Reincarnation

[Spartan]

Fundamentalists drive people away with nonsense about Jonah being swallowed by a fish and a six day creation.. global floods.

Jesus was a fundamentalist. He believed in and taught the fundamental truths of the faith, and he drew in plenty of people in his day.

And by the way, I don't believe Genesis teaches a literal 24 hours six day creation.

 

[sooda]

Jesus was a fundamentalist. He believed in and taught the fundamental truths of the faith, and he drew in plenty of people in his day.

And by the way, I don't believe Genesis teaches a literal 24 hours six day creation.

Jesus taught in parables.. Fundamentalists are literalists. They believe Jonah was swallowed by a fish... They didn't even believe that in the first century.

The Exodus was probably 500 people if it happened at all .. The Red Sea didn't part, the sun didn't stand still for Joshua. Solomon's kingdom was 40 acres and fewer than 2000 people.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

And who is to say that before the Big Bang the Universe didn't operate on different laws?

It didn't, because the universe didn't exist before then.

Actually I recall an M-theorist in one of their books (I think Brian Greene in his earlier, less dumbed down work) saying they don't know 100% for certain that laws don't change or are always constant, but that the assumption that they do just makes everything easier.

An infinite universe would require infinite resources and energy to sustain itself. That alone dismisses it as a possibility. Sure, there is speculation the laws of physics may not match up in other universes, but we have zero evidence to suggest they actually exist, and it doesn't address the fundamental issue of perpetual motion. It cant be done, and even the universe will end.

 

[Salvador]

Look up “quantum consciousness” and the works by Stuart Hameroff and Roger Penrose. They and their Ph.Ds. would disagree with you.

"Theoretical physicist Roger Penrose and anaesthesiologist Stuart Hameroff collaborated to produce the theory known as Orchestrated Objective Reduction (Orch-OR). Penrose and Hameroff initially developed their ideas separately, and only later collaborated to produce Orch-OR in the early 1990s. The theory was reviewed and updated by the original authors in late 2013.

Penrose’s controversial argument began from Gödel’s incompleteness theorems. In his first book on consciousness, The Emperor’s New Mind (1989), he argued that while a formal proof system cannot prove its own inconsistency, Gödel-unprovable results are provable by human mathematicians. He took this disparity to mean that human mathematicians are not describable as formal proof systems, and are not therefore running a computable algorithm.

Penrose determined that wave function collapse was the only possible physical basis for a non-computable process. Dissatisfied with its randomness, Penrose proposed a new form of wave function collapse that occurred in isolation, called objective reduction. He suggested that each quantum superposition has its own piece of spacetime curvature, and when these become separated by more than one Planck length, they become unstable and collapse. Penrose suggested that objective reduction represented neither randomness nor algorithmic processing, but instead a non-computable influence in spacetime geometry from which mathematical understanding and, by later extension, consciousness derived.

Originally, Penrose lacked a detailed proposal for how quantum processing could be implemented in the brain. However, Hameroff read Penrose’s work, and suggested that microtubules would be suitable candidates.

Microtubules are composed of tubulin protein dimer subunits. The tubulin dimers each have hydrophobic pockets that are 8 nm apart, and which may contain delocalised pi electrons. Tubulins have other smaller non-polar regions that contain pi electron-rich indole rings separated by only about 2 nm. Hameroff proposes that these electrons are close enough to become quantum entangled. Hameroff originally suggested the tubulin-subunit electrons would form a Bose-Einstein condensate, but this was discredited. He then proposed a Frohlich condensate, a hypothetical coherent oscillation of dipolar molecules. However, this too has been experimentally discredited.

Furthermore, he proposed that condensates in one neuron could extend to many others via gap junctions between neurons, thus forming a macroscopic quantum feature across an extended area of the brain. When the wave function of this extended condensate collapsed, it was suggested to non-computationally access mathematical understanding and ultimately conscious experience, that are hypothetically embedded in the geometry of spacetime.

However, Orch-OR made numerous false biological predictions, and is considered to be an extremely poor model of brain physiology. The proposed predominance of ‘A’ lattice microtubules, more suitable for information processing, was falsified by Kikkawa et al., who showed that all in vivo microtubules have a ‘B’ lattice and a seam. The proposed existence of gap junctions between neurons and glial cells was also falsified. Orch-OR predicted that microtubule coherence reaches the synapses via dendritic lamellar bodies (DLBs), however De Zeeuw et al. proved this impossible, by showing that DLBs are located micrometers away from gap junctions."

https://www.facebook.com/QuantumMind

 

[sayak83]

If you were ever to do your due diligence on Christianity and dig deep into the evidences for it, with an unbiased mind, I think you'd change your thinking.

Not really. I did due diligence, and met many of those whose books you recommended. They are mostly either fakes or irrational in their beliefs trying to justify their beliefs by sophistry. Bad for Christianity in general imo.

 

[sayak83]

Definition: "Reincarnation, a major tenet of Hinduism, is when the soul, which is seen as eternal and part of a spiritual realm, returns to the physical realm in a new body. The belief is that a soul will complete this cycle many times - even hundreds of times, learning new things each time and working through its karma. This cycle of reincarnation is called samsara."

Analysis: From a Biblical standpoint, reincarnation is a false doctrine: “It is appointed for man to die ONCE, and after that to face the judgment” (Hebrews 9:27).

In some Hindu teachings, if a person is "bad" in the present life, they may well wind up as a protected 'temple rat" in the next life. Which begs the question: If one is a 'bad' temple rat in that life, do they further regress to a temple cockroach, with an infinite regression back to an ill-mannered amoeba? What's more, who was the first person on earth reincarnated from, and which power on earth or in heaven facilitates those supposed rebirths?

Reincarnation voids the necessity of Christ for salvation and eternal life. If one can simply 'live again,' then what is the need to believe in Jesus? Therefore, Biblically speaking, the idea of reincarnation is Satanic.

The Bible makes it clear that Satan has been around since before the Garden of Eden. He knows what occurred in the lives of such people as Alexander the Great, Cleopatra, Hitler, and every other person who has lived since the creation of mankind. It is certainly not a “reach” then to believe that he and / or his demonic spirits can impart false memories of “prior lives” into the unregenerate minds of men, especially when those individuals are making an effort – such as in a seance – to establish “contact” with a former self or higher spiritual power.

Finally, there has never been any credible evidence that I've ever seen that reincarnation exists. If anyone has a good example of an individual who purported to have reincarnated, I'd like to see it.

How good are you in reasoning and reading comprehension skills? What provides you confidence that you can analyze arguments and evidence and understand their truth or falsity? Its a skill, to be learned with time and effort...like math.

 

[QuestioningMind]

Nuts. If you were really well versed and up to speed on the New Testament and its foundations in the Old Testament, you'd be singing Amazing Grace with fervor.

And if YOU were really well versed in Hinduism and up to speed on the Vedas then YOU'D be singing Glory to Vishnu with fervor!

Do you honestly not see how pathetic and childishly immature you sound? Grow up and stop pretending like you know things about people that you don't.

 

[Kapalika]

It didn't, because the universe didn't exist before then.

An infinite universe would require infinite resources and energy to sustain itself. That alone dismisses it as a possibility. Sure, there is speculation the laws of physics may not match up in other universes, but we have zero evidence to suggest they actually exist, and it doesn't address the fundamental issue of perpetual motion. It cant be done, and even the universe will end.

Actually, we don't know that the Universe didn't exist before the Big Bang, it's more that there isn't any observable impact of events before it, according to Hawking (as he worded it in an interview in 2018 with Tyson). So in practice, you can say that's when everything began but it's still true that things could, of occured before it. Actually, many cosmologists believe that quantum fluctulations caused the Big Bang and there is some mathmatical proofs of this IIRC. I also recall M-theorists predicting that our Universe's Big Bang was caused by two other Universes colliding somehow, as well as other predictions. There are some models that predict that dark matter might be gravity shadows of other Universes and are working on ways to confirm it through observation. The presence of galaxies entirely made of dark matter though I think give some circumstanial evidence of this.

As far as what Hawkings said I'll give an analogy, say you have a book no one has ever seen the pages of and then blow it up to the point that the pages become fine dust. We might as well say the pages were all blank and had nothing, since there is no possible way to know what, if any words were actually on the pages and there is no way to observe any effects from it since no one read it. Yet there may of been words on the pages, and to some of us we find it more likely there were words than not. Not the perfect metaphor but more or less the same in practice.

Also, I never said the Universe was infinite but that it is eternal. Physical reality, yes is finite. But the physical Universe in Hinduism reverts to a non-physical form after billions/trillions of years (it wasn't long ago that big crunch theory was replaced by heat death and big rip competeing, I suspect either way physical reality will disintegrate and time and space will cease ending it as part of this receding). Physical reality exists within the space of Conciousness and no it's not the type of conciousness which we have (since it is limited and vieled in ignorance). I can't really explain this last paragraph without getting overly technical which might make communication difficult but I can attempt if you want.

 

[Samantha Rinne]

Definition: "Reincarnation, a major tenet of Hinduism, is when the soul, which is seen as eternal and part of a spiritual realm, returns to the physical realm in a new body. The belief is that a soul will complete this cycle many times - even hundreds of times, learning new things each time and working through its karma. This cycle of reincarnation is called samsara."

Analysis: From a Biblical standpoint, reincarnation is a false doctrine: “It is appointed for man to die ONCE, and after that to face the judgment” (Hebrews 9:27).

In some Hindu teachings, if a person is "bad" in the present life, they may well wind up as a protected 'temple rat" in the next life. Which begs the question: If one is a 'bad' temple rat in that life, do they further regress to a temple cockroach, with an infinite regression back to an ill-mannered amoeba? What's more, who was the first person on earth reincarnated from, and which power on earth or in heaven facilitates those supposed rebirths?

Reincarnation voids the necessity of Christ for salvation and eternal life. If one can simply 'live again,' then what is the need to believe in Jesus? Therefore, Biblically speaking, the idea of reincarnation is Satanic.

The Bible makes it clear that Satan has been around since before the Garden of Eden. He knows what occurred in the lives of such people as Alexander the Great, Cleopatra, Hitler, and every other person who has lived since the creation of mankind. It is certainly not a “reach” then to believe that he and / or his demonic spirits can impart false memories of “prior lives” into the unregenerate minds of men, especially when those individuals are making an effort – such as in a seance – to establish “contact” with a former self or higher spiritual power.

Finally, there has never been any credible evidence that I've ever seen that reincarnation exists. If anyone has a good example of an individual who purported to have reincarnated, I'd like to see it.

I'm convinced that reincarnation is a valid teaching, regardless of what your clearly straight laced fundamentalist notion of Christian theology is.

Here's the thing. It says we die once, are judged, are burned up in the last days. Let's do a side by side with Buddhism.

Christianity mentions being saved, or being damned. But it also mentions a God who wishes ALL to come to his presence. So the idea of eternal torment or extinction are both inconsistent with the idea of a loving God, and no matter how much you can claim those who believe in reincarnation are treating Jesus as if he never died, you're missing a few points.

Like Jesus returning, and the disciples being unable to recognize him at first. Now many of the pagans that the Chris encountered believed in pointless endless reincarnation (the Greeks for instance believed soul must have a body so it always returns to a vessel), but this isn't what we're talking about. The sainted in Christ if they were to only be in an afterlife would be no different from the dead. But these are those who death no longer has any power over. The saints of God can come back to this Earth, but they do so with their memories intact. This is subtly different from reincarnation, but the result is the same. The dead are alive again, but have no worries. They are transformed.

Now, remember we talked about Buddhism? A loving God destroys body and soul. We have an image of rebirth (which is not reincarnation because the soul is regarded as mortal) in Buddhism, where the soul is like a flame, lit up to a torch from another. The soul is different but similar like an echo. So what happens to souls that get destroyed on the last days? Well, either we have a loving God who isn't really a loving God, and the cross of Jesus doesn't save these people, or God knows how recycle and compost souls.

 

[Spartan]

And if YOU were really well versed in Hinduism and up to speed on the Vedas then YOU'D be singing Glory to Vishnu with fervor!

Do you honestly not see how pathetic and childishly immature you sound? Grow up and stop pretending like you know things about people that you don't.

Go tell your slop to somebody else.

 

[Spartan]

Not really. I did due diligence, and met many of those whose books you recommended. They are mostly either fakes or irrational in their beliefs trying to justify their beliefs by sophistry. Bad for Christianity in general imo.

Nuts. One more time. Show me your best ONE example (1 - just your best ONE) of a person, place, or event in the GOSPELS that has been proven to be fictitious. Cite the pertinent scripture(s) and make your argument.

 

[Spartan]

Jesus taught in parables.. Fundamentalists are literalists. They believe Jonah was swallowed by a fish... They didn't even believe that in the first century.

The Exodus was probably 500 people if it happened at all .. The Red Sea didn't part, the sun didn't stand still for Joshua. Solomon's kingdom was 40 acres and fewer than 2000 people.

That's funny.

 

[Spartan]

I'm convinced that reincarnation is a valid teaching, regardless of what your clearly straight laced fundamentalist notion of Christian theology is.

Here's the thing. It says we die once, are judged, are burned up in the last days. Let's do a side by side with Buddhism.

Christianity mentions being saved, or being damned. But it also mentions a God who wishes ALL to come to his presence. So the idea of eternal torment or extinction are both inconsistent with the idea of a loving God, and no matter how much you can claim those who believe in reincarnation are treating Jesus as if he never died, you're missing a few points.

Like Jesus returning, and the disciples being unable to recognize him at first. Now many of the pagans that the Chris encountered believed in pointless endless reincarnation (the Greeks for instance believed soul must have a body so it always returns to a vessel), but this isn't what we're talking about. The sainted in Christ if they were to only be in an afterlife would be no different from the dead. But these are those who death no longer has any power over. The saints of God can come back to this Earth, but they do so with their memories intact. This is subtly different from reincarnation, but the result is the same. The dead are alive again, but have no worries. They are transformed.

Now, remember we talked about Buddhism? A loving God destroys body and soul. We have an image of rebirth (which is not reincarnation because the soul is regarded as mortal) in Buddhism, where the soul is like a flame, lit up to a torch from another. The soul is different but similar like an echo. So what happens to souls that get destroyed on the last days? Well, either we have a loving God who isn't really a loving God, and the cross of Jesus doesn't save these people, or God knows how recycle and compost souls.

Christ is the only way to salvation (John 14:6, etc.). But thanks anyway.

 

[sayak83]

Nuts. One more time. Show me your best ONE example (1 - just your best ONE) of a person, place, or event in the GOSPELS that has been proven to be fictitious. Cite the pertinent scripture(s) and make your argument.

Why would I? And what does that show anyway?
Cite one place or event in the Hindu Upanisads that has been proven to be fictitious. Cite the scripture and provide the proof.
You are nuts to not believe in Brahman and that is only increasing your suffering in this Samsara.

 

[sayak83]

That's funny.

No, completely serious, there is good evidence for it.
https://www.amazon.com/Bible-Unearthed-Archaeologys-Vision-Ancient/dp/0684869136

 

[QuestioningMind]

Go tell your slop to somebody else.

Aw... so sorry if I challenged your fragile little beliefs. And so sad that they don't hold up under the slightest scrutiny. But that's the way it usually is with childishly immature arguments.

Enjoy continuing to delude yourself!

 

[Spartan]

Aw... so sorry if I challenged your fragile little beliefs.

Nothing fragile about my historically-based beliefs.

 

[Spartan]

Why would I? And what does that show anyway?

You can't do it. OK for the Gospels!

 

[sayak83]

You can't do it. OK for the Gospels!

LOL

 

[QuestioningMind]

Nothing fragile about my historically-based beliefs.

Your posts certainly don't convey as much.