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Topic: Do you believe in Reincarnation? (Read 4060 times)

full member
Activity: 154
Merit: 100
Don't dwell in the past, don't dream of the future
January 27, 2013, 06:06:23 AM
#64
If you answer yes:
1) Do you think there are more or less souls than there are living things on the earth suitable for reincarnation?
2) In other words, would there be a "queue" a soul would have to wait in before getting back in the game?
3) What do you think is the ratio of souls to suitable vehicles for "incarnation"?

I've just never really taken the idea seriously so if these are dumb questions sorry.

1) Do you think there are more or less souls than there are living things on the earth suitable for reincarnation?

I'm a Buddhist; I believe that it depends on what you do in life. I think some people are capable of coming back. Some people will re-incarnate into something that is more than physical and not inhabit a body.

2) In other words, would there be a "queue" a soul would have to wait in before getting back in the game?

In a Buddhist prospective, no. There are multiple levels of re-incarnation depended on how much good karma you had in your life and how much enlightenment you received. Here are the different levels explained. You can go up and down in rank of existence based on merit. Here is a rank of lowest existence to highest.

1. Beings in Hell - The lowest and worst realm, wracked by torture and characterized by aggression.  
2.Hungry Ghosts - characterized by great craving and eternal starvation
3.Animals - animals and livestock, characterized by stupidity and servitude.
5.Humans - both good and evil; enlightenment is within their grasp, yet most are blinded and consumed by their desires.  
4.Asura -anger, jealousy, and constant war; the Asura (Ashura) are demigods, semi-blessed beings; they are powerful, fierce and quarrelsome; like humans, they are partly good and partly evil.
 6.Deva  - heavenly beings filled with pleasure; the deva hold godlike powers; some reign over celestial kingdoms; most live in delightful happiness and splendor; they live for countless ages

3) What do you think is the ratio of souls to suitable vehicles for "incarnation"?

Like I said before, I think this doesn’t matter. Everything re-incarnates. If there were no more physical vessels left I would assume that we would all be stuck in the top 2 and bottom 2 of the scale and still re-incarnate between the 4 because of free-will.
hero member
Activity: 812
Merit: 1000
January 26, 2013, 01:24:38 PM
#63

David Chalmers gets mentioned so many times, and I engage in conversations about his work to various people, so I have no idea if we've discussed him before. Have you read him (and his 1996 book)?

Not yet, but I've been thinking about getting round to it sometime. Cheesy

Now would be the time.
hero member
Activity: 775
Merit: 1000
January 25, 2013, 06:20:47 AM
#62

David Chalmers gets mentioned so many times, and I engage in conversations about his work to various people, so I have no idea if we've discussed him before. Have you read him (and his 1996 book)?

Not yet, but I've been thinking about getting round to it sometime. Cheesy
hero member
Activity: 812
Merit: 1000
January 24, 2013, 11:48:01 PM
#61
When does 'you' stop becoming you, before you die, when you undergo certain events?
blaah... blaah....
......blaah...

Absolutely fascinating read! Definitly some interesting things to think about.

Thanks! I'm still thinking about the Halting problem and the rejection of Physicalism, though. My reasoning might have been a bit weak -- some counterarguments:
-our human 'OS' has evolved to get so many interrupts from our chaotic environment that we never get stuck on anything for too long.
-we are creatures of habit and we do get stuck in loops. It's just that we don't care, or we just can't see them from the inside.
- (I read on someone's blog but lost the link) even if we had a 'magic' interrupt/reset circuit, it would create paradoxical possibilities and we would still need additional tiers to break free.

So my back-up argument is: qualia Grin We somehow feel all those feelings, smell various smells, see what we see, hear what we hear, taste what we taste, and so on, even though none of those things exist outside of our minds. Our complete inability to objectively communicate any of those things hints at a non-physical basis for them.

David Chalmers gets mentioned so many times, and I engage in conversations about his work to various people, so I have no idea if we've discussed him before. Have you read him (and his 1996 book)?
full member
Activity: 126
Merit: 100
January 24, 2013, 06:22:40 PM
#60
18,000 worlds. That's really interesting.  .
full member
Activity: 126
Merit: 100
January 24, 2013, 06:17:03 PM
#59
Really??
full member
Activity: 126
Merit: 100
January 24, 2013, 06:16:05 PM
#58
My bad i thought it said "words"  not "worlds" my bad.
Sorry.
full member
Activity: 126
Merit: 100
January 24, 2013, 10:36:21 AM
#57
Quote
Ehyeh-Asher-Ehyeh (often contracted in English as "I AM") is one of the Seven Names of God accorded special care by medieval Jewish tradition
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_that_I_Am

Enki is a god in Sumerian mythology, later known as Ea in Akkadian and Babylonian mythology.

1)Enki lives in a paradise until he eats a bad plant against the warnings of the other gods.

2)Enki was responsible for fashioning the first man from clay.

3)Enki was responsible for introducing multiple languages.

4)Enki was responsible for saving humanity from a great flood


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enki

Yeh that is some nice stuff bitcoincoinbitcoinbit. Summerians is some really interesting stuff suprizingly we neve get taught about these people in schoolwe get taught about the egyptians the romans the greeks but not summerians  Huh These people laid the foundation of civilization. Schools laws farming you name it.  This is where the first real societies were formed  as we know them today plus a whole frigin other heap 0f basics like structuring the concept of time into minutes seconds and hours etc. and brewing beer .. Oh of course they also believed in aliens or at least mention them and describe them. And they laid the groundworks for the bible 2 thousand years later, In fact i think that Abraham was from the land or area of summer.
I guess that why it is never taught in class.

The Jewish Talmud claims there are over 18,000 worlds.
Relevance?
hero member
Activity: 775
Merit: 1000
January 24, 2013, 10:05:41 AM
#56
When does 'you' stop becoming you, before you die, when you undergo certain events?
blaah... blaah....
......blaah...

Absolutely fascinating read! Definitly some interesting things to think about.

Thanks! I'm still thinking about the Halting problem and the rejection of Physicalism, though. My reasoning might have been a bit weak -- some counterarguments:
-our human 'OS' has evolved to get so many interrupts from our chaotic environment that we never get stuck on anything for too long.
-we are creatures of habit and we do get stuck in loops. It's just that we don't care, or we just can't see them from the inside.
- (I read on someone's blog but lost the link) even if we had a 'magic' interrupt/reset circuit, it would create paradoxical possibilities and we would still need additional tiers to break free.

So my back-up argument is: qualia Grin We somehow feel all those feelings, smell various smells, see what we see, hear what we hear, taste what we taste, and so on, even though none of those things exist outside of our minds. Our complete inability to objectively communicate any of those things hints at a non-physical basis for them.
newbie
Activity: 56
Merit: 0
January 24, 2013, 12:52:56 AM
#55
Quote
Ehyeh-Asher-Ehyeh (often contracted in English as "I AM") is one of the Seven Names of God accorded special care by medieval Jewish tradition
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_that_I_Am

Enki is a god in Sumerian mythology, later known as Ea in Akkadian and Babylonian mythology.

1)Enki lives in a paradise until he eats a bad plant against the warnings of the other gods.

2)Enki was responsible for fashioning the first man from clay.

3)Enki was responsible for introducing multiple languages.

4)Enki was responsible for saving humanity from a great flood


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enki

Yeh that is some nice stuff bitcoincoinbitcoinbit. Summerians is some really interesting stuff suprizingly we neve get taught about these people in schoolwe get taught about the egyptians the romans the greeks but not summerians  Huh These people laid the foundation of civilization. Schools laws farming you name it.  This is where the first real societies were formed  as we know them today plus a whole frigin other heap 0f basics like structuring the concept of time into minutes seconds and hours etc. and brewing beer .. Oh of course they also believed in aliens or at least mention them and describe them. And they laid the groundworks for the bible 2 thousand years later, In fact i think that Abraham was from the land or area of summer.
I guess that why it is never taught in class.

The Jewish Talmud claims there are over 18,000 worlds.
hero member
Activity: 527
Merit: 500
January 24, 2013, 12:09:53 AM
#54
Quote
Everyone is the same thing. The chair your sitting on is just as much of you as your arm. Everything in the universe is made of things in the universe, meaning we all are one... Interesting to think about.

I believe in reincarnation in that sense, as we are all the same thing. Its kind of like all living things are the universe seeing itself in different perspectives.

So your toilet won't flush. What action do you take? How is this action related to your philosophy?

There is no separate entity "I" that can take any action. Action will happen, but the idea that there is a separate "me" doing it is just a thought.
hero member
Activity: 728
Merit: 500
January 23, 2013, 10:44:59 PM
#53
Quote
Everyone is the same thing. The chair your sitting on is just as much of you as your arm. Everything in the universe is made of things in the universe, meaning we all are one... Interesting to think about.

I believe in reincarnation in that sense, as we are all the same thing. Its kind of like all living things are the universe seeing itself in different perspectives.

So your toilet won't flush. What action do you take? How is this action related to your philosophy?
newbie
Activity: 28
Merit: 0
January 23, 2013, 10:38:49 PM
#52
When does 'you' stop becoming you, before you die, when you undergo certain events?

I believe that the real you (or in my case, me) is some kind of metaphysical observer stuck inside an automaton. The automaton is obviously human, but without you in there, it would be a philosophical zombie -- an empty shell that eats, breathes, claims to feel pain, ages, maybe even evolves, but there's nobody at the wheel.

If there's nobody at the wheel, the human/automaton must always act according to some program, and this is known to be problematic. The person's overarching operating system or algorithm would be faced with the Halting Problem. It would sometimes crash and therefore have to be periodically rebooted... by something else! But by what? Reset circuitry is not foolproof either -- it's still part of the system. What if that gets stuck in an infinite loop and the whole thing has to be rebooted? There could be a long chain of reset circuits, and they all get stuck in a recursive loop! Therefore, at the end of the chain, there still has to be something else -- some conscious being that is capable of breaking the loop by being illogical.

Thus we can safely reject Physicalism and continue searching for that "something else", which is you.

If we look into Kurt Goedel's work and his incredible understanding of the language of mathematics, we begin to understand the limits of science. For whatever model of reality we work with, 1) there must be something outside of the model, 2) that something can't be explained inside the model. The link ^^ goes for the god/deity angle to explain that something, but with a little bit of effort I think it can equally be interpreted as the real you.

I find it fascinating that depending on how you look at the world, you can be either infinitely small or infinitely big. If you trust your senses and take their inputs as gospel, then you're just a tiny little consciousness, stuck inside a biological being, crawling on a mediocre planet, in a generic solar system, in some galaxy floating around in a vast universe. But if you don't trust the empirical evidence of your senses, you are the only thing you really know exists, and the entire universe is just a bit of imagination housed in your mind.

Reincarnation?

First there would have to be 'death' -- that purported phenomenon that happens to lots of other people, assuming that we take the empirical evidence of our senses as gospel. It's pretty obvious that everyone else dies, but how do you know you're not just imagining everyone else? Perhaps death is what happens to your body when 'you' head for the exits?

There would have to be 'birth'. As far as I'm concerned, my birth was an infinitely long time ago. I don't even know if it really happened. Maybe I've always existed? It seems preposterous that something could 'create' me, let alone a mundane biological mechanism with blood and guts everywhere!

There would have to be something that survives biological death, and gets "plugged back into the Matrix" at some time around birth or gestation. However, in addition to that, those 2 entities would have to be somehow connected. Overall I think the jury is still out on that.

Absolutely fascinating read! Definitly some interesting things to think about.
newbie
Activity: 28
Merit: 0
January 23, 2013, 10:04:07 PM
#51
Everyone is the same thing. The chair your sitting on is just as much of you as your arm. Everything in the universe is made of things in the universe, meaning we all are one... Interesting to think about.

I believe in reincarnation in that sense, as we are all the same thing. Its kind of like all living things are the universe seeing itself in different perspectives.
full member
Activity: 126
Merit: 100
January 23, 2013, 06:27:25 PM
#50
Quote
Ehyeh-Asher-Ehyeh (often contracted in English as "I AM") is one of the Seven Names of God accorded special care by medieval Jewish tradition
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_that_I_Am

Enki is a god in Sumerian mythology, later known as Ea in Akkadian and Babylonian mythology.

1)Enki lives in a paradise until he eats a bad plant against the warnings of the other gods.

2)Enki was responsible for fashioning the first man from clay.

3)Enki was responsible for introducing multiple languages.

4)Enki was responsible for saving humanity from a great flood


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enki

Yeh that is some nice stuff bitcoincoinbitcoinbit. Summerians is some really interesting stuff suprizingly we neve get taught about these people in schoolwe get taught about the egyptians the romans the greeks but not summerians  Huh These people laid the foundation of civilization. Schools laws farming you name it.  This is where the first real societies were formed  as we know them today plus a whole frigin other heap 0f basics like structuring the concept of time into minutes seconds and hours etc. and brewing beer .. Oh of course they also believed in aliens or at least mention them and describe them. And they laid the groundworks for the bible 2 thousand years later, In fact i think that Abraham was from the land or area of summer.
I guess that why it is never taught in class.
hero member
Activity: 728
Merit: 500
January 23, 2013, 01:47:14 PM
#49
Quote
Ehyeh-Asher-Ehyeh (often contracted in English as "I AM") is one of the Seven Names of God accorded special care by medieval Jewish tradition
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_that_I_Am

Enki is a god in Sumerian mythology, later known as Ea in Akkadian and Babylonian mythology.

1)Enki lives in a paradise until he eats a bad plant against the warnings of the other gods.

2)Enki was responsible for fashioning the first man from clay.

3)Enki was responsible for introducing multiple languages.

4)Enki was responsible for saving humanity from a great flood


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enki
hero member
Activity: 775
Merit: 1000
January 23, 2013, 07:29:05 AM
#48
...Each human is really just a manifestation of the same fundamental reality. A vessel thought which god experiences itself.

You equate God with man? Heresy! Burn him! Cheesy

John 17:

"That they all may be one, as thou, Father, in me, and I in thee; that they also may be one in us; that the world may believe that thou hast sent me."

Also, I think the biblical god tried to tell the people they were god when he told Moses his name was "I AM".

Exodus 3:

God said to Moses, “I am who I am. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘"I AM" has sent me to you.’”

However this has been treated as heresy and subversion for this longest time. The Jews have gone as far as barring people from saying the verse as intended.

Nice!
So a few decent philosophical ideas managed to slip past the censors.
newbie
Activity: 56
Merit: 0
January 23, 2013, 07:05:55 AM
#47
Wrong question.

All there is is the fundamental reality, "god" if you want. Consciousness is probably a better word. The world is a manifestation in consciousness, which is aware of all things.

You are not "you" or the body or the mind. You are consciousness, which is aware of the body/mind/experience.

The confusion comes from the ego. What this means is that the mind of your average human has this idea inside it that "I am this body" (or something similar) and simultaneously holds the idea that this is a true thought. As a consequence, this neural network/learning machine that is the human brain, behaves AS IF IT IS A BODY. This is all a deterministic process. Obviously a brain will behave according to what it believes.

The result is a phenomenon where every action that the body takes and every thought that it has is associated with the belief that "I" am the doer of this deed or "I" am the thinker of this thought. This then reinforces the belief that "I am this body". This is the ego. It is an illusion.

Consciousness is simply aware of this illusion; it is aware of the experience of believing you are a body. In an enlightened being, it is aware of it's true self as the fundamental reality.

There is no reincarnation. Each human is really just a manifestation of the same fundamental reality. A vessel thought which god experiences itself.

You equate God with man? Heresy! Burn him! Cheesy

John 17:

"That they all may be one, as thou, Father, in me, and I in thee; that they also may be one in us; that the world may believe that thou hast sent me."

Also, I think the biblical god tried to tell the people they were god when he told Moses his name was "I AM".

Exodus 3:

God said to Moses, “I am who I am. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘"I AM" has sent me to you.’”

However this has been treated as heresy and subversion for the longest time. Some Jews have gone as far as barring people from saying the verse as intended.
hero member
Activity: 775
Merit: 1000
January 23, 2013, 06:58:47 AM
#46
Wrong question.

All there is is the fundamental reality, "god" if you want. Consciousness is probably a better word. The world is a manifestation in consciousness, which is aware of all things.

You are not "you" or the body or the mind. You are consciousness, which is aware of the body/mind/experience.

The confusion comes from the ego. What this means is that the mind of your average human has this idea inside it that "I am this body" (or something similar) and simultaneously holds the idea that this is a true thought. As a consequence, this neural network/learning machine that is the human brain, behaves AS IF IT IS A BODY. This is all a deterministic process. Obviously a brain will behave according to what it believes.

The result is a phenomenon where every action that the body takes and every thought that it has is associated with the belief that "I" am the doer of this deed or "I" am the thinker of this thought. This then reinforces the belief that "I am this body". This is the ego. It is an illusion.

Consciousness is simply aware of this illusion; it is aware of the experience of believing you are a body. In an enlightened being, it is aware of it's true self as the fundamental reality.

There is no reincarnation. Each human is really just a manifestation of the same fundamental reality. A vessel thought which god experiences itself.

You equate God with man? Heresy! Burn him! Cheesy
hero member
Activity: 527
Merit: 500
January 23, 2013, 04:23:29 AM
#45
Wrong question.

All there is is the fundamental reality, "god" if you want. Consciousness is probably a better word. The world is a manifestation in consciousness, which is aware of all things.

You are not "you" or the body or the mind. You are consciousness, which is aware of the body/mind/experience.

The confusion comes from the ego. What this means is that the mind of your average human has this idea inside it that "I am this body" (or something similar) and simultaneously holds the idea that this is a true thought. As a consequence, this neural network/learning machine that is the human brain, behaves AS IF IT IS A BODY. This is all a deterministic process. Obviously a brain will behave according to what it believes.

The result is a phenomenon where every action that the body takes and every thought that it has is associated with the belief that "I" am the doer of this deed or "I" am the thinker of this thought. This then reinforces the belief that "I am this body". This is the ego. It is an illusion.

Consciousness is simply aware of this illusion; it is aware of the experience of believing you are a body. In an enlightened being, it is aware of it's true self as the fundamental reality.

There is no reincarnation. Each human is really just a manifestation of the same fundamental reality. A vessel thought which god experiences itself.
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