Reincarnation: A Reason Based Fact of Reality

[Peter]

I really wish you would learn to use the quote feature.

I'll concede that there is a "formula" for every living person that ever existed. In fact there are an infinite number of formulas for people. After I die is it possible that another "me" out of the infinite number of formulas will be born in the future? Sure, but infinitely unlikely. Sorry but your eureka moment is a fizzle moment in my opinion.

If you can take that on board it will become apparent to you why the state before life is quite different than the state after life if you're talking about reincarnation. Specifically, your first life isn't a reincarnation since you never existed before. Your second life or reincarnation requires the same formula as your first life and that would require one specific formula out of an infinite number of formulas.

Bottom line, the fact that we're alive right now does not guarantee in any way that we'll be alive again after death.

[Hickory]

Dec. 30, 2011

To Peter:

You said:

"I really wish you would learn to use the quote feature."

My response:

If I knew how to use it, I would be, so it follows that I must not know how to use it, right? :-)

The reality is that I simply don't like the appearance that it imparts to the text.

You said:

"I'll concede that there is a "formula" for every living person that ever existed. In fact there are an infinite number of formulas for people. After I die is it possible that another "me" out of the infinite number of formulas will be born in the future? Sure, but infinitely unlikely."

My response:

As I have said repeatedly, any argument by which you attempt to undermine "life after death" also applies to the life you are living right now. Thus if you allege that being born again after your death is "infinitely unlikely" (i.e., impossible), then the life you are living right now is also impossible.

The reality is as follows:

(1) The recipe for bringing you into existence works. We know that because you are here right now.

(2) If a recipe works once, it will always work. We know that because to deny it is to deny the principle of scientific induction, which is foundational to the structure of human knowledge.

(3) The material universe is all that exists. Hence there is nothing that can take away from the material universe a power that it had before.

Since whatever had to happen to bring you into the world has happened, it follows that the recipe for you exists and works. Hence over the span of infinite future time, it is guaranteed to be fulfilled over, and over, and over again, however improbable it may be that it will be fulfilled in a particular case.

You said:

"... your first life isn't a reincarnation since you never existed before."

My response:

The material universe is all that exists. Therefore there is nothing that can give to it a power that it didn't have before. Therefore any power that it has today it always had. Thus the recipe that is responsible for your being in the world today has been a power of the universe throughout the infinite past. Hence over the span of infinite past time, it is guaranteed to have been fulfilled over, and over, and over again.

You said:

"Sorry but your eureka moment is a fizzle moment in my opinion."

My response:

If there has been a "fizzle moment," it was entirely your own. :-)

[BlackSheep]

As I have said repeatedly, any argument by which you attempt to undermine "life after death" also applies to the life you are living right now. Thus if you allege that being born again after your death is "infinitely unlikely" (i.e., impossible), then the life you are living right now is also impossible.

The reality is as follows:

(1) The recipe for bringing you into existence works. We know that because you are here right now.

(2) If a recipe works once, it will always work. We know that because to deny it is to deny the principle of scientific induction, which is foundational to the structure of human knowledge.

(3) The material universe is all that exists. Hence there is nothing that can take away from the material universe a power that it had before.

Since whatever had to happen to bring you into the world has happened, it follows that the recipe for you exists and works. Hence over the span of infinite future time, it is guaranteed to be fulfilled over, and over, and over again, however improbable it may be that it will be fulfilled in a particular case.

You are mixing two things. Lets say I have a random number generator that generates a number from 1 to a googol (10^100). It is a very big number and yet it will generate a number with no problem. Even if I made the random generator generate a number from 1 to a googolplex(googol ^ googol) it will still generate a number. Now the odds of two numbers coming up the same are very low within a finite period time. The fact that the number "1" came up once does't have any baring on the statistical likelihood of it coming up again.

No one is claiming the formula for any person is impossible, just highly unlikely. Every one is highly unlikely.

The material universe is all that exists. Therefore there is nothing that can give to it a power that it didn't have before. Therefore any power that it has today it always had. Thus the recipe that is responsible for your being in the world today has been a power of the universe throughout the infinite past. Hence over the span of infinite past time, it is guaranteed to have been fulfilled over, and over, and over again.

The past has not been infinite.

[Hickory]

Dec. 30, 2011

To BlackSheep:

I said:

"The material universe is all that exists. Therefore there is nothing that can give to it a power that it didn't have before. Therefore any power that it has today it always had. Thus the recipe that is responsible for your being in the world today has been a power of the universe throughout the infinite past. Hence over the span of infinite past time, it is guaranteed to have been fulfilled over, and over, and over again."

You said:

"The past has not been infinite."

My response:

Given:

The material universe exists and is all that exists.

Theorem:

The material universe always existed.

Proof:

1. Either the material universe always existed, or there was a time when it did not exist.

2. Assume there was a time when it did not exist.

3. Since the material universe is all that exists, then when it did not exist, nothing existed.

4. Since nothing cannot do anything, it follows that if there was ever a time when the material universe did not exist, it could never exist.

5. Therefore the material universe does not exist now.

6. But 5 contradicts what was given, hence the assumption made in step 2, from which 5 was logically derived, is false.

7. Therefore the only possibility that remains is that the universe always existed. Q.E.D.

It's called reason: you state the possibilities, find contradictions until only one possibility remains, and accept the answer that remains as the truth.

Bottom line: the past, like the future, is infinite.

[Night]

Given:

The material universe exists and is all that exists.

Theorem:

The material universe always existed.

Proof:

1. Either the material universe always existed, or there was a time when it did not exist.

2. Assume there was a time when it did not exist.

3. Since the material universe is all that exists, then when it did not exist, nothing existed.

And that is where you're wrong. Ever heard of a singularity? I suggest you do your research before claiming everyone else is wrong. The singularity which caused the big bang was an infinitely dense (meaning it had NO MASS) point of energy. Almost all of this energy was "cancelled out" in the big bang, and only a small portion of this energy resulted in the known universe.

We CAN NOT KNOW "all that exists"...that is just stupid, given that we cannot even see much of what does exists...

4. Since nothing cannot do anything, it follows that if there was ever a time when the material universe did not exist, it could never exist.

5. Therefore the material universe does not exist now.

6. But 5 contradicts what was given, hence the assumption made in step 2, from which 5 was logically derived, is false.

At some point, I hope you realize that attempting to sound intelligent while presenting a very unintelligent idea doesn't actually work.

7. Therefore the only possibility that remains is that the universe always existed. Q.E.D.

It's called reason: you state the possibilities, find contradictions until only one possibility remains, and accept the answer that remains as the truth.

Bottom line: the past, like the future, is infinite.

That is not true. You assume that the physical universe is bound by the restraints of time. That isn't always the case.

[Night]

I love these numbered flows of attempted logic from you, hickory. Out of the cluttered textual-vomit known as your posts, I just look for the numbers if I want to disprove your entire post. From now on, if you'd like to make a particularly illogical point, do not use numbers and I probably won't even read it.

(1) The recipe for bringing you into existence works. We know that because you are here right now.

(2) If a recipe works once, it will always work. We know that because to deny it is to deny the principle of scientific induction, which is foundational to the structure of human knowledge.

It will always work? That's simply not true. For hundreds of millions of years after the big bang, it would simply not have been possible for a human to exist.

(3) The material universe is all that exists. Hence there is nothing that can take away from the material universe a power that it had before.

Also disproved in my previous post. I love how you make such sweeping statements about something you could not possibly know.

Since whatever had to happen to bring you into the world has happened, it follows that the recipe for you exists and works. Hence over the span of infinite future time, it is guaranteed to be fulfilled over, and over, and over again, however improbable it may be that it will be fulfilled in a particular case.

That would be true, if the universe has always existed. Unfortunately for your flawed logic, the universe has NOT always existed. Before the big bang, we don't know exactly what existed, which completely destroys your entire argument.

That said, even if our own universe existed before the big bang, it couldn't be called reincarnation. The big bang "created" time. Before the big bang, there was no time, everything was timeless. So even if our universe existed beforehand, whatever happened between our universes (the singularity) was without time, and interrupted the flow of time, meaning that it erased all possible "information" from the previous universe. No one in any particular universe would ever truly know what existed in the previous one.

You said:

"... your first life isn't a reincarnation since you never existed before."

My response:

The material universe is all that exists.

Bullshit. You can't prove that. While we can guess, that's all it is. A guess.

Therefore there is nothing that can give to it a power that it didn't have before. Therefore any power that it has today it always had.

Also not true, but I won't even begin to explain the multiverse theory in more detail to someone who thinks in terms of "recipes" for human consciousness.

Thus the recipe that is responsible for your being in the world today has been a power of the universe throughout the infinite past. Hence over the span of infinite past time, it is guaranteed to have been fulfilled over, and over, and over again.

As shown above, this is not true. The past is not infinite. That is one thing we DO know.

You said:

"Sorry but your eureka moment is a fizzle moment in my opinion."

My response:

If there has been a "fizzle moment," it was entirely your own. :-)

I'm beginning to think that you will never have a fizzle moment. Your beliefs ten years from now will be exactly the same as they are today.

[Night]

I cannot believe the arrogance of someone who purposely makes his posts unreadable for everyone else because he doesn't like the way it looks! Please, hickory, just use the damned quoting feature like everybody else does and make your posts readable for a change.

Well at least now I can finally say I understand why hickory thinks reincarnation is true. It isn't as ridiculous a theory as I thought he might use, but it's still untrue anyways. I can't believe he has never heard of the Big Bang, it seems.

[BlackSheep]

Given:

The material universe exists and is all that exists.

Theorem:

The material universe always existed.

Proof:

1. Either the material universe always existed, or there was a time when it did not exist.

2. Assume there was a time when it did not exist.

3. Since the material universe is all that exists, then when it did not exist, nothing existed.

4. Since nothing cannot do anything, it follows that if there was ever a time when the material universe did not exist, it could never exist.

5. Therefore the material universe does not exist now.

6. But 5 contradicts what was given, hence the assumption made in step 2, from which 5 was logically derived, is false.

7. Therefore the only possibility that remains is that the universe always existed. Q.E.D.

It's called reason: you state the possibilities, find contradictions until only one possibility remains, and accept the answer that remains as the truth.

Bottom line: the past, like the future, is infinite.

Logic is a wonderful too but is useless without accurate data.
We don't know the material world is all that exists. We only have evidence of it, but we can not assume that. Once we remove that your argument collapses.

I am curious as to why you didn't respond to my main argument and only the second point.

[Hickory]

Dec. 31, 2011

To BlackSheep:

I said:

"Given:

The material universe exists and is all that exists.

Theorem:

The material universe always existed.

Proof:

1. Either the material universe always existed, or there was a time when it did not exist.

2. Assume there was a time when it did not exist.

3. Since the material universe is all that exists, then when it did not exist, nothing existed.

4. Since nothing cannot do anything, it follows that if there was ever a time when the material universe did not exist, it could never exist.

5. Therefore the material universe does not exist now.

6. But 5 contradicts what was given, hence the assumption made in step 2, from which 5 was logically derived, is false.

7. Therefore the only possibility that remains is that the universe always existed. Q.E.D.

It's called reason: you state the possibilities, find contradictions until only one possibility remains, and accept the answer that remains as the truth.

Bottom line: the past, like the future, is infinite."

You said:

"Logic is a wonderful too but is useless without accurate data. We don't know the material world is all that exists. We only have evidence of it, but we can not assume that. Once we remove that your argument collapses."

My response:

By definition the material universe, a.k.a. the cosmos, a.k.a. reality, a.k.a. existence, is the sum total of everything that exists. Everything that exists--i.e., everything that can affect us, either directly or indirectly--is part of it. That's why I stated it as a given.

You, of course, are free to call "everything that exists" anything you like. Whatever term you use, however, you will at the end still arrive at exactly the same conclusion--to wit: that everything which exists always existed. What the argument proves, in short, is that the entities of which "everything that exists" is composed can be rearranged in accordance with the laws of physics, but their existence is eternal: they cannot come into existence out of nothing or vanish into nothing.

Bottom line: the proof is correct because you can't refute an argument by changing the definition of the terms.

You said:

"I am curious as to why you didn't respond to my main argument and only to the second point."

My response:

Your "main argument" was excellent, and I enjoyed thinking about it. (My only quibble: a googolplex is ten to the googol, not a googol to the googol.) The reason I didn't go into it was that I was sleepy. Thus I went to bed with the intent to respond later. In the meanwhile, you put up the post to which I am presently responding, so I'm going to respond to your main argument here.

The premise underlying your argument was that the universe is finite both in space and in time. If you go out far enough in space, you leave the universe behind and enter an endless expanse of nothing. If you go back far enough in time, you reach a point where the universe no longer exists, and there remains only nothing. And if you go forward sufficiently in time, you once again reach a point where the universe no longer exists, and there remains only nothing.

Given those assumptions, we can calculate that the number of births that would be required (i.e., the number of combinations that would have to be gone through) to bring a person back into the world after his death would be too large for it to occur in the time available.

Let's use an analogy to try to clarify the point.

Suppose that you decide to throw dice until you get two sixes, and that it takes an average of 10 seconds to make one throw, retrieve the the dice, and be ready to throw again. Since there are 36 possible outcomes and, on average, you will have to go through 18 of them before rolling a double-six, it is going to take an average of 180 seconds, or 3 minutes, for you to roll a double-six.

Similar considerations apply to the time required, on average, to reincarnate a specific individual. However, the number of possible outcomes (births) that must occur, on average, to produce one particular outcome (a specific individual person) is vastly greater than the number required to roll a double-six. Hence for any assumed finite size of the universe, the time required is also vastly greater. If you actually run those numbers (and I have), using the measured size of the observable universe and the supposed (not measured) time since the alleged "Big Bang," you conclude that there has not yet been enough elapsed time for any human to have been reincarnated even once.

The flaw in the position, of course, is that the universe is eternal: it always existed and it always will exist. Result: however much time is required, on average, to reincarnate a specific individual, that amount of time is available. In fact, because the amount of time available is infinite, there is enough time available to reincarnate each of us an infinite number of times.

[BlackSheep]

By definition the material universe, a.k.a. the cosmos, a.k.a. reality, a.k.a. existence, is the sum total of everything that exists. Everything that exists--i.e., everything that can affect us, either directly or indirectly--is part of it. That's why I stated it as a given.

By using the term material universe you are suggesting there maybe something more or there would have been no need to use the extra term material.

You, of course, are free to call "everything that exists" anything you like. Whatever term you use, however, you will at the end still arrive at exactly the same conclusion--to wit: that everything which exists always existed. What the argument proves, in short, is that the entities of which "everything that exists" is composed can be rearranged in accordance with the laws of physics, but their existence is eternal: they cannot come into existence out of nothing or vanish into nothing.

I am not the one who used a overly specific term to refer to everyhting and made it seem you were not. If you want to talk about everything that exists then you have potentially far more to be ignorant of. Once you start referring to things beyond our time-space we have really no idea about it. There is no way to know if our time-space can somehow be spawned from elsewhere or if something similar ever has or ever will be again. We just don't know.

Bottom line: the proof is correct because you can't refute an argument by changing the definition of the terms.

I didn't change the terms. You referred to the material universe without defining it and claimed it was all that exists. if you had said universe simply it would have worked better, but you didn't.

Your "main argument" was excellent, and I enjoyed thinking about it. (My only quibble: a googolplex is ten to the googol, not a googol to the googol.) The reason I didn't go into it was that I was sleepy. Thus I went to bed with the intent to respond later. In the meanwhile, you put up the post to which I am presently responding, so I'm going to respond to your main argument here.

Thanks and sorry about getting that wrong.

The premise underlying your argument was that the universe is finite both in space and in time. If you go out far enough in space, you leave the universe behind and enter an endless expanse of nothing. If you go back far enough in time, you reach a point where the universe no longer exists, and there remains only nothing. And if you go forward sufficiently in time, you once again reach a point where the universe no longer exists, and there remains only nothing.

Actually I said that the past was not infinite. Also I am not aware of any theory suggesting you can simply fly out of the universe in terms of space. As i understand it you can not leave space.

Given those assumptions, we can calculate that the number of births that would be required (i.e., the number of combinations that would have to be gone through) to bring a person back into the world after his death would be too large for it to occur in the time available.

Even if your assumptions were wrong that is the gist.

Let's use an analogy to try to clarify the point.

Suppose that you decide to throw dice until you get two sixes, and that it takes an average of 10 seconds to make one throw, retrieve the the dice, and be ready to throw again. Since there are 36 possible outcomes and, on average, you will have to go through 18 of them before rolling a double-six, it is going to take an average of 180 seconds, or 3 minutes, for you to roll a double-six.

Similar considerations apply to the time required, on average, to reincarnate a specific individual. However, the number of possible outcomes (births) that must occur, on average, to produce one particular outcome (a specific individual person) is vastly greater than the number required to roll a double-six. Hence for any assumed finite size of the universe, the time required is also vastly greater. If you actually run those numbers (and I have), using the measured size of the observable universe and the supposed (not measured) time since the alleged "Big Bang," you conclude that there has not yet been enough elapsed time for any human to have been reincarnated even once.

The flaw in the position, of course, is that the universe is eternal: it always existed and it always will exist. Result: however much time is required, on average, to reincarnate a specific individual, that amount of time is available. In fact, because the amount of time available is infinite, there is enough time available to reincarnate each of us an infinite number of times.

I agree if the universe was infinite that this would be true, but you have not demonstrated that without being countered. There are far too many assumptions.

[Night]

HICKORY, the universe is not infinite! Your entire argument is proven wrong simply because of that fact...

It has a beginning, and time itself will also come to an end. The Big Bang blows your entire argument out of the water. Have you honestly never heard of the big bang???

[Night]

The flaw in the position, of course, is that the universe is eternal: it always existed and it always will exist. Result: however much time is required, on average, to reincarnate a specific individual, that amount of time is available. In fact, because the amount of time available is infinite, there is enough time available to reincarnate each of us an infinite number of times.

The universe is infinite??? That would be news to practically any scientists who lived after the 1960's...

Hint; the universe is not infinite. Time has not always existed, time is a property of mass, and mass did not exist before the big bang...