A flaw in reincarnation?

[BoshansStudios]

First off I have to say that this thread is not meant to bash anyone's beliefs.

Okay so the other day I was at work and for some reason had random thoughts about reincarnation. My understanding of the belief is that when you die you come back as something else. If you were good you become something better, and if you were bad you go down a step. There is also another idea of reincarnation that you just go up or down in social class but i'll talk about that later.

Anyways, the flaw I picked out is what if we killed off every other species on the planet? To be reincarnated you have to be birthed from something else, but if there is nothing other than humans you would just come back as well, a human. It wouldn't matter how bad or good you were.

As I understand, the other form of reincarnation believers see it as you are still human, but if you're bad all of your lives you will just be a poor bum for eternity, and if you're good you will come back in the higher social classes. The only way I could see this being beatable is if the world was completely communistic in the sense of money and power, and if everyone was the same race.

Please point out any flaws or mistakes I have made in my post to help better the thread.

[372]

The simple fact is: Reincarnation is a extremely unrealistic theory.

[PorkytheHedgehog]

I only believe in reincarnation because I have the chance of becoming a Platypus.

Or an alien.

[MonkeyV]

The biggest flaw I see in reincarnation is that in a different body and different mind, can you really still say it's you? Yeah, I get it you keep the soul, but I don't see what difference that makes. I think reincarnation is more of a population thing. If a large group of people become evil villains, it just means we're going to have a lot of tape-worms or rats in the distant future.

You should read the story "Obsolete" from the book "Haunted" by Chuck Palahniuk.

[PikaRobo]

I never heard about going up and down a step, I just thought it ment you become something else after death.

[NEVR]

At 7/31/09 10:32 PM, BoshansStudios wrote: My understanding of the belief is that when you die you come back as something else. If you were good you become something better, and if you were bad you go down a step.

I was under the impression that if you were good in life then you simply went to heaven or something, whereas the point of being reincarnated was so that you could live through life again to iron out your past-life mistakes... or something like that. I'm not really an expert on the subject, either.

Personally, I find it to be a bit of a ridiculous theory, which is why I've never really taken the time to attempt to understand it fully.

[MultiCanimefan]

I don't think many thousand-year old belief would have anticipated what we have today. However, this flaw only exists if you believe this plane of existence to be the only one or that this planet is all there is that can support life.

[sven647]

How would you lead a good life as a cockroach?

[NeverHundred]

In Buddhism there are different heavens and hells where a person burns karma, if they have an abundance of good karma they will end up in a heaven, a abundance of bad karma they end up in hell. When that karma is burned they are reborn as a human.

It never fucking ends!

[RaptorJesus]

At 7/31/09 10:42 PM, NeverHundred wrote: In Buddhism there are different heavens and hells where a person burns karma, if they have an abundance of good karma they will end up in a heaven, a abundance of bad karma they end up in hell. When that karma is burned they are reborn as a human.

It never fucking ends!

There are so many variations on what happens, heavens/hells etc. What if your soul becomes reborn into a tree or maybe something even inanimate like a cell phone. Sort of pantheistic, but that's the first thing that came to mind.

[Proottalfain]

Well you could see it as if many humans decide to kill entire species, then when they die, they'll come back as cockroaches, feeding on the dead bodies of the animals they killed in their previous life.

I personally think that reincarnation is a more plausible theory than a regular hell/heaven system. Because in the Christian system, souls are constantly created for babies, and when the body dies, they go to heaven or hell, and thus the population of both places grows constantly. Of course, since anything is possible, overpopulation does not exist in Heaven/hell, and God can create as many souls as he wishes.

But still, I prefer the recycling system of reincarnation, it's closer to what happens in the material world.

[MonkeyV]

Everybody read this! ^_^
You're welcome. Very good story.

[NeverHundred]

At 7/31/09 10:50 PM, mrgreg846 wrote:

At 7/31/09 10:42 PM, NeverHundred wrote: In Buddhism there are different heavens and hells where a person burns karma, if they have an abundance of good karma they will end up in a heaven, a abundance of bad karma they end up in hell. When that karma is burned they are reborn as a human.

It never fucking ends!

There are so many variations on what happens, heavens/hells etc. What if your soul becomes reborn into a tree or maybe something even inanimate like a cell phone. Sort of pantheistic, but that's the first thing that came to mind.

Exactly. No body has any clue what happens in death anyway. So they make their wild guesses, some might be right but they all can't be right. Atheists think that believing in nothing is the safest route, after all it is the most logical... but than again, without scientific proof most respectable scientists find that they can't come to a conclusion until they are absolutely sure without a doubt. It would be irresponsible to simply assume that things work the way they theorize, because they don't really even have any evidence to suggest that it does, let alone any real proof of anything.

Way I see it, no one will know for sure until after they die. I guess if they reincarnate they'd lose that information and be left to speculate once again what the afterlife holds. Or maybe they don't, and they're just nothing... whatever it is, I don't feel like it matters all that much. Though it is interesting to ask these questions even if there is no answer that can be proven.

[Bryan]

I don't really believe in reincarnation, but, sometimes I just wonder where your soul goes when you die, does it just go to Heaven or Hell or that shit or does it have another purpose?

[NeverHundred]

At 7/31/09 11:12 PM, Bryan wrote: I don't really believe in reincarnation, but, sometimes I just wonder where your soul goes when you die, does it just go to Heaven or Hell or that shit or does it have another purpose?

It's used to fuel the matrix.

[link3657]

At 7/31/09 10:36 PM, PorkytheHedgehog wrote: I only believe in reincarnation because I have the chance of becoming a Platypus.

Or an alien.

This thread should now be about platypus's.

They're ssssoooooo awesome!

[tweekee]

At 7/31/09 10:50 PM, mrgreg846 wrote:

At 7/31/09 10:42 PM, NeverHundred wrote: In Buddhism there are different heavens and hells where a person burns karma, if they have an abundance of good karma they will end up in a heaven, a abundance of bad karma they end up in hell. When that karma is burned they are reborn as a human.

It never fucking ends!

There are so many variations on what happens, heavens/hells etc. What if your soul becomes reborn into a tree or maybe something even inanimate like a cell phone. Sort of pantheistic, but that's the first thing that came to mind.

I'm pretty sure trees don't have souls and a cellphone is called manmade for a reason. It's a technological device, it can't have a soul.

[MonkeyV]

At 7/31/09 11:13 PM, NeverHundred wrote: Fuel the Matrix.

That ^, my friend, is an awesome band name.

[Jerkapotamus]

At 7/31/09 10:40 PM, NEVR wrote: I was under the impression that if you were good in life then you simply went to heaven or something, whereas the point of being reincarnated was so that you could live through life again to iron out your past-life mistakes... or something like that. I'm not really an expert on the subject, either.

It depends on the religion and even the different sects. In Hinduism, you're reincarnated until you obtain something called moksha, which is basically a higher and ultimate understanding of the universe. If you know anything about Hinduism, it's probably that it's sort of a strange polytheism where each of the many Gods is but a single aspect of a single God (Brahman). When moksha is obtained, you realize that all existence is one, and thus, you no longer have a need to inhabit a body. You become one with all existence.

That's what we learned in school anyways. Knowing Hinduism, there are most certainly different versions. It's a fairly interesting religion from a philosophical stand-point.

[RaptorJesus]

At 7/31/09 11:16 PM, tweekee wrote:

I'm pretty sure trees don't have souls and a cellphone is called manmade for a reason. It's a technological device, it can't have a soul.

Maybe. I was thinking along the lines of some Native American religions where the plants, dirt, rocks, everything has a soul or has god in it. Or like other pantheistic religions where god is literally everything.. maybe souls are everything?