--- In [email protected], "lurkernomore20002000" <steve.sun...@...> wrote: > > --- In [email protected], tartbrain <no_reply@> wrote: > > > But the questions as to why that 8 year old girl was born into poverty and > > a girl across town was born into a life of privilege is far less clear. I > > too find reincarnation is a plausible, but highly difficult to prove, > > explanation. > > > There are many instances of detailed past lives memories, even in lives of > ordinary people. One I recently overheard on TV involved the child of a down > to earth American couple where the child recalled his life as a WW2 pilot > involved in dog fights. (I think I have that straight)
I saw that too. Lots of detailed stuff supporting reincarnation. However, I found it interesting the the boy, at age 10 or so, had no recollection whatsoever of providing all the detailed information when he was younger. > There has always been plenty of evidence to support the reality of past > lives, but it seems to be something that upsets the status quo, so it > generally goes no where, and really I don't think it even matters. > But if you are trying to make sense of things, at least for me, it is a > necessary pre-supposition. Whether or not the fact (if it is a fact) of > reincarnation then requires a belief in God, I don't know. I think it > probably does, or at least a higher power of some sort. I separate the God hypothesis and the Reincarnation hypothesis. Why would one have to exist with the other? (I ask myself, not challenging your direction.) Populations continue through patterns and forces of biology and evolution. A anthropomorphic god is not necessary to explain that. Why would a god be necessary to explain a continuation of inner life if it exists)? There is a tendency to lump things together and then say that because one of the things is bad or false, all the other stuff must be also. Like a recent post linking karma and caste systems at the hip. I see no reason to link the two. Karma (we all have different definitions perhaps) certainly is not dependent on some archaic feudal social organization. Nor do I see god as a prerequisite for a hypothesis of karma. Cultures and societies generally have much longer lives than humans. So, while continuity of individual life through reincarnation may be dicey to prove, its clearer to see how the actions of one generation can affect future ones (though far from crystal clear.) Odd example perhaps, but one I was thinking of earlier. Japan has suffered a 20 year deflation and their economy has gone sideways over those years. Did their aggression during the 30's and 40's set up chains of events that led to the 20 year slackness of their economy? Maybe thats too far of a stretch. But their economic policies of the 70's and 80's surely had its effects on their 20 years in the desert. And digressing onto even further tangents, I try to look at history outside the conventional "truth" of my society. Many examples of conventional wisdom that as sacred cows yet quite suspect in their validity. This is a point AI was trying to make in an earlier post I made on one of Curtis's points of the sacred cows of religious beliefs. I think such sacred cows extend far wider than just religion. What American doesn't look at Pearl Harbor with disgust and feel all out war on Japan and massive bombing civilian populations (not just the two a bombs, but over 100 cities were incinerated -- not industrial targets, entire cities and their civilians) was justified because - hey out of the blue they hit us. To express a divergent view, in public, usually does not meet with much careful consideration -- but rather knee-jerk (a bit jingoistic) reactions -- and echoes perhaps Obama's comments in his Nobel Price speech -- sometimes there is evil that must be fought. But if evil exists and must be fought, then why did we not go to war against Britain, France and other major colonial Empires that for 100's of years invaded, overran, exploited and treated the locals viscously and harshly? Japan, it can be argued, while vicious in its aggression of the 30s through Asia, was simply replacing older colonial empires with a new one -- an Asian one which is perhaps a step better than European ones. But discussing the reality of geopolitics, past and present, is difficult due to the prevalence of secular many sacred cows. The US initiated a steel and oil embargo on Japan because Japan overthrew part of the French colonial regime in Viet-Nam. The horror. Kicking an exploitive colonial imperialistic power on its ass. The poor imperial French. The meanie Japanese. And the embargo directly led to the Japanese attack on the Philippines and Hawaii six months later.
