I'm watching it now while I eat my Oatibix.

These nutters drive me crazy - it's why I can't call myself a "Christian" anymore - people always assume you are one of this lot which I am *NOT*. There doesn't seem to be any nice, sane, tolerant middle ground anymore - but then perhaps there never was.

I don't want an Anglo-Saxon heaven - cherubs would look silly in horned helmets.

The reincarnation case of Anne Frank and Barbo Karlen. A nifty way to sell your books anyway.

http://www.iisis.net/index.php?page=semkiw-anne-frank-barbro-karlen-reincarnation-past-life

Edit. Including a list of the 'Key Points and Principles of Reincarnation' so we can do a check on ourselves.

Ferval - re the girl who is recovering from cancer - I thought Andrew Maxwell was very fair to and about her when he acknowledged that he could "get her *spiritual* beliefs", but not the rest of the stuff about the *literal* interpretation of the Bible. And Maxwell went on - very gently, I thought - to question her (Jo's?) insistence that Noah really did build an ark (the dimensions given made it sound like an early QE2) for the dinosaurs as well as all the other creatures. It's just so silly.

But live and let live. If she wants to believe that - if it helps her - so be it.

It's the Day of Judgement chap who's really annoying me. Back to the programme.

Quote :

It's the Day of Judgement chap who's really annoying me

Here he is being given a platform for his nonsense.

He looks like a reject from "The Apprentice".

Please, please understand that folk who may believe in *something* beyond themselves do *not* necessarily subscribe to the utter nonsense he is spouting. I certainly don't.

Charles Darwin had it right. I *do* subscribe to this (Wiki again, I'm afraid, but never mind):



Though reticent about his religious views, in 1879 he responded that he had never been an atheist in the sense of denying the existence of a god, and that generally "an Agnostic would be the more correct description of my state of mind."^[7] He went as far as saying that "Science has nothing to do with Christ, except insofar as the habit of scientific research makes a man cautious in admitting evidence. For myself, I do not believe that there ever has been any revelation. As for a future life, every man must judge for himself between conflicting vague probabilities."

Absolutely.

Long lost twin?

This is one of several Doonsbury cartoons, all along much the same lines:



I think they're brilliant... witty, not aggressive, but always spot on!

PS : And sorry... I've now led the discussion yet even further away from the OP about Reincarnation.

Quote :

These nutters drive me crazy - it's why I can't call myself a "Christian" anymore

But by that criterion I couldn't call myself a New Zealander, or a reporter or even a woman, temp!

What - you are a New Zealand woman reporter by virtue of fundamentalist simplistic pseudo-Christian reactionary ignorance?

Are you sure?

The link that ID provided states "Since around the year 2000, multiple independently researched reincarnation cases have emerged, which show that from one incarnation to another, people maintain the same facial features, personality traits and talents."

So who, in the past, looked like you, shared your personality traits and exhibited the same talents and so was obviously you in a previous life?

Nefertiti?

Quote :

What - you are a New Zealand woman reporter by virtue of fundamentalist simplistic pseudo-Christian reactionary ignorance?

Are you sure?

I am a NZ women reporter despite there being various nutters in all those categories. And Temp could be a perfectly good Christian despite fundamentalist simplistic reactionaries among the ranks of Christians.

ferval wrote:

The link that ID provided states "Since around the year 2000, multiple independently researched reincarnation cases have emerged, which show that from one incarnation to another, people maintain the same facial features, personality traits and talents."

So who, in the past, looked like you, shared your personality traits and exhibited the same talents and so was obviously you in a previous life?

I imagine there were a few in the past who I could resemble in one way or another and I'm sure they would all be ancestors of mine.

Interesting that it is only 10yrs ago that all these supposed 'cases' have come to light and no-one noticed before though. So despite educating the masses, people will still believe in utter rubbish? Doesn't say a lot for humanity. I really can't fathom how any child could possibly be born who doesn't carry the DNA of the parents, and will (according to these people) be something entirely different in every way.

Caro wrote:

And Temp could be a perfectly good Christian despite fundamentalist simplistic reactionaries among the ranks of Christians.

Apparently not, Caro - and that is official. To be a "Christian" these days (I blame Cliff Richard, always have), it seems you *have* to be fundamentalist, simplistic and reactionary. I can do simplistic pretty well, but not the rest. It is all unutterably depressing.

But ferval and ID are valiantly trying to keep us talking about reincarnation. Who had the misfortune of being me in a previous century? I'll go away and think about that one.

Something else to read;

http://www.cfpf.org.uk/articles/background/snyder.html

I was given The Bhagavad Gita for my birthday (Jack Hawley's translation). I've never read it before, but I'm finding it very moving. Some very interesting things about the atma (the soul, the life force):

"There has never been a time when I, or you, or any of these kings and soldiers here did not exist - and there will never be a time when we cease to exist. Physical bodies appear and disappear, but not the atma that lives within them."

There's an "In Our Time" programme about the Gita which I shall listen to later today. Just wondered if anyone had read this text. Any thoughts? Is it just nice poetry, but not much else - the Bible of old hippies?

PS Caro - I'm still mulling over your "courage of your convictions" message. It has given me much food for thought, believe me. I very much want to be "a scorcher of enemies" (advice given to poor dithering Arjuna by Krishna), but, alas, I think I identify more with that other arch-ditherer, Archbishop Cranmer, of whom Diarmaid MacCulloch writes: "If there is bias in this narrative, it is sympathy for a man who was frequently confused and who confused others..." Mind you, DM also says "...there is also admiration for the way in which he struggled to a final gesture of certainty in his last hour."

I suspect MacCulloch was Cranmer in a previous life.

Temperance wrote:

I was given The Bhagavad Gita .... Just wondered if anyone had read this text. Any thoughts?

I did read it many, many years ago when at university but I'm afraid it left me completely unmoved and I can hardly remember any of it at all. As you say: nice poetry, but not much else. But then I wasn't reading it in search of enlightenment or anything, it was only because I thought I ought to read it, in the same way as I struggled through the Koran.

Since nothing in the universe is ever lost then I think there is a case for the life force continuing somehow. It's the concept of recycling it into another living being that is hard to take on board - the maths of supply and demand is an interesting side issue.

Early in this thread I made remark that ID illustrated later by saying that a DNA person was unique to its parenthood. A person could not reproduce identically in the future. I doubt anything recycled does.

Certainly in a physical sense P, the carbon in our bodies was first formed in a supernova billions of years ago.

Aye, Trike, I assumed the basic elements that make up me are all recycled in the good ol' 'ashes to ashes' wisdom of the Bible - I meant manufactured things or objects of life-force growth.

Well I never - just look at this! "Quantum substances form the soul!" I know we should be *extremely* wary of anything we read in the Daily Mail", but isn't this what the Stoics were saying with all their talk of "Divine Essence"?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2225190/Can-quantum-physics-explain-bizarre-experiences-patients-brought-brink-death.html

Talking of the Stoics, was Marcus Aurelius - as has been suggested on the current quiz thread - really a subscriber to "stoical atheism"? I know he had no time for supernatural nonsense, but surely he was not an atheist - more an agnostic?

"If gods exist, you have nothing to fear from taking leave of mankind, for they will not let you come to harm. But if there are no gods, or if they have no concern with mortal affairs, what is life to me in a world devoid of gods or devoid of Providence? Gods, however, do exist, and do concern themselves with the world of men..."

Meditations 2:11

I once read a lovely thing about Marcus Aurelius; it was from Henry James, commenting on the equestrian statue of the great man which stands in the Piazza Campidoglio in Rome. James wrote: "In the capital of Christendom, the portrait most suggestive of a Christian conscience is that of a pagan emperor."

MA would be appalled - he found the Christians (well, the Fundies that is) immensely irritating, but then, don't we all?

I read also (in the introduction to my copy of the Meditations) that "the theology of the Christian Church owes a large debt to Stoicism", but it's an old Penguin edition, (Maxwell Staniforth translation and intro), so perhaps such a view is out of date now.

Sorry - don't know what happened there - I tried to change "pagen" to "pagan", and in so doing quoted myself and sent another copy of my post. Could the Benign Enlightened One please remove the repeated message?

Thank you!

You are quite right in saying that Marcus Aurelius is best described as an agnostic. I have amended the comment in the quiz accordingly.

Marcus Aurelius was terribly troubled with the requirement that he, as emperor, should be deified upon dying. The pragmatist in him recognised the political necessity of the belief at least to be publicly endorsed by him. But it also caused him to question the notion of elevation to sanctity or divinity of individuals. He seemed to end up with a kind of "super god" stratum in his own mind which transcended all understanding - anything lower which could be explained, expressed or understood was, he suggested, therefore most probably of human invention.

And I think he was probably right.

Oh heck Temp, I can't cope with quantum stuff before my third coffee and preferably several large red wines. Even then I can only grasp the lace on the hem of the ideas before it all slips away and my brain boils.
It does however bring to mind Feynman's 'one electron universe' hypothesis and Dirk Gently. The latter is closer to my level of understanding.

Son is currently considering whether to do his thesis on geometrical something or rathers in quantum physics theory and for the life of me I haven't a clue what it all means. Can't understand how I, with no mathematical ability whatsoever, produced this child.

It would be interesting to find out what percentage of History lovers are hopeless at maths, I used to get 5 out of 100 for spelling my name right in History exams. Maybe maths uses another, less developed part of the brain.

Temperance wrote:

I was given The Bhagavad Gita for my birthday (Jack Hawley's translation). I've never read it before, but I'm finding it very moving. Some very interesting things about the atma (the soul, the life force):

"There has never been a time when I, or you, or any of these kings and soldiers here did not exist - and there will never be a time when we cease to exist. Physical bodies appear and disappear, but not the atma that lives within them."

One aspect of re-incarnation which is puzzling is that some of the religions and traditions which profess belief in the phenomenon then seem to do their utmost best to prevent it taking place. Take Hinduism for instance. The classic Hindu funerary rite involves cremation of the body and then disposal of the ashes in running water. It’s difficult to think of a more effective way of preventing (or at least hugely delaying) the re-incarnation of that body than to do that. The freshly sunken ashes on a river bed will take a very long time to break down into nutrients for plant life. The underwater plants which then draw nutrition from them will then take quite a long while to grow before they are food for microscopic organisms, crustaceans and fish etc. Those river creatures themselves are as likely to be eaten by other river creatures several times over before ever seeing fresh air and being eaten by amphibious reptiles, birds or mammals. Hinduism is a religion which also promotes vegetarianism, so even after the recycled residue of the deceased has re-emerged onto dry land it still won’t be consumed by a human until the droppings and/or dead carcasses of the reptiles, birds or mammals are then recycled again having fertilized crops intended for human consumption. And that’s just for physical re-incarnation. With regard to any spiritual re-incarnation, then, after such a very lengthy process with infinite variables, any ‘atma’ or even any electrical charge would surely have long since been dissipated and in many different directions.
     
Zoroastrianism, by contrast, takes the opposite view. In the Zoroastrian view humans are flawed creatures whose bodies are not deemed worthy to be consumed by fire (the most sacred of the elements). Instead a dead person is considered best consumed by wild animals (preferably carrion eating birds) and are thus fast-tracked to re-incarnation (or at least into the crop of a vulture). Avian and other scavengers, of course, are not the first things to start consuming a corpse after death. Microbes and bacteria set to work immediately (and vultures often play a salutary part in ridding the environment of the most virulent of those). Where large scavengers are not present, however, the corpse (often buried) will then take a long time to break down and will really only be ‘food for worms’ for several years if not decades.

The idea of micro-organisms was first proposed and considered to be an important part of the re-incarnation process as early as the 5th Century BC. This was in the Acharamga Sutra a monastic text in the Jain tradition. The Tenth Lecture of the book gives a long list of places where a monk or nun may or may not ‘ease nature’ (i.e. urinate and/or defecate). There are repeated injunctions to be mindful when relieving oneself not to harm ‘eggs’ or ‘worms’ and presumably worms’ eggs. This lecture would seem to be the proto-type of all obsessive, compulsive disorders but in the main it’s just a guide to good, basic hygiene and human courtesy. In the Fifteenth Lecture, the Fifth Clause states:

If a Nirgrantha would eat and drink without inspecting his food and drink, he might hurt and displace or injure or kill all sorts of living beings.

How first inspecting, say, a mango, will prevent someone from killing microbes on it when eating it is not said – but the basic idea that there are tiny living beings of which we may be unaware is there. And yet the Jain funerary rite is also to cremate the deceased and as soon as possible. The ashes are then buried. You can read an English-language translation of the Sutras here:

Gaina Sutras

It seems to be the case that contradictions abound even with regard to physical re-incarnation quite apart from any spiritual interpretation of the concept.

Reincarnation isn't resurrection of the dead. It's the spirit inhabiting a new body.
Additionally, you seem to suggest Zoroastians might be buried. Never. The corpses are exposed on a "Tower of Silence".
Another culture that disposes of the dead by feeding to carrion-eating birds is the Tibetan Bhuddist practice of "Sky Burial".