What if reincarnation was proven to be real?

(Note: there are numerous definitions on the subject of reincarnation but I am only focusing on individuals being born again in different physical bodies after death on Earth.)

What if there was proof that a person is reborn after death? How would different societies react and change from this? Do you think there would still be unanswered questions like:

• 1. If a person's actions and intentions, termed karma in Hindu religion, will affect his future in another body?
• 2. If a person can only reincarnate in their own gender (a man dying and being reborn in another male body), or even in the same species.
• 3. If a soul reincarnates at a certain distance from the location where the previous body died.
• 4. If reincarnation can traverse different timelines. For instance, a person dying in the modern century being reborn in the medieval era.
• 5. If memories or experiences from past lives carry over to the person living in the next one.
• 6. If there would still be debate on the issue of whether reincarnation exists or not and be put under further scientific review.
• 7. If one can still be a nihilist despite the evidence of reincarnation because one believes that memories, experiences, and emotions of one's past selves are erased completely when being reborn into a new body.
• 8. If being reincarnated from someone with a history of atrocities will make one liable to face crimes for their past actions in another body.
• 9. Whether reincarnation continues on forever or has an end point, like how there's still debate over whether the universe is infinite.
• 10. If the flow of reincarnation can be controlled like changing the path of the river (assuming it has one).
• 11. If reincarnation can be broken (like how Hindus and Buddhists believe it is a way to attain nirvana).
• 12. If there is a specific waiting period between rebirths.
• 13. If sometimes happens to a reborn soul when the eggs split, such as in identical twins.
• 14. If reincarnation only occurs in a particular hierarchy of living things, like humans.
• 15. If reincarnation has any other noticeable effects on things besides the transition to different physical bodies such as weather, genetics, etc.

I know there are serious issues with the question I asked, like how one is able to quantify the 'soul' (or life force or whatever) needed for reincarnation to occur, or if reliable measurements can be used on reincarnation. I was just wondering how anyone else would think and respond.

edited 22nd Mar '14 9:16:59 PM by BestOf

I'd just like to say that I don't think this thread is about asking whether reincarnation is true or how it could be shown to be true; instead, the idea is to discuss reincarnation with the assumption that it is true. If this is not what the OP was thinking I'll redact this statement.

Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur.

1. 1 would make the Just World Fallacy true, poor/sick/unlucky/etc. people would be left in the dirt to die because they deserved to be poor through their actions in the previous life.

"And as long as a sack of shit is not a good thing to be, chivalry will never die."

I would start a betting pool for when the first person is sued for actions of his previous life.

Or imprisoned. I can see people going "Well, he was a mass murderer in his last life, so we should obviously imprison him for life, just to be on the safe side."

"You can reply to this Message!"

Well, if reincarnation is divorced from the arrow of time then actually proving it happens becomes very difficult indeed. One Discworld book introduced a character who believed in preincarncation, where the soul would always be reborn in a earlier time. I suppose that model would look fairly similar to standard (especially if the next body has to die before the one before is born) except that Karma would seem to work in reverse.

There's also the issue of what happens when birth and death rates aren't equal. Where do new souls come from? Where do surplus ones go? Is the answer to both those questions the same?

edited 23rd Mar '14 4:35:13 AM by Elfive

I have absolutely no idea, but I hope that enough of us would study it without prior unfounded assumptions. I think we'd have people against attempting to figure out access the memories of previous incarnations or figuring out who the previous incarnation was.

I think this would be one of the things to study. We should remember that the way our actions affect our future reincarnation has no bearing on their morality. You will get equally wet drowning someone as you will when saving them from drowning. Our morals do not need to be the same as Karma. The most moral action imaginable would be doing something that is right, knowing it will doom your next incarnation.

Humans being reincarnated as other animals would make us prioritize good living conditions for animals we keep for food. It would likely make people change to vegetarian diet over time. I don't see how everyone always being born the same gender would affect anything.

Could make new incarnations easier to find. Might affect where people have sex/go during pregnancy/give birth. Could be used to discover when the reincarnation happens.

Get access to the memories of knowledgeable people from the future ASAP. If we manage to discover a way to affect how and when somebody is born and grant them access to their memories at specified times this could be used to travel in time. We would need research on how to travel in time and place the same way reincarnating people do.

If this is not what is meant by reincarnation, I don't know what is. For reincarnation to be true though the memories and experiences would have to be behind some kind of a block though, because obviously very few, if any people have access to theirs.

I'm sure there would be some kind of scientific debate. What kind of debate it would be would depend on the proof you mentioned in the OP.

I would say that memories and experiences being erased would mean there is nothing to be reborn. I don't see how reincarnation affects whether one can be a nihilist, which I define as coming up with morals and personal ethics without external authority.

No. It would however affect whether the memory accessing process should be done. Research should be done on finding a way to give people the ability to choose which memories to access. If the consciousness is transferred along with the memories we'd have to at least make sure they cannot negatively influence the most recent incarnations decisions.

Yes. I have no idea of what kind of experiments or math it would involve.

See #4.

We'd need to find out what happens when it is broken, and then decide what to do from there. I don't think I would choose to break my own reincarnation.

Why would reincarnation have anything to do with weather? If it had an effect on genetics, that might give us a way to track reincarnations, or influence who reincarnates. It would also make the ethics of genetic manipulation a lot more important.

I worked with incarnation being the transportation of the memories and possibly the consciousness of a dying person being transported to a child somewhere between the time of being conceived and maturity.

edited 23rd Mar '14 6:27:24 AM by Qeise

Laws are made to be broken. You're next, thermodynamics.

Mind-wipe reincarnation is still important to the reincarnatee because it's the difference between continued existence and oblivion. (I'm assuming no other afterlife exists for this one)

The only other way it would become relevant is if the number of available souls was finite. Reincarnation would be closer to a recycling process than anything in that case. There are a few settings where this is indeed the case and a common plot thread is a soul shortage causing an increased frequency of stillbirths.

How is the mindwipe any different from oblivion?

Laws are made to be broken. You're next, thermodynamics.

The same way amnesia is different from death.

With amnesia all memories aren't lost and there's a chance of recovery. Biological continuity could be comparable to a soul, but I wouldn't care about what happens to my body divorced from my memories and consciousness. My biological body is a fairly well defined entity unlike my soul, so whether I'd care about what happens to my soul would depend on what a soul is.

Laws are made to be broken. You're next, thermodynamics.

Tracking the soul from one life to the next would require defining and studying it to the point where it could be called a concrete entity. Depending on your personal beliefs might mean that the endeavour is impossible but for now lets assume it isn't.

The soul being defined and traceable would not necessarily mean I care what happens to it. That would depend on the definition. It needs to be defined for me to know whether I would care or not, it being defined does not automatically mean I care.

Laws are made to be broken. You're next, thermodynamics.

So if past life memories became a thing you'd be in?

I would like my memories to be accessible after my death, and would like to access the memories of those before me.

Laws are made to be broken. You're next, thermodynamics.

I think there are some forms of "mind-wipe reincarnation" where the mind-wipe is only effective while alive. Which means between each life, you can reflect on all your previous ones.

"And as long as a sack of shit is not a good thing to be, chivalry will never die."