Thread: Ok, trying this again -- refining my theory on NON-SPIRITUAL, NON-RELIGIOUS reINCARNATION

reincarnation

I wrote something about this recently, but it was confused and not well worded. I've thought about it some more, and heres version 2.0:

Let me stress again, there is NOTHING religious or spiritual about this, and it DOES NOT mean any part of you goes on or lives again... you absolutely DO NOT carry any memories through etc....

All it is, is this...

When you die, of course your consciousness dies, as it's a function of the living brain. But, we know so little about consciousness itself... who's to say this can't happen? Keep in mind I'm a very skeptical person, don't believe in anything magical or superstitious etc... mostly just science. But to me this sounds feasible.

Here it is... after you die (and I'm not saying I have any idea whatsoever how long after... could be immediately on death or days or maybe years later, who knows?) a NEW CONSCIOUSNESS forms somewhere in a womb (hundreds are formed every day if not thousands). YOU develop in this consciousness. Ahhh... see, this is the part I have so much trouble expressing!!! It's not like your personality or memories "carry on" (whatever that means)... it's not really the same you... it's just a completely new consciousness that becomes YOU. A completely NEW you.

Crap, that's the best I can do for now.


Does anybody understand what I'm trying so futilely to say? With so many little embryonic personalities forming every day, why wouldn't one of them be another you? Why couldn't it? (These are completely rhetorical questions by the way).

Anyway, this is still a new idea for me. Does anybody know if it's been discussed before (here or elsewhere)? I'm sure I'm not the first to think of it. I really wish I could figure out how to express it better!!!


***EDIT***

Ok, after a little more thought, here's a somewhat better explanation of what I mean when I say YOU (and tha'ts the problemmatic part here):

It's not your personality or your identity... not your memory.... its much more basic than that. It's quite simply that fragment of awareness that lives in your brain... that looks out through your eyes and hears through your ears.

Think about how this awareness comes into being in the first place... it's the result of electrical energy flowing through neurons in your nervous system and brain. It forms in the developing embryo and grows toward full awareness as the body develops. The personality is more of a graft-on....

This ethereal awareness... what you call ME I suppose... comes into being and gradually becomes more fully formed, and it dies when the body dies. There are literally billions of these awarenesses housed in bodies all over the world. More come into being all the time, and they're dying all the time too. Why did this one in particular become YOU? Why not me or somebody else entirely?

Ok, Im at my limit again. No idea how to express it better than this. I suspect if I ever DO figure that out, Ill have a much better understanding of exactly what consciousness is.

so

what you are saying is that basically when you die that you become somebody else but you have no memories of before

so the you of the thoughts and memories is gone but the awareness remains, like wiping off a whiteboard.

If you write racist slogans on the whiteboard as opposed to ponies it is a completely different whiteboard but its fundamental nature cannot change

i think this is what is being said

Welll... you mostly got it... (but I'm not sure I appreciate the whole racist slogans thing... how did THAT get in here??!! )

Only one thing.... you said "The awareness remains"... that's not quite what I mean. The awareness dies when you die. But sometime after it does, thousands of completely new awarenesses are born. Each of them is SOMEBODY... who can say one of them won't feel like YOU?

Does it make any sense?

The awareness doesn't REMAIN... more like it reforms completely in a new body... with a new personality etc.

Whew, this is so hard to explain!!

So... It's like, you're reborn!
You just can't remember, feel, see, know, or do anything about you past life?
I rather have Jeezus

I'd really prefer this not turn into a religious debate. Note which forum it's posted under.

So in other words, you believe there is a finite sett of "consciousness"-es, and that everytime a person die, a new consciousness with their fundamental personality is developed. Is that it?
If so, I have some questions. Why would this happen? Is there any reason to think that all "consciousness"-es are connected? Why should a new brain need to be connected to something older (which is must be, even if no "spirit" is transfered)?
Also, does this mean there's a finite set of "consciousness"-es, so that only a (maximum) number of conscious beings can exist at the same time?

Ahh cool... thanks for the chance to further explain my thoughts...

First, I wouldn't call any of this a "belief"... I'm just trying to work out some ideas that are currently pretty fuzzy in my head, but definitely taking shape.

This idea doesn't call for a finite amount of consciousnesses, nor are they connected in any way.

Let me try this another way...


You're born, you grow up, you eventually die. Fade to black. Complete and utter non-existence... just as we atheists believe. Later another person is born. Well actually many many other people are born. Note Im not saying your soul or personality are somehow transferred into one of them... no. But that just from random chance, "YOU" will be one of them. Or should I say one of them will be you? Not in any way the same you... this is the hard part to explain. I suspect not many people will understand it. And I'm afraid I still don't know how to express it any better.

But I really do appreciate your effort to understand. I see no reason why new consciousnesses can't form all the time. Heck, that must happen, since there are more people now than ever before!! Unless something even weirder is happening, like somehow all consciousnesses are actually facets of one.. but then that's getting into completely different territory!! And I don't want to go there.

Somehow this entire idea hinges on exactly how we define a consciousness, and just how it comes into being. What is it that makes "me" be the one inside my body, and you be inside of yours? Why wasn't it the other way around?

Ok... head hurting...

I suspect this is a problem Ill be working on for a long time.. gradually increasing my understanding of it. I hope somebody in here can help with that.

Ok well, it's time for me to hit the hay.

I'll sleep on it and check back in here later tonight.

Originally Posted by Darkmatters

reincarnation

I wrote something about this recently, but it was confused and not well worded. I've thought about it some more, and heres version 2.0:

Let me stress again, there is NOTHING religious or spiritual about this, and it DOES NOT mean any part of you goes on or lives again... you absolutely DO NOT carry any memories through etc....

All it is, is this...

When you die, of course your consciousness dies, as it's a function of the living brain. But, we know so little about consciousness itself... who's to say this can't happen? Keep in mind I'm a very skeptical person, don't believe in anything magical or superstitious etc... mostly just science. But to me this sounds feasible.

Here it is... after you die (and I'm not saying I have any idea whatsoever how long after... could be immediately on death or days or maybe years later, who knows?) a NEW CONSCIOUSNESS forms somewhere in a womb (hundreds are formed every day if not thousands). YOU develop in this consciousness. Ahhh... see, this is the part I have so much trouble expressing!!! It's not like your personality or memories "carry on" (whatever that means)... it's not really the same you... it's just a completely new consciousness that becomes YOU. A completely NEW you.

Crap, that's the best I can do for now.


Does anybody understand what I'm trying so futilely to say? With so many little embryonic personalities forming every day, why wouldn't one of them be another you? Why couldn't it? (These are completely rhetorical questions by the way).

Anyway, this is still a new idea for me. Does anybody know if it's been discussed before (here or elsewhere)? I'm sure I'm not the first to think of it. I really wish I could figure out how to express it better!!!


***EDIT***

Ok, after a little more thought, here's a somewhat better explanation of what I mean when I say YOU (and tha'ts the problemmatic part here):

It's not your personality or your identity... not your memory.... its much more basic than that. It's quite simply that fragment of awareness that lives in your brain... that looks out through your eyes and hears through your ears.

Think about how this awareness comes into being in the first place... it's the result of electrical energy flowing through neurons in your nervous system and brain. It forms in the developing embryo and grows toward full awareness as the body develops. The personality is more of a graft-on....

This ethereal awareness... what you call ME I suppose... comes into being and gradually becomes more fully formed, and it dies when the body dies. There are literally billions of these awarenesses housed in bodies all over the world. More come into being all the time, and they're dying all the time too. Why did this one in particular become YOU? Why not me or somebody else entirely?

Ok, Im at my limit again. No idea how to express it better than this. I suspect if I ever DO figure that out, Ill have a much better understanding of exactly what consciousness is.

That is pretty much how i feel can be possible. No magic, or religion, or whatever involved. If it happens, it's because it's how the universe works. It can be a day, a year, 100 years, 1 million years but it will all be in the blink of an eye because when you do not exists, time does not exist so there is no slow movement of time. Just here, and now. You are not "you", you are someone else expieriencing life with their own consciousness. Life happens everyday, i don't get why there can't be another consciousness born when there is 1 everyday.

Mods, I'm adding to my old thread , so don't accuse me of necro-ing, ok??!!

A good way to get at what I was trying to say is what buddhists refer to as the Observer.

That inner part of you that, when you're meditating, can observe your thoughts, your feelings, and your memories. If it can observe them, it can't also BE any of them. So it's a much more central and essential part of your self.

Originally Posted by Darkmatters

Mods, I'm adding to my old thread , so don't accuse me of necro-ing, ok??!!

Aaaah, shucks! : D

Weell.
Yeah - that's about what my husband tried to convey to me as well - reincarnation would somehow be reconcilable with rationalist materialism - but it is not.
I didn't read everything in here yet - but I'm with Juroara - without invoking some sort of spirituality - it just does't make sense.

This observer-"function" - how come it doesn't simply cease to exist, once your brain goes to mush?
It would have to be something independent from your brain - something that has a continuity as a discrete entity.
Well - then it's something "spiritual".

Why on earth would you wreck your brain to accommodate for this idea, which you can't even formulate?
I think I know, why my husband does - he doesn't want to acknowledge that while meditation and studying Buddhist texts have brought him so much subjective insight and "wisdom" and wellbeing - the doctrine also has irrational elements, no matter how you twist and turn semantics in order to make it seem "scientifically" possible. I think, he fears that admitting to that fact would somehow invalidate his experiences and he would loose "trust" in the texts in general and consequently not "benefit" from them anymore, also maybe loose trust in the validity of his own "wisdom".

Why not cherry-pick and just take what you like - meditation, this detached self-observation, the wise words, too, of course - but throw out the religious crap in between? There's by far less of that in Buddhism than in any other religion I can think of - but there is - karma and reincarnation.
Without Buddhism - would you ever have come up with such concepts on your own?

Well - or take it as it comes - but being aware then, that it is faith in the spiritual, not any form of reasoning that brought you there.

Edit: as said next door - meanwhile he said he actually doesn't really believe in reincarnation despite trying to defend it kicking and screaming yesternight. Don't ask me, what believing something "unreally" might mean...

Like Steph, I think this idea is sort of silly. There too many unfounded assumptions that have to be made about the nature of consciousness for it to work. You would have to assume that it is an elemental substance that follows it's own law of conservation for example. I think that is patently absurd. If there was a finite supply of consciousness on earth, we would either see a fixed level of humans on earth or if we are generous enough to allow that different animal consciousnesses are mixable, a finite level of neural life in general. Both assumptions are emperically unfounded.

Consciousness is likely a pattern in existing matter and patterns do not follow laws of conservation. Yes, there is a limit to how much consciousness there can exist in our universe but that limit is founded on the material substrate that the consciousness is imprinted upon, not some consciousness meter of the universe!

I can see you guys totally don't get it. There are absolutely no assumptions about consciousness involved - only that fact that we know it exists, in every person. It forms in the developing mind, in the developing brain, somewhere either in the womb or possibly later, I don't know.

Steph: "This observer-"function" - how come it doesn't simply cease to exist, once your brain goes to mush?"

It does! It dies when you die, since it IS you. Or rather it's what makes you you and not somebody else. Just goes kaput! And Pffft - it's gone forever never to exist again.

Why do you think something has to continue on? That's the religious baggage, the magic idea that you find impossible to accept. What Im trying to get across is that NOTHING continues. Nothing is carried through. Something completely new comes into existence, a shiny new baby awareness, just like all the billions of others, but just as has already happened once, it somehow is you. Whatever made this you you - why can't it happen again, and again, and again? Maybe it has happened dozens or thousands of times already, and will continue to, until there is no more life in the universe. It's already happened at least once that you're aware of, so you know it happens. I'm just saying why do we assume it only happens once? We don't know that it does. THIS is all I'm saying.

I can see you guys totally don't get it. There are absolutely no assumptions about consciousness involved - only the fact that we know it exists, in every person. It forms in the developing mind, in the developing brain, somewhere either in the womb or possibly later, I don't know. And actually, technically, what I'm discussing isn't really consciousness, it's merely the sense of awareness, which is only one small piece of consciousness, or an emergent property of it or something.

Steph: "This observer-"function" - how come it doesn't simply cease to exist, once your brain goes to mush?"

It Does! It dies when you die, since it IS you. Just goes kaput! And Pffft - it's gone forever never to exist again.

For some reason, even though I keep saying over and over that there is nothing a all magic or religious involved here, you both think that's what I'm talking about.

What you need to think about in order to try to grasp this is all those billions of little consciousnesses that come into existence every year (or however many it is - especially if you consider animals, not just humans). In the entire history if life, one of those countless little sparks of awareness was YOU. That one is gone now. Nothing has lived on or continued in any way (I've said all thins dozens of times already - it's hard to believe neither of pom grasped it yet - I guess you only read the OP?).


Think about it - why did you ever exist at all? Why did one of these countless billions of sparks of awareness happen to be you, ever? Somehow it happened, and by some chance, it's right now - your extremely limited span of life happens to coincide with mine and with everyone else's who is reading this. Why wouldn't it have been in the Middle Ages, or Ancient Greece, or the Renaissance, or ancient Egypt? And then poof! Gone forever. But it didn't happen - instead you were born into today's world.

And after you're gone, billions upon billions of new awarenesses come into existence, in billions upon billions of little babies. For some reason, one of them at one time was you - whatever that means. We have no idea why one of them is subjectively you and all the rest are not (though every one of them is subjectively somebody).

What if 'you' had never been born into the world at all? Why were you? And why right now? Thinking about these ideas might help you to understand the particular conception of subjectivity Im talking about, the concept that of all the countless awarenesses, one of them is 'you'.

Well, but I'm just repeating what I've already said ad infinitum before. I think she people already get it and will recognize it when they read this, some people might get it at some point later in life, possibly this thread can plant the basis of future understanding, or they might arrive at it through some totally different means. And of course the majority of people will never get it at all. Most will never be able to see it as anything other than religious or magic.

Ok, look I'll give you the benefit of the doubt since you have demonstrated credible views and thinking in previous posts.

Can you explain to me in one paragraph as precisely as possible, your theory on "reincarnation". I am getting conflicting signals here on what your idea actually entails. I am not going to go so far as accuse you of pulling a DiMeglio here but I am confused nonetheless.

I am sorry if this is terribly frustrating for you but I can not even appraise your idea if I can't see it!

(Note - this is an edit I tried to do on my previous post, but it came up separate, so I'll let it stand here. After having a few years to let it all marinate I seem to have found a somewhat different way to explain it.):

Why do you think something has to continue on? That's the religious baggage, the magic idea that you find impossible to accept. What Im trying to get across is that NOTHING continues. Nothing is carried through. Something completely new comes into existence, a shiny new baby awareness, just like all the billions of others, but just as has already happened once, it somehow is you. Whatever made this you you - why can't it happen again, and again, and again? Maybe it has happened dozens or thousands of times already, and will continue to, until there is no more life in the universe. It's already happened at least once that you're aware of, so you know it happens. I'm just saying why do we assume it only happens once? We don't know that it does. THIS is all I'm saying.

Ok, so you are saying that the only continuity that you would experience between this life and the "next" is our subjective experience. Just as when I go to deep sleep, my consciousness is shutoff and then turned on when I wake up. Something like that continuity but without the added anchor of the intact memories from the previous tract of conscious experience during yesterday.

I have had thoughts like this before. In fact, it could be that we are "reincarnated" with every average clock cycle that our brain goes. A conscious being dies with every moment, only to be replaced with another with the same memories.

Am I even close to your idea or am I just tooting my own horn here?

Yes!! You're definitely on to it now. Have you ever done meditation? Know about the idea of the observer, which is the part capable of observing your thoughts feelings or memories without being attached to any of them? That would be the part I'm referring to, or perhaps it's actually something even deeper in the unconscious morass of which the observer is a somewhat conscious aspect. I don't remember if LaBerge talked about the observer in ETWOLD or not, but I think that's where I picked up the idea of it for the first time. And if he did talk about it, then I'm deeply ashamed that I remembered the concept when I made this thread but not the term Observer or the way of describing it which comes from buddhist meditation.

I am acquainted with it somewhat. Can't say I necessarily agree with the idea that there is or indeed can even be an observer that is truly detached from thoughts, feelings or memories. It could just be that the "observer" is just at a higher meta level of cognition and is just another element in our subjective experience rather than the artificer.

I have experienced what you describe during previous experimentations with meditation; it is a most peculiar sensation and makes the belief of a disembodied spirit more excusable than it would have been otherwise.

One issue I always have with such ideas of reincarnation is why should there be a reopening of your subjective experience after death? Think about it for a moment: with every clock cycle of our brain, your consciousness blinks out and into existence. If it was true that there is a true continuity of subjective experience independent of any temporal arrangement of matter, why is it that after the first blink, my tract of subjective experience does not switch to another substrate that is suitable to house it? If subjective experience really operated like this, I would expect it to be far more sporadic and inconsistent then it appears to be.

It seems to be more plausible that the particular tract of experience is localised to the particular substrate that created it, the brain. Once the brain ceases to operate, the pattern dissipates. If the brain decomposes to a sufficient extent, the pattern can no longer be recoverable and that particular track of subjective experience will never run again.

Far more pessimistic and conservative theory for sure but I find it more probable.

I actually agree with everything you said except for this: "I have experienced what you describe during previous experimentations with meditation; it is a most peculiar sensation and makes the belief of a disembodied spirit more excusable than it would have been otherwise." and this: "… a reopening of your subjective experience after death?"

What I'm talking about definitely does not involve anything like a disembodied spirit or a reopening of the same anything. To call it a re-opening implies that something is still carrying over.

I think what might help is to think about just the sheer incredible multiplicity of awareness-es winking on and off all the time - any given day there are thousands of lives born and extinguished. Every single day. The vast majority of them are not you - in fact of all of them, only one is. Think about that. Do you really believe it's because of some spiritual quality or some disembodied spirit that that sense of this one being you exists? I don't. I think it's pretty much random. And I think you do too. Why in the hell, with all the billions of them that were born in the time you were, was one of them you? Why did you even come into existence at all? You didn't have to. It could easily just have been all those others, with no you EVER. But for some reason that we aren't capable of understanding (or apparently of even talking about effectively) each one is subjectively somebody, and one of them is subjectively you. And one me.

And yet to each of the others, the same is true. Only one is him. Or her. Why? What causes that subjectivity? I agree with you (not sure if you said this directly, but you implied it) that the sense of awareness, like everything about consciousness, is probably some kind of illusion. An emergent property of thought in the growing brain. But who is experiencing the illusion? You are, whatever that means. If it's an illusion, then so be it. But why couldn't the same illusion happen again and again and again? The illusion of you?

I'm trying to say that nothing has to 'carry over'. If we are good atheists, we don't believe this awareness 'came from anywhere' anyway to begin with, right? It was created as the mind grew to a state of cognition compatible with conscious awareness. We don't know exactly at what stage the spark of pure awareness comes into being, the sense that you are in there looking out (and by this I don't mean to imply a spirit housed in a body, just a mind with a sense of self in its most basic primitive form). We don't know how or why it happens, but we do know it happens. Each of us knows it happened once anyway. Whatever mysterious process causes a sensate little awareness to envelop in each embryo for some reason builds in that subjectivity in each one. It seems to be the most central and basic element of consciousness, at least that we know of. We can't experience anything deeper. You can strip away thoughts, feelings and memories, and it's still there. The you who sees through your eyes and yours only.

Billions of these 'yous' are born every decade. We assume that every one of them is a unique and totally different you. All he's and she's then, from your perspective, but of course from their own perspective, each is a me. Countless little budding me's. And since we have absolutely no understanding of how this happens, how this little sense of being a Me develops in each one, we have no idea if that sense of me is something that can happen again and again, or if it only happens once.

I'm saying, that, since it IS some kind of illusion, and since the same illusion develops in every mind, it's basically meaningless to say that "you can't ever live again".

What I think is so hard for people to grasp is that I'm not talking about any kind of continuity, It seems no matter how many times I say that it's still what everyone (most anyway) think of. But I'm saying try to think about how each little me develops the sense of 'me'ness. It's completely imponderable really. I doubt science will ever be able to explain it. Falling asleep and waking up is a decent analogy, but of course it's much different, because no matter how deep in sleep you are your mind is still functioning and that spark of awareness is always there, it exists in every dream no matter how bodiless or void-ish they may be. It might wink out in a coma state, I don't know. But I suspect it remains to some extent, at least some aspect of it. But when you die of course it goes completely. It sings Daisy, slower and slower, and goes offline completely. (And of course, when you wake up you can remember previous days).

Now, we do know that countless trillions of new me's will shoot off like popcorn afterwards - this is happening constantly. We have no idea whatsoever why one of the countless trillions that came before was 'you' - hell, we can't even define what we mean by 'you'. But somehow we know it did. Whatever constitutes that sense of subjective 'me'ness happened.

And it will happen every time an new embryo comes into existence. The only question is, will all of them be other-than-you? Or might one of the new ones be a completely new you?

Ok, That's all I got. Wiped out now. But Im glad to see I'm finding some new ways to look at it and explain it.

Hach - my husband is the best!



How it all began with this topic, husband and me, from another thread:

Originally Posted by StephL

As far as I know - the Buddhists claim there is no continuity in consciousness anyway - not even from second to second. How they can then come to the weird idea that after death then suddenly there is continuity in that never-ending discontinuity and with karma-seeds coming into some sort of causal fruition over to your next incarnation - I simply cannot follow that "logic".
Oh dear - I found out lately that my husband is a closet Buddhist, but he likes to ignore this conundrum, can't explain it to me, but is ardently of the opinion, that all my objections wouldn't apply, since I wouldn't understand it properly.
But - he's unable to even express it in words so that it makes sense to his own ears - he just believes, all the rest would be so wise and precious, that I shouldn't think, I can so easily call bullshit on karma and reincarnation. And it would anyways only be peripheral. Weell.
Got something to do much closer to home than I expected - I wonder if I wanted to even know that - I thought he only meditates. Do I write to my own husband now - quoting texts and showing him, that I indeed can? Can call bullshit, I mean. Gosh - I guess, I will sort of have to...
I'll report next door then - but we had a discussion yesterday which left me flabbergasted - he didn't shy away from several clear fallacies - even right-out dishonest tactics like changing the goalposts all the time, trying to change the topic and and. Wow! Well - I can't un-know that now...

Originally Posted by Darkmatters

Are you sure you need to kill off your hubby's beliefs? It will undoubtedly go very much like your attempts to talk sense into a certain Creationist who made things very active for a brief while around here (and now it's died down once again). You may think from time to time that you're getting through, only to find out soon that you didn't at all. And it may very well end your marriage or make it unhappy for one or both of you. Challenging someone's core-most beliefs is not a thing to be taken lightly - I've seen it rip apart old friendships even when both parties laughingly assured themselves and everyone else that there was no way that could ever happen - 'after all, we're all adults here, right?' Some things you need to just accept in someone you love - you can't force them to change and trying is a relationship-killer more often than not.

Originally Posted by StephL

Yeah - I'll see, you're right of course, it might be dangerous in principle.
Right now we're both laughing at it - I showed him my post - now he says, he actually doesn't really believe in reincarnation anyway, and I should go ahead.
But that I should stop, once he would desperately cling on to his meditation mat, chanting and catatonically drawing mandalas on the floor.

If he told me he believed in something "spiritual" of any kind - that would make at least internal sense - but he keeps at the same time claiming, he would be a staunch materialist. That's sort of exasperating me - you can't have it both ways, now can you?
Oh well - obviously you can - the mind is a wondrous thing indeed..

Don't worry - but sweet of you to actually do worry - but don't, we're gonna survive that - I can take it, if he stays like that - I love him! And he knows me well enough to not be surprisable by something like this.
But I'll try - seems he's done some reorganizing over the night already.
And he said to greet you sweetly!

I didn't even need to start out with collecting stuff to show him, that he can't have it both ways - he's been on the net himself and on this mission. That's what makes all the difference - just listening to me didn't work, unsurprisingly - the will needs to be there and one needs to do it for oneself, not while in a confrontational exchange. Self-defence is a mighty beast and almost instinctive.

And he agrees with me meanwhile - you need the supernatural to invoke reincarnation - he says he's not completely rid of the idea, but at least he is aware now of the discrepancy. And he brought along a lot of sources, which he looked into - including "the Dawkins of Buddhism" as he called him, that's this Stephen Batchelor.
But first off a classical definition, one that he finds unconvincing:
REBIRTH - Bhikkhu Bodhi
One more, same author:
Dhamma Without Rebirth?

Now said "Dawkins" - author of "Buddhism without Beliefs":
A Difficult Pill: The Problem with Stephen Batchelor and Buddhism
An interview with him:
BG 175: The Buddhist Atheist » Buddhist Geeks

Here the "opposing" view - also interview:
BG 179: An Evidence-Based Spirituality for the 21st Century » Buddhist Geeks

A debate:
https://tabmemfree.appspot.com/blank...le_favicon.ico

Another anti-reincarnation thingy:
Buddhists Against Reincarnation

Now he's not yet sure, if he's also such a Buddhist atheist - or if he might not anyway be inclined to the supernatural, but at least knowingly.
Soo - that didn't go in any way and whatsoever similarly to "debating" a Creationist - I didn't even have to do something - shaking up my husband's foundations that fine evening has indeed lead to him getting quite active on his own to sort out his head and beliefs - I'm proud of him!! Ah - but would I have married a block-head? NOPE!!
There are indeed people on this planet who are able to admit to having been wrong and willing to even find out themselves and then willing to work out, what that means to them personally! Might take him a while longer, but I'm sure he'll come out with something at least internally consistent, and hopefully, but also highly probably the rational variant. As can be seen in the quotes - my problem was this cognitive dissonance he had, believing in reincarnation and at the same time claiming to be a staunch rationalist materialist.
Hurraaah - mission got accomplished - and he did it for me!!

Darkmatters I just got to say that your idea makes totall sense and I believe that anyone are able to see that too. IF, one is willing to actually give it the amount of thought that it require, depending on how flexible one's thoughts will be that is. The reason why I post here in the first place, is that since you have this idea of incarnation. I just thought that might be very interested in listening to this lecture by Alan Watts. Your idea might be even more clear to you since this is the exactly same thing he is talking about.
Enjoy!

Steph - indeed, I agree you can't have it both ways. Did your husband's idea rely on something magical or religious? If so then it's different from what this thread is about, because my idea has no 2 ways about it. I's strictly rational. If you still persist in thinking there's something magical about it, then would you do me the favor of pointing out what it is?

I think maybe it's just the word reincarnation - those people who have remained rigidly opposed to what I'm talking about seem unable to understand that reincarnation is not necessarily a religious or magical term. We've all been incarnated (made flesh) once - we can all agree on that right? It happened - and if you're atheistic you don't think it was through some kind of magic, right? What's stopping one of the countless billions of new lives that will form in the future from also being you?

Well - my consciousness arose from that sperm and egg thingy and it was totally brand new - never was any_of_it there before - and once my brain goes to mush, all_of_consciousness_StephL will be terminated. It's an emergent property/phenomenon of a nervous system, and what stays is that bit, which makes it into other people's heads as memories. That's my view in a nutshell.

Originally Posted by Darkmatters

We've all been incarnated (made flesh) once - we can all agree on that right?

Nope - I've not been "incarnated" - I've not been there at all before "I" emerged from my nervous system's workings.
I've not been made flesh - flesh made me.

Originally Posted by Darkmatters

What's stopping one of the countless billions of new lives that will form in the future from also being you?

Lack of mechanism.
How would you imagine this something_of_you makes it into the next body, how could that work? Why only one specific body at a time?



My husband had exactly the same idea, which you have - that something_of_you can get reborn without that being a supernatural happening.
By reading the above linked sources - he changed his mind about that.
Did you check up on those?
Because you know - all that I said to him in real life didn't work on him, so I doubt it might work on you - but maybe these sources will!
No disrespect of course - husband's a highly intelligent man and mathematician, and he managed to hold that view up to now.

By the way - this whole affair hasn't killed off his "spirituality" now - not even if he comes to drop the rebirth concept.
Quite the opposite - he didn't actually read Buddhist stuff for a longish while and now he's freshly enthused about some aspects - meditation cushion is at the ready again, and he wants me to read certain stuff and show me how wise this and that is.
Also how some of it concurs with modern neuroscientific findings and has aspects of what Thomas Metzinger, my favourite philosopher says. I'll take a look and expect him to be correct.

I'm fine with all that, even if he'll come to accommodate for the supernatural - just happy this cognitive dissonance has disappeared.
Reminds me of Xanous and his Christian Atheism, actually.

Originally Posted by StephL

Well - my consciousness arose from that sperm and egg thingy and it was totally brand new - never was any_of_it there before - and once my brain goes to mush, all_of_consciousness_StephL will be terminated. It's an emergent property of a nervous system

Ok, so you completely agree with me so far. No part of your mind, or a soul, or anything else lives on or goes on or in any way can possibly continue when you die.

Check.

Nor does any of it "live again" in any way, "reform", or come back into being in any way shape or form.

Incidentlally, I really wasn't asking you to explain it, I wanted you to really ponder the process itself, but I'm afraid you only wrote off that rather dismissive statement off the very top of your head. The part I wanted to you think about is later than the sperm/egg collusion - it's during the development of the mind itself, at whatever point that awareness comes into existence.

Now please indulge me just a little bit farther - I'm going to see if I can walk you through the tricky part where I think everybody gets lost. And please, don't think of this as me arguing with you, because we're in total agreement. and please, get absolutely any ideas of anything religious or magical out of your head, I think those are screwing you up. There's none of that in this concept at all. As many times as I've said this, you keep going that way. It's clear you aren't grasping it yet.

Of all the countless little developing brains with their developing minds, each gets its own little awareness inside it. Happens hundreds of times every day, right? How come one of them - THAT one - became you? Why didn't it become somebody else? This is the really mysterious part. And I think this is the key to getting people to understand.

We have absolutely no idea why that one became you, or this one became me. Or that other one became LouaiB. And I'm not talking about names, or identities, or anything so surface as that. Just the fact that somehow, that one little meat calculator grew YOU inside of it, rather than somebody else.

You can't explain it. Scientists can't explain it. It's one of the great mysteries of life.

Ok, so we know that for some unexplainable reason, you grew inside that one particular brain. And of course when that brain dies, you will die with it. That mind winks out like a light bulb and with it goes that particular awareness.

Now please try to completely eliminate any idea of it living on, or transferring or anything like that. Awarenesses can't do that - they're only as you said an emergent property of thought. But one grows inside every little brain at some point in its development. One of them became StephL. You don't know why or how, but it did. Well, with all the countless ones developing every day, who's to say one of them won't have the subjective property of YOU being in there? I don't mean StephL of course - it would be a completely new person (or animal). Totally new identity. No memories, no baggage, because it never existed before, It's completely fresh and new, just as the StephL awareness was before it. A totally new you. You would not be aware of ever having existed before, because really you didn't.

Hmmm.. maybe what's making it so hard to understand is the continued use of the word you. I guess it tends to make people think that I'm somehow talking about the SAME person, the same identity, or the same awareness that existed before. I'm absolutely not, It's essential that you grasp this in order to understand. It's only the fact of being inside a brain, in a body. Subjectivity. Interiority - access to the thoughts and feelings coursing through that brain.

Ok, I honestly don't think I can explain it any better than that. If you still don't understand, then maybe you have some ideological blockage that resists such ideas on whatever grounds, such as you think science says it's impossible (science cannot possibly ever study any such thing, barring the development of entirely new and amazing technology). Or maybe you've fallen into argument mode and you refuse to lose this one (What, Steph hard-headed and obstinate? Never!! ). And I'm sure you think I've fallen into argument mode or have some ideology that makes me immune to logic on this issue, but I can assure you neither is true. I just had a weird thought one day and suddenly I could see this. It was so amazingly simple and so obviously possible (remember I'm not saying it definitely happens, just that it's as likely as not) that I wanted to try to share it, and have been running into this frustrating wall of incomprehension in most quarters. Sigh. But at least trying to explain it is helping me to think deeper into it and come up with ever better ways. Maybe one day I'll have the breakthrough or maybe some really smart person will see this thread and can explain it much better than I can. It really sucks to have this amazing thought, and not to be able to share it with almost anybody.

I'll read the links you provided - though I'm betting all they preclude is any kind of religious or magical idea of reincarnation.