On reincarnation of God

[warpus]

Why run away tho?

Maybe it's a scary clown hippo face.

 

[EvaDK]

Sorry, I meant Jesus already reincarnated once.

Reincarnation presumes the soul is reborn in different physical bodies. According to the New Testament, Jesus was resurrected, not reincarnated.

 

[Farm Boy]

Sorry, I meant Jesus already reincarnated once.

Still not quite. He got up and left his tomb. Then later ascended physically into heaven. More specifically Catholic, but in the same vein if you're ever in a mood, the Assumption of Mary is one of my favorite yearly masses. If you go to a bigger regional church, or a cathedral if you have access to one, it's sort of wild to watch the church get hotboxed with frankincense. From a more... reserved protestant upbringing at any rate.

Christ may speak to people, or appear if you're into religious visions, but his physical return typically isn't structured as being reborn anew.

 

[Moff Jerjerrod]

^Awesome Johnny Cash song.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Re-incarnation, if I'm not mistaken, is when an living entity dies its spirit comes enters another body to live life on earth again. So when a frog dies it comes back to life as a cow. When that cow dies it might come back as a human or some other creature depending on how it lived its life on earth. Can anyone verify for me?

Reincarnation as thought about within Hinduism and Buddhism is more involved/complicated than you might think. Reincarnation is about a soul being reborn within a different/new body; transmigration of souls involves souls being reborn in a new body that is of a wholly different nature (animal to human, bug to bird, etc.). One's karma (bindings/attachments from life's actions) drives one's next iteration of life. One's karma is the wrapping and unwrapping of ones attachments through actions and events. There are progressions of rebirth from simple life forms through more complex ones which involve worldly existence and spiritual existence. Simplified, the goal of reincarnation is to unbind oneself from attachments and escape the illusory worlds of Maya and the cycle of reincarnation altogether and enter into an experience of cosmic unity.

"Maya" is also a complicated principle. Typically, it stands for the forces that maintain the physical world's illusion of being permanent and real when in fact it is not. What is Real and unchanging is the underlying essence of all existence.

 

[warpus]

I don't understand how reincarnation can possibly work without a supreme being of some sort, some sort of architect deciding which souls go into which bodies, etc. Yet Buddhists don't believe in a god. So who set up this framework that sorts souls and puts them in the right bodies, and who maintains this infrastructure? Who's making the decisions?

 

[Birdjaguar]

I don't understand how reincarnation can possibly work without a supreme being of some sort, some sort of architect deciding which souls go into which bodies, etc. Yet Buddhists don't believe in a god. So who set up this framework that sorts souls and puts them in the right bodies, and who maintains this infrastructure? Who's making the decisions?

This can get very complicated so I will skim the surface. Within Maya a soul perceives itself as distinct from the physical world around it regardless of its level of awareness or consciousness. As it lives and dies its actions (of any sort) accumulate as impressions (Samskaras) upon the individual soul. Over lifetimes, samskaras accumulate and extinguish themselves seeking balance. As its life forms get more and more complex the accumulations get more and more complicated and their removals too. Through this long process the soul is seeking to understand itself though the experiences of the physical world. In the end, at the end, the soul comes to realize that all this time it has only and always been nothing but the entirely of all existence. Its experience within Maya just an illusion, ignorance of of Truth: Infinite unconscious existence "waking" to find itself as infinite consciousness. There is no decision maker at death and rebirth. Souls work their way physical existence and progressive consciousness. Each lifetime leads to the next naturally. Both Hinduism and Buddhism allow for advanced spiritual souls to speed the progress of other souls and create pathways for progress.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

I don't understand how reincarnation can possibly work without a supreme being of some sort, some sort of architect deciding which souls go into which bodies, etc. Yet Buddhists don't believe in a god. So who set up this framework that sorts souls and puts them in the right bodies, and who maintains this infrastructure? Who's making the decisions?

Maybe the souls themselves?

There was a really weird feeling I had back in 1993, when I adopted Gussy. He was a young kitten who turned up in the back yard out of basically nowhere. We have no idea how he got there since we never found indications of his mother or siblings, and nobody in the neighborhood was missing a kitten (I asked around and posted a notice at the local corner store since everyone in the neighborhood went there sooner or later). To this day I can't figure out where he came from, since the back yard was completely fenced and it would have been impossible for anyone to just toss him over. He would have had to crawl under, but from where? We searched up and down the alley and found no indication of the rest of his family.

Cassandra, my first cat, had died the previous year. When my dad and I caught Gussy and brought him inside and he adapted to living indoors with us, I was floored at some of his mannerisms. They were exactly like Cassandra's. Mind you, some of his mannerisms were like the squirrels he lived with for a couple of weeks. His first language was squirrel-chatter, and the concept of "meow" didn't take until he observed my other cats (I already had 3). Both of them mourned my grandparents (Cassandra when my grandfather died and Gussy when my grandmother died).

So was Gussy the reincarnation of Cassandra (who would have known where home was and so that's where this kitten ended up)? I have no idea. I won't ever know.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I don't understand how reincarnation can possibly work without a supreme being of some sort, some sort of architect deciding which souls go into which bodies, etc. Yet Buddhists don't believe in a god. So who set up this framework that sorts souls and puts them in the right bodies, and who maintains this infrastructure? Who's making the decisions?

you can somewhat get there (even without implicating a "soul", which we can't demonstrate exists) by doing a many worlds interpretation, or if it turns out universe cycles infinitely or w/e. if there turns out to be some process whereby we get a different result than "heat death permanently", there's a possibility to recreate similar or identical events again given infinite time (it would take unfathomably long, but it's not like you'd be aware in interim, nor be capable of recalling past iterations or noticing any small differences). it's not like we know enough about consciousness or how the universe works to rule stuff like this out.

brings me back to thought experiment if you could make a device that duplicates a person similar to transporters in star trek, which one of the episodes explored a bit. right now, we have no reason to believe the product of such a device would be any more or less "you" than you are, or that either has (or lacks) a "soul". if universe generation does something like this, the other "you" iterations are also as much "you".

i doubt science will find a way to keep us alive longer than regular lifespan (if we're lucky, maybe they can extend it a bit), or make us into machine intelligence in our lifetimes. we're probably more likely to kill ourselves with non-aligned ais than we are to achieve that, even. but maybe science will advance enough that we can somewhat answer the questions of consciousness/end of universe better than now and give hope to atheists .

 

[Valka D'Ur]

you can somewhat get there (even without implicating a "soul", which we can't demonstrate exists) by doing a many worlds interpretation, or if it turns out universe cycles infinitely or w/e. if there turns out to be some process whereby we get a different result than "heat death permanently", there's a possibility to recreate similar or identical events again given infinite time (it would take unfathomably long, but it's not like you'd be aware in interim, nor be capable of recalling past iterations or noticing any small differences). it's not like we know enough about consciousness or how the universe works to rule stuff like this out.

brings me back to thought experiment if you could make a device that duplicates a person similar to transporters in star trek, which one of the episodes explored a bit. right now, we have no reason to believe the product of such a device would be any more or less "you" than you are, or that either has (or lacks) a "soul". if universe generation does something like this, the other "you" iterations are also as much "you".

i doubt science will find a way to keep us alive longer than regular lifespan (if we're lucky, maybe they can extend it a bit), or make us into machine intelligence in our lifetimes. we're probably more likely to kill ourselves with non-aligned ais than we are to achieve that, even. but maybe science will advance enough that we can somewhat answer the questions of consciousness/end of universe better than now and give hope to atheists .

One point about Star Trek transporters I read is rather interesting regarding whether what comes out of the transporter is the same as what went into it.

People can be transported with no problem. But it's illegal to transport authentic, original historical works of art (ie. the Mona Lisa). If you scan those to transport them, it means that it would be possible to create as many as you want, which would render the original one worthless. So it was made illegal.

 

[Kyriakos]

you can somewhat get there (even without implicating a "soul", which we can't demonstrate exists) by doing a many worlds interpretation, or if it turns out universe cycles infinitely or w/e. if there turns out to be some process whereby we get a different result than "heat death permanently", there's a possibility to recreate similar or identical events again given infinite time (it would take unfathomably long, but it's not like you'd be aware in interim, nor be capable of recalling past iterations or noticing any small differences). it's not like we know enough about consciousness or how the universe works to rule stuff like this out.

Afaik that is a thought experiment about a universe where while time is infinite, different arrangements of matter aren't. Apart from the issue with whether there is any smallest amount of matter than can react to form something different, it is easy to examine in a small scale, for example if your universe consisted of 3 objects that can be arranged in pairs (and you can't have more of any of the three objects, so they can't react to a copy of themselves), with primacy in the pair being a factor (AB is not the same as BA) the arrangements would repeat after merely 6 pairings.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Afaik that is a thought experiment about a universe where while time is infinite, different arrangements of matter aren't. Apart from the issue with whether there is any smallest amount of matter than can react to form something different, it is easy to examine in a small scale, for example if your universe consisted of 3 objects that can be arranged in pairs (and you can't have more of any of the three objects, so they can't react to a copy of themselves), with primacy in the pair being a factor (AB is not the same as BA) the arrangements would repeat after merely 6 pairings.

that assumes they would repeat, which we don't know. entropy is all we observe, but the big bang happened in the first place somehow.

but yes, if we assume infinite time (in the sense that we conceptualize it) + something that somehow offsets entropy (???) we'd expect an (eventual) repeat of experiences/positions (plus many more that are closely similar but not quite).

 

[citizenofdoom]

I don't understand how reincarnation can possibly work without a supreme being of some sort, some sort of architect deciding which souls go into which bodies, etc. Yet Buddhists don't believe in a god. So who set up this framework that sorts souls and puts them in the right bodies, and who maintains this infrastructure? Who's making the decisions?

If imagine all or some objects in the world have an intrinsic capacity to "think", and the brain is just a unique structure thing that is able to carry out the needed computation.
An object can be arbitrary, maybe there exists something smaller than quarks that is actually your soul?
And by random chance, your thing appeared to be in the right position that can control your brain that controls your body.
And maybe, that small thing controls your brain by streaming an infinite amount of information in an interval of time, and your brain acts like a computer that processes it?
If I remember my high school chemistry class right, electron moves like teleporting in space with probability approximated by some orbital shape.
Like this?

So in just a very small interval of time, size|set of <list of positions> of that one electron of that small Hydro atom| is infinite. It makes a single electron of a small atom capable of generate a lot of information to me.
So let assume we actually believe in this bs religion I made in 8 minutes and one more thing: your "soul" particle adopts a Brownian motion.
So it will be more likely to end up in the right brain spot in the place near your death, where your brain become ill-functioned.
So people that do good deeds making the living society better. That also includes cows, birds, ~fried~ chickens count too.
It will affect your expected future soul-home.
And ofc, people who commit sin will be more likely to end up in the land they screwed(by a little).
Wow, then it makes sense that good souls go in good bodies, bad souls go in bad bodies.
Imagine this was what the Buddha thought when he found the religion.

 

[warpus]

Some interesting points being made in this thread!

I always liked Buddhism, but the universe having a mechanism in place (or our souls having that mechanism) to make all of that (i.e. reincarnation) work just seemed like.. well, suspect. I have read all your thoughts and it still seems suspect to me. How would a system like that evolve on its own? Am I making the faulty "watchmaker" argument that creatonists sometimes use, but in a different context?

I can't decide. So I'm open minded to reincarnation, but presently I don't see a solid explanation for how that could all be set up like that, without somebody setting it up (and maintaining it or leaving somebody to maintain & operate it)

Life appears to be a physical process that can be studied from life to death, with no evidence of a soul, as an object or entity that exists separate from every other part of the human anatomy & physiology. If there's more to the human body & our consciousness than meets the eye, then we have to continue researching related disciplines until we figure out how more of it (the human brain) works..

We don't really know that much about our brains, I don't think.. in the grand scheme of things.. I wouldn't be surprised if there was all sorts of weird stuff happening that we don't know about yet.. but without any evidence, it's hard for me to point to something ambiguous like a soul and imply that there is a mechanism in place somehow that transfers souls based on your goody points in life. For me it's like walking into a magical tent with clockworks turning everywhere, and somehow it all works, but nobody designed it and nobody maintains it.

Which of course sounds an awful lot like the watchmaker fallacy, but.. having thought about it some more now, the difference is that reincarnation is a bit of an extraordinary claim. We have figured out how the species evolved and how humans came to be. It's a complex process that's at times hard to grasp at the timescales it operates on.. but it's all 100% logical and can be written out on paper. So yeah, it seems suspicious that all life just "magically came to be randomly somehow".. but that's not exactly what happened... It's a whole bunch of scientific principles & concepts working together, at various times, and eventually you end up with humans. In our case at least..

So there's nothing extraordinary there.. It's counter-intuitive at best.

Reincarnation on the other hand, and the mechanisms, safeguards, and other support apparatus required for reincarnation to work as described.. seems like an extremely extraordinary claim, with exactly zero evidence. And this is why the comparison of my point to the clockmaker fallacy would not hold ground (probably)

There, I've convinced myself. I might not have convinced anybody reading though (but that's ok)

 

[Birdjaguar]

The universe does work in some way but exactly how is still unclear to many people. Over time folks have offered up lots of different solutions to explain things. Most people make doo with some framework of explanation that suits their way of thinking and life. For some it is strictly a science based model rooted in rationality. for others it is solely faith (of some sort) based in which science is secondary. And still others work to blend the two. We each get to choose and change over time without ever knowing (in the science context) if we are correct. Christianity, just like Hinduism and Buddhism has fragmented into many different sects and offshoots that many answers can be found and they may not agree at all. We all in some way have to choose what we are willing to accept as true (or possible) as our assumptions about existence. From there one can build some version of existence that feels correct and useful and includes all the parts we feel need to be included. Things like:

• All of science
• Some of science
• Spirituality (however one defines it)
• A physical god that interacts with people
• The physical universe is real and all there is
• There is more than just the physical universe
• The supernatural
• Souls
• Consciousness
• Fate/karma
• Purpose
• etc.

We get to pick and choose which to include and by what criteria we allow ourselves add them as part of our thinking. Some might be seen as mutually exclusive. As soon as one chooses one's assumptions about what is possible or how one knows what is possible, one's path is set and often the end of the search will be already defines. For example, if one chooses that nothing except the physical observable universe exists, then many things disappear from one's choices and a worldview is mostly set. The fundamental assumptions of many Eastern religions allow a variety of things that Western religions don't.

 

[warpus]

We get to pick and choose which to include and by what criteria we allow ourselves add them as part of our thinking.

I realize this, but I am approaching this from the pov that we are after verifiable truth here. Otherwise your truth will differ from my truth, will differ from another poster's truth, and so on, and then we can't even discuss what we're trying to discuss, because everybody's assuming completely different starting axioms.

I agree it's important to build your own world view based on things that make sense to you, and that doesn't always align with verifiable fact, even for me.. But this is a completely different question from.. "Hey so, let's discuss reincarnation and if it might actually exist or not"

While world religions and other such philosophies provide an interesting context & commentary on the possibilities, they do not provide us any answers in terms of whether reincarnation exists or what it is. The religions simply state these things as fact. Which is fine for spiritual purposes, but not if you are trying to figure out what something is and how it might work.. the hows and whys, which the approach I am using when looking at the possibility of reincarnation. From my pov, it makes sense to look at it as any other potential phenomena - let's study it, collect data, and analyze it to see if we can draw any meaningful conclusions. I agree 100% that if you are a spiritual person discussing reincarnation from a faith-based POV, the conversation would be completely different (and perfectly fine too)

 

[Birdjaguar]

I realize this, but I am approaching this from the pov that we are after verifiable truth here. Otherwise your truth will differ from my truth, will differ from another poster's truth, and so on, and then we can't even discuss what we're trying to discuss, because everybody's assuming completely different starting axioms.

I agree it's important to build your own world view based on things that make sense to you, and that doesn't always align with verifiable fact, even for me.. But this is a completely different question from.. "Hey so, let's discuss reincarnation and if it might actually exist or not"

While world religions and other such philosophies provide an interesting context & commentary on the possibilities, they do not provide us any answers in terms of whether reincarnation exists or what it is. The religions simply state these things as fact. Which is fine for spiritual purposes, but not if you are trying to figure out what something is and how it might work.. the hows and whys, which the approach I am using when looking at the possibility of reincarnation. From my pov, it makes sense to look at it as any other potential phenomena - let's study it, collect data, and analyze it to see if we can draw any meaningful conclusions. I agree 100% that if you are a spiritual person discussing reincarnation from a faith-based POV, the conversation would be completely different (and perfectly fine too)

From your perspective then, one of seeking verifiable proof of being true, you will cross off everything that reaches into any non physical universe. You can figure out what that leaves you to investigate and what you cannot. The only home runs will inside the park ones. Certainly no current religion will fit.

 

[citizenofdoom]

I realize this, but I am approaching this from the pov that we are after verifiable truth here. Otherwise your truth will differ from my truth, will differ from another poster's truth, and so on, and then we can't even discuss what we're trying to discuss, because everybody's assuming completely different starting axioms.

I would disagree.
The process of "science", in my opinion, is not as concrete as you think.
We receive some observations, then we try to generalize our observations, and then we construct a model to approximate truth.
Let's say "theory of gravity". Does gravity force vector exist in real life? No, it's Newton's construction to approximate the fact object falls, and other observations related to it.
Oh and somehow it does generalize to planets.
Seems true until some guys called Einstein appeared.
Is something unobservable like string theory considered science? Maybe.
Is it currently verifiable? No.
To me, science is just a modern approach to religion.
Religion in the past and its theology is just a human construction of that one fact: we, humans, exist and have self-consciousness.
And deep down, we know something or some abstract non-thing exist that represents us some unknown how in some unknown way that helps us having some unknown sense of control.
And according to quantum physics I saw in the internet, our world is not deterministic, or that's just our observations are not deterministic.
And it's okay to construct many things that are fundamentally different, that arrive at the same result.
If I recall correctly, there are like X number of theories of everything.
And religion is that you believe something is right, and you devote yourself to find proof that it's right or to fix your religion(example: Reformation)
It's not very surprising if there are some aliens come to Earth, then tell humans that "All of your understanding/theories about the world you live in are fundamentally wrong."
--------------
Brief notes about what religious belief I currently follow:
- World revolves around life. What is considered life depends on some unknown classification process. A lifeless table could have some minimalistic consciousness that's unknown.
- I know I have self-consciousness since I'm some unknown thing that some unknown how controls my brain that controls my body . I saw other bodies that look similar to my own body(example: humans). They are likely to have consciousness too but I'm not very sure if that's the case.
- The world we live in could be created either by a figure(called god?) wielding unlimited or limited power or it's just the mere concept that defines our world.
- If the world we live in created by a figure(god) wielding unlimited power(unlikely tho), that figure is a criminal against humanity, and humans someday will be able to testify that figure, made that figure receive capital punishment.

This is the human law stating what is crime against humanity:
(a) Murder;
(b) Extermination;
(c) Enslavement;
(d) Deportation or forcible transfer of population;
(e) Imprisonment or other severe deprivation of physical liberty in violation of fundamental rules of international law;
(f) Torture;
(g) Rape, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution, forced pregnancy, enforced sterilization, or any other form of sexual violence of comparable gravity;
(h) Persecution against any identifiable group or collectivity on political, racial, national, ethnic, cultural, religious, gender as defined in paragraph 3, or other grounds that are universally recognized as impermissible under international law, in connection with any act referred to in this paragraph or any crime within the jurisdiction of the Court;
(i) Enforced disappearance of persons;
(j) The crime of apartheid;
(k) Other inhumane acts of a similar character intentionally causing great suffering, or serious injury to body or to mental or physical health;

That god if wielding unlimited power, created a world with limited resources, which is torturing every human ever lived in such a flawed world. If that's fun to observe human life like that, given you have unlimited power, it's enslavement.
It doesn't mean that I'm anti-religion. I pay my full respect to people who found religions and created a great unity between humans.

 

[EvaDK]

To me, science is just a modern approach to religion.

Science is based on experiments, objective facts and verifiable truths; science is a discipline that accepts and embraces its own fallacy.
Religion is neither of the above; religion is subjective and belief based. Religion has historically been very poor at explaining and accepting fallacies, within its own narrative/tenets.

Science is mostly about discovering *how*, while religion is mostly preoccupied with answering *why*.

 

[citizenofdoom]

Science is mostly about discovering *how*

But isn't that what you don't know?
You had to devise a set of rules, or axioms, whatever it called that you feel natural and somehow magically fits every of your observation.
It's still belief-based. Axioms are those beliefs. And it magically somehow fits your dataset.
And "science is based on experiment" is based.
Because there exists non-experimental science, such as math.
Experimental math is dead in Babylon(or maybe it reformed into machine learning?)
---------------
Anyway, your observation lead me to think something.
That religion kinda revolves between somewhere thought to be starting point. (god and stuff)
That starting point likely flow through an infinite series of transformation function to the observable world.
The observable world is the subject of scientific research, both to understand it and expand it.
So with the knowledge of human's observable world, one may try to guess the starting point and its transformation functions.
Like it's the distribution of <starting state, transformation function> given current human knowledge about the observable world.
So it should be naturally for people in the past theorized about <god+empty, action god did> pair of starting point and transformation function.
If that's the case, I believe there's a duality of science and religion since current human knowledge about the observable world expands.
If my guess is right, religion should become closer and closer to the true truth.
That the faster science advances, the faster religion develops?
But that doesn't seem like the case.
What ceases people to theorize about that pair <starting state, transformation function>?
Would be nice if you(or someone) answer it for me.