That low? I thought that many live in China alone today!
Here’s a link to the article in question.
The pertinent line is:
So you’re out by a factor of up to nearly 100, which is a fairly big error.
It’s usually said that there are 6 billion people alive on earth today. There is now somewhat more than that according to Worldometers site. The rate of increase also gives pause for thought.
One of my favorite college courses was all about debunking myths and pseudo-science, and learning critical thinking techniques. The professor was fond of saying that a good argument against reincarntion is that “there aren’t enough dead people.”
I’m a little sorry to learn she was mistaken.
As far as I know, all the people since the dawn of time have lived on Earth.
But where do you draw a line and say “From now on all your descendants are people and, sorry ancestors, you are too primitive to be included”?
I guess then the answer to “How many people have lived on earth since the dawn of time?” hinges on the answer to “When, exactly, is the dawn of time?”
Or “How do you define people?” but in affect they are the same question.
The reasoning still basically applies, you just have to be a little bit careful with the wording. There are more human beings currently roaming the earth than there have ever been at a single point in time, so we can’t all have recycled souls.
I am not following you reasoning. Talking Cecil’s lower number of 69 billion people. Subtract 6 billion from that gives 63 billion dead people plenty for every body today to have a recycled soul. Certainly at some point there must have been a first time for each soul but there is no reason that the first time for all souls in people today could not have been in the past.
All of them. 
Yes, but presumably it would be a system that works in a consistent fashion. For the system to be sustainable new souls have to be continually added as the population grows. Therefore any given person could potentially have a “new soul”, and given the rate of population growth in the last 60 years we would expect this to be a significant fraction of humanity, maybe 50% or more, unless the entire system was set up to favour this particular moment in history.
Why do you think your previous incarnations were human? If I by some freak of spirit can remember any previous lives, being human doesn’t seem to have been a major trend. I was most memorably some kind of butterfly before this, I suspect. And presumably an annelid many many times.
Well obviously this reasoning only applies to a belief in human-only reincarnation, eg. pretty much every woman was Cleopatra in a past life, or so they are told by certain psychics.
I prefer C. S. Lewis’s argument against reincarnation. “God is not a clown who whips away your bowl of soup only to replace it with another bowl of the same soup.”
So it’s a strawman. Perhaps that was why it was included in a class “all about debunking myths and pseudo-science, and learning critical thinking techniques”. Only students who spotted it for what it was got an “A”.
Nobody in the history of the world has ever believed in human only reincarnation have they?
Lewis was preaching to the choir, so his arguments tended to this sort of weakness. Believers in reincarnation point out even human lives are as different from one another as humans are from angels.
It’s like Lewis’ argument that Jesus was either crazy and not worth listening to, or he was the messiah. False dichotomy much?
Ford, Twain, Franklin, and Patton believed they were reincarnated, why I don’t have the information for. The list is pretty interesting. I dont buy it, but would be interested in their reasoning.
Ford was not remotely qualified as a philosopher.
Twain was not remotely qualified as a philosopher.
Patton was not remotely qualified as a philosopher.
As to Franklin, I’ve just spent some time googling on ‘“Benjamin Franklin” reincarnation’ and I can find only unsupported assertions and manifest lies.
Cleopatra was also reincarnated as an alley cat who was often quoted by a cockroach in The Evening Sun.
What, prey tell, makes one “qualified” as a philosopher? A Ph.D.? Is there some certifying body? Do you have to sit for an exam? Maybe a séance? How does one tell that one philosopher is “better” than another?
I don’t believe at all in reincarnation, whether as or from some non-human life form, but should I be impressed if a “qualified” philosopher says otherwise? Would Shirley McClain count?
http://www.jstor.org/pss/25057231
I belive this book/article is the source.