Transcript File - A2 Philosophy of Religion

Mr. DeZilva
Living after Death in
Physical Form: Reincarnation

 Reincarnation, also known as rebirth
 The individual continues to live after death in some
sort of bodily form
 Being reborn into this world after death into a new
physical body
Hindu beliefs in
Reincarnation

 Each person has an essential self known as the atman
 This self is eternal and seeks unity with God
 In the Upanishads (Hindu sacred text), it says that
spiritual wisdom comes when people recognise the
ultimate identity of the atman with the divine
 God manifests himself in the atman of each
individual
 Once this manifestation is realised, there is no need for
the atman to continue in the cycle of rebirth  it has
attained its release, this is known as moksha
 The physical body is nothing more than a vehicle for
the atman
Hindu beliefs continued

 Hindus believe that the process of rebirth is
controlled by the law of karma
 Each deliberate action from a person has consequences
(fruits) (good act = good consequences)
 The Karmic fruits attach themselves to atman and
keep it in the cycle of birth and rebirth (samsara)
 The quality of one’s future life is determined by how the
individual acts in their current life
 For example, if someone is poor or disabled, this could
be because they acted morally bad in their past lives
Implications for
Hinduism

 Everyone is where they are in their current life
because of their own actions of a past life
 Seems like there is no compassion for the poor
 However, everyone has an atman and has a
connection to the divine
 Concern for the well-being of others is important
 The beggar at your gate or the refugee you see on the
news might be your own parent or child in the past
or future lives.
Buddhist beliefs in
Reincarnation

 Buddhist have no belief in the soul or a God
 Anatta  the Buddhist belief that there is no self and
that the sense of self is an illusion (soullessness)
 A person is made up of the five skandhas
(aggregates or strands), beyond which there is no
essential self
 Matter, sensation, perception, volition (acts of will),
and consciousness
 All of these are merged together to make a person who
attracts karma
 The wise person is one who realises that any sense of
atman is an illusion
Implications for
Buddhism

 Like Hinduism, also believe in Karma and Samsara
 What is it that is reborn, then, if there is no self?
 Buddhist say that the person is neither the same nor different
 The analogy of the lighted candle which in turn lights another
candle (the two flames are neither the same nor different, but
the energy from one candle begins the flame of the next)
 What does Karma attach its fruits to if there is no essential
self?
 One is not freed from their evil deeds
 Mango analogy from The Questions of King Malinda
Western beliefs in
Reincarnation

 Pythagoras (570 BC to 495 BC)
 Greek Philosopher and Mathematician
 Claimed to have memories of past lives
 Believed that as an individual passed through a
successive life, they also gained in wisdom and in virtue
to live on in another life
 Benjamin Franklin (1706 – 1790)
 "I look upon death to be as necessary to the constitution
as sleep. We shall rise refreshed in the morning."
 Mark Twain (1835 – 1910)
 "I have been born more times than anybody except
Krishna."
For both Hindus and
Buddhist

 Karma works with perfect justice
 It is seen as natural law, and that whatever happens,
no matter how long removed from a previous terrible
action, will always be just.
Evidence for
Reincarnation

 Ian Stephenson wrote Twenty Cases Suggestive of
Reincarnation (1974)
 The book explores 20 cases in which there is apparent
evidence that an individual is the reincarnation of
someone else who lived in the past but has died.
 Chose to study children, as opposed to adults, and
found that children had “memories” of past lives and
these memories had an unusual resemblance to the
lives of deceased people that they had never met
Examples from
Stevenson

 Swarnlata, a child in India described a house that she
used to live in (but she never had), sang songs she
has never learned, spoke a language she did not
grow up speaking and recognised people she had
never seen.
 She resembled the deceased daughter of a family in
every fashion, even greeting the family members
with “a warm affection”
 Other examples will be provided later
Stevenson’s explanation
that the children would
 Strong evidence supports
not have been lying or trying to fraud the research
since they had nothing to gain from the “lies.”
 Cryptoamnesia  The memory of the subconscious
 A person thinks they remember something, but in fact,
has heard about it from another source.
 Genetic Memory  Similar to how a bird can
“remember” to build a nest at a young age.
Something instilled in a child that they just “know”
 Extra-Sensory Perception  Paranormal and
telepathic links potentially occurred, but still
wouldn’t explain the “remembering” of events
Criticism of
Reincarnation (rebirth)

 These examples that Stevenson provides could be
examples of culturally influences
 John Hick directly critiques Stevenson by saying that
these cases of Reincarnation take place in countries
and cultures that already have a strong belief in
reincarnation
 Christianity, Judaism, and Islam would find that
reincarnation contradicts with the teachings of the
Bible or the Qu’ran.
 If reincarnation is true, then it takes away from the
importance of the one valuable and special life to live
that these religions believe in and promote.
Further Criticisms

 John Hick further suggests that reincarnation may
be explained by some kind of extra-sensory
perception
 The dead person leaves behind some kind of psychich
traces (what he calls husks) enabling a memory of a
previous individual or of a life (further explained in
replica theory)
 Issue of Identity
 Shared memory is not the same as identity. It is
impossible for two different individuals to be in any
way “the same person.” It is a contradiction