Just by way of discussion: I was looking into and researching the method employed by the Tibetan "monks"when searching for the "reincarnated "Dalia Larma", the leader both spiritual and political of the Tibetan people. It is fascinating how intuitive the search is carried out and how they may be actually "intuitively" looking for recurrent DNA ( large percentage - similar) manifesting in a child born after the demise a previous Larma. ( any previous Dalia Larma - many generations included) Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! It is not impossible to consider that genetic lineage over hundreds of generations may manifest in recurrent DNA. Generational similarities of personalities ( dead or alive) is certainly not unheard of. In fact, it may be one of the main reasons why humans tend to prioritize their linage over others. Maintaining family/ethnic purity etc may be an intuitive desire to provide an idealistic probability of a recurrence occurring. Resurrection features commonly in many religious thoughts.
The reason I quoted it was certainly not to upset any one... I apologize for not considering fully your sensitivities. Perhaps by way of explanation it is worth suggesting that the use of mathematical probabilities, chance etc are merely intellectual abstractions, that we as limited humans use to placate our concerns about the unknown or unknowable. Thus the reality of any result is reduced to a binary of true or false ( dualism ) As an aside, science tends to consider results that are at least 85% (?) proven to be evidence of the veracity of a theory. This allows for a 15% chance that the theory is wrong. My apologies in advance if the above makes your brain hurt. It certainly hurt mine when I first ventured down this philosophical path many years ago...
Speculation is rarely limited by what is impossible ... It seems to originate from Sun worship ... ancients interpreted the Sun appearing to stop mid winter was seen as it dieing and then as it appeared to move again after three days that was seen as it being resurrected after three days. Many of the human gods from those times featured such similarities to the Sun. Where reincarnation originated I don't know it may have spun off from the three day resurrection thing but I don't know..I will look into it however. Alex
Of course you accept that my posts are not only for your own reading...surely. It is a public post after all. By all means you are free to express your opinions just like any one else and whether you wish to express your somewhat self declared intolerance for other posters opinions or not is entirely up to you. Your personal intolerance of "silly" quotes and thought teasers is noted but really irrelevant to the discussion. The thread titles is about the possibility of reincarnation existing. I am responding by suggesting that it may be so and suggesting also that there is scientific reason for that to be the case. The only area of concern being really is what people interpret reincarnation to be. In science it may be recurrent DNA with associated genetic memory, in some cultures it may have a more spiritual basis. But either way both relate to the topic in question. Perhaps starting a topic about what you can't tolerate in the "About the members" forum would be more appropriate. I am confident that if you traced you genetic linage you will find an ancestor that strongly resembles yourself. The development of photography though is only a relatively recent event ( 1826-ish) so it makes it hard to research it. In a few more generations it will be a lot easier.
Yes I get your point. The op talks of a soul finding a new body perhaps that should be the place to start. I don't think there is any evidence for a soul other than that there is nothing I can contribute. Alex
I agree, but again it depends on what people mean by a "soul". For surely a soul and a body are the same thing IMO (non-dualism vs dualism)
To me it is really about the evolution of self discovery. Over thousands of years man kind is slowly moving towards identifying itself in a way that doesn't force a duality (religiousness) upon itself. Projecting a distinction between body and soul when in reality they are one and the same very complex being. The soul could be considered as an attribute or quality of a material being, nothing more. Thus grounded in science ( psychology, endocrinology ) rather than fear generated mysticism or spirituality. Reincarnation or resurrection could be considered in similar terms. Grounding spiritual thought using the material body, reproducing itself with all it's complexity as central to it's past , present and future existence.
The idea of genetic reoccurrence in the human tree got me to think of twins and clones. There was a story of a rancher who had a beloved bull. It was gentle and sweet. He missed it after it died so he had it cloned. When it grew up it gored him and he nearly died.
obviously his cloning method was not quite adequate... or the environmental conditions that the cloned Bull endured from birth effected it's personality. The sensed expectation that the bull should be as nice as it's source code could have been enough to put the bull off so to speak... Suffice to say cloning the personality/love may be a lot harder than simply cloning key physical attributes.
Death is synonymous with nothing. Can you just say death is not the end of the physical self and that your conciousness in not a spirit now free.
Death does include non-consciousness or the termination of manifestations, which could be construed as "nothing". Though there is no actual display or presence of blankness, silence, etc. All modes of "materialization" ironically cease in materialist ontological orientations with respect to what matter is without the representations of consciousness. In the context of Russellian monism, existence would still fundamentally consist of elemental phenomenal properties of some kind, but those are no longer arranged by living brain processes into complex configurations and an intricate loop or knot where they circularly verify the presence of each other. So even though there would still be random events "showing" themselves after death with regard to the decaying body's "stuff", they would be cognitively invisible (lacking coordination into a system of verification). Thus, equivalent to "nothing", even though "something" is primitively manifesting minus acknowledgment.
A beginning is only an assumption. It is illogical to assume a beginning, and then ask the question about what happens or exists before. If you assume there is a beginning then there can be no before. (re: Context : Absolute-ism)
I agree, there is no true beginning, and I'm not one to assume. I think it makes sense that we live in a singularity, and if there are only so many shapes and colors, then there are only so many possible out comes, and thus we are reincarnated forever, unless you came hence into "nature," thus going forth into nirvana.
Perhaps some care is needed in terms like "I" or "We" and find some sort of agreement in their meaning/definition so that rational discussion can take place. An eon old debate: Who are you? Who am I? What am I? How am I? ...and then after reaching consensus moving on to : What is reincarnated? How is it reincarnated? For an example question that help in clarifying the material/organic demands necessary for an "I" to exist: Test statement: "I am the sum of my entire experience, the whole of which must be intact and a part of my memory ( unconscious, sub conscious and conscious)"Show relationship to the physical: If I suffer and die from Alzheimer's disease do I exist at the time of death?. What is reincarnated if anything? Conditional claim: The "I" can only exist if there is a physical ability to do so. So what exactly is being reincarnated if reincarnation is reality based?
I'm a manifestation of myself slumbering in Heaven in a deep meditation, but what you see me as, flesh and bone, has no self or unchanging soul, in favor of innocence, then i awake in Heaven, faihful and perfect, and totally unharmed. Reincarnation is possible, it is one of those things that is still possible if you have faith. This world is constant spinning wheel, of evolution and destruction and rebirth and as you come hence into this world you go into nirvana and along as you are in this world you are reborn with the lower level beings who go through life and death forever.
IMO, physical reincarnation exists in the form of heritable traits. The combined DNA of both parents shape the offspring as a generic blend of both DNA. Thus, all babies are physical reincarnations of both parents......Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Organizational and structural information about the somatic domain is at least passed down. The "generic human" template continues, so to speak, but not the personal memories or specific identities that the two merged sources acquired over time. Nevertheless, making possible the continuance of "generic subjectivity", which has familiarly been presented in here for years... Death, Nothingness, and Subjectivity https://www.naturalism.org/philosophy/death/death-nothingness-and-subjectivity The supposedly natural-based idea about continuance above has no data or pattern transfer at all -- just the persistence of basic manifestation itself treated as some kind of rudimentary identity that (as part of a new human) can re-learn the psychological personhood characteristics (as if recovering from a bout of amnesia). But actually involving no travel or teleportation of an information-less property or capacity either. The "absence of everything" that the consciousness of a dying organism fades into is a globally available status of non-sentient matter that the consciousness of a new organism is arising from elsewhere. That rudimentary "identity" of generic experience itself is also present in surviving, developed humans. Arguably, one of the latter could apply to the stripped-down continuance of dead individuals, just as a newborn is reflexively considered to be (in the context of this concept). If the contingent, acquired psychological extras of that existing body's unique life history are set aside as impediments -- in essence, the continuance recognized and accepted as retroactively "having already been in progress for years".
