Do you believe in "metempsychosis"?

ewwww….No!

Reincarnation: No. I think we simply return to our basic compounds. That then get re-used by the biosphere that is called Earth. As far as you, your personality – provided you had a lot of friends and family that were really close to you—they are your best chance of being alive as they remembered you to be. Hence, one of the most important things while alive is relationships, and what you leave behind – as well as enjoying this magnificent event called life.

This is what you are discussing?

“Reincarnation is believed to occur when the soul or spirit, after the death of the body, comes back to Earth in a newborn body. This phenomenon is also known as transmigration of the soul.”

Voodoo drama and spooky logic.

No.

There is considerable ( albiet mostly anecdotal ) evidence to warrant giving serious consideration to reincarnation.

yes… from first hand knowledge

As the reincarnation of Mahatma Gandhi, I can tell you that it doesn’t work that way. First the soul travels to the mystical land of the marshmallow king where your soul is “defluffed” and converted into an ethereal thread that’s woven into a cap by a golden psychedelic spider. This “mystical cap” is placed onto the head of every unborn fetus after the second trimester which is when all “ensoulment” takes place. Neat, isn’t it.

I have as much proof of this theory as anyone else has of theirs.

Before saying “yes”: or “no” we need to examine the “stuff” of souls in its physical form. If given the soul is the mind and the mind without the brain is the electical energy that flits around it, then as energy cannot be destroyed, but only changes form, then yes, reincarnation is possible. This would involve the same energy in an unchanged state entering the gray matter of a newly formed fetus. Difficult? Yes, nearly impossible, but not impossible given the very nature of energy. How the energy transfers from the dying body to the fetus at the time of the fireing of the first neuron is the difficult part.
For the religious, this phrase is uttered twice in “The Bible,” once by an angel and once by Christ, “For with God, nothing is impossible.”
Religious or not, I love this phrase as what seemed impossible just ten years ago we are finding is possible in science and technology.
The Dali Lama is the epitome of a reincarnation example, as to be the Dali Lama, the individual would have first have had to prove prior life experiences.
For a soul to maintain it’s energy in an unchanged state must be like seeing to it that an icecube not melt in a fire. It can be done by protecting the icecube from the environment. Difficult, yes, but it could be done, which is why reincarnation must be so rare.
The scary part for me would be the timing of the energy entering the body of the fetus, as once the brain is formed (though growing), the body already has a energy (a soul). Would the energy mix to synthesize a new soul? Would the reincarnated soul push out the new soul-technically murder? Or can only a give amount of energy occupy the space of the mind and whatever is generated occupies this or whatever makes it to the synapses first is the “winner” of the brain? The energy generated to fire the first neuron then is the birth of the soul. Science must have a way to show this occuring during fetal development. If you used energy from your own mind to fire this neuron, would you in essence be in two bodies? Would the baby take on your personality traits or would the makeup of the rest of the baby’s brain and energy generating processes overwhelm that one nueron? Or does it obtain more energy by firing from one synapse to another? Are the souls of identical twins then one identity or two as they both came from the same initial energy source or does the source change by the time the brain is formed and/or over time? Or are we truely only what we eat, wherein energy comes only from caloric intake to make the mind? But as energy takes the path of least resistance, isn’t it easier to use energy already used in a mind? Nature is rarely wasteful, so it would make sense to recycle this energy. Then again, everything in nature is in a state of atrophy (change) and for anything to remain unchanged, again must be rare, but not impossible. (Whew) that was a fun ride, lol…

@lookin4otherslikeme fun considerations all around, with one addition. All matter is also energy. Throw that into the mix ;) So in a sense, the chemical grouping (compounds) that are created of the living chemical system (life), propagate – and create the fetus. Yes it’s pretty cool how life keeps on going :)

phoebusq,
True that. That’s matter in it’s changed form. As an example, the man dies, the worm eats the man, the bird eats the worm, a man eats the bird, so in a way, he eats the man. But what’s more interesting is energy unchanged. Maybe this explains not only reincarnation but also ghosts if either exist. I wonder if you could capture a soul, just by capturing the energy in the brain when one is dying. I guess it would just be like the electric running through a computer after its shut off,. This energy is useless though without the computer on and functioning. If our brains are like computers then all is lost after death unless it is saved somewhere. Somewhere like our children. I’ve seen a study wherein people whose parents were in a particular occupation were able to pick up on that occupation quickly a greater percentage of time than those whose parents did not engage inn that occupation. My mother was a secretary and within a week I was typing 40wpm. Not a bad start. My dad was a doctor, but I’m sad to say I ‘ve never had the chance to do surgery to prove this has been passed on to me, lol…

Fear the spirit of my anus.

@lookin4otherslikeme although these are fun considerations again I would say no. There is the property of emergence. The basic elements that depict life, are just that – basic elements. The basic elements that depict atoms, are just that, and sub atomic particles etc. The further down you go, the simpler it gets. But when you put the stuff together, at each level of complexity you get another level of interaction and emergent properties.

Similarly, when you put the chemical compounds required together for a chemical system of life (propagation/maintenance) – they have their respective emerging properties. But when they de-compose back down, or are used as compounds or as groups of compounds (proteins etc) by other organisms – they do live on in a sense. But they don’t have the same emergence, they’re part of something else now. They’ve changed – their role, their reality. I was wrong to use the word created in the previous reply because it’s a fallacy unless the reader understands it as ‘changed into’. Things change around into other things. Emerging properties change. It would be interesting if there were properties carried – and there may be some – but I’d argue that it’s nowhere near enough to carry over anything like the vast amount of information required to portray a personality. If you look into memory studies as compared to personality – and that our memory is a huge part of it, you’ll see what happens when memory gets corrupted – great personality changes, and behavioral changes. Sadly the basic systems do not hold the previous configuration of the emerged properties.

I see you keep returning to the energy as a medium, but the energy is an actor. The medium for us are neurons and neurochemistry. Memory is saved both in the individual chemistry and biochemical changes in individual neurons but also in the group behavior (another emerging factor) of many neural networks. Memory is one of the most interesting systems because it’s stored everywhere in the nervous system, it in a way is the nervous system. Many different types of it, cooperating and working together each time you execute a recall or ‘remember’.