Quote:
Originally Posted by Ubermensch
Reincarnation just doesn't make sense. Reincarnation is the belief that when you die your soul (which is metaphysical) will eventually find another living thing to inhabit, if you're a pantheist it can also inhabit nonliving things too I guess, but this requires the belief that all things living and nonliving possess souls. There are about 7 billion people that are alive today. So where did all these souls come from? The human race had to begin small, possibly with two people like Adam and Eve, but maybe more than that. But it surely didn't start out with 7 billion people! In order for reincarnation to even be plausible mathematically the number of people alive cannot be more than the number of souls.
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While I don't believe in reincarnation myself, I had asked that same question to someone who did believe in it. I didn't think they'd be able to answer and would just shrug their shoulders, but instead they said something that really surprised me.
What they said was that it was folly to assume all souls would start out as human. Instead, they suggested that all life (including microscopic) has a soul that would be reincarnated, and that eventually they would basically 'evolve' into a human soul. About the world population increasing, they suggested that with fewer areas available for animal and plantlife, more and more souls would be forced to evolve towards a human soul before they were ready to do so. As a result of not being ready for this stage, fewer humans would be moving on to the next one, leading to overpopulation and an increase in problems.
I still don't believe in reincarnation, but I thought it was a really interesting view.