Round 1: GAOTU789 v Budski I'll be back, page

Reincarnation is real. Seems like a simple topic, yes? To understand where the belief system of reincarnation comes from and why it is followed by so many people today we first need to look at it's history. It can first be found in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, one of the earliest writings of the Hindu religion, dating back to between the 7th and 8th century BCE. Three to four hundred years later, in the 4th century BCE, it is commonly accepted in India and as far away as Greece. There is even mentions of it in the Old testamant :

Psalm 90: 3-6
Thou turnest man to dust; and sayest, Return ye children of men. For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night. Thou carriest them away as with a flood; they are as asleep; in the morning they are like grass which groweth up. In the morning it flourisheth, and groweth up, in the evening it is cut down and withereth.

(Ezekiel 37: 9-10; 12-14)
Then he [the Lord God] said unto me, Prophesy unto the wind, prophesy, son of man, and say to the wind, thus saith the Lord God: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe up these slain, that they may live. So I prophesied as he commanded, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood up upon their feet, an exceedingly great army... thus saith the Lord God: Behold, O my people, I will open your graves, and bring you into the land of Israel... And shall put my Spirit in you, and ye shall live, and I shall place you in your own land; (Ezekiel 37: 9-10; 12-14)

This predates the idea of resurrection of the body, since these passages where written before the birth of Christ. The idea of reincarnation didn't truly become heretical until the Romans adopted Christianity as there primary religion. They viewed it as a threat to the branch of Christianity that they believed, which preached resurrection as the path to God. As with all that the Romans "conquered", it was required to fit into there view of the world, which reincarnation didn't. With the Second Council of Constantinople in 553 AD, which finally outlawed all teachings of Origen, an early Christian theologian, they had finally outlawed reincarnation as a belief in Christianity.

Why did they feel threatened by this? Well, it took away their monopoly on God. If man understood that the true path to God lay in his personal actions in this life, which would lead to either a progression or lead to lessening of his spiritual journey, why would they need the church to absolve them of their sins. With reincarnation, man would have the true path to enlightenment, and the Romans couldn't have that now could they?

The German philosopher, Arthur Schopenhauer, may have said it best:

"Were an Asiatic to ask me for a definition of Europe, I should be forced to answer him: It is that part of the world which is haunted by the incredible delusion that man was created out of nothing, and that his present birth is his first entrance into life."

Think about that statement for a moment. The dominant sects of Christianity ask you to believe that this life is your first, and only, go around on this planet.

They also expect you to believe in a very black or white ending to it. Heaven or Hell. Thats it. Nothing else. Your soul only gets one chance at this life to make your way to Heaven. Most other Western religions preach the same thing. Yet there are many different sects within the larger religious groupings that do believe in reincarnation.

There are many cases of past life experiences that have been recounted through the ages but it is only recently with hypnosis that real recollections of these past lives have come to prominence. My worthy opponent deems these "laughable" or that they cannot be proven. On the contrary, many of the previous lives that people have experienced and have talked about under hypnosis can indeed be verified. Not only the "famous" ones, as my opponent put it, but many average people, whose existence was found
through searches of records of birth and deaths. There is in fact, many, many just such cases recorded in medical and psychiatric journals. The "phenomenon" has been studied at many different Universities and hospitals around the world. Studying past lives has become an accepted practice among the medical and psychiatric community. There have even been studies done on the subject by mainstream media.

I will cover all these subjects and more in my next response, showing you, the reader, that reincarnation is indeed real and is experienced, and has been experienced, by people from all parts of the globe, regardless of their religious beliefs.

Thanks to GAOTU789 for some interesting points, well made.

I would like to address some of the theological points raised by my opponent in this post, and refute some of his historical data.
The Second Council of Constantinople in 553 AD did not actually address the issue of reincarnation, and is properly called the Second Ecumenical Council of Constantinople. Records from this meeting show that reincarnation was not discussed.

The idea that Origen taught reincarnation is of dubious origin and has not been proven - supporters like to cite that his teachings were destryed or repressed but there is no evidence to support this.
Here is supporting evidence and some other quotes from biblical scholars and theological figures that Origen did not teach reincarnation.

My opponent has also produced biblical quotations showing that the idea existed in the old testament, and again, this can be argued against:

HEB 9:27 And inasmuch as it is appointed for men to die once and after this comes judgment,

HEB 9:28 so Christ also, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, shall appear a second time for salvation without reference to sin, to those who eagerly await Him.

and:

"But Abraham replied, 'Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted here and you are in agony. And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who want to go from here to you cannot, nor can anyone cross over from there to us'" (Luke 16: 25-26).

Another old testament story is that of the witch of endor. In this Old Testament story, King Saul asks the witch to call up the spirit (or ghost) of Samuel because he desires to know the future since God is no longer speaking to Saul because of his disobedience. The witch, or medium, does as King Saul asks and the ghost of Samuel appears and says to Saul,

"The LORD will hand over both Israel and you to the Philistines, and tomorrow you and your sons will be with me. The LORD will also hand over the army of Israel to the Philistines" (1 Samuel 28:19).

This story provides two examples, the first is that the ghost or spirit of Samuel could not be called up if reincarnation exists, secondly Samuel tells Saul that both he and his sons would join him in the realm beyond death. He does not say that they would die and be given another chance at life. He says simply, "you and your sons will be with me."

So the Bible which also requires faith, can be used equally in support against reincarnation.

There are many philosophical questions which surround this debate, not least of which is transmigration of the soul, which allows that a human may come back in the body of an animal and was argued by Plato, amongst others.
This seems incredible and yet is an accepted part of reincarnation doctrine.
Would readers seriously consider that animal souls and human souls are equal, and that it acceptable to come back as (for example) a snake? How would this affect the learning process that reincarnation has at its centre, when you could come back as a non sentient being?

There is also the concept of Karma, and how this affects your current life. A question that is often asked is about how Karma would work for such historical figures as Hitler, Pol Pot or Stalin - is there any way that the suffering they inflicted on tens of millions could be adequately reflected in even a million lifetimes? I think not. There simply isn't enough time, if you believe that the earth is halfway through its life.

Free choice also comes into play. The concept of Karma and reincarnation would mean that none of us are responsible for what happens in our lifetime and that we are merely pawns in the cosmic karma game.
Think about that - everything that happens to you is a direct result of what you did in another life, and yet you have no memory of it and no way to atone or be rewarded except through the puppetmaster that is karma, and through karma you are doomed to life after life, reincarnated to repeat the same mistakes and suffer further through other lifetimes.
This I cannot accept. This would mean that we are all on a merry go round, with no expression of choice or free will, and I refute this idea totally.

There are other schools of thought that exist regarding reincarnation, and this should tell us more than philosophy ever could - that the concept is man made and therefore not real.

First, to some of the points made by Budski:

The quote from Abraham could easily be interpreted as an argument for Reincarnation. He states that no one for here can cross to the spirit world and vice versa, in physical form. To say that Abraham thought that his soul would never join his son's doesn't make sense.

As for the witch of Endor story; how could the witch not call up the spirit of Samuel if reincarnation didn't exist? To think that the soul of a person would immediately move to it's next vessel seems a little off. The soul needs time in the afterlife to reflect upon the deeds of it's previous life. Otherwise reincarnation is not a spiritual journey but a big game of craps. To admit that there are ghosts shows that the soul lives on for a time in the afterlife. The ghost doesn't say that you'll join me in Heaven or Hell, it simply says that they will join him in the afterlife.

Free choice also comes into play. The concept of Karma and reincarnation would mean that none of us are responsible for what happens in our lifetime and that we are merely pawns in the cosmic karma game.

I think you may have this one backwards. Karma is free choice. Its the results of the choices you make. the Oxford Dictionary defines it as:

karma
• noun (in Hinduism and Buddhism) the sum of a person’s actions in this and previous states of existence, viewed as affecting their future fate.

You can see that this is indeed free choice. You are free to make any choice you want but there are consequences for your actions. You may suffer them in this life, if not, you will suffer for them in the next. As far as Hitler, Stalin and the rest go, tell me, would being reborn as a child in Ethiopia in the '80's be a start? How about being a child in Darfur? How about being born to a heroin addicted prostitute in Siagon? There are a innumerable lives that could begin to repay the horrors and suffering these monsters inflicted upon the Earth.

This has been an interesting philosophical discussion but my task is to prove that reincarnation is real so:

Lets start with Dr. Ian Stevenson. Dr. Stevenson spent his life traveling the globe documenting cases of children having past life memories. In a paper published in 2000 in The Journal Of Scientific Exploration, he details how the way children play can be indicative of a past life.

In 22 cases the child’s statements were found to match events in the life of a specific deceased person. In such cases the play was also found to correspond to some aspects of that deceased person’s life, such as his or her vocation, avocation, or mode of death.

He also published many other books and papers on the subject one of his most famous being Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation. This title shows a number of things, summarised as such:

* The large number of witnesses and the lack of apparent motivation and opportunity make the hypothesis of fraud extremely unlikely.
* The large amount of information possessed by the child is not generally consistent with the hypothesis that the child obtained that information through investigated contact between the families.
* Demonstration of similar personality characteristics and skills not learned in the current life and the lack of motivation for the long length of identification with a past life make the hypothesis of the child gaining his recollections and behavior through extra-sensory perception improbable.
* When there is correlation between congenital deformities or birthmarks possessed by the child and the history of the previous individual, the hypothesis of random occurrence is improbable.

Dr. Stevenson spent his life collecting data on this topic but being the modest man he was, he never claimed that the case studies proved anything but that it presented a strong case for the existence of reincarnation. I would say, in a court of law, his evidence would stand up to most skeptics. Carl Sagan, the noted skeptic actually wrote:

"At the time of writing, there are three claims in the ESP field which, in my opinion, deserve serious study: (1) that by thought alone humans can (barely) affect random number generators in computers; (2) that people under mild sensory deprivation can receive thoughts or images 'projected' at them; and (3) that young children sometimes report the details of a previous life, which upon checking turn out to be accurate and which they could not have known about in any other way than reincarnation."

Dr. Stevenson was very meticulous in is gathering of evidence. He made every attempt possible to prove the knowledge of the children couldn't have been gathered any other way than by past live knowledge. He also studied the relationship between birthmarks on children and the mode of death in their past lives. He studied near death experiences and their correlation to reincarnation and the survival of the soul.

Sadly near the end of his life, in an article in the Washington Post, he felt that his life's work of trying to get main stream science to accept reincarnation as a possibility wouldn't be realised. His work is being carried on by others in his noble quest to show that reincarnation is real.



Edited by member's request to meet character limit by removing hyperlink.

[edit on 2-10-2007 by The Vagabond]

I'd like to address some points raised by my opponent, but first, I assume the failure to refute my points about Origen means he has conceded this point - and if such a fundamental point is wrong, how much else is wrong or even merely misguided?

Thank you GAOTU789 for proving my point about Karma:

karma
• noun (in Hinduism and Buddhism) the sum of a person’s actions in this and previous states of existence, viewed as affecting their future fate.

You can see that this is indeed free choice. You are free to make any choice you want but there are consequences for your actions. You may suffer them in this life, if not, you will suffer for them in the next.

If you make mistakes or "sin" in a past life that you do not remember, and then suffer for them in a later life, this does indeed negate free will, as you have no control over your actions. For instance, if I believed in reincarnation and karma, my actions would always be affected by this belief, thereby negating my free will, even though I have no proof, only my faith.
We have seen many instances where religion is merely a form of social control and I believe this to be another example.

There is also evidence to suggest that belief in reincarnation can have a very negative effect on a society, such as feudal Japanese society where most of the population were either shinto or buddhist, both of which have forms of reincarnation in their teachings, and which led directly to amoralism, selfishness, immorality, and all sorts of sin, often “justifying” them by recourse to allegedly spiritual principles and “truths.”

But I digress,
my opponent has said that there are many case studies that prove reincarnation is real, something which I refute.
I'd like to look at a couple of these "case studies" and make a case against them based on their very obvious shortcomings.
First of all there is the case of Bridey Murphy which clearly shows the pitfalls of any kind of research based merely on one persons word.
Any research, however honestly done, in which the end result is already in the researchers mind, especially when relying on such unreliable methods as regression therapy and hypnotism, is clearly suspect.
This is not to say that the researcher has deliberately set out to falsify, merely that the methodology and results must be suspect, simply because most, if not all of the research cannot be quantified in any meaningful way.
Research flaws such as self deception , ad hoc hypothesis , confirmation bias, subjective validation , anecdotal evidence , have no place in a proper study, and yet these are all present in studies of reincarnation, thereby rendering it unreliable.

But perhaps the greatest condemnation of the theory of reincarnation, is that it is one of the central tenets of Dianetics, the "bible" of Scientology , in which the founder L. Ron Hubbard (a failed sci fi writer) states:

"It has only been in Scientology that the mechanics of death have been thoroughly understood." What happens in death is this: the Thetan (spirit) finds itself without a body (which has died) and then it goes looking for a new body. Thetans "will hang around people. They will see a woman who is pregnant and follow her down the street." Then, the Thetan will slip into the newborn "usually...two or three minutes after the delivery of a child from the mother. A Thetan usually picks it up about the time the baby takes its first gasp." How Hubbard knows this is never revealed.

source
So much has been written and condemned about the cult of scientology, that I really need to say nothing further on the subject - suffice to say that this is the one of the biggest single proofs that reincarnation is not real.

To keep this debate on the topic of proof of reincarnation, I shall keep my responses to my opponents argument short and to the point.

I assume the failure to refute my points about Origen means he has conceded this point

This would be a wrong assumption . I didn't bother bringing up Origen because all that was provided was a Roman Catholic source for my opponent's opinion. Using the same source that branded his teachings heretical spoke for itself. But if you insist...

St. Origen

in the 6th cent St. Origen was declared as "foremost heretic" or arch-heretic, by Western church leaders, mostly because of the popularity of the doctrine of Transmigration of souls which Origen taught along with the East.

I will cover both the hoax example and Scientology at the same time. One was done by an amateur hypnotist, the other by a greedy writer. The best way for someone to try to make a believable hoax is to use some truth(reincarnation) to make it realistic. Then add the rest of the junk to it, hoping people buy your story and don't look too far past the truth's. L. Ron Hubbard was a manipulator that used the very real concept of reincarnation to sell his bogus religion to people. Seems to have worked, unfortunately.

I have said what I needed to about Karma, I'll let the judges decide that one for themselves. Now for some more evidence.

The Dalai Lama is the spiritual head of Tibetan Buddhists. He also acts as the spokesman for the people's of Tibet around the world. This current Dalia Lama is the 14th, the first dating back to 1391. The monks of Tibet search for years sometimes to find the new Dalia Lama. When they think they have found him, they place articles that belong to the former Dalia Lama and some that don't in front of the child. If he can rightly identify the proper articles, he is declared the next Dalia Lama. Now my opponent may call the procedures that are used to find the new Dalia Lama coincidences but I beg to differ. Just look at the mans life. He has lead Tibet through a time of huge upheaval and won the Noble Peace Prize for his work. The other Dalia Lamas have done some equally remarkable things in their lives. The 3rd converted all of Mongolia to Buddhism. They have all worked to keep Tibet, a country that is perpetually under siege, free through peaceful means. Many prophesied the region that their new incarnation would be born in. Many knew that they were the new Dalia Lama before they were found. The accomplishments of each of these individuals collectively shows that the spirit of the original lives on.

The Chinese Government, an Atheist Regime, take the reincarnation of the Dalia Lama seriously enough to regulate reincarnation. The Chinese say that it is to "institutionalize reincarnation" but the truth is that they are trying to pick the next Dalai Lama to help solidify there hold on Tibet. I am no Seer but I predict that this attempt will fail, the new Dalai Lama will be born and will fight peacefully to rid his country of tyrannical rule of the Chinese. If an Atheist Government can believe in reincarnation enough to regulate it, I would say that speaks volumes for the validity of reincarnation.

To finish, I add this as an after thought. The idea of reincarnation is real enough for the folks at CBC here in Canada to have done a full three show series on it. It's called Past Life Investigations. A very fascinating exploration of past lives.

In this post, I'll address the biggest hole in the argument that reincarnation is real - that of population growth.

In order for reincarnation to be real, there would need to be a constant number of people on the planet, or a source of "new souls", in order for this belief to have any credibility at all.

So, lets take a look at the facts, rather than faith in a misguided belief system.

The world today, has a population growth rate of about 1.3% per annum, against a current population estimate of 6.6 billion, and is expected to reach approximately 10 billion by the decade starting 2050.

The US census bureau and the International Data Base (IDB) provide irrefutable evidence that the population of the planet is growing, here .

If you take an estimate of historical world growth, here , you will see that for the year 1,000 BC, at least 2 centuries before the earliest recorded examples of reincarnation, there is an estimate of 50 million people worldwide.

So at the start of the belief system of reincarnation, the planet had a population of 50 million people approx versus 6,600 million today.
But lets go further, and assume that in the 200 years before reincarnation surfaced, there was a population growth of 10 million, bringing the total to 60 million.
Now given the fact that some of these original souls may have reached a state of perfection and entered nirvana, there would seem to be a significant shortfall of souls for all the fresh bodies waiting to be inhabited.
So, unless there is a ready source of new souls, there are billions of people walking around without one - zombies if you believe that the soul is what makes us who we are - and this is clearly not the case.

Not only does reincarnation expect us to believe that we live many lives trying to reach a state of perfection, but the maths just don't add up - unless there is some kind of "soul factory" - and this is just one more nail in the coffin for the case for reincarnation. The figures cannot be disputed or refuted except by the tiniest margin.

Not only are we expected to believe that we have lived past lives, we are also expected to believe in karma and transmigration of the soul that means we may have been an animal in a different life. Well hey, why not go through it in alphabetical order and start as an aardvark then work your way up and down the food chain until you become a perfect soul. This is what reincarnation is telling you "happens".

This argument is also true if you believe that we can be reincarnated as or from animals or if these souls came from another part of the universe and earth was just one more manifestation - on order for this to work, there would need to be a constant number of humans and animals, throughout the universe.

The argument that souls come from other places in the universe is the very one promoted by scientology and their theory of thetan possession of an individual.


There is some evidence to suggest that a naturally occuring halucinogen called DMT, which is linked to the pineal gland (7th chakra) can be responsible for supposed past life, out of body, near death and other mystical experiences when it is found in raised levels - whether artificially or naturally, but these theories (like everything about reincarnation) are speculatiove and untested.
When tested, with larger than normal amounts of a hallucinogenic substance, there were raised levels of mystical experience, and it has been used by various mystics and shamans for centuries.
source
So a naturally occurring chemical from our own body can induce higher levels of hallucinations, in which subjects also suffered from raised levels of psychosis, memory loss and over active imaginations.

And this is why reincarnation is not real - it is a belief system with no basis in truth or fact.

Reincarnation is real---closing statement

Thanks to The Vagabond for getting these incredible debates going for us. Also, thanks to budski for an intelligent, fascinating debate.

Before I get to my closing I would just like to address one point from my opponents last statement.

On the matter of population growth, this again assumes that all souls are on Earth at the same time. Which just isn't true. There are estimates that there has been, at the high end, 113 Billion people on this planet. 113 billion would certainly provide enough souls over time to account for population growth. My opponent used the story of a ghost earlier. To imply that a ghost talked to Samuel, means that his soul wasn't inhabiting a corporeal body. It was wandering the spirit world, waiting for the proper time to return to Earth. There are countless stories of ghosts, some the spirits reportedly haunting areas for hundreds of years. This
claims that there has been roughly 106.45 billion people born since man began to walk the planet and that only 5.8% of that number are a live today. There have even been population reductions in are history. The Black Death is estimated to have killed between 75 and 100 million people world wide. That was almost one fifth of the Earth's entire population at the time.


During the course of this debate, I have offered a brief history of the belief of reincarnation.

I provided evidence to show you why Western religions were fearful of reincarnation, so much so that they labeled it heretical and blasphemous to follow it's teachings.

I have provided examples of scientific studies done to show the validity of reincarnation.

I have pointed out how hoaxers use a real truth to sell fake ideas successfully.

I have even shown you that a government that is strictly against religion has taken reincarnation seriously enough to try to regulate it.

In conclusion, I would just like to say that reincarnation is real and may your next life be better than this one.

Thank You