Can you accept reincarnation?

[ray245]

Firstly, let's limit this to a morality discussion or a religious question...mainly.

Let's assume that reincarnation exist in some form, if you don't believe in it.

What is your personal view on that kind of after life? On moral and religious ground?


Well, personally, I don't like the idea of it. I would rather remain conscious of myself rather than let myself be reincarnated and lose my identity.

I mean, you would have no control of what kind of person you would become. You could be a mass murderer in your next life for all you know.

[Oni Koneko Damien]

Firstly, let's limit this to a morality discussion or a religious question...mainly.

Let's assume that reincarnation exist in some form, if you don't believe in it.

What is your personal view on that kind of after life? On moral and religious ground?


Well, personally, I don't like the idea of it. I would rather remain conscious of myself rather than let myself be reincarnated and lose my identity.

I mean, you would have no control of what kind of person you would become. You could be a mass murderer in your next life for all you know.

First off, define exactly what kind of reincarnation model you're using here, as there are quite a few types.

Most reincarnation models use some sort of morality yardstick, what you did in a previous life determines how this life will go for you, and what you do in this life will determine how good the next life will be, etc. Only those who've become moral enough get the chance to 'transcend' to the next level.

Some others I've heard of use a more 'experienced' based system, where you reincarnate as a number of different living things so that you have the chance to experience life from a number of different viewpoints.

What seems to be a clinging contention of both is that you have no real memory of your previous lives, which makes both disagreeable to me, but makes the first one particularly reprehensible.

Basically, according to the first system, if you're a shitty person in one life, you'll be 'punished' by being reincarnated in a suckier situation the next time around. The problem is that if you don't carry the memories over between lifetimes, you're essentially punishing an innocent being. No memories, a new body, a new mindset, who the fuck cares about some immaterial, unevidenced soul, since it obviously doesn't even have enough of an impact to let you know exactly *why* your life is so shitty this time around.

The purpose of punishment is to correct bad behaviouir. It is absolutely fucking useless if you cannot even remember what you did wrong in a previous life. It is downright barbaric when you take into account the fact that you're essentially a completely different being than the one who did all those allegedly bad things.

Of course, this brings up another interesting question: Say a person gets sent to jail for murdering someone, and after a few months, he conks his head and suffers some brain-damage. He has no memory of his life before that point, and in fact it appears his personality has also been affected in no small measure by the jolt. Is it ethical to keep him in jail for a crime that 1) He has no memory of, and 2) That he comitted when he was fundamentally a different person?

[Covenant]

Let's assume that reincarnation exist in some form, if you don't believe in it.

What is your personal view on that kind of after life? On moral and religious ground?

Is this a question of 'invent an afterlife,' or are you asking me what I believe it would be, if I believed it was? Any form of reincarnation assumes an undying element to the person, and furthermore the usefulness of an ascending form.

It can't be based in morality, therefore, as people aren't inherently polarized in their morality from birth... so you can't be carrying with you a moral element. Also, lower forms... yes? Reincarnation merely as people, or also as lower forms? Since dogs have a different ethical framework than humans, there's no reason for it to be assumed to be moral. I have no idea what value dragging some kind of Soul-bound Video Recorder through several lifetimes would be.

I certainly have trouble conceptualizing a reason for reincarnation. Any system that used it would be rather contrived.

Well, personally, I don't like the idea of it. I would rather remain conscious of myself rather than let myself be reincarnated and lose my identity.

Luckily for you, when you die, you just go away. No threat of turning up in the body of a cat.

[ray245]

Is this a question of 'invent an afterlife,' or are you asking me what I believe it would be, if I believed it was? Any form of reincarnation assumes an undying element to the person, and furthermore the usefulness of an ascending form.

It's more of a 'I'm asking you what you would believe it would be, if you believed it was?' kind of question.

[Covenant]

Is this a question of 'invent an afterlife,' or are you asking me what I believe it would be, if I believed it was? Any form of reincarnation assumes an undying element to the person, and furthermore the usefulness of an ascending form.

It's more of a 'I'm asking you what you would believe it would be, if you believed it was?' kind of question.

Well, I think there are logically inconsistant things with any conception of reincarnation, except with the possible 'ascending' phase as my next step. Since nobody out there currently seems to be a reincarnation of anything, and if I was reincarnated into a sheep, I wouldn't remember being a person... the only way I could really 'observe' and then believe in reincarnation would be if I was sublimed into my next high-energy gaseous Special Effect form.

I would need to assume, since you're supposed to live several lives or through several forms, the goal is empathy and a degree of understanding the impact you have on large structures. That to me seems the only reason for it--to force really dense people to walk a few miles in other people's shoes--just so they get the point when they're raised to the new level.

What that is, I wouldn't know, but it would need to be something that benefitted from the kind of experience I was describing.

That or the 'God' in question is a being of great evil that feeds off of the accumulated despair of a being that has more than one lifetime of death, pain, and suffering--and so it seeds souls into the world like nets to scoop up as much as it can before the souls return to it and feed it's mindless horror-sleep.

[Lord of the Abyss]

Firstly, let's limit this to a morality discussion or a religious question...mainly.

Let's assume that reincarnation exist in some form, if you don't believe in it.

What is your personal view on that kind of after life? On moral and religious ground?

My view is that it's not really life after life. If everything that makes me who I am is erased and my soul is stuck in an infant, that's no different than not having a soul or having it destroyed. Not that I believe in souls to begin with.

I'd be completely indifferent to "my" former or future lives, because in my view they wouldn't be my lives in any sense I care about. I'd regard it as morally irrelevant; there's no moral distinction between a world of soulless people, like the real world, and a world where people have souls but are reincarnated. When you die, you are still destroyed; there's just a useless supernatural appendage that gets passed along to someone else.

[Flagg]

Reincarnation just gives people an excuse to treat the poor, disabled, and sickly like shit. After all, they must have been real assholes in a past life for them to end up like that.

[ray245]

My real personal dislike of reincarnation is because not only does your soul is being reborn as a new person...you have no control that what your choice what kind of person in the next life you would become.

You can be a mass murderer...yes, you may not be directly responsible for it, but indirectly, you CAUSED a mass murderer to be born.

[Dooey Jo]

What religion teaches that you have no control over how you will reincarnate? Usually it is linked to a concept of karma.

[Darth Wong]

If reincarnation does not require continuity of personality or memory, then you are reincarnated. Your organic matter returns to the Earth and will eventually end up in other life forms.

[Flagg]

What religion teaches that you have no control over how you will reincarnate? Usually it is linked to a concept of karma.

Yeah, reincarnation paired with karma is the real evil. Alot of people like to throw the word karma around in the popular sense, but most have no concept of what it really means and how fucking horrid it is.

[Feil]

If reincarnation happens, it happens. It's no more moral or immoral than photosynthesis or rain. People, not natural processes, are subject to moral judgment.

[General Zod]

If reincarnation does not require continuity of personality or memory, then you are reincarnated. Your organic matter returns to the Earth and will eventually end up in other life forms.

So you could say that reincarnation is basically just a fancy word for "recycled"?

[Akhlut]

I'd assume that it is not that different from just living one life and then dying and being gone forever.

Why? Because aside from a few whackjobs here and there claiming otherwise, no one remembers their previous lives. How can it be all that useful of a teaching tool or a reward or a punishment if you can't even remember what you did to get there? In that case, it is nonmoral.

[Kanastrous]

Reincarnation just gives people an excuse to treat the poor, disabled, and sickly like shit. After all, they must have been real assholes in a past life for them to end up like that.

Of course, if you spend your lifetime treating the poor, etc like shit because you feel they have it coming, you're buying yourself a ticket to misery in the next incarnation yourself, for having treated them that way.

[Vendetta]

Any form of reincarnation that dissociates actions in one life from consequences in the next has found a particularly neat way to define itself into irrelevance. Since my "next incarnation" will have absolutely no characteristics that could define it as being related to me, I have no reason to consider it in more than vague moral terms.

My actions are determinant to the life of a total stranger, but that is true in the immediate sense more often than not as well.

[Molyneux]

If reincarnation does not require continuity of personality or memory, then you are reincarnated. Your organic matter returns to the Earth and will eventually end up in other life forms.

What if you die on the Moon?

There was an interesting view of reincarnation I heard once:
All souls are fragments of some larger, original entity, which it splits off so they can live different lives and learn, love, and grow...then return, teaching the primary entity of their lives. All sparks return to the Allspark.


Slightly more seriously, some variants of Judaism believe in reincarnation - essentially, when you die, one of two things happens to you: you go on to Heaven/Nirvana/whatever's next, or you're not quite ready for the next stage.

If you've been an evil person, you go to what's essentially Purgatory, for up to a year and a day; after that, either you go on to Heaven, or you get put back on Earth for another try at life. (Presumably without your memories, but with some seed of your personality intact. Judaism seems to tend towards the "soul and body influence each other/soul is essentially a recording of the body's life/soul wears the body like clothing" point of view.)

On the plus side, it does have the virtual guarantee that everyone will eventually "graduate" to Heaven. No such thing as eternal damnation, of course. On the downside...well, the only thing that comes to mind is that it applies no matter how evil someone is. Hitler, with that theology, would have been redeeming himself for no more than a year and a day...and afterwards, he'd either get Heaven or another mortal life.

[Gigaliel]

Just to add to the no continuity arguments: typically there is some form of it. In most mythologies (Hinduism/Buddhism mostly) you regain all your past memories of in some 'spirit world' before being judged by Deity X and sent to the memory erasing chamber/river/thing for your next life. So there is just enough time to learn before being judged and mindwiped.

Of course this doesn't really add much to the arguments of it being evil, it just adds an extra level of "wow the gods are jerks" to it.

Ironically, I believe that's sort of the point of karma. The world sucks balls so be a good person and maybe you can leave the cycle and merge with Nirvana/Brahman/cease existence/etc*.

Of course, if this were actually true I would wonder why the hell there hasn't been an uprising in the spirit world by now. I mean this system purposefully exerts suffering so you can lose your individuality upon leaving the cycle. And it's mostly based on shear luck of your past lives not being in hell holes that make you do evil things. Wow, that makes me feel warm inside. Great idea, deities.

Clearly the solution is to take a flaming sword to the pantheon. Woo rebellion.

But in all seriousness this situation would be horrifically evil given these assumptions.

*In some cases these are all the same thing. Aren't purposefully contradictive ideas fun? And yes I am massively generalizing these religions.

[Junghalli]

It always seemed kind of pointless to me.

Who we are is defined by our memories and experiences. If we get mindwiped every time we incarnate, is it really all that different from true death? Your next incarnation may share some sort of spirit or something with you, but in many ways it won't really be you. If this sort of reincarnation was true I'd be pretty apathetic toward it; it's not much different from no afterlife.

Unless maybe your spirit remembers everything, the memories are just blocked in mortal life for some reason. As most reincarnation-based belief systems suppose IIRC. In which case it'd be fairly cool. At any rate it'd beat true death, or the retardedly simplistic Christian belief system where messing up once guarentees you eternal torture in Hell.

[Drewcifer]

If reincarnation does not require continuity of personality or memory, then you are reincarnated. Your organic matter returns to the Earth and will eventually end up in other life forms.

So you could say that reincarnation is basically just a fancy word for "recycled"?

The body is constantly recycling itself. Except for your heart and brain, the matter that you're made of is continually being replaced by new matter. The atoms and molecules that you were made of last year have almost all been replaced, something like 98% annually, iirc. So, from a certain perspective, we're reincarnated every year.

Or in other words, we literally are what we eat.

[Elaro]

Well, from a certain point of view, we are all "reincarnated". Sort of. What I mean to say is, when we die, we're gone/dead/obliviated. Our point of view is destroyed. But the next moment someone is born, they have their own, new, point of view. So we're kinda reincarnated, sort of. In the "so as life ends, so life begins anew" kind of way. Which is why I'm so interested in leaving a memetic legacy. I want "my" future self to admire me.

As for the morality of reincarnation, if you take a non-deterministic view of it (as in, who you are reincarnated into is completely random, no "karma" bullshit) then it becomes a great incitor to make a better world, because your future self is going to live in the world that you're leaving behind. It's a big exercice in empathy, really.

[ray245]

Just to add to the no continuity arguments: typically there is some form of it. In most mythologies (Hinduism/Buddhism mostly) you regain all your past memories of in some 'spirit world' before being judged by Deity X and sent to the memory erasing chamber/river/thing for your next life. So there is just enough time to learn before being judged and mindwiped.

Of course this doesn't really add much to the arguments of it being evil, it just adds an extra level of "wow the gods are jerks" to it.

Ironically, I believe that's sort of the point of karma. The world sucks balls so be a good person and maybe you can leave the cycle and merge with Nirvana/Brahman/cease existence/etc*.

Of course, if this were actually true I would wonder why the hell there hasn't been an uprising in the spirit world by now. I mean this system purposefully exerts suffering so you can lose your individuality upon leaving the cycle. And it's mostly based on shear luck of your past lives not being in hell holes that make you do evil things. Wow, that makes me feel warm inside. Great idea, deities.

Clearly the solution is to take a flaming sword to the pantheon. Woo rebellion.

But in all seriousness this situation would be horrifically evil given these assumptions.

*In some cases these are all the same thing. Aren't purposefully contradictive ideas fun? And yes I am massively generalizing these religions.

Actually, from chinese mythology, apparently, your soul CAN be destroyed. Although it is often viewed as the most cruel punishment.

Which means, the chinese version of hell is kind of a stopover point after your death. You can somehow choice between staying down there, and from plenty of mythology, it is basically no difference between hell and earth other than the location.

You can choose to stay there, choose to reincarnate, and choice to let your soul be destroyed. Which kinda means you are dying AFTER you are dead.

You can burn hell notes, paper cars, Paper tickets, paper computer, paper XBOX 360, paper mansion, paper ships and etc.


Basically, it is on the belief that as long you have relatives who is willingly to spend money on paper stuff, you can live a luxury life.

[Sea Skimmer]

I would dearly like to believe that spiritual reincarnation was real in a literal way, but I cannot reasonably have that belief.

[speaker-to-trolls]

I'd like reincarnation more than most other kinds of afterlife, I think I wouldn't mind losing my identity as long as a kind of central consciousness continued to exist. I think I'd still be me, in a sense, in that the soul or whatever it is that actually experiences everything I experience and accumulates the memories I end up with would still exist and experience stuff in the next life.

Morally it doesn't make much sense, particularly when it comes to non-sapient creatures, how the hell are you supposed to move up the karmic ladder in any meaningful way when you can't make conscious decisions? But it's supposedly a natural process rather than a moral system set up by a conscious being, so I guess you can't really complain (I can't help but feel this is a much more sophisticated justification for the fact that certain people have to grub around in the dirt for their whole lives whilst others get to live in giant palaces than the European: 'God says so').

Unfortunately I don't believe in reincarnation, as far as I can tell my being is entirely made up of electrochemical reactions in my brain, and I'll never know what it's like to be a shark

[Zwinmar]

for the sake of argument and debate what if:

The personality that one has is determined by the soul so to speak. Reincarnation ties into a character system.

Take Dungeons and Dragons for instnance. A character is created that one controls, the character itself does not know of you, its puppet master. However, when that character dies another character is made, utilizeing what the overmind has gleaned from the previous.

Basically, reincarnation reminds me of characters in a play. The soul being the author.

Or something to that effect..