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Judging from the two previous posts I sense a flame war coming.
As an atheist I don't believe in reincarnation..like others said before
me death is the final step. Even if they, for instance, cloned Einstein today there's no guarentee that the cloned version would be a Nobel-winning scientist.
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Posted: 2006-01-27 09:15:47
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Hey Brix, you people have one of the best believes in the world - from my personal experience. Is easier to believe in something one can directly relate to. Is a pity you've decided to be a atheist. And yes I like adding some 'spice' to the topic. Gets more people 'involved' :-) Greetings from South Africa. Mario.
This message was posted from a Nokia 7650
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Posted: 2006-01-27 10:04:06
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Reincarnation is something that is defined differently by different people. Some may believe that when one's mortal dies one immediatelt reincarnates into another body. Other may believe that a certain amount of time passes before one reincarnates. Still others may believe that reincarnation is a combination of both of those ideas.
Earlier someone raised the point about there being more people in the world today than there have been in the past. I do not see that such a situation necessarily invalidates a belief in reincarnation. How are we to know how many souls/spirits exist? Perhaps there are hundreds of billions, trillions or perhaps there are an infinite number. If such were the case then any number on incarnations could be possible across the universe. One might also consider the idea that ultimately we are all part of a single whole that divides up into seperate beings in the physical world. Again this would allow for there to be any number of incarnations.
I believe that certain Buddhist traditions use practical examples to prove that a person is a reincarnation of someone who had previously died. The reincarnated person takes tests to prove that he/she was the deceased person in a previous life e.g. demonstrating knowledge about the deceased person that they could not know.
There have been a number of cases of people recalling information about previous lives whilst the relatives of the deceased person are still alive and able to verify the information. It is difficult to explain where such information would have come from, especially if the reincarnation and the deceased person's family have neve rbeen in contact with one another and the information is of a kind that would either not be available easily or at all.
My own beliefs do not advocate a belief in reincarnation per se although they do not necessarily rule it out either. I believe that all life (and everything else for that matter) is part of the Tao and that as such we are eternal; our physical bodies may die, but our essence, that which truly makes us alive, does not. The Tao Te Ching says of Death and Renewal:
Quote:Empty the self completely;
Embrace perfect peace.
The world will rise and move;
Watch it return to rest.
All the flourishing things
Will return to their source.
This return is peaceful;
It is the flow of nature,
An eternal decay and renewal.
Accepting this brings enlightenment,
Ignoring this brings misery.
Who accepts nature's flow becomes all-cherishing;
Being all-cherishing he becomes impartial;
Being impartial he becomes magnanimous;
Being magnanimous he becomes natural;
Being natural he becomes one with the Way;
Being one with the Way he becomes immortal:
Though his body will decay, the Way will not.
To say that there is nothing beyond physical death with any sort of certainty is foolish in my opinion and ironically it is often said by those to claim to live their lives by science. Where do they get such a view? Certainly not from science since science can only deal with that which can be observed and measured and as yet there is no absolute proof that there is not some form of afterlife. In another twist of irony aetheism is therefore governed by belief too because without quantifiable evidence to say that a God or an afterlife or reincarnation doe snot exist all that one can do is believe that they don't.
If one looks at the universe around us one can see that nothing ever truly dies, all the energy that was in the universe when it first formed is still here now. The particles that made up long gone stars are all around us and inside us just in a different form. We can create our own strands of chemicals that form life; we can even clone life to produce exact copies, but what we cannot do is create that which turns a collection of molecules into a living being. We understand the physical side of it, but we do not know what actually makes something alive. At which point do a group of cells stop being a chemical reaction and turn into a life form? The answer is we do not know. Why is paint not alive? It is a collection of atoms just as human beings are, so why isn't it alive? We can give an answer involving chemistry and physics, but we cannot say what it is that makes something more than just a collection of atoms.
It was Tennyson who wrote:
Quote:Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die
To an extent that is true; we will all die, that is inevitable so we should get on with our lives and not worry about it. However, we do have the capacity to reason why because we are more than the sum of our parts. There is something in a living being that is more than just molecules and chemicals, there is something that takes those elements beyond being inanimate, unthinking particles and turns them into something capable of emotions, thought and feelings.
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"I may be drunk my dear woman, but in the morning I will be sober, and you will still be ugly." WSC
[ This Message was edited by: scotsboyuk on 2006-01-27 09:32 ]
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Posted: 2006-01-27 10:29:57
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I don’t believe in reincarnation, when you die, you die (imo like when you sleep and don’t dream).
But if it were true do you think you are reincarnated only into another human or a random animal. Do bad people get reincarnated as crap things like bugs and stuff?
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Posted: 2006-01-27 14:25:18
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why are bugs so crap - imagine how big the world is to them lol
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Posted: 2006-01-27 15:32:18
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Posted: 2006-01-27 16:51:08
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On 2006-01-27 09:04:26, mario2002 wrote:
The question was: where does it go ? Your answer is irrelevant
read my previous post and try again
otherwise sit down and let someone als try
Greetings from South Africa. Mario.
This message was posted from a Nokia 7650
that's my point - the knowledge in a book is simply an imperfect representation of something real. The actual reality of the information exists whether the book exists or not. So the answer "where does the information in the book go" well the letters and pages of the book go to dust, but the information the book represents remains unchanged. In the same way, when your body dies and goes to dust, your soul lives on. Your soul exists independent of the body, so no matter what you do to the body, the soul and it's memories live on. You body is like the book, it only represents, in an imperfect way, who you really are. The real "you" is the spirit, which is eternal. Your soul can write pages in the book, but nothing that is done to the book has any affect on the soul.
That is only my view, but it is certainly releavant to your analogy about books, even if you don't agree with my points.
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Posted: 2006-01-28 03:41:07
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Huh buddy, you still seem not to understand what I am saying. The issue is not about the information per se, but about the moving/direction thereof ! Let's make it even simpler. I burn a yellow piece of paper. Where does the 'yellow' go ?
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Posted: 2006-01-28 23:16:53
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the yellow on the page doesn't exist anymore. Neither does your body when you die. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. But the concept of "yellow" lives on. Likewise your spirit lives on when you die.
Just the same as "yellow" manifests in many different forms, so too does you soul. The spirit of "yellow" always exists. Your soul always exists.
I understand fully what you are getting at, I just don't agree with you
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Posted: 2006-01-29 01:50:20
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I undertand it in this way (its very simple): when you die you become dust, from that dust its become grass, some animal eat grass so you become part of them also and so on everything is fill full with each other and that is a proces of reincarnation... The all spirits are making one big spirit of the earth.
This message was posted from a T610
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Posted: 2006-01-29 02:11:13
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