Buddhism is deeply rooted in reincarnation and the progression of a common person to an enlightened being through different ranks over the span of multiple lifetimes.
I am pretty sure there is a dimension of life that we have yet to discover and learn about. And for the time being Buddhism is the only “religion” that openly discusses this progression.
Hinduism has the same but in my experience it’s a lot more reserved. Bali is a great example of this (which has a strong Hinduism foundation), of how you can create “paradise on Earth” and yet 99.99% of tourist’s don’t ever encounter the root of that paradise.
Humans will learn the full extent of life long before they go extinct.
I think any view of life consistent with its emergence by evolution isn't consistent with reincarnation, or certainly doesn't support it.
But given the universe in total may be unimaginably larger than our observable universe, and the total universe may well be an insignificant feature of an unimaginably larger reality, its quite possible that versions of us appear in a fractal-like way, over and over across reality.
Also, given the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, which is the most basic (Occam's razor) interpretation of the equations, we are constantly spinning off a foam of combinatory alternatives of ourselves and everything around us, because the particles that make us up are doing that. So we live many lives, and even when we die in one perceived timeline, other versions of ourselves continue their journey.
Both of those are scientifically plausible, especially the second - which many scientists already believe to be true.
Although they sensibly tend to focus on interpretation at the particle level, avoiding the hype and wishful mysticism that would tend to crop up around its implications for us as individuals. Too many imaginative people and popularizers have a tendency to jump from actual equations/constraints they don't understand, to non-scientific psychologically motivated "implications" and ideologies. Quantum mechanics has been abused enough that way.
The easiest way to test the theory is to go into the unknown and find out for yourself. You can walk into life situations with a predisposition (which is a useful skill to have) and then see the feedback that you get in return.
By and large, to really have success with this is to learn meditation (not master it by any means), because even basic meditation will naturally provide insight that is outside of the scope of the mental framework you are accustomed to as a mind.
Even in science, there is a lot of focus on what happens to the person on a physical and a mental level, but little on what happens outside of it, which can only be learned by being quiet/still.
I like your reply and it is balanced, and I am not sure that I could reply to it in any other way than I did now. My personal experiences transcend a lot of such discussion, even what I am saying myself, but those are the elements of being human, being bound by something.
I think manipulation of elements (for example) will be considered as a very primitive thing in the grand scheme of evolution!
My response is staying with science, which just means staying with evidence and reasoning that avoids our unbounded ability to fool ourselves. I.e. repeatable experiments by others, tested model predictions, mathematical and statistical checks, etc.
That is all science and math are. An accumulation of tools and systems that improve the reliability of our thinking. They increasingly help us mitigate our exceptional talent for fooling ourselves.
If we find another way to "know", it will get included into science too.
I am a big believer that our personal experience and relationship with life is improved by meditation, staring by learning to quiet our minds and focus/refocus on one simple thing at a time (breathing for instance, or nothing). Then use our ability to focus to mindfully listen to our bodies, then our feelings, then our beliefs, our values, our situations, finally what it all means.
But our minds/brains don't internally track providence of information. What is real and beyond us, vs. what we imagine or want. It is all mixed up in our heads, thus the ease with which we trick ourselfs, and others.
I am a big believer in imagination, to the sky and beyond anything we see. But the very unboundedness of imagination is why just because we can imagine something, and it seems right, fulfills some deep balance, and seems vivid, desirable, and makes clear sense that must be true, ... that doesn't actually make it true, real, or coherent, not even a little bit.
> I think manipulation of elements (for example) will be considered as a very primitive thing in the grand scheme of evolution!
Evolution created multicellular creatures, nervous systems, and brains, which in turn have created a species/society that is actively searching for knowledge and putting it to work for survival at higher orders of organization. I.e. science, economics, politics, technology, etc. Limited resources (at any given time) continue to drive us to solve new problems and learn more, to continue surviving even as we complicate and expand the environment we survive in.
So in that sense, life is already moving past biological chemistry into other substrates, and we are already learning to harness the arrangement of atoms to go further. And eventually, perhaps, harness the fine structure of space-time, and beyond.
> Although they sensibly tend to focus on interpretation at the particle level, avoiding the hype and wishful mysticism that would tend to crop up around its implications for us as individuals.
Is this yet another one of those scientific facts that does not require a proof?
> Too many imaginative people and popularizers have a tendency to jump from actual equations/constraints they don't understand, to non-scientific psychologically motivated "implications" and ideologies.
Similarly, too many imaginative people who lack adequate depth in epistemology and non-binary logic like to practice both on the internet as if they know what they're doing. And the beauty of it is: if the minds of the population have been adequately conditioned, no one notices.
But wait, there's even more Oracle level soothsaying of the unknowable below:
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My response is staying with science, which just means staying with evidence and reasoning that avoids our unbounded ability to fool ourselves. I.e. repeatable experiments by others, tested model predictions, mathematical and statistical checks, etc.
That is all science and math are. An accumulation of tools and systems that improve the reliability of our thinking. They increasingly help us mitigate our exceptional talent for fooling ourselves.
If we find another way to "know", it will get included into science too.
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I'm sorry to be such a party pooper, but when religious or mystical people make epistemically unsound claims, the knives almost always come out for them, a little in the opposite direction shouldn't hurt too much. And besides: "science" claims to welcome criticism, much like religious people claim to follow their scriptures. But then, who doesn't like to have their cake and eat it too?
While I get your general critique I am not quite clear if you are critiquing me, including me with the science inspired confabulators.
Just in case you were including me in that:
For the record, the many worlds interpretation just sticks with the field equations of quantum mechanics (extremely well tested).
It doesn’t invent the quantum collapse, which actually isn’t necessary to interpret them and which raises many questions that have never been well answered. I.e. when does collapse occur, how is information conserved if collapse keeps injecting information into all quantum systems, in situations with time reversal (different orders of events for different viewers in relativistic scenarios) how is information being destroyed. On and on. Collapse is both an unnecessary and problematic interpretation in an attempt to avoid a continuation of superpositions.
What we see as collapse is just the experience of being included in the field equations as the quantum systems information becomes too complex (via thermodynamics, information escaping the experiment) for superposition to be detected anymore at a practical level.
But as we learn to control larger and larger systems, we do indeed find superposition isn’t bound by mass or system size. In fact, all of quantum computing depends on it not being bounded. It is just a challenge to keep information in isolation, I.e. from spreading in a way that is unrecoverable.
Just as eventually we will be able to “simulate” intelligence in a quantum computer, we are already intelligence in a quantum system. We just can’t control the quantum information in us so we lose any systematic relation/observability to the superpositions of our particles.
Chemistry throughout our body operates consistently with the quantum behavior of all other chemistry. Our particles are no different from any other particles.
I think it's interesting (though not surprising) that your long response avoided every single piece of your text that I quoted, as well as my question and other text (ie: the unknowable) of my critique.
> Is this yet another one of those scientific facts that does not require a proof?
Quantum mechanics is full of unintuitive, amazing effects, that get hyped by non-experts into imagined meanings. The latter isn't science.
But the actual quantum field equations themselves are as hard science as it gets.
> I'm sorry to be such a party pooper, but when religious or mystical people make epistemically unsound claims, the knives almost always come out for them, a little in the opposite direction shouldn't hurt too much. And besides: "science" claims to welcome criticism, much like religious people claim to follow their scriptures. But then, who doesn't like to have their cake and eat it too?
> "science" claims to welcome criticism
Science welcomes well thought out analytical or experimental challenges. Not criticism without merit, contrariness based in ignorance of the subject, ideological attacks, or simple negativity - all those just waste time.
Think informed critique, not just any "criticism".
> much like religious people claim to follow their scriptures.
Science only works to provide the best, incomplete, but most useful model we have of the truth, at any given time, backed up by independent evidence and math. It is subject to new evidence, a deliberate awareness and focus on current limitations - which is where scientists spend most of their time - with the expectation that today's best understanding will be eclipsed.
In stark contrast, Scriptures claim to be the stable truth without need for justification. Scriptures often frame "doubt" as undesirable, and their authority as above evidence. Unbelievers are often cast as morally compromised. Religions are rarely known for encouraging the discovery and sharing of contra-evidence, or the search for alternate and better viewpoints.
Very different.
> But then, who doesn't like to have their cake and eat it too?
Not sure what the cake and eating it too is? Science for being hypocritical like religion? (Not my view, but trying to understand yours.)
>> Although they sensibly tend to focus on interpretation at the particle level, avoiding the hype and wishful mysticism that would tend to crop up around its implications for us as individuals.
>> Is this yet another one of those scientific facts that does not require a proof?
> Quantum mechanics is full of unintuitive, amazing effects, that get hyped by non-experts into imagined meanings. The latter isn't science.
Once again, you do not answer the question.
Are you asserting that your claim above is a fact? Yes/No
>> "science" claims to welcome criticism
> Science welcomes well thought out analytical or experimental challenges. Not criticism without merit, contrariness based in ignorance of the subject, ideological attacks, or simple negativity - all those just waste time.
> Think informed critique, not just any "criticism".
a) Please state unambiguously (Yes/No) whether you consider my criticism valid, or whether it falls into your "other" category.
b) Who decides what qualifies as valid, and is that done in a non-biased, non-ideological manner?
c) By what means did you come into possession of knowledge of the entirety of what all scientists do, and how they do it? (Here I am presuming that you consider scientists to be a part of science....and if you don't, I would then wonder how things like "Science welcomes" is implemented).
> Science only works to provide the best...
Please reveal the source of your omniscient knowledge. The supernatural is certainly allowed, but I've been led to believe that science folks "don't" believe in the supernatural.
> In stark contrast, Scriptures claim to be the stable truth without need for justification. Scriptures often frame "doubt" as undesirable, and their authority as above evidence. Unbelievers are often cast as morally compromised. Religions are rarely known for encouraging the discovery and sharing of contra-evidence, or the search for alternate and better viewpoints.
I'd say this is at least "mostly true".
> Very different.
True - but do you also know this much less famous part: they are also very similar, simultaneously.
> Not sure what the cake and eating it too is? Science for being hypocritical like religion? (Not my view, but trying to understand yours.)
Bullseye. Scientific ~believers/followers are indeed hypocritical, like religious people[1], and in many ways even above and beyond religious people (in that: if one has superior especially in specific ways scriptures, as science does imho, then violations of them are more egregious, in certain dimensions).
[1] I suppose I should reveal that the root cause is inheritance from People, though an ideology taking root in the mind is necessary to exploit its capabilities to their maximum.
Evolution is environmental selection, in a context of reproduction with error. We have chemical, geological, genetic and morphological evidence of its history. And the history of the things it produces, our bodies, and then nervous systems, and our minds. Our minds being constructed biologically, implemented with neurons that maintain its activity and memories.
So we know how our eyes, brains and hair came to be with a truly remarkable amount of evidence.
The theory of evolution is also mathematically tractable, to the point of being a tautology. It explains vast amounts of phenomena, and can be tested in the lab and with computer models.
It is a highly robust theory in practice. Useful for doing such things as optimizing aircraft wing geometry.
We know how information flows in evolution, encoded in form and blueprints, how they are maintained and duplicated. Where there is information continuity, where there is not and why.
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Reincarnation proposes a different form of continuity, that is not just unsupported by evolution, it is in stark contrast to everything we have learned about it and from it.
Reincarnation isn't even a well defined concept, and has no evidence for it. It has no explanatory power or any proposed connection to evolution that makes sense.
It is not only not supported by evolution, but violates everything we know about how life develops and reproduces.
What is reincarnation exactly? There are nothing but vague definitions, which violate any principle of the information flows, we call survival and reproduction, as explained by evolution.
What part of continuity does it maintain? Why does it happen? How does it happen? How and why would it appear and evolve? What was the initial process? In what initial form? How would it progress? What maintains its existence as a phenomena?
Why would it happen at death? Given death isn't a simple event, how does it "know"? Why not continuous reincarnations? Why not merged reincarnations? What constraints what can reincarnate into what? How would any of this work?
Nobody has been able to propose construction, reproductive, selection or adaptation mechanisms for anything that looks even vaguely like reincarnation.
Nobody has been able to propose tests that would identify a reincarnation event vs. non-event, its presence or effects that others can work with.
Nobody has created an experiment to initiate or monitor a reincarnation.
Nobody has a formal model for it. Or even an informal model beyond hand waving. In contrast to the unending number of worlds that don't exist, but mathematicians have no trouble exploring.
Reincarnation is an incoherent psychologically motivated conjecture.
Like many other such culturally generated and valued ideas, it is also interesting, fascinating, imaginative and inspirational. A positive contribution to stories and dreams. Even a comfort, to those who don't require their beliefs and values to be well formed or verifiable.
There's a crucial bit in your reasoning, the assumption that the mind is a result of the brain. Your entire argument rests on this fulcrum.
All the questions you pose do carry the intention you mean IF you abide by that assumption. That mind stems from matter.
If we recognize that material science is purely speculative when it comes to explaining the intricacies of the inner world of the mind, we could make a list of similar questions.
For example:
> What part of continuity does it maintain? Why does it happen? How does it happen? How and why would it appear and evolve? What was the initial process? In what initial form? How would it progress? What maintains its existence as a phenomena?
You could ask this same question about feelings and thoughts and intentions. If you could answer it, if you could track down and correlate all those details from thoughts to neurons, you'd be able to read minds and predict people's behaviors mechanically.
In a materialist conception of the world, there is something binding the assumption that mind arose from brains to our current scientific understanding. There's a bridge of "we'll figure out the details if we stay on the train of scientific progress". But that's a promise.
That vagueness that you call out, standing from a scientific mindset, that same vagueness appears when you stand grounded in direct (non conceptual) experience, and you ask to science "what is a thought?".
There's no precise definition in science as to what makes up a thought, and science is born out of thought. That is worth contemplating (which is not the same as thinking).
What you're objecting is not unreasonable, but you're describing why reincarnation is incompatible with materialism, not with evolution. If you don't share the assumption of matter over mind, then there is room for compatibility, of mind working in tandem with matter in a process that we don't fully understand, in which reincarnation occurs in ways that we don't understand materially, and in which evolution occurs biologically in ways we kind of understand.
I am pretty sure there is a dimension of life that we have yet to discover and learn about. And for the time being Buddhism is the only “religion” that openly discusses this progression.
Hinduism has the same but in my experience it’s a lot more reserved. Bali is a great example of this (which has a strong Hinduism foundation), of how you can create “paradise on Earth” and yet 99.99% of tourist’s don’t ever encounter the root of that paradise.
Humans will learn the full extent of life long before they go extinct.