The Karma Management Problem and other clues of Providence in non-theistic Dharmic religions

The Karma Management Problem and other clues of Providence in non-theistic Dharmic religions

Jainism and Buddhism are two of non-theistic religions which do not accept theism, defined as a belief system in which there is a benevolent creator God that interacts with His creatures. However, in this post I'll argue that the at least two beliefs that Jainism and Buddhism share seem to require the existence of a benevolent Creator. 

As it happens, Jainism and Buddhism both accept the reality of rebirth and karma: (non-liberated) sentient beings continually die and get reborn in mortal lifetimes and such lifetimes are determined (at least, in a great part) by their past actions. Furthermore, it seems that in Buddhist and Jainist traditions, there is the idea that the way to liberation is continually re-discovered and taught after times in which the 'Dharma' (the salvific teachings) is forgotten and, as it happens, the likelihood to 'hear the Dharma' and have an ooportunity to achieve liberation is also linked to how one lived in previous lifetimes (e.g. one must be reborn as a human being or perhaps a deva, a celestial being, to be able to achieve liberation).  

While samsara, the cycle of deaths and rebirths, is obviously a terrifying 'world' to be inhabited, it seems like that an 'exit' is built in the system. Furthermore, despite being a terrifying 'world' its rules clearly promote good behaviours and, indeed, these good behaviours done even by non-liberated beings favour one's prospect of liberation. So, while samsara is indeed a flawed 'world', it nevertheless seems to contain, so to speak, traces of good. Also, while beings trapped in samsara are conditioned by a form of 'spiritual ignorance', they can 'awaken' to the salvific knowledge. 

To me all of this suggests that even within Jainism and Buddhism the beliefs that I described in the second paragraph (the 'ethical' rules of samsara, the belief that the Dharma is continually re-discovered and the fact that good behaviour increase the chances to liberation) hardly make sense to me without some kind of Divine Providence - without God, these features seeem to have no justification at all. So, I do agree with what is written in the SEP article about the Afterlife:

"Imagine further that we can limit the most plausible accounts of such a moral order on the basis of either traditional theistic accounts of the afterlife or a system of reincarnation in which Karma is at work determining successive re-births until enlightenment—liberation. Robin Collins has argued that the second alternative faces what he calls the “karma management problem”. He writes,

'Traditionally Buddhists have believed that by and large the circumstances of one’s rebirth are determined by one’s karma—that is, one’s deeds, whether good or bad in this and previous lives. This, however, seems to require that there exist something like a “program” that arranges your genes, the family conditions you are born into, and the like to correspond to the moral worth of your past deeds' (Collins 1999: 206).

For theists, such as many (but not all) Hindus, this minute arrangement of one’s life circumstances to match one’s karma can be viewed as the work of God. So long as we recognize the intelligibility of divine agency, the “management” of reincarnation should in principle be no more difficult to accept than any other theistic explanations. But in the absence of theistic, intentional explanations, how would a “karma program” work, and how was it initiated?" (Afterlife, William Hasker; source: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/afterlife/#MetConConSur)

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