PixyMisa, we know the world isnt flat because we can demonstrate it's a sphere. We know babies are delivered by women (and occasionally men these days). How do we know reincarnation doesnt exist?
It's exactly the same. We have demonstrated - with far more, and more convincing evidence than assertions like "the world is a sphere" or "babies come from women" - that the mind is the product of the brain, and that minds die when brains die.
Yes, it's impossible for the world to be flat, and it's impossible for babies to be delivered by storks, and it's impossible for people to be reincarnated, because these things are not true.
Reincarnationists counter this by invoking a second impossiblity. You can do that for anything, and it has the same value anywhere, i.e. zero.
Since most here concede that the concept requires some notion of "soul" or at least consciousness/spirit
One of these things is not like the others.
and we have no objective physical evidence of those things, how do you demonstrate that soul or spirit ceases at death?
The what now?
Minds cease at death. Invariably.
Souls are impossible. Just like the flat Earth and the stork-babies. They are flatly contradicted by all relevant observations.
Just because we currenty don't have the know-how to demonstrate these things doesn't definitively prove they don't exist--it just proves that we can't demonstrate them!
No, sorry, you've fallen in the water.
There is no evidence for the existence of the soul, no evidence that a soul could exist, no requirement for the hypothesis, and every reason to believe that they cannot possibly exist.
But that does not mean that you could not come up with convincing evidence of reincarnation.
You can only come up with convincing evidence of reincarnation if reincarnation happens.
It doesn't.
Hence no evidence.
We don't know the exact nature of gravity or even light for that matter, but we casually accept these things cause we observe them and know how they behave.
That's all we know about anything - behaviours. Reincarnation has no behaviour; nor do souls. We describe this situation by saying that they do not exist.
You've basically come right out and said that people who believe in the idea are "imbeciles" (if that's not an insult--i don't know what is) I don't believe in reincarnation--but millions of who i consider to be very intelligent people do believe in that idea--are they all imbeciles, in your opinion??
Nope, I said nothing of the sort.
I described the
idea of reincarnation as an imbecility.
Now, it's true that I also consider all people - myself included - all people who have ever lived as cheerful idiots, but that has little to do with the question at hand and everything to do with neuroscience.
(sorry, no hysterical laughter emoticon)
