FALSE
HOPE OF REINCARNATION
REINCARNATION
Most believers in a life after death believe in reincarnation. The doctrine says that after we die we come back in new bodies. It is believed that we all lived before. Reincarnation is usually taken to refer to returning in a human body. Transmigration is the doctrine that you can come back as an animal.
Reincarnation and the doctrine of karma, that the suffering and good you send out of you returns to you later perhaps in a new incarnation, do not have to go together. You can be randomly reincarnated without karma. But anybody that wants to believe in reincarnation likes to hope that karma exists for they want to work for a good incarnation the next time round. Reincarnation with or without karma is a frightening doctrine, though it is ten times worse without it for you could come back as an AIDS baby and most people in the world are in a bad way.
Karma is a vile doctrine but perhaps it is untrue and we have chosen to be here?
Some think that when we are in the midst of unhappy lives now, we must not have chosen to be human and that since we survive death we must be subject to some law of reincarnation that forces us to be on earth instead of in some heavenly happiness.
But perhaps the mind which may exist without the body develops in the womb and then lives on after the death of the body without reincarnation.
It could be that we don’t know anything at all but sense that there is a body available when we are in between incarnations. We then may struggle for the body and the winner gets incarnated in the body or the early bird catches the worm.
Maybe we want bodies and choose them ourselves. Perhaps it is worse being outside the body than in it which makes us willing to come back. Perhaps being disembodied is a painful and lonely experience. Perhaps we are driven by this pain to take the bodies. If so then there is no karma for it could hold us back to get us to pay off our debts of suffering. But it is ludicrous to imagine that the mind is separate from the body and suffers without it. If a body had no senses or nerves the mind wouldn’t be able to suffer. If you are separate from your body then your body is not you but an accessory.
Death is really nothing if we live on. Reincarnation cannot explain death. It would be easier and wiser to let a person live on in the one body and wipe their memories or some of them at various long intervals.
Reincarnation is no consolation for the one who fears annihilation at death for when you won’t remember your past lives when your next one starts so you might as well have had none at all.
The Handbook of Christian Apologetics argues against reincarnation thus:
- It is denied by the Bible and by the Churches.
So what? You Churches think you
know it all. You think you are something
special.
- It would mean that the incarnation of Jesus was just an apparition.
This is not true. The book
contradicts this assertion with the next point it makes that it pretends
undermines belief in reincarnation.
- It would mean we incarnate as well as Christ and take away from the uniqueness of his incarnation.
Nonsense - for he was supposed to be the revelation of God. And he said we are not God. Jesus if he was God or the Son of God would
be unique regardless of whether or not we engaged in incarnation or
reincarnation.
- It is supposed to imply that God made a mistake by putting us in bodies
Not necessarily, when he does it once he could do it again. The book is using a straw-man approach. It
wants to pretend that reincarnation goes with the idea that being in a body is
a terrible thing for the body is a prison in the soul.
- Reincarnation is supposed to say that souls are imprisoned in bodies which contradicts what we know about mind and body being interconnected.
But if we have souls now and they are not in prison this argument isn’t
necessarily right.
- Reincarnation is supposed to blame evil on the body.
Often it does not. It may blame it on our
acts. And even if it did blame the body
who can prove that it is not the body’s fault?
The reincarnation doctrine can be reformulated to avoid blaming the
body. You might suggest that we could be
reincarnated because the body is the best thing we can have with all its flaws.
- Reincarnation is rejected by the book because it says we come back to learn which makes no sense when the memory is wiped at conception.
But that presupposes that we need the lessons of the past life in this life which is not necessarily true. The wiping could be necessary for we will know too much. Perhaps when we need no more incarnating we will remember all and it will all fit into a whole picture that will show the reasons why the memories were wiped. No two situations are the same so maybe that could be the answer to the problem of people coming back to seemingly learn the same things over again. It could be that we have vocations in each life. That would mean we are here to develop certain virtues for this life that won’t be looked for in the next.
Our memories are wiped all the time during life and we tend to remember inaccurately. If that isn't a problem in this life, why should memory loss stand as a refutation of reincarnation?
- The book dismisses the evidence for reincarnation, memories of past lives, as being caused by telepathy or demons.
To ignore thousands people we can talk to and interview and get to know
when they testify to a return from the dead in favour of a handful of men we
know little about like the apostles is what I would call trafficking with
demons.
- The next problem posed by the writers of that awful book is why reincarnation is necessary.
They reject it for no answer has been thought of. Then think of one however complicated. You can’t prove something wrong just by finding no reason for it.
For this study we will
deploy the OCR Philosophy of Religion for AS and A2,
Matthew Taylor,
Editor Jon Mayled, Routledge, Oxon, New York, 2007
There are two basic answers.
One is that the soul and body or mind and body are separate. The soul or mind controls the body but is separate from it and so can survive the death of the body. This view is called dualism. The soul can go on to take another body. Reincarnation is possible. With dualism there can be only one me at the one time.
Two is that the mind or soul cannot be separated from the body. Body and soul are the one thing. This view is called monism. Some monists believe that when you die you cease to exist but your mind comes back in another body. The new body isn't a problem at all for they say my body now is not the same body I had years ago for it rebuilds itself.
We conclude from this that no idea of body and soul necessarily excludes reincarnation.
Monism is credible because sensors developed by NASA can detect and identify words you say silently to yourself without speaking audibly. A scanner was used in 2005 which could picture what people were merely thinking (page 273). These experiments strongly show that thoughts happen in the brain - they have a physical not supernatural cause. If we survive death by resurrection or reincarnation and monist theory is true, it follows then that I could be copied for with resurrection and reincarnation what is happening is the creation of what is more or less a replica of me. Believers in this theory say that a replica is not the same as a copy. But this isn't believable. If a replica of me is made, then how do I prove that this replica is not a copy? To say that one new me is a replica and not a copy of the old me is a strange thing to say. If a replica can be done there can be more than one replica of me done. There could be more than one me at the one time. Against this it is said that there can only be one me for part of being human or person is being an individual. The reply to that is that if there were two copies made at the same time then which one is me and which one is the copy? Why aren't both me? Why aren't both copies? Both have had the same experience that makes me me so it suggests that BOTH are me. Another reply is that if I die and there are two me's created after my death one will still be as much of a person as the other. To say there being more than one me is a problem is nonsense. Its confusing for people yes but you never say that the argument is proven wrong by being confusing and doing away with the way we think of people as individuals.
Some philosophers are saying the replica is not me but a copy because there is no physical continuity. If I die and my body rises again three days later the result is a new person who thinks he is me and remembers my experiences but who is not me. But my body as it is now living has been made from entirely new substances and the body I had ten years ago has literally gone down the toilet gradually. The physical link isn't important. There could still be a supernatural link. Perhaps the mind is able to link through time and space when it dies to the new body. Perhaps there is something incomprehensible happening that is the solution. After all, we cannot comprehend or explain how thoughts happen. Christians cannot deal with these problems and yet they have the nerve to talk as if the resurrection of Jesus is believable. Any evidence for the resurrection is wrong if philosophy disproves it so philosophy should be sorted out first. Even when you are looking for evidence you are doing philosophy so they pay homage to philosophy by looking for evidence and then they trample on it.
Peter Geach (page 279) contends that if you survive death as a spirit then there are problems identifying you so you need your body back. He held that the only way to make sense of life after death was to contend that people die and rise again. Resurrection was his solution.
Geach rejects reincarnation for he says that a link between the new life and the life of the person who died cannot be established. Richard Swinburne rejects reincarnation because there is no physical continuation between the brain of the person that died and the baby that is born after and supposed to be her reincarnation (page 294).
This was an incredible thing for a believer in God to argue across. Why? Because if we survive death as spirits or at least are spirits until we rise again God could take care of the identity thing. The Bible speaks of formless beings being given appearances by God and being able to speak audibly. The forms may be like visions that God uses to let other people know who you are and that you are there. Also, how do we identify God if God has no body? Geach should say God is not a spirit at all but a material being if he wants to be consistent. Geach speaks of incomprehensible mysteries in his faith and has the nerve to say that just because he thinks there are problems with reincarnation he is entitled to reject it. There might be an incomprehensible solution for we are talking big mystery in relation to reincarnation.
Resurrection is a less probable hypothesis than reincarnation.
Page 294, says that the central idea of reincarnation is that the soul is eternal that is without beginning or end. I would correct this to say that it is the central idea of many systems based on reincarnation. But why can't a soul be made and have a beginning but no end?
The reasons for preferring belief in reincarnation to resurrection are as follows. More people in the world testify to reincarnation than to resurrection. Reincarnation asks us to make a good world for when we and our families will return. Resurrection doesn't care about this at all for it says you are out of the world forever when you die. Reincarnation respects the body as it is while resurrection seeks a better body that is ghostlike and magical. Reincarnation is more comforting and realistic than a nebulous belief in a resurrection that we don't understand. Reincarnation faces less rational problems than belief in resurrection. For example with resurrection what body is raised? The one I had when I was ten? The one I had when I died at 105? The body is not a thing but a process of rebuilding and changing. Reincarnation does not speak of super-miracles. Resurrection does for it has every person who ever lived coming out of their graves. Resurrection is based on the dubious claims of Jesus Christ who promised to rise again as a sign that he was from God and when he finally did it nobody was around to see it so some sign!
KARMA, RETRIBUTIVE JUSTICE
It is usually believed that if reincarnation is true then how you lived in this or your past life determines what your next life will be like. If you murder, you will be murdered and the law of karma will see to that. Others would say you might not be murdered but will suffer in other says for your crime.
The allegation that karma can’t be reconciled with free will because it determines a person to do harm to a person who has to pay this way for causing suffering is seriously mistaken. A free agent can be manipulated not to choose certain things through thoughts and feelings. If you can’t think of something you can’t choose it.
If A murdered a person in a past life then A has to be murdered or tormented by B. How could B have sinned when he or she is only giving A her or his due? B has done her or him a favour by getting the worst over. If B sins it is only because B does not have the sense to know that he or she did not do wrong.
Some say that the doctrine that babies deserve the suffering they get when they get sick or abused is not as cruel as it sounds. They say it is crueller to say they don’t deserve what evil comes upon them for that implies there is nothing you or they can do about at least some of the terrible things that may be on their way to them. But it is less cruel to see evil as a harsh reality of life that is undeserved than to suggest we bring it on ourselves by our sins. Also, if karma is untrue, it is crueller to have people trying hard with good works and penance to avoid the price of some sin for then they will be disappointed. There is a lot to be said for facing life with courage and knowing that injustices will happen and expecting them. They hurt more when you don’t expect them. Even when you do accept the karma doctrine you don’t know how much evil you have done in a previous life so all the good you can do in this one might not be enough to avoid the rest of this life and the next ten from being unbearable. There is no excuse for saying people deserve the sicknesses and rapes and murders that befall them.
The believers in karma may say that those who murder and rape are doing wrong even though the victim deserves it but that makes no sense. If wrong at all it is not very wrong. And raping if you believe the person deserves it cannot be by any means as bad as raping when you believe the person does not so the doctrine clears the evil conscience a bit. Glen Hoddle got into trouble for saying disabled people are paying for past life sins and that is the way it should be. Statements like that are terrible. If he were disabled himself he would not be so convinced. We conclude that it is best and decent to see evil as something that should be entirely hated and despised and which we do not deserve. See it as something to be fought and don’t condone it in anyway way or even slightly.
Karma and sincerity don’t get along well. If you believe that one good work atones for all your sins for a good work would please an infinitely good God infinitely and a good infinitely valuable work and a bad infinitely valuable work cancel then it shows that you can get around karma. If you sincerely believe Jesus Christ did all the good necessary to cancel out and make up for your sin you will still be subject to harmful karma. Evil things will still happen to you. Free will seems absurd so disbelieve in it and karma shouldn’t touch you. Some will conclude that since you still suffer no matter what you believe, karma can’t be cancelled out by beliefs and intentions. But that makes karma unjust for when you act sincerely what more can you do? You are doing your best.
Karma depends on your motives not on your actual actions. When you do evil you think it is right which means you will that an infinity of people should do the same if they existed. Sin then is infinitely bad. If karma were true you would be in everlasting torment right now for willing infinite evil. When you will such evil, you repent all the good you have done and are embracing evil for to approve evil is to forbid all good. The fact that we don’t all fall into eternal torment when we do wrong proves that karma is a false doctrine. If people believe in sin that deserves infinite torture and commit it they would immediately go to eternal torment. How can anyone have good karma when the impulse or inclination to sin remains? Good karma that lets that happen is really bad karma. We will good alone so suffering disproves karma. In other words, you do evil because you are attracted by the good in it not the evil. You imagine that the evil is really good.
Nobody ever does all they can to help others in the best way. You must have unrepented faults because if you did not you could and would be put in a state in which you cannot do any more wrong but just make atonement. From this, it follows that the good works you currently do are really evil because they are made in a state of impenitence or attachment to sin. It is like you do them because it suits you and not because it is good. To sit down and meditate or to do good works to win liberation is sinful for you should do all you can first for others. It would be psychically easier to do that if you lived forever but you don’t and that suggests that karma is untrue for it gives you an almost irresistible temptation to put yourself first.
Some religions say that you can get rid of your bad karma by meditating. Meditating saves you by drawing you to a mental state that is supposed to be getting the mystical or magical knowledge that you are free and eternal and since it is the experience that saves you from earthly existence it is real and when you die you will enter it permanently. Buddhism believes that. But then salvation or liberation from it is impossible. When we have all deceived people in religious matters either by act or omission it follows that we will be deceived ourselves and so could be getting a false experience of liberation. So, it is a sin to claim to be liberated for you cannot be sure and it is self-righteous pride – a source of bad karma! – to believe that you are. Yet liberation is called enlightenment.
Only suffering could deliver you from what you deserve for how could meditation or good works do it when they are more pleasant and the easy way? Remember, you don’t deserve the easy way and to be fine when you could pay for your sin without being fine would be as good as trying to reward yourself. So, to be liberated you have to inflict penitential pain on others and yourself. Nobody can manage to hurt the whole world terribly therefore if karma is true there is no freedom from it.
If karmic retribution is true then the world and life are unreal. Evil breeds evil so if karma is really fair it will put each person in a world that is not real but which he or she thinks is real to keep her or him from bad influences and to get bad karma repaired faster. When I am able to question if the world I am in is real that proves that the doctrine of a just karmic reincarnation is false for it leads me to believe the world is an illusion and do as I please. I can’t think of everything anyway so karma could stop me thinking of that.
The doctrine of karma is harmful for why try to catch murderers and crooks if their bad karma will catch up on them? Better to save the expense for yourself. You can’t give it to the poor for they supposedly deserve to be poor. You cannot understand another person’s degree of responsibility fully so it would be fairer to let karma take care of the criminals for you might punish them too little or too much. The experience of liberation from karma must be delusional.
We know that the doctrine that we
should not do what is best for the world unless we really want to is
false. It repudiates morality. It is putting intention before results. If a person goes to
There is a complete contradiction between the notion of karma and the promise of salvation.
People sin and suffer after the alleged enlightenment which frees one from karma suggesting that they are not free from it at all. If they can be enlightened then everybody should be especially when they experience is supposed to provide freedom from sin and evil at death. The experience is a delusion.
If karma were true then when you forgive all who have ever done wrong surely you should be forgiven by the law yourself? Or if you prefer you would deserve to be forgiven. You have earned your pardon and should instantly enter Nirvana or salvation for all your bad karma is cancelled.
Karma is cruel when it wipes the memory at death. If we remembered our previous lives we would not accumulate as much karma for we would be wiser.
It is said that karma is not about retribution but
about us learning to love. I charge this
version with hypocrisy for that can’t be the reason for karma because lessons
can be miraculously implanted and lessons are no good unless we have the right
kind of feelings to make us good and feelings can be implanted as well. The lessons are just an excuse for hurting us. The doctrine means that karma for retribution
is supposed to be immoral and still it happens meaning that it is really for
revenge. Bad retribution is revenge.
MEMORIES OF PAST LIVES
Some people claim to have memories of past lives which are usually brought out of them by past life therapists and hypnotists. But if any of these are inexplicable then they could have been learned by means of some kind of psychic sixth sense. Some say it could be the influence of mischievous and evil spirits. It could be just plain clever guessing or good discreet research. The therapists bringing up the memories could be using cold reading techniques similar to what fortune tellers do. Also, when it is more likely that some clever deception is taking place through some conspiracy than that something supernatural is happening we cannot believe in reincarnation on the basis of those reports. That is because when the memory is lost and returns like that and in pieces you are not meant to remember or can’t remember. The pieces probably came from something else other that recollections of a past life. You can only subscribe to the supernatural when the natural explanations have been conclusively exhausted but this never happens for how can you prove that here is no secret conspiracy? There is no evidence for reincarnation.
It is easier to believe that the memory evidence for reincarnation comes from some kind of psychic delusion than that it comes from a real but past life. All psychics claim that they can get the wrong information. They can misunderstand what they see, they can pollute the information with their imagination or prejudices or they could be picking up on information from another time that they think is past-life memories. It is simpler to believe that the memories are not real than that they are. Why would you die and be born again when you can only remember chunks of your past life? Reincarnationists often say we are here to learn so when the vast majority forget their past lives and learn, remembering must be an abnormality and it must be unlikely that the memories are real.
It may be inquired that if the memories arise from psychic powers then why do they often come as the memories of only one or a few incarnations? One would expect psychic power to pick up information more randomly. It may have something to do with the powers only being able to tune into the minds that give off a certain vibration enabling a psychic link to be made. Psychics often blame their mistakes on the lack or breakdown of such links. They are the reason they say their powers are not fully reliable and don’t always function the way they want. Good excuse. The vibration can surely be read by a different vibration. When psychic power is the ability to gain information in ways out of the ordinary and by using hidden forces, vibrations shouldn’t come into it at all. Non-physical forces shouldn’t have the restrictions that we are accustomed to seeing with material forces. The excuse about vibrations makes us sceptical about the value of the powers. If a medium gets wrong information and blames the vibrations then how do we know that the vibrations giving correct or plausible information really came from a spirit? A medium is only wasting her or his time if she or he cannot verify being in touch with spirits.
Conclusion
Reincarnation is a guess. It has no rational or philosophical or scientific basis at all.
BOOKS CONSULTED
AFTER DEATH – WHAT? Fred Pearce, Christadelphian Publishing
Office,
ETERNAL LIFE, Hans Kung, Collins,
GOD AND THE NEW PHYSICS, Paul
Davies, Penguin Books,
HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN
APOLOGETICS, Peter Kreeft and Ronald Tacelli, Monarch,
JEHOVAH OF THE WATCHTOWER, Walter
Martin and Norman Klann, Bethany House Publishers,
IS THERE LIFE AFTER DEATH? Paul
Kroll, Worldwide
MIND OUT OF TIME, Ian Wilson,
Gollanez,
OCR Philosophy of Religion for AS and A2,
Matthew Taylor,
Editor Jon Mayled, Routledge, Oxon, New York, 2007
LIFE AFTER DEATH THE WONDERFUL
FACTS, Alan Hayward, Christadelphian, ALS,
REASONS FOR HOPE, Ed Jeffrey A
Mirus,
TEACH YOURSELF PHILOSOPHY OF
MIND, Mel Thompson, Teach Yourself Books,
THE AFTER DEATH EXPERIENCE, Ian
Wilson, Corgi,
THE DEVIL HIDES OUT, David Marshall, Autumn House, Grantham, 1991
THE LIFE OF ALL LIVING,
THE INCREDIBLE CREED OF JEHOVAH
WITNESSES, Frs Rumble & Carty, TAN,
WHATEVER HAPPENED TO HEAVEN?
Dave Hunt, Harvest House, Publishers,
The Web
www.csicop.org/sb/9803/reincarnation.html
Case of Reincarnation Re-examined by Joe Nickell. This refutes the reincarnation claims of Jenny Cockell.