not generated an appropriate reaction in your present life, you will get the reaction in your next life.

The Bible tells us that unfairness and inequality were caused by Adam when he disobeyed God in the garden of Eden. He ate the fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, thinking that it would make him like God. Through his disobedience, sin entered the world and spread via the natural laws of propagation. Being the first ancestor, his action caused a reaction that impact all his descendants. This reaction is still multiplying.