Should people who claim to be reincarnated and have facts that are verified, be allowed to continue their past lives?
As in live as the same person that they claimed they were before they died?
Lets say the person who makes the reincarnation claim knows facts that can be verified and even knows the occupation of the other “past person” and including details like their SSN, email accounts, friends, family, etc.
Reincarnation has never been scientifically proven, and it never can be. But if someone who believes it knows enough information shouldn’t they be allowed to continue who they claim to use to be?
They can continue to be the person they claim to be in every sense but a legal one. That’s because they aren’t the person they claim to be. Even they really are reincarnated there’s no way to prove it so legally it’s no different than pretending. And that will make you look foolish and mentally unbalanced so even if you believe without doubt that you are reincarnated you might as well pretend to be the new person and say that you* feel *like you are the reincarnation of your past self. Or don’t bring it up at all since no else actually cares except you.
You begin a new life so you can experience new things, or similar things from a different perspective; the whole point is that you learn and grow, to inch closer to enlightenment. To continue on a previous life is to completely miss the point.
People are fighting the hypothetical (and it’s ridiculous, so I get why).
But let’s say that reincarnation is real, and can be proven to happen beyond some reasonable scientific standard of doubt, but – as is the case now – it’s quite rare for people to recall past lives.
In that case, would we want the dead to be able to reclaim their pre-rebirth identities?
My answer is: I really don’t think so. If reincarnation is real but rarely provable, it has bad effects to recognize it as conferring legal rights. Also creates perverse incentives (like spending time and energy setting things up for your next-life self).
If reincarnation is real and commonly accepted as fact and continuous identity is easily proven, I don’t know how a society would deal with that – the details would matter a lot.
The OP specifies that reincarnation cannot be scientifically proven. If it was it would be an entirely different question. In that case the reincarnated person is still physically different from their predecessor so I wouldn’t lean toward considering them to be legally the same person, though there could be some legal steps in cases where through the cooperation of others they could resume their prior status such as in the case of spousal and parental relationships where all parties agree.
Even if you’re a Buddhist and believe in reincarnation, there is no claim that the current incarnation is continuing to live the previous life, nor any reason why one would want to. Reincarnated enlightened are believed to have voluntarily chosen to continue previously-begun work, but not to be continuing the same life. The two things are quite different.
Why would one want to continue living a previous life, and what is that supposed to mean when you are in a different body, are two things the OP would need to explain and define before any opinions can be formed.
Suppose a ten year old child is proven to be the reincarnation of somebody who died. And that person was married when they died. Is the child now married to their former spouse? What happens of their spouse got remarried in the ten years since the death? Are they now a bigamist?
Or suppose the child is the reincarnation of a prisoner who was ten years into a forty year sentence when they died. Do you put the child in prison to complete the remaining thirty years of their sentence?
If the person who died owed money, does the child now assume that debt? If a life insurance payment was made, does the child have to reimburse the insurance company now that they are alive again?
It seems that his non-scientific proof is intimate knowledge of the previous life. Sounds good, but without a way to prove it scientifically it could always be fraud or coincidence. So I consider that level of proof insufficient to accept someone as being the reincarnation of someone else. No matter how good it sounds the legal aspects of this can’t be ignored.
A person who has been reincarnated should be grateful for their new role, and do their best with it. Of course reincarnation is real, would Jimmy Webb, Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson, Waylon Jennings and Johnny Cash lie to you?
I think that in India at least, where they are far in advance of primitive Western civilization, if needed prominent Brahmins can be found to verify a reincarnation, as also can Buddhist monks for their persuasion.
If you don’t mind a brief digression, I’ve never understood why you start with a clean slate. If the idea is to learn and grow, shouldn’t you keep the empathy/wisdom that you presumably worked so hard to acquire last time 'round? Not the personal information. Or conversely, if you’re a slimeball and get reincarnated as a bug, shouldn’t you know why you’re a bug so you can learn from it?
The whole point about the idea of reincarnation is that you are getting a new life, nit a continuation of the previous one.
So, assuming one could prove it, no.you don’t inherit anything.
That doesn’t even take into consideration how many claimants to Cleopatra or Napoleon there will be, and how exactly to determine what exactly they would inherit…