The odds on being born again?

But , for me, our characters die with us. Whatever happens in our brains to produce so-called “memories” and dream fantasies also dies with us. We are only sentient beings when we are alive. So there is no part of us which can have “lived” before. In my opinion, of course. Matters of the supernatural can only ever be matters of opinion.

If by soul you mean the “essence” of the person that dies with them. If you refer to some spectral component of the individual then we are entering the realms of fantasy.

I didn’t mean soul in any religious context, but, as you say, the vital ‘essence’ of what makes us peculiarly ‘us’.
Even identical twins have different characters. To me reincarnation is not about being born into an identical body as the one you’ve just vacated, but having the same thought processes, thus being aware that you’ve lived before in other times through dreams, etc.
Documented cases of reincarnation often explore the studied individual’s regression into different genders, hard to do in the same body!
Mind you, without the person being aware of reincarnation, it may as well have not happened…

The fact that you exist as something that is alive is a subject of debate anyway – did life start as a random collection of amino acids which worked better as a collective than individuals, and which subsequently evolved; OR did we start as bacteria from elsewhere in the galaxy.

Either way, its a billion to one chance that life exists. You personally are a collection of elements – your atoms have been in existence for the duration of the universe, so your component parts have been recycled many times before. There is little to no chance that every atom in your body has been solely used in the creation of another living organism, so again, the idea of re-incarnation is fantasy. You have been created in the furnace of a star, probably been part of this planet for a few billion years…. but have you, as in your entire chemical composition, been something living – nah.

Nor am I. My post was commenting on Al’s post.

I’m not interested in the soul.
Matters not that I am concious of the fact I lived again, or am in fact a different person. Just that I exist again and are concious of that fact (that I am alive).
I still say if it happened once it could or should happen again.
If it’s so improbably it won’t happen again how do you explain it has happened?
Surely it shouldn’t have happened in the first place.

If by soul you mean the “essence” of the person that dies with them. If you refer to some spectral component of the individual then we are entering the realms of fantasy.

Mythology doesn’t really need to have a place in the 21st century..

That assumes that the ‘soul’ exists. I can see no evidence that proves it does. There is only the physical in existance, you’re talking about something intangible…

Surely it’s the person’s soul which would be reincarnated, not the physical body…

The odds are the same as my ability to spell ‘scientific’……

There is a slight error in what I said – the molecules would have to be the SAME ONES for true scientific re-incarnation – in otherwords, every atomic particle in your body reforming EXACTLY as it is now. Simply put, not going to happen with an almost infinite number of re-assembly options. To be honest, your body will revert to the core elements of which it is composed over time, and you will be spread across the planet, the galaxy and ultimately the universe VERY thinly….. You are composed of waste material from the stars, and that is all you will be in the future…. unless you have aspirations at an atomic level of being part of a rock…

In theory, the molecules that are arranged in such a way that you exist, COULD be dismantled and then re-assembled into exactly the same sequence as they are (true scienticic re-incarnation), but the mathematical odds on that are billions of billions to one.

So the answer then is yes.
What are the odds of those molecules comming together to make each of us.
Must be similar odds to them re-creating each of us.
Might take zillions of years but could happen.

😀

That would depend on someone judging me on how I lived my life. … I’ll be a greenfly next then….

JT442 – but if you were Buddhist you might have been a cat and might next be a cow!;)

In theory, the molecules that are arranged in such a way that you exist, COULD be dismantled and then re-assembled into exactly the same sequence as they are (true scienticic re-incarnation), but the mathematical odds on that are billions of billions to one. I’d love to give an exact figure, but it depends on how many fundamental molecular structures you contain and the number of possible combinations….

As for the idea that your memories and experiences could be transferred into another body several hundred years later- utter tosh. Kindly explain how a mixture of chemical and electrical signals could transgress space and time…

Spiritualists may have a plan… The idea that this ‘LIFE’ is no more than a learning playground is interesting, and may explain why some of the laws of physics are not particularly good too…. Think of a self imposed ‘Matrix’ (as in the film) where you pre-ordain what you want to acheive in life whether that be immense suffering, a long marriage (its the same thing…) or whatever. There is a line of thought within Spiritualism that in the ‘real’ world, we are close to about ten people, and it is these ten people who will be your companions through every life, but often in different forms – for example, your best mate could have actually been your dad or your wife (!) in a former life. Apparently its the richness and the diversity that life has to offer that is the learning experience.

None whatsoever, so far as I am aware. But there has never been sufficient evidence to enable a scientific proposition to be tested. If there were, I am sure it would be.

Is there any scientific reasoning, ideas to suggest that, if it (a life) happened once so it could happen again?

in english by any chance ???

Eh?

Perhaps there are parallel universes and we are living our lives elsewhere in the past the present or the future………there is so much we have learnt over the last 50 years but even more we have yet to learn.

That brings to mind a remark I saw or heard years ago which I agree with- the more we learn the more we realise how little we know.

So what’s to say this cycle will not happen again and is there any scientific evidence to suggest it might? Or is it a one chance only scenario?

This very concept was recently demonstrated on that well know fountain of philosophical wisdom “Futurama”

Professor Farnsworth builds a time machine, but it can only go forwards in time. Due to Farnsworths clumsy operation of the controls & an abortive quest trying to find a race that had developed a “backwards in time machine” they end up many millions of years in the future, but find that if they just keep going, the universe eventually collapses in on itself & another big bang is created thus making history repeat itself, of course it takes several attempts & a few times around the clock for our heroes to get it right.

I like Futurama.:cool:

So in Matt Groenings world, it’s a yes, you can be born as many times as a series will permit, in mine, it’s a big don’t know 😀