Do you believe in reincarnation?

I’m not even so certain about incarnation.

No, but I wish it were so, only I would not want a second or 40th spin as a guman, I’d like to reincarnate as various animal species, a turtle would be awesome. Swim all day, sun on rocks and no predators. haha

@Coloma I’d love to reincarnate as a wolf. They are the most badass of all the species of the animal kingdom

@NerdyKeith Yes, either an apex predator or something with a shell. A barnacle would have a pretty kick back life of leisure too. lol
I’m partial to the big cats, but then as a wolf or a leopard you’d have to worry about being shot by some great white hunter that wanted to hang your head on their man cave wall. :-(

Yes. I believe.

Sure…the human body is mostly comprised of oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium, and phosphorus and I argue the energy to hold those atoms in place so we can be who we are. We die and those atoms do not die….we do so those atoms are now free to scatter back into our ecosystem and back into the Universe where they will be gathered up as they are needed by other “forms” that comprise our Universe and that is my personal view on reincarnation.

I want to be a banana slug.

@Rarebear Just stay off the bike trails, it will take you about 3 hours to cross the road. lol

NOT really, but if there is I want to come back as our cat, napping all day, soft warm beds, and nothing but looking cute and getting pampered all freaking day.

No. I don’t know why the world would work like that.

No. The idea is pure fantasy.

I don’t think that energy recycling is enough to count as reincarnation. The whole point of re-incarnation is that it is the same thing coming back again. This would mean that there would have to be some fundamental thing that counts as us (the “real” us) that persists not just throughout our own life, but into some other life as well. But there is no evidence for anything meeting such a description.

We certainly cannot rely on the bits of manner and energy that make us up right now. Those won’t stay together for the next six seconds, let alone some hypothetical next life. But what else is there? Your mind, including your sense of self, is a product of your brain. And even that is an ever-changing bundle of impressions and ideas with no underlying identity except that which it builds for itself.

When we die, we are gone. Only the consequences of our actions live on. So if you’re worried about your legacy, try to make sure the ripples that emanate from your life become the kind of waves that push boats along rather than the kind that sink ships.

The obvious problem with Stevenson’s research, by the way, is that children are highly imaginative and typically have a shaky grasp on the precise boundary between lying and make-believe. Simply asking them if they’ve had a past life could lead them to invent one. And there is also no way of confirming after the fact the claims made by parents about things the child supposedly couldn’t know about. I also find it highly unlikely that any parent could possibly be aware of everything their child has ever experienced. “He’s never even heard German” Oh yeah? You monitored every conversation that has ever been had in your child’s vicinity. Despite the fact that adults—unlike children—have learned to tune out background noise? Sure…

What you believe becomes your reality. Like if your in a simulation that you just need to ask for a change and it would be.

People choose what they want to believe, then find evidence which supports it. There is plenty of evidence for a soul, energy, and afterlife. I could google some stuff for you but I’m tired. You decide what you choose to believe.

No. Death is just death. Wishful thinking does not make a thing true or even possible. And if I had any doubts, the fact that reincarnation would fulfill people’s wishes about an afterlife would be enough to make me sceptical. Just like any other religious promise.

Not really. I can’t identify any personal “essence” that could get transplanted from one container to another.

I could see how believing such a thing might be useful as a moral thought experiment. If you live your life as if the world’s problems will not simply become someone else’s to deal with when you’re gone but will continue to plague you, you might be motivated to take a longer view of your responsibilities. And if you consider that any being might have been your mother or father, sister or brother in a past life, that could make you less inclined to treat random beings like shit.

So as beliefs go, it seems to be rather a benign one. I just don’t see a good basis for it.

@SavoirFaire I would like to offer up a hypothetical theory I came up with a few years ago which for me helps explain some the very real and very unusual life after death experiences I have had with close family members. I think of this energy we “borrow” and use while we are here and will use a computer hard drive for an analogy for the universe. Ever key stroke, mouse click, picture, song, video file we save is essentially an “energy file” saved on the hard drive forever or until the file is deleted and I can see how moments in time, events or maybe our entire life is recorded in the energy field of the universe. Our bodies, our thoughts, our words, our experiences are all moments in time where the energy that was used at those moments could be recorded and stored in the energy field of the universe.

I also think man is unique in that he can intentionally generate and experience both good/positive and bad/negative energy which plays into the karmic vision of what goes around comes around. So the universe could be a karmic bank account of our good and bad energies. And why hyper sentient persons such as myself can feel energy and why some will be at a certain place and “feel” happy and often bad energy especially in homes and buildings where violence and even death has occurred. When someone says “this place creeps me out” there is often something that happened in the past that is the source for this vibe. And I believe that is why many people can be often correct in saying “that dude creeps me out” because they can sense their bad energy. There is so much more I know about body energy, universal life force energy, but I think you get the gist of it…or not.

No, even the word itself is ridiculous let alone the idea behind it.

No. I believe that when my life ends, it stayed ended, neither going to an afterlife or into another being or form.

There are two ways that this is possible:
1. We have a “soul” that does not die and can take other forms and posses other creatures. The whole classic incarnation thing is then possible…as well as others

2. We do not have a soul and are nothing more than material. The information about your “state” is eternal I.E. only one mathematical possibility for the configuration of particles and energy states than make up your body and mind at any given instant exists. That being true especially if that state is ever recorded then a whole world of possibilities opens up. Resurrection groundhog day style for one. A synthetic “soul” could be derived by modeling your mind as as system and then placing that system in a new body with no memory… It’s no leap of faith when you start looking at the joint probability of any crazy information only scenario. This is not possible if you have a “soul” that exists both inside your body or in another plane of existence. If we are ever able to truly figure out consciousness then we’ll really be able to have some interesting discussions on this.

Got my tenses mixed up. I’m not dead yet. Should have read…

No. I believe that when my life ends, it STAYS ended, neither going to an afterlife or into another being or form.

But you already figured I meant that, right?

I don’t necessarily disbelieve, but then I am and agnostic.

Actually, I encourage all religious folk to look into and embrace reincarnation. Do-overs seem to be a lot better incentive to me than the black-and-white, winner-take-all of heaven and hell.

I’m pretty sure I am turning into an egg roll right now after an indulgent dinner. Help me.

No.