Rebirth and Reason

Philosophers and thinkers feel the question what happen to us after death as the most difficult one to answer. Unfortunately, this question will never have a definite answer. The reason is no one returns from dead — if he comes back he is not — and tells us what happened.

Religions differ on this. In Western and Mid Easten like Christianity and Muslim, god will take over us.

In Asian religions like Hinduism and Buddhism, it is the rebirth. 

It is unusual that we hear most of the stories of reincarnation from countries around Asia where people believe in reincarnation. This means belief is also a reason for these incidents. However, it looks strange that none of these stories refer to the persons who died in far-distant places like different countries. Most of the cases occur within a region. Sometimes it is the next or the same village or town. But they never talk about aliens from other planets or distant universes. Maybe we on earth live alone in the universe—a contradiction by itself.

Previous life stories we hear are mostly by children. Other than results of psychologists interviewing mainly children so far no scientific evidence proves rebirth or reincarnation.

In Deductive reasoning from a general statement, you reach a logical certain conclusion. In Inductive reasoning, we evaluate general propositions that are derived from specific examples. The conclusion, rebirth is true, by results of experiments doctors and psychologists did using a person who talks about his past life is not deductive reasoning. If this happens to one person, we cannot assume it for everyone. Even if we come to the conclusion most probably rebirth is a fact by inductive reasoning, we can’t assume rebirth is universal. The evidence of few persons talking about life before does not conclusively prove rebirth. Out of 6 billion-plus population only a couple of hundreds have talked about their past lives.

There are instances where some people could relate incidents with precise details how they died in the life before. These descriptions could be verified in some cases. I find it interesting that in most of these cases, the person has met with a violent death, mostly by accidents. These phenomena can be explained as some form of information emitted in the forceful incident mapped to another person. There may be hither to unknown phenomena that can transfer information from one person to another. This cannot be termed as rebirth or reincarnation.

You cannot attribute diversification of same family siblings to rebirth. Theories regarding genetics explains this and is evident in all advanced life forms.

Presume rebirth is true. Then the knowledge gained before life should be present in after life.

It follows knowledge will keep on accumulating in each life. A small child should have a lot of knowledge that he gained in the previous lives. This does not happen. Small children need to learn everything from scratch.

Rebirth wastes enormous amount of resources. Apart from very little, you can remember next life erase everything learned previously. So a person will have to learn again and again the same thing. In nature, everything has a meaning and meaningless things don't happen.

A being consists of cells in general. Death occurs when all cell-structures brakes up. These single cells can be termed as lower organisms. Higher organism can be defined as a collection of them with a central processor —the brain itself being such a collection. So colonies of lower organisms that act logically can be termed as a higher organism.

Very interesting conclusions emerge if rebirth is true to lower organisms as well as higher organisms.

If mind is essential for rebirth, then rebirth does not apply to lower organisms that do not have a mind. Only higher life that has high brain power is reborn. I don’t think even advocates of rebirth believe that rebirth applies to micro organisms.

If we try to define rebirth as each single cell having a one to one map of the previous being we run into the difficulty because within the lifetime of a being the cells itself dies and fresh ones are born. Further to that the total number of cells of a being will vary from time to time. When a person becomes fat, he will have more cells. When a child grows to an adult, the number of cells will increase. Because of these reasons one to one map of cells in rebirth cannot be accepted. So when a being is reborn, it should refer to the higher organisms with the central processor.

Current scientific evidence leads more and more towards the argument that mind, soul and brain are identical. If soul is not a separate entity from the brain rebirth will be copying of the brain to the new being. In rebirth what remains after death is the data of the central processor. We can say the central processor of the new being has the information of the old being.

Karma could be explained as a state of mind. Evolution programs genetically all beings living within a society to be good. Goodness is a mandatory quality of a society. We are genetically programmed to feel bad when we do terrible things. This is karma. These feelings will be embedded in our brain. It undertakes to refine us.

If deeds in this life reflect in the next how do you keep all the data of good and bad? The answer seems soul. In rebirth if we are to carry these feeling to the next life, we will need an enormous amount of data — person's brain will have a large amount of data stored in it —to be kept and passed to the other person.

Then we will need a mechanism to keep this data and transmit it. Someone needs to manage this data.

In my opinion, the concept of rebirth is not necessary for teachings of Buddha. Attaining nibbana in this life is Buddhism, this is the ultimate goal. The ones who pursue it are the Buddhists. Therefore, rebirth is irrelevant for Buddhism.

About Nationalism

I would like to give a different perspective for nationalism. It is not only a belief but a method of grouping a set of humans. This grouping has it’s advantages and disadvantages.

The advantages stem from resource allocation. Though in theory you may say all resources are equally owned by all humans it is not correct.

A society cannot function like that. If it is the case the society will be a dormant one. There will be no progress.

All humans are not equal in their abilities. More able humans accumulate wealth. Less able humans become poor.

Love of parents to their children is another factor of wealth distribution. Because of this even less able humans can accumulate wealth.

There is another factor wealth also accumulates wealth. When you put money in a bank you get interest. When you own shares you gets dividends and usually the value of shares goes up.

This factors also apply to societies. The love is also there to a lesser extent. But the society as a hole understand if they freely distribute their wealth to outsiders they become poor. So, they try to prevent this distribution.

This creates nationalism.

It is evident that a lions and hyena outsider is not only unwelcomed but killed. This is due to competition for food.

But among themselves they share the food—though hierarchy matters.

So nationalism exist even among animals. Mainly due to the competition for resources.

Therefore nationalism is not man made. It is intra species competition for resources.

But there is a balancing act. Why is the competition among groups and not among each other? There are advantages of a group. A pride of lions can kill larger animals than their size. Group hunt very efficiently where it is unimaginable for a lone lion can do. So grouping is advantageous.

Therefore nationalism is advantageous.

Man has evolved in leaps and bounds than other species because they share, care and help each other than any other species.

But there should be always a balance to win. The two Germanys got together after the collapse of Berlin Wall. Today they are one of the most rich countries in Europe. So in this example sharing was advantageous.

Usually when countries and communities unite they thrive. When they divide they deteriorate. We still cannot answer whether division of Rasia was advantageous or not. Also example of EU is still unclear.

Smart politicians and citizens make correct choices and thrive. Where as dumb people make stupid choices and collapse in the end.

If you are smart these choices should be made on economic factors. Because economic factors are the ones that created the need for nationalism.

If you are blind nationalists you are bound to deteriorate at some point of time. Immigration policies of developed countries is a good example. Countries like Australia, a nation of immigrants model their policies in such a way to sustain progress and protect the ones who are already citizens.

Nationalism for the sake of nationalism is a recipe for doom of a nation.

The dilemma of Boat People.

Financial migrants.

Brain Drain

Deterioration of knowledge

Deterioration of values

Religious fundamentalism

Religions differ only on the aspect of after life. But people fight each other in this life.

America’s debt crisis also connected with nationalism. Ultra nationalist republicans – mostly white do not like the liberal democratic. Liberal republicans loose elections and non liberal  republicans don’t loose elections.

Effect of religion. Only parents should teach religion to their children. Eating or fishing is not bad for Sri Lankan Buddhists. Use mosquito coils don’t crush them or electric ratchet. Rats use a cat not a trap.

Why do we care religious conversions? Only one religion is correct. For instance Buddhists are reborn  and Christians and Muslims go to god after life cannot be true. It is simple logic. Because all humans are same physically and mentally and should be given same treatment by nature.

For us it is our religion and for them it is their religion is true.

So in our perspective a person converted from our religion to another is in trouble.

Is it for the love of them that we fight? It cant be because after conversion he is one of them not one of us. We like to kill one of them if possible. No love is lost to the other.

Then it can be we are not sure of our religion though we believe it. With all the injustices around you it is not strange if we come to such a conclusion. How can we assume a good god karma controls everything? Every on of us have a little bit different religion even if we all believe in one religion. Are we using numbers to convince us that our religion is correct. If more of us believe the something it must be correct is a reasonable presumption. But it may not be the correct assumption. So we don’t like the population believing our religion dwindle.

After Death

All religions are the same what is good and bad

They differ only on what happens to us after death

What is it good for Absolutely nothing – Religion.

Statistics

Religions of the world is distributed among the population. 33% Christians, 19.6% Muslims, 13.4% Hindus, 6.4% Chinese folk religion and 5.9% Buddhists. Each religion has different interpretations of what happens after death. But, everyone should share the same fate. This is the general logic. We all are similar irrespective of religion. Therefore we should share the same fate. Buddhist being reborn, Christians and Muslims going to their respective gods and whatever other religions having a different fate is not logical. If we all share one fate at least 77% is wrong—Christians are right. If other religions re correct more percentage is wrong.

Afterlife and Occam's razor

Occam's razor, the principal that states lesser the number of assumptions more truer the theory.
All principals of afterlife have assumptions that cannot be proved. Some are the world is not balance if all good deeds doesn't result in good and bad deeds results in bad. Without perpetual life this is impossible. Sometimes with a long life that tonedown activities it may be achieved to some extent, but in actual life, we see that life is cut short without results, especially of bad deeds. We say he was a bad person but, had a peaceful death or he was such a good person but had a short life. These phenomena cannot be explained without an afterlife. Then religion will come to play. The religions will be multiple that gives different reasons to explain how afterlife happens, how to avoid it (Buddhism), how to achieve a higher status in afterlife (with help of god) etc.
But do we need all this? Simply why can't you say no afterlife. The life is a gamble, mostly good deeds results in good, but not always and it is the same with bad. This have the least assumptions.

Rules of engagement of religion

Religion goes to roots of our life. But there are things religion should not indulge with, or else religious and ethnic disharmony will wreck the society.

Governments should distance it from religious activities. Most countries have a government minister for religious affairs. Most functions starts after religious ceremonies. This favors the largest population forgetting minorities. This creates a rift among different communities.

Teaching religion should be properly regulated. Schools should be secular. Having multi religions inside a single education institution do not produce the expected result of a tolerant society. Usually children do not behave as expected. More you try to bend them more rigid they become. May be teenage hormones play a part.They likes to compete whatever way they can, even, may use religion to abuse the ones who are different. Abuse is part of their competition. So having religiously different children and advertising that they are different by making religion part of the curriculum will in the end produce unexpected results. I can remember being abused as a child by my class mates, just because we lived in a rented annex owned by a landlord of a different religion.

Children under certain age should not be taught religion except by parents. Teaching to young by seniors is always coupled with abuse that leads to produce mentally skewed children. Always parents are ignorant of the pedophile activities. Parents getting paranoid about advertised deterioration of ethical values tries to over correct this by outsourcing their responsibilities of producing ethical adults to institutions trusted by them. This has created mayhem in society by making it intolerant to religious and ethnic diversity.

Institutionalised religious education should be limited only to very mature individuals above a certain age (the age we realise we cannot beat death - usually over 45). Even this education should start with world history of philosophy and religion, before embarking on more ambitious teaching of a particular single religion.

Stop ordaining children as monks. As monks these children caught up between two worlds. On one hand they are taught and brought up to uphold religious values. On the other hand the hormone reactions inside them makes natural instincts surface. Usually these two are as different as hevan and earth. When they are young they are torn apart between two worlds. As they become mature they learn to cope. When they become old they tend to forget everything in past and preach religion outwardly showing that they are extremely pure. Further, they start to enjoy the luxuries of being a senior priests. Also they will support the same process that they detest when they were young - making of young priests.

The urge to swell the priest population is political. Majority wants to maintain their superiority and minorities wants to preserve their identity. Large priesthood pulsation is absolutely necessary for both. But, everyone forgets that it is a grave crime, similar to war crimes, robbing the childhood, and sadly, done  by their most trusted guardians mostly - their parents.

Birth control is ignored by politicians and clergy. Increasing population is the biggest threat to humanity.  If promoted this directly affects democratic politicians and contemporary clergy. For these groups, larger the population better the benefits. Most of current religions prohibit birth control. This should stop.

Religion

If you have a religion the goodness is taken for granted.

If you are religious you feel you are good.

If you have to do things not religious you consider it as a necessity.

If you don't have a religion you have to think about whatever you do, whether it is correct.