There is no “they”. After you die, there is no existence, there is no “you” to be reincarnated. Nothing is floating around anywhere waiting for anything.
Of course it doesn’t make sense to you, it doesn’t make sense to me either, it is outside our human experience because to experience something we must exist therefore it is not possible to experience non-existence or imagine it in any meaningful way. It is the opposite of “I think, therefore I am”.
Just because something doesn’t make sense, doesn’t mean it is wrong. The universe doesn’t have to behave in a way that makes sense to us.
Yes being dead forever means forever in the long term. When you die the universe ends for you and never comes back, ever.
The statement that being dead is like before you were born is only meant to help you grasp the concept of non-existence, nothing more than that.
It seems that you are struggling with the concept of inevitable and permanent death. Welcome to the club, entire religions are invented around our fear of death and the unknown. Don’t think about it too hard because it will only keep you awake at night, just make the most of the time you have.
The only reincarnation you can reasonably expect is for your molecules to be incorporated in to other objects and lifeforms, eventually to be swallowed by our dying sun and ejected into space, perhaps to become part of another star system. Even allowing for that, the universe itself may eventually end and every atom that makes up your body will cease to exist.
This reminds me of a series of SciFi books I read where a major plot point was that an alien race had discovered the secret of the universe. Expecting this to be revealed as something really cool and thought provoking, I was quite disappointed when it turned out to be that existence is pointless. Isn’t that obvious? I thought. It’s not exactly a big reveal.
That’s another SF concept that doesn’t really mean anything–being from or going to “another dimension”. Imagine that you live in flatland–does it make sense for someone living there where there are only 2 dimensions (left/right and forwards/back) to imagine that when they die, they go to “up/down”? Not to a place that is above or below them, but “to” the directions themselves? It is gibberish applied to flatlanders and it is gibberish applied to us.
I’ll side with the OP a little on this topic. If we define our “selves” as a pattern in a sea of matter and energy, then we have to accept that our pattern is a possible occurrence of the universe. Can this pattern arise again in the future? I think that yes this is possible with a couple of assumptions. The first assumption is that the universe or “multiverse” is infinite. The second is there is a mechanism in place as a counter to entropy. I have no idea if any of these assumptions are true, but if so, we see countless examples of repeating patterns in the universe and even a pattern as complicated as yourself could come back into form given enough time and energy.
Well, you’re not wrong here, the chances against any particular individual existing are astronomical. And yet, here we are.
If there were 100 trillion people, and we picked out one particular person to give a cookie too, the chances of any particular person getting a cookie are 100 trillion to 1. But someone gets a cookie.
of course.
so your problem is that i missed used a word? that i should have said something - like from a realm that contains more of different dimensions than our own and so therefore they dont experience time in the same way that we do? that i used a type of shorthand that is widely used and widely understood, but is nonetheless imprecise? this is why you dismiss someone’s contribution to a philosophical discussion as gibberish?
i repeat my statement. it must be hard for you to know so much and be surrounded by fools.
so, you’re saying that something that one humor author wrote 15 yrs ago holds more weight for you than a concept that billions of people have seriously considered for thousands of years? it must be satisfying to know that you have it all figured out.