RobynWhat if reincarnation is real, but you were probably plankton in your last life, so you don’t remember anything anyway?
potoooooooo ✅️I guess it would explain why everyone can fucking eat me.
🇰 🌀 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 🇮 Pretty sure that’s because humans are simply at the top of the food chain and can eat pretty much any other animal, including other humans.
In unrelated news: Would you like to come to my Donner dinner party?
Vandals_handleI use the name Donner to make restaurant reservations just to hear them say, “Donner, Party of four”
rc__buggyThat’s part of the whole mythology
You have no idea about your previous incarnation, it’s a way to try to manipulate people into being good which (as with all religions) relies on choosing stupid leaps of faith
It’s not just about manipulating people into being good. It also gives great comfort to everyone who believes because if anything bad happens to someone, it’s because they deserved it.
Oh yeah, it (again, with all religions) gives people licence to be cunts
No mythology, contrivances, or manipulation are necessary. Even from a completely secular perspective, some form of rebirth is arguably more likely than simply non-existence after death. Things like karma are unnecessary. If rebirth is real, even one driven entirely by naturalistic processes, then the state of the world is enough to make us ask what kind of world we want to be born into next. The more suffering there is in the world, the more likely it is you will be reborn as something that will suffer.
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Rebirth more likely…?
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Why would non-existence be more likely?
You’re the one making the claim
A stupid one at that
The burden of proof lies with you.
The burden of proof, when there’s no proof in any direction as to what happens after death? Sure, easier to go around calling everyone else stupid when that appears to be the majority of what you add to conversations. You must be real fun at parties.
Alright, I’ll bite. For the purposes of this exchange I’m going to define “you” as narrowly as possible to whatever the minimum set of conditions is for a sentient organism to exist, and the bare essentials within that organism that allows it’s subjective experience to be uniquely yours. Memories change, knowledge changes, even personalities change. But at least for one being’s life cycle, there is an anchored continuity of qualia that is only ever theirs, and at least unless we ever invent some sci fi technology, only ever belongs to that one qualia’s body.
With that in mind the argument is quite simple. “You” were born once. If it can happen at least once, why assume it would happen only once?
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Pseudo-intellectual wank at its finest
So where’s your rebuttal?
Again,
You’re the one making a claim, not me
I’m not wasting my time on you
What if it includes the entire universe and the chances of being a human, on Earth, are just super incredibly slim?
Even if it’s just Earth, if we assume there is a degree of randomness in species assignment then you’ve got decent odds of reincarnating as an ant:
We conservatively estimate total abundance of ground-dwelling ants at over 3 × 10^15^ and estimate the number of all ants on Earth to be almost 20 × 10^15^ individuals. 1
And of course, massively high odds of being a bacteria. There are probably ~40 trillion bacteria living just in your body right now:
They estimate that the range of bacterial cells goes from about 30 to 50 trillion in each individual. 2
All these memes about wanting to die: You could have been a chunk of ice orbiting Saturn, but you lucked into the single greatest thing the universe has to offer, sentient life.
How do we know sentience is the greatest? It could be peaceful just orbiting.
SquigglezSounds like heaven to me, most of my troubles come from knowing what my situation is and how powerless I am.
Well now hold on…sometimes NOT knowing how bad you’re fucked is even worse!
For example…
tackles Squigglez to the ground, handcuffs them to the wall, and puts a hood over their face
See? Now you’re fucked, but the hood over your face makes it so you can’t see what I’m preparing, or how fucked you are!
Maybe I’m about to give you a ham dinner, or mabe I’m going to steal your kidneys. Who’s to say?
chainsaw revving
Now hold still…this is only going to hurt a lot.
I mean that can explain a lot. I’ve always been a creature of great inertia, more like a tectonic plate than a human being
I always admire your name
And the same to you, good sir!
aarch0x40You could take refuge in the fact that you were a very good plankton to make it all the way to human.
But human existence is suffering. Buddhism teaches that if you do incredibly well, you'll be reborn as a being with a worry-free life. Being a plankton sounds exactly like that.
IMO human existence, with all its benefits, is waaaaay below plankton.
Homie led the plankton revolt of 1831479QT, and ushered in a golden age of cooperation and peace between the sea Lords and planktonions, so that only the old, sick, recently deceased plankton would fuel the hunger of the overlords
I wanna be a lobster
The way they die in old age does not appeal to me.
Growing forever, but eventually when they get too large, their shell becomes so difficult to molt that they die of exhaustion before they can complete their molt.
Lumidaub
BeesbeesbeesGuess I was a bad plankton :(
Thats an interesting take. Figure between sapient lifetimes there would likely be many on sentient lives and your last sentient life would just be a garble by the time you got a new one. Makes me wonder taking the idea that universe is just sorta sentience rearranged and you could then be rocks or beaches or such to. Its like life is a grade school play.
Let’s assume that reincarnation is real for all living things, and that you get reincarnated the moment you die. And you get to do it a lot.
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Wait a minute, I fucked up, viruses aren’t technically alive. Too bad, your soul is in it until it gets destroyed cause I’m not changing my original comment. You’ll just have to wait it out, then you can go back to being probably-but-not-always bacteria.
I feel like there’d be a lot of ants and insects in there too.
These odds aren’t promising either.
Technically it’s true. There’s a high chance bits and pieces of you have been used in other life several times, though you were more likely parts of plants than other creatures.
And when you die, you’ll be reused again. Nature has always been like that.
Nothing goes to waste, but god-botherers and smelly hippies want to make something stupid out of it
not just “alive” things but “dead” things too. the “dead” multivitamin i took this morning is absorbed into my “living” cells now. the air we breath has been inhaled and exhaled countless times for eons. loose hair and dead skin cells become dust and soil again.
the universe is an ocean, and we are a wave. we’re made of stardust and dinosaur farts.
I remember though. A big whale ate me.
TranquilTurbulenceSpeedrunning death again? So, how was it? Did you get to top 500?
I lean in favor of open individualism these days, so yes, I was, am, and will continue to be plankton for as long as plankton continues to exist. And to be extra cliche, I am also you, and you, and you, and you, and I am he, as you are he, as you are me, and we are all together.
Even if you were a human your memories would still be in your previous brain. I see no reason to assume you’d remember anything from your previous life unless you believe there’s a “soul” that carries your memories rather than your brain.
I assume that belief in reincarnation requires belief in something like a soul to be reincarnated
In the traditional sense yeah but it could also be linked to the idea of the multiverse or quantum immortality. Or maybe our physical brain only acts as some kind of a receiver that tunes onto some greater consciousness.