Does
reincarnation actually make sense?
Without reference to any sort of religious scriptures, is reincarnation
a logical conclusion based on the evidence?
As our society
has drifted away from the Bible, more people feel the need to fill the religious
vacuum with ideas of their own, often based on a mixture of science and their
own sense of logic and wishful thinking.
They often begin with the scientific principle that “energy can’t be
created or destroyed but just changes forms” and apply it to the spiritual
“energy” of the soul. What happens to
our soul or spirit when we die? Well, if
it is a form of energy, so they logically conclude that it can’t be destroyed
but just changes forms, leading to wishful thinking about being reincarnated
into another body.
That was the
conclusion a young man named Jay described to me when I initiated a gospel
outreach conversation with him at a bus stop.
The problem with this belief, I think, is that it doesn’t stand up to
the very scientific, logical, and wishful thinking standards that produced
it! Scientists have long tried to
establish a scientific basis for spiritual energy after we die, to no
avail. They can measure energy in every
other way, why not this one?
Logically,
claims of reincarnation can be shown to be inconsistent with just a few reasonable
questions. For example, if our
personality includes our lived experiences, how are we the same person if we
reincarnate into a new life and situation?
We can’t remember any previous life, so how does it affect us? Some claim Déjà vu is evidence of a former
life, but why would we feel we have “done this before” if we are in a new body
and have new experiences?
As for wishful
thinking, how is that consistent with either science or logic? In the end, we are just left to our own
fantasies regardless of what science or logic might tell us. We end up picking and choosing our own
spiritual reality, and our own “god”, at the great buffet table of religious
ideas that are out there, including our own imaginations. We fall into the trap of idolatry, in which
God neither defines Himself or ourselves as part of His creation, but rather we
define God.
We are like the
philosophers of Athens in Acts 17, who “spent their time doing nothing but
talking about and listening to the latest ideas.” They worshipped many “gods” of their own
imagining, and Paul told them that the true God was the One they couldn’t
imagine. He’s the One neither our
science nor our human logic will lead us to.
Rather, He defies our science, He defies our logic, and He even defies
our wishful thinking as He knows what is better for us than we know ourselves.
Paul explained
this to the Athenians, and he speaks to us today: “The God who made the world and everything in
it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human
hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather,
he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. From one man he
made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked
out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. God did
this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him,
though he is not far from any one of us. ‘For in him we live and move and have
our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’
Paul went on…“Therefore
since we are God’s offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like
gold or silver or stone—an image made by human design and skill. In the past
God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to
repent. For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man
he has appointed. He has given proof of this to everyone by raising him from
the dead.”
This “unknown
God” that Paul preached comes to us on His terms, not man’s, no matter how
imaginative we might be. He “marked out
their appointed times in history”, and elsewhere in Scripture we read that “people
are destined to die once, and after that to face judgment”, so reincarnation is
not part of God’s terms, no matter what our science, logic, and wishful
thinking might say.
Thanks, Jay,
for a short but interesting conversation!
It can be seen on my YouTube channel at https://youtu.be/-K47D1IX7Is
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