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LINK Three Reasons “You” Won’t Return After This Life

Captures both the religious nonsense of somehow 'living on' after death, as well as some of nonsense of Buddhism on the subject.

I've never believed any of this religious nonsense, not even when a child.

Key paragraph for me:
"Your actions and personality are truly what gets “left behind.” These are passed down from life to life: ideas, biases, diseases, religions, money. Just because you’re not remembered later does not mean you didn’t influence others; just because everyone remembers your name does not mean you benefited this planet. Your actions always have consequences, many of which you’ll never realize. That’s karma. It’s nothing magical. Just put down your phone to look around and you’ll see it everywhere."
'

David1955 8 Oct 2
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8 comments

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2

The best reason that you will not return after this life is that you are dead.

Yeah. That's called Zombies.
And no one will want to interview you.

2

People who do claim to remember past lives always seem to claim to have been royalty or some other person of great importance. But if this farcical notion had any validity most people would be recalling memories of bleak poverty, disease and drudgery.

Very true.

I always thought the same thing. So many women claim to have been Cleopatra in their past life that it's really comical.

@Elissa yes, I remember that joke about actress Shirley McClain being the oldest actress to win an Oscar at 3,500 years old, given all the past lives she claims to have had Including some famous people if I recall.

Maybe not, I hear reincarnation machines are really expensive, so it would make sense that only the rich come back...

3

Whether you come back or not is fun to debate.

My question is, if you could, would you want to?

No, we have our time, then the baton is passed.

Fuck no. One go around on this shit hole is too much. To choose to come back again, when the planet is in drastically worse shape, could not be the decision of anyone whose actually thought about the proposition intelligently for more than two seconds.

3

Very well put!!

When it comes to religion the Noah’s Ark story was what I began questioning at around age 11, I started asking myself, How did that thing stay afloat all those months (9 according to the Bible) without a functional bilge pump? How did they get all those animals aboard? Not to mention all the food that would have been necessary. It had no rudder, no charts, no ventilation, no depth sounder.

You would have needed approximately 7 or 8 modern cargo ships to ferry all that around. That was the beginning for me, though I did not become Atheist until 16 years later. Breaking away from ingrained conditioning is in many ways more difficult than breaking a drug habit.

When it come to asking questions about religious beliefs that are totally unanswerable by reason, logic and common sense, the catch-all answer is "all things are possible with god" and "god works in mysterious ways".

Not to mention the poo. And it was a sealed up ship.

Although I didn't know what a bilge pump was at age 9, I found the Noah's ark story extremely awful and ridiculous. Besides the improbable logistics of all the animals on the ship, I was really horrified by the fact that all the other humans were being drowned on purpose.

1

We don't know if there is an afterlife. We don't know if you are reborn into a new life.

But you don't know that we don't know.

The very concept is preposterous.

4

Yes, your actions have consequences and karma is a system of "doing." It never comes back to bite you in the ass. To believe so is putting an unneeded importance to self. Why do I think you will not return after this life? Show me proof of someone who did. We have no consciousness without the body because out thoughts live in our mind and body. They are not just flying around somewhere.

7

The whole idea is nonsensical but it is still promoted by religions to gullible believers. I remember years ago a Roman Catholic workmate told me that when he died he went to purgatory until purged of his sins then he went to heaven proper. When I laughed he got very upset.

Sure you are mistreated here, in this life.
But a reward is awaiting you.
Such bullshit.

4

Whether or not one's consciousness travels to another body does not really matter in an evolutionary genetic way, and in terms of Buddhist philosophy, reincarnation is closer to a theory. Even if it does happen, probably most people have no interest in remembering other lifetimes, which seem a total fantasy to them. Additionally, in this world it would be self-defeating to claim one has the same identity as in a previous life.

Reincarnation lacks an explained connection to science. Consider the elegant partial randomness about how humans mutate, develop new characteristics, adapt, procreate, and evolve in balance with surrounding lifeforms... evolutionary genetics theory.

Most mutation is not random... it is a combination of two opposing forces — the mis-pairing (mutation) during DNA replication and the need to preserve a protein's function... which could explain why evolution occurs much faster than if mutations were, in fact, totally random...

Compare death to entropy (randomness)... The more energy that is lost by a system to its surroundings, the less ordered and more random the system is... Energy disperses, and systems dissolve into chaos... entropy is a measure of the disorder of the universe, on both a macro and a microscopic level. Now compare DNA's chemical reactions and genetic instructions to the predominantly non-random growth of a new human.

Back to the theory of reincarnation... if one wishes to remember a previous life (briefly imagine a scientific parallel to non-random DNA sequence repetition) in order to adapt to random chaos in current life circumstances (draw a parallel to *random chaotic mutation), then who's to prove that reincarnation theory (which might never be scientifically proven) does not make sense as an adaptation that is able to deal with chaos. By the way, real Buddhism is philosophy, not religion.

Whether after death, one becomes nothing, a rock, or a human does not really matter.

I am neither for nor against reincarnation which may simply be no different from the Chirstian notion of heaven and hell (carrot and stick) training which BF Skinner renamed Operant Conditioning as though he had made some new discovery.

The claimed recognition of a previous incarnation for which there is no verifiable scientific test, is nothing more than a nice little trip down fantasy lane. Another consolatatory distraction for those who are unhappy with their lot in life.

@ASTRALMAX
There's a lot more philosophy and theory in what I wrote than there is fantasy.
Maybe you didn't read my latest edit, which says that it doesn't really matter whether one becomes nothing, a rock or a human after death.

@AnonySchmoose I agree that it does not matter whether you become a tree or a rock. I think that the whole notion of reincarnation is essentially no different from the Christian notion of heaven and hell. 🙂

Fritjof Capra wrote The Tao of Physics in which he attempted to draw parallells between modern physics and East Mysticism. Enteraining reading at best...

Interesting. My only comment is that having lived in the Buddhist country of Thailand for a number of years, the ideas of karma and reincarnation are real things they believe in and they are dangerous ideas. Poor people are poor due to bad karma and reincarnation, and rich people have good karma, and nonsense like that. Western 'spiritual' types often say that Buddhism is a philosophy not a religion, to which I say baloney and go and live in a Buddhist country for a while, don't just read academic books on Buddhism.

@David1955
I am aware that many Buddhist countries practice types of Buddhism that subscribe to duality ideologies, thus the populations are ideologically & psychologically oppressed by Buddhist religion. I am not referring to that Buddhism, but to the original Buddhism, which was a philosophical & meditational process toward freedom from duality. Example: the largest Tibetan Buddhist tradition, one of the main goals of which is to liberate beings from suffering. I do not blame you for disliking Buddhist teachings that propagate a duality ideology... I detest it too. It is noteworthy that many types of Buddhism adapt themselves to local cultures, so are you sure what you experienced wasn't the local cultural superstitions and behaviors?

@AnonySchmoose well in the case of Thailand Buddhism is a religion that has overgrown an underlining culture of animism and the country's practise of religion reflects that. I have often heard Buddhist proponents say that of course the practice of Buddhism may be questionable in some places but theoretical and pure Buddhism is wonderful of course, to which I say a religion or ideology is only what it is in practice not in theory.

@David1955
I think it makes sense to say an ideology is what it is in practice, not in theory....

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