Reincarnation

[MoonStarer420]

if reincarnation is real then how has the population on earth been growing?

Well, it explains why a lot of species are going extinct, they all want to be human....j/k Fucking inconsiderate Homo sapiens

[PureEvil760]

Reincarnation is a nonsense idea. If my "soul" is recycled into another human being, yet that person knows nothing of my life or who I am, what does it mean to say that that person is me? So far as I'm concerned, who I am is based on my experiences and memories, combined with the particular body I find myself inhabiting. Everything I have experienced has had an effect on me, and the sum of all those effects is my personality. A new person with my "soul" but none of my memories would form his own personality based on his own experiences, and would not be related to me in any identifiable way.

Then again, the very idea of a soul is also a nonsense idea. What does it mean to be immaterial? The only immaterial things I can think of are non-existent things. If something is immaterial, i.e. made of nothing, then it doesn't exist. I can't conceive of something that doesn't exist yet exists at the same time, like gods our souls which are supposedly not made of anything yet still somehow in the realm of existence.

If something is "supernatural", it is not part of the natural world, i.e. it cannot be observed or detected. All supernatural entities have no influence on the natural world, otherwise they would be part of the knowable and observable natural world. Souls are claimed to be immaterial and supernatural. How can they possibly affect our world then? How do they not influence physical reality in some measurable way to make our bodies act out our decisions, thereby including themselves in the realm of the natural? They would have to, logically speaking. And then they would not be supernatural entities anymore. They would be some sort of physical reality. A few hundred years ago pretty much everybody believed that the soul was indeed a physical reality, but they imagined it to be kind of a transparent ether-like substance. Now we know that they were partly right. The mind is a physical structure, but it manifests itself as the brain. The brain is your mind, and your mind is your brain. When your brain dies, so does your mind and your consciousness. Unless somebody revives your brain and puts it into a new body, reincarnation just isn't going to happen.

Sounds like ur forming ur very own religeon..fake like all the others good job!

[verklingen]

Hi guys, kinda new to this site. I posted this on another forum, but it is so pertinent here that I couldn't resist reiterating it for the folk here.

Consider the metal iron. Although it is the most abundant metal on the Earth, it is only found in nature in combination with sulfur and oxygen. In order to isolate the iron, our Iron Age ancestors learned that they could use fire to burn away the impurities leaving pure iron behind. This process is called smelting. The more times one does this, the more pure the iron will become.

I view death as a kind of smelting process. Whatever right and just works you have wrought throughout your life are like atoms of iron. Likewise, whatever unjust works you wrought are atoms of various impurities. The process of death is like a fire which burns away these impurities, leaving your spirit clean, but not yet whole. The more pure your spirit, the easier and less painful this process becomes. We all continue this cycle, hoping to live our life in such a way that will leave no impurities to be burnt away when we die. Having acheived thus, the pure spirit passes through the fires of death unscathed and there he remains, never to return to the mortal world.

So in short, yes; reincarnation does occur and is an inherent part of existence.

[mrdevious]

if reincarnation is real then how has the population on earth been growing?

Tradtional Hindu beliefs hold that that there are 24 different realms of reality in which different forms of life live in each, some exporting more souls while others importing. There's are also a small amount of buddhist sects that hold this belief, however I don't personally.

note that there also exists the buddhist concept of rebirth, which is often confused to mean the same thing as reincarnation, but it is not.

Sounds like ur forming ur very own religeon..fake like all the others good job!

From what I read he wasn't proposing a religious philosophy at all, merely basing a belief on the empiracle evidence we have thus far. He's basing this theory using the method of doubt, which can sometimes be right or wrong, but certainly is not religious.

[beachguy in thongs]

Sounds like ur forming ur very own religeon..fake like all the others good job!

The supernatural can be fictional, as is his definition of it, or it can be something we don't understand.

Cannabis heals with supernatural powers. Less than 30 years ago, the U.S. government was paying scientists to find something wrong with it's healing capability. As soon as we make Cannabis non-supernatural, it will be legalized.

I felt like typing something, my cigarette's burning out, and I'm leaving.

^^^ Sounded good, though.

[MaryJaneScott]

Hi guys, kinda new to this site. I posted this on another forum, but it is so pertinent here that I couldn't resist reiterating it for the folk here.

Consider the metal iron. Although it is the most abundant metal on the Earth, it is only found in nature in combination with sulfur and oxygen. In order to isolate the iron, our Iron Age ancestors learned that they could use fire to burn away the impurities leaving pure iron behind. This process is called smelting. The more times one does this, the more pure the iron will become.

I view death as a kind of smelting process. Whatever right and just works you have wrought throughout your life are like atoms of iron. Likewise, whatever unjust works you wrought are atoms of various impurities. The process of death is like a fire which burns away these impurities, leaving your spirit clean, but not yet whole. The more pure your spirit, the easier and less painful this process becomes. We all continue this cycle, hoping to live our life in such a way that will leave no impurities to be burnt away when we die. Having acheived thus, the pure spirit passes through the fires of death unscathed and there he remains, never to return to the mortal world.

So in short, yes; reincarnation does occur and is an inherent part of existence.

No idea if this is true... but it is one of the coolest things I've ever read. :thumbsup: