If your memory and personality get wiped away every time you get reincarnated, then how can we say that that entity is “you”? It isn’t you anymore. You’re gone. That other person is no more you than your children are you.
A valid point, except that some people who indulge in memory retrieval through hypnotism claim that the memory isn’t actually “wiped away” but simply buried at a subconscious level.
I agree with those who say that who you were in a previous life is irrelevant to who you are now and, unless you were a pirate in a previous life who buried a ton of long forgotten treasure, finding out details of your previous life would be a fairly pointless exercise.
Actually, I’m disappointed that scientists, preferably those with an atheistic bent but able to assess evidence on its merits, are too bashful to conduct a proper set of experiments that might answer the question one way or another.
In the event that reincarnation is ever proved to be true then that might mean the end of religion as we know it (which would be a relief) and the world might split along two conflicting sets of beliefs, let us say between the “Statisticalists” - those who belief that reincarnation is random - versus the “Volitionalists” - those who believe that you can actively select your next reincarnation target.
Like ?
If you are referring to memories supposedly recovered from past lives, those were debunked long ago; they always turned out to be based on something the person already knew, or wrong, or so vague as to be meaningless.
Take a lump of iron. Make it into a gate. Melt it down and make it into a cannon. Melt it down again and make a statue. Then a construction girder. Then an engine. It doesn’t matter that it’s not the gate anymore; it’s the same iron.
I’m with you Der Trihs. It’s not viable, and even if it was, so what if you have no recollection?
But it does matter. That engine isn’t a gate, or a cannon, or a girder anymore; those are the equivalent of our identity, in this analogy. To make it match the question at hand more closely, if we melted down an intelligent robot into paperweights, are the paperweights the robot ? No; they are chunks of the same material the robot was made of, but the robot is gone.
Or to further the analogy, if you get eaten by a bear, do you become the bear? Your muscles and bones and organs are digested and some of your molecules become incorporated into the bear’s body. But you haven’t become a bear, you’re gone.
I recall reading a passage from one of the Hindu epics, in which a god speaks with a man. The god says, “We have both lived countless lives. The only difference between us is, I remember my past lives; you do not.”
Some sects believe that, when you are between incarnations, you can remember the past lives. If that were the case, then I would be happy to jump on the bandwagon.
Christianity and Buddhism are both based on the idea that the world is a rotten place, and your greatest goal is to escape from it. The problem is, I like the world. My biggest complaint against it is, I am not wealthy enough to indulge in more worldly vices. I would not mind getting another shot at it.
And if the memory wipe were permanent, well, I would be no worse off than I am now.
Only if I knew that my current life would somehow count in my future incarnation – like if I was certain that being a better person would give me a cushier gig next time around.
Otherwise, no.
I don’t understand what it even means. “I” am reincarnated. What part of me? If I haven’t had the same experiences in my life, and I don’t have a sense of continued continousness, what is actually the difference between a “reincarnated me” and, say, a friend of mine?
EDIT: And if the explanation depends on the word “soul”, I still wouldn’t understand it.
I keep thinking of a rock in a stream, positioned such that the water flowing over it creates a certain pattern of whorls and eddies. The stream dries out, and the rock is left high and dry. Then it rains, the water flows over it again, and the pattern of whorls and eddies returns.
Where did the pattern go while the stream was dry? Are the patterns you saw before and after the drought the same “thing”?
If that was an answer to me, what is the rock supposed to be in the metaphor?
What, indeed.
I remember seeing a documentary about some bat cave in Borneo or somewhere and there were these coprophagous insects of some sort who spend their entire existence living in and feeding on bat guano. I thought to myself “God, I hope there’s no such thing as reincarnation, because knowing my luck…”
I’m gonna go oppo here and say I’d be happy about it–assuming I don’t have to pay for my wicked life by becoming a tree slug or something.
Even if I don’t remember my past lives, it’d at least mean there wasn’t only an eternity of NOTHING after the big sleep. There’s something intriguing about the concept of living as different beings in different places and times across the multiverse. If it were proven, I think I’d be able to go about my life without having that nagging feeling of ultimate dread at the thought of dying.
What would the difference be between a tree slug who is you and a tree slug who is not you?
In literature, the whole purpose of reincarnation is to allow all kinds of hints from past lives to leak through, messing with your life in plot supporting ways. I think I’d find that interesting. Having a life that comes with pre-installed easter eggs would be like a my own personal treasure hunt.
There could be past life research clubs. Online past life geneologies. You and your cousin could argue about which one of you is *really *the reincarnation of Great Aunt Nell. It could be cool.
But then those insects are all saying: “Mmmmmm, bat shit. It just doesn’t get any better than this, guys.”
If, in a next life, you became the lover of your granddaughter from a previous life, would this count as incest?
To the people who say it makes no difference because you can’t remember it: Do you feel the same way about your early childhood? Because you no longer remember it, is it meaningless? Do you believe that it might as well have been a different person, that there is no difference between what happened to “you” and what happened to “someone else” at that age?
Pretty much, yeah. Even though I know whatever happened probably had some sort of influence on my present-day self, I wouldn’t know that, or know what it was, so yeah.