What are some arguments against the idea of reincarnation?
Offline Other than “there’s no scientific proof” or “it’s not in the bible” what else is there? If that is your answer please try to explain in detail why you don't believe it is possible other than giving me a vague answer.
I’m agnostic but after much reading I’ve concluded that I am beginning to believe the possibility of consciousness existing after our body has died. Reading further, many people give convincing ideas that reincarnation does happen but the only problem with it is I HATE the concept.
I don’t want to start all over a new life, I don’t want to be a different person, I don’t want to forget the ones I love, I like who I am and I don’t want to change. If I’m in a better state why would I go back to some planet/dimension where pain, suffering, and such exists? Some people who believe in reincarnation say it’s possible my husband may come back as my son in another life….WEIRD O.o
The reason I find it convincing is because in documented near death experiences, some people have been able to describe particular instruments physical design in detail without ever seeing it. Keep in mind they are unconscious. Some scientists have a theory that our energy lives on and that’s one explanation. Believers in reincarnation keeps science in mind with energy is not created nor destroyed but transferred thus transferred in a different body.
Some people argue that “There’s more population now than there ever was before so how is it possible?” One explanation is that souls are not finite, there are other planets/dimensions, souls are not limited to just humans.
Can anyone convince me with theories on why reincarnation doesn’t exist? It seems convincing to me and I don’t want to believe in it although I’m not 100% sure in anything. I’d RATHER believe in NOTHING happening but I can’t force myself to believe that. Ideally, I’d want some how to just be eternally happy in some state, do whatever the hell I want, and if I want to see my loved ones I’m able to do that but of course this isn’t logical and neither possible to imagine.
Sorry for this. It’s just been bugging me and that’s been on my mind all the time and I wish I could stop thinking about it. It's not what happens after death that bugs me, it's just the idea of reincarnation. lol Those people have been convincing me but perhaps its the forums and audience. Here is a good place, people of different beliefs and it's not biased.
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Our consciousness is the product of entirely physical stuff goin on in the brain. This is what every single piece of scientific evidence points to. By screwing with someone's brain you can drastically change their personality.
To take this knowledge and then postulate that somehow our conciousness is more than a product of our brain, and somehow it can live on after the brain stops working has ABSOLUTELY NO GODDAMN EVIDENCE BACKING IT UP WHATSOEVER. If that is not enough for you to disregard the retards selling you the idea of reincarnation then you must also take the idea of underpants gnomes seriously and everything else some tool postulates to be real just because you can't prove it isn't real.
Near death experiences are bullshit, these people are flat out lying to you. There have been actual experiments to test all these idiotic claims and none of them have produced any results.
EDIT: just to clarify, I'm not saying there are no such things as near death experiences, just that the claims of people having mysterious knowledge that they couldn't possibly have had access to while "dead" is crap.
I hate that "don't say there is no scientific evidence". What other universal tool do humans have to emperically measure reality because "it feels right" is not universal nor is it a tool.
Lots of people believe things because "it feels right". But we do know even on a scientific level that perceptions are notoriously flawed which is why emperical testing is all that more important to insure a more accurate filtration to filter out flaws in our perception. "reincarnation" is merely another delusion in our phychological anthropomorphism of turning our natural drive to continue into comic book form.
Reincarnation is stupid because atoms don't deliberately become a cockroach to punhish a bad person, nor do they set out to become a good human because they were a good lower animal prior. Reincarnation is merely a human invented superstition like any other.
Once you die, what was you decays, and you do not come back as another life and at best your atoms pass on to other objects, but they dont set out to make another conciousness, lower or higher, as individual atoms.
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
Check out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under Brian James Rational Poet, @Brianrrs37 on Twitter and my blog at www.brianjamesrationalpoet.blog
There is nothing to indicate the possibility of immortality or reincarnation throughout the entire visible universe. Everything dies, constantly. That's enough for me, unless or until any evidence to the contrary is presented.
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
I just meant the sentence of it being vague and that's it.
What does that mean?
Scientific method has not discovered everything and without independent verification SHOULD NOT claim an answer.
But there are things people discard all the time even without science that simply have no evidence and make no sense. How much funding has any university asked for to prove the existance of Santa?
We have not conducted studies on the possibility of the sun being a god even though the Egyptians falsely for 3,000 years believed such. Even with our current knowledge of the chemical and atom makup of that giant ball of gass, do we really need to consider that it is a god way after the absurd claims made in antiquity?
Reincarnation was not started in a lab with the intent of testing or falsification and independent verfification. It was started in an age of humans merely pulling shit out of their ass and deserves as much consideration as all other myths and superstitions others reject without compunction.
I don't know who invented the first wheel. I also could not build a combustion engine from scratch by myself. But I damned sure know that those natural things, like the sun, are not a product of our own anthropromorphic narcissistic gap bullshit answers.
Mental masturbation isn't the problem, even lagit scientists want to think about what could be. The difference between faith and the universal technology that all use, is that one is dependent on scrutiny and the ability of discarding bad claims, and the other is solely based on the narcissism of "faith" because of our own egos.
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
Check out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under Brian James Rational Poet, @Brianrrs37 on Twitter and my blog at www.brianjamesrationalpoet.blog
I always figured those who worshipped the sun at least had something right. If any one real thing could be pointed to and referred to as a god (defined as a creator or provider), that thing could ONLY be Sol.
I view sun worship as the only remotely rational 'spiritual' position to take. Not that it's rational to pray to the sun or anything like that, but there's no harm in accepting that without the sun we'd all be dead in days, and the Earth would become a frozen wasteland. So if someone wants to call it god, I won't bother arguing the point. Not until I'm asked to believe that Sol is more than a ball of fire anyway.
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
Well, let's ignore the science issues then, if you want a simple one let's try a point by the late great George Carlin, population has been rising steadily. This would mean that 'souls' are apparently either being printed up somewhere to fill out more bodies or something similar. The thing is that if reincarnation were to work then there has to be a kind of universal consciousness from the beginning and more importantly nearly everything would HAVE to be conscious plants, animals, etc. Now just think about that, literally each time you eat, walk etc. you're trampling, tearing, destroying a being of equal intellectual status and consciousness. Not to mention that this would also have to apply to bacteria and the like.
I wouldn't worry about it. There is no evidence to support it. Check out these links :
http://www.skepticreport.com/sr/?p=466
http://everythingelseatheism.blogspot.com/2009/02/problems-with-reincarnation.html
http://ed5015.tripod.com/SupernatReincarnationEddie56.htm
http://www.skepdic.com/stevenson.html
“It is proof of a base and low mind for one to wish to think with the masses or majority, merely because the majority is the majority. Truth does not change because it is, or is not, believed by a majority of the people.”
― Giordano Bruno
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72oCyrbgN_I
http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=L1aBip9ge48&feature=endscreen
http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/the-boy-who-lived-before/
http://www.medicine.virginia.edu/clinical/departments/psychiatry/sections/cspp/dops/home-page
http://www.virginia.edu/insideuva/2001/03/stevenson.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reincarnation_research
But yes, reincarnation is in the Bible, there are some passages that weren't censored. The popular Jewish sect of Pharisees taught kind of a reincarnation (good people get reincarnated, the evil ones don't) and Jesus and his disciples seem to refer to these ideas quite matter-of-factly, though the teaching of Jesus is a little different.
I don't believe in "consciousness" survival after death, because it's too vague. But again, I'm not a classical atheist as everyone around. I am convinced there is a set of material worlds with various degrees of density in which we live through a set of corresponding bodies. In death a few of these bodies die and the consciousness re-focuses itself into a higher body, just like when you have a set of colored lamp shades on a lamp and take one off.
The point is, you must have a mechanism. Just a consciousness won't do. No energy in nature exists alone, except perhaps of EM waves (photons). All other energy is bound in matter.
As for the vehicles, my favorite model says, that we are actually instruments of the souls, for work in the physical reality. As instruments we have a great deal of freedom, but not a freedom to stop reincarnating. That is a no-no, we are the soul's only means of development to freedom and it's not going to let us go lightly.
Anyway, it seems to me you could use a bit of happy, busy and fulfilling life on your part, to forget about such worries. Me too, actually. But failing that, you've got two choices. Firstly, stop believing in something that has no evidence, free your mind. Secondly, you might as well go all the way and read up more about the reincarnation. Don't be satisfied with popular notions, learn what is the actual detailed modern notion of it - for example the Theosophic model. Then you can see how far-fetched it is, what are the flaws, or if there is any way you might verify it. But don't stay halfway, just with vague notions, face the fear, give it a form. As long as you can't put a finger on it, you can't do anything about it.
Beings who deserve worship don't demand it. Beings who demand worship don't deserve it.
I think you and I have similar views on this subject.
So how do you mean it? Similar views like similar similar, or just similar in that part where consciousness needs a material mechanism to exist?
Beings who deserve worship don't demand it. Beings who demand worship don't deserve it.
I'm not a classical atheist either and you might remember I'm also a Buddhist.
I believe the following (in a very quick summary):
1- there is no creator. no god. all religions are false.
2 - the universe is not endless
3 - this universe is only a dimension, which loops
4 - outside this universe is another dimension, which loops
5 - there are a specific number of dimensions, all which loop back on their selves
6 - if you traveled from point a in this universe, given enough time and resources, you would loop back to point a
7 - i think therefore i am not. life as we know it is an illusion brought on by desires of our ego
8 - all suffering is brought from our desires
9 - there is no "life after" death because life as we know it an illusion. "we" merely return to our previous state
10 - all life is based on energy patterns. humans have a more complex pattern of energy
11 - change is constant, but the rate at which change happens varies
12 - if we have a "soul" it can be explained through quantum sciences.
13 - science can explain everything, but the human race might not survive long enough to figure this out
14 - everything changes. everything ceases. impermanence.
There is more, but I thought I would throw this out there just to see if I'm on the right track with you.
Here is something for your review (not that it is anything presented as "proof" but merely an interesting article to look at:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/109248092/Quantum-Reversal-of-Soul-Energy
(edit)
Oh, one other thing.
I've asked atheists & theists the following question:
What is outside this Universe? What is outside that which is outside the Universe? and what is outside, that which is outside the Universe?
When does it end or start?
Most of the time the answer is "I don't know" but others will ignore the question completely.
You have to realize, the thing you probably mean as a "soul", my investigations hint that we consist of several of these, as bodies permeating and overreaching us, interacting subtly, differing in dimension, density, function, degree of development and of permanence. We could imagine them as several lampshades stacked on a single lightbulb. These are parts of personality (ego) vehicles of expression, but not the Soul, not the source of light, not the lightbulb in the center. They transmit, color and express the light of consciousness, but do not have their own - except vegetative consciousness. And all these are macroscopic, each larger than the other and it could be said that the central "Soul" is the largest of them all, an ancient "great fiery vortex of energy" as some mystics describe it.
I would try to avoid a localized point of view, that considers our world the most stable one and everything beyond it a formless ocean of energy. On the contrary, our world is said to be the least permanent, a world of temporary and fragile solid expression, while the higher worlds are less solid, yet more long-lived because of that. More moving, vivid, changing and responsive, but much less energy is lost by friction and entropy.
As for the interaction between the dimensions, between the subtle bodies and so on, that might be better understood on quantum level, although not exclusively. A man-sized "energy field" interacting with a man-sized person, is it not wise to study it on quantum level only. In my experience, we're missing something big, not small. I'd say it's the dark matter, our body (energy pattern) on the level of dark matter, that serves as an intermediary between the biologic and higher bodies. There's some fringe science behind that. It seems there's a connection with electro-static phenomena, neutron detectors (and nuclear fission), vacuum luminescence and so on.
Further on, we will show that the electricalconductivity of perispirit is enormous (10trillion times greater than that of the metals),what shows that it contains a plasma. Yes, that would fit. However plasma also permits lots of complex structures within it, separated by different electric charge, magnetism and polarity. It's not a homogenous plasma field, it's basically a counterpart, a supportive structure and blueprint for the living tissues. This might be how the primordial living molecules got assembled together.
The energy-supporting process described in the paper should be possible with instruments like carefully chosen colors in form of polarized light and laser (already in use), but also with sound frequencies generated by oscillating crystals (already in use). But using a maser, well, that would be cool!
However, I find it strange they consider the therapeutic effect of brain delta waves, in my experience an energy transfer takes a work of multiple energy centers and generally engages the whole outer shell of the body to resonate the other person's energy body. I haven't had my brain waves measured during that, but I wouldn't say the biologic brain waves do most of the work, rather the energy body does. There is some exhaustion then, if I'm not careful.
Anyway, thanks for the link! It's nice to see how the modern science does the homework that our clairvoyant ancestors should have done ages ago instead of passing us mystical writings and unverifiable claims of "spirit world". Although I'd bet Prof. De Aquino "cheated" a little and had a peek into some occult texts.
Holy crap. This guy has a theory of quantum gravity. Is he for real? He has both the maths and... my stuff. How comes he isn't on Scientific American, Nature and all other peer-reviewed journals? (now you see why I hate that question
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Beings who deserve worship don't demand it. Beings who demand worship don't deserve it.
It means that our emotions and memories betray us
There is no desire to stop suffering. When a person sees that suffering ends when you "kill off your ego" then the process starts. It's a realization of truth.
There is no rationalization of the subject. You don't say, "Hmmm do I want to stop suffering? or continue on this path?"
Yes, Spock is a good analogy.
There is a saying that the root of all suffering is fear.
I do not believe any thing took great effort to get us to our present state.
Yes, atoms are quite complex to us, but once understood they become very simple.
Yes. Black holes. The Universe's trash can.
Very interesting. I will need to ponder this for a while.
Dark Matter = All living things which have died in this Universe?? lol
I sort of stumbled on to him. I like to randomly put things in to google and see what comes up.
Some of the stuff is like "wow" and other stuff "huh". It's just a swizzle stick for the brain.
Hmmm. Next time I bring that question up at a party I'll remember your comments.