Alex's questions at the end of the podcast:
1. From a scientific standpoint, is reincarnation nonsense? How would we explore such a question scientifically?
2. How can life have any meaning if we live in a meaningless universe?
3. How can reincarnation be true when there are more people alive today than have ever lived before? (Alex doesn't know).
Alex's questions at the end of the podcast:
1. From a scientific standpoint, is reincarnation nonsense? How would we explore such a question scientifically?
2. How can life have any meaning if we live in a meaningless universe?
3. How can reincarnation be true when there are more people alive today than have ever lived before? (Alex doesn't know).
1: The question of reincarnation is of course not nonsense, it is an incredibly pertinent and valid question, and science has the means to investigate the question as Jim Tucker and Ian Stevenson have shown. What is utter nonsense, is the suggestion that the science (the "scientific method"), has somehow discovered all there is to know about the universe and the humans who inhabit it, and there is nothing left to investigate. Implying that any claims to the contrary are clearly ludicrous, as we already know all there is to know about what there is to know, and what we don't yet know (which is in my silly opinion, a HECK of a lot) will simply reinforce what we have already, firmly, and immutably, established. (To me this sounds more like religion than anything else).
2: life CANNOT have meaning in a dead and meaningless universe. The mainstream "scientific" hypothesis is the Darwinian idea of survival. Survival is measured ultimately in terms of DNA survival and propogation. If we are nothing more than overly complicated DNA replicators (and pretty piss poor ones) which exist to do nothing more than pass on our genetic code, and consciousness is simply an accident or somehow a convoluted tool designed to more effectively pass on the all important DNA, then things are looking pretty bleak.
There can be no moral imperative in this universe, unless it somehow enhances the propagation of one's DNA. This is an argument against morality, and in favour of the worst and most atrocious immoral excesses of mankind (as they are far more efficacious in terms of the propogation of one's DNA).
A warlord with a forcibly acquired harem of sex slaves from this standpoint would seem to be the absolute ideal and pinnacle of success from the point of view of DNA. Thinking and philosophy (morality) really seem from this standpoint to be great big mistakes in the mechanistic process of DNA propogation, as rather than enhance the process, clearly they are the greatest inhibitors of DNA propagation.
A far better model would be one in which the organism does not have a hand at the wheel, and certainly cannot attempt to completely override the biological imperative of passing on the DNA (as clearly, a thinking conscious being can do). Better to have automata than cannot go against the programming, and simply tries to dominate all other organisms as quickly as possible, and mate with as many other organisms as possible by any means necessary to further the particular strand of all important DNA our example is carrying.
Surely this is the bleakest, most pointless and horrendous universe we can imagine. Horrendous precisely because we are conscious entities, and the model that mainstream science presents simply cannot be squeezed into our experience of the world, or the way we live life.
3: the last issue I don't have time to state my position on, as my children are crying to go to bed, and I haven't time, other than to say that the number of humans existing on this tiny sphere in the inconceivably large universe out there, and the potential dimensions a spiritual being may inhabit beyond, surely does not pose any threat to the notion of reincarnation. Only if we somehow have first determined that there is a finite number of souls in the universe, which only inhabit the planet earth, and no other planet or dimension, only then can we say the theory of reincarnation is absurd. But clearly, we cannot say this. Evidence points to the contrary.