detheridge wrote on Nov 2nd, 2009 at 6:03am:Hi Don,
thanks for the reply. However, I would point out that the original quoted source for this assertion is from the Catholic Encyclopedia itself.
Also try here:
http://reluctant-messenger.com/origen7.htmlBest wishes,
David.
Berserk2 wrote on Nov 1st, 2009 at 10:02pm:Detheridge:] "Reincarnation was an original tenet of the Bible until the Council of Nicea under the Emperor Justinian in AD557, where it was declared anathema."
No, this is an often discredited error invented by New Agers who have never themselves studied the primary texts of early church history. You, of course, have no first hand knowledge of the Council of Nicea and can cite no provisions of its proceedings.
Your other points can be refuted by 3 observations universally accepted in the scholarly world:
(1) Rerincarnation is never taught by the Bible or for that matter, by the Judaism of late antiquity. [No, no one imagined that John the Baptist was the reincarnation of Elijah. Defend this claim and I'll demonstrate the error in great detail.] Only denizens of the New Age Ghetto imagine otherwise. They need to get out more and read mainstream secular scholarship on the early church. What a couple of intertestamental Jewish books (2 Enoch and Wisdom of Solomon) do teach is the preexistence of the soul; and this teaching seems implicit in Jesus' encounter with the man born blind in John 9:1-2.
(2) There is no Judaeo-Christian reincarnationism in first-century Palestine. A very tiny Jewish baptismal sect, the Elchasaites east of the Jordan River, did teach reincarnation in the early second century AD, as did a small minority of second century Gnostic sects (e. g. the Carpocratians). But their reincarnationism is rare even among the Gnostics and does not infect the early Catholic church.
(3) An early church council did condemn reincarnationism in the form attibuted the early third century church father, Origen. But in fact they misuunderstood Origen who merely developed the doctine of the soul's preexistence in greater detail. In fact, Origen repeatedly CONDEMNS reincarnationism!
Don
Hi I dont need to go to any human source to find out if reincarnation is true or not. The Divine Christ Jesus said it was not true and that is good enough for me
IT IS APPOINTED ONCE TO DIE AND THEN THE JUDGEMENTThere are so many things wrong with reincarnation that I feel it's one of the more puzzling beliefs out there.
1) First of all, to accept reincarnation, you have to accept dualism. After all, it is the soul that survives and merely changes bodies when the current host dies. ?
2) Living creatures, reincarnation claims that a new baby that doesn't have the same biological materials, don't have any of the same memories, doesn't have any sort of viable link to an old lady recently deceased from a heart attack, is indeed that old lady. It's patently absurd.
But let's assume that the soul does exist and inhabits a new body when the old one dies.
3) Why does the soul forget its past experiences? What would make the soul's memories stop when the old body dies?
4) Why would the self - the soul - not be able to remember? Is the soul not the ultimate self? Why would a new body limit the self's ability to conjure its own memories?
And for those who claim that déjà-vu or whatever is repressed past memories?
5) I ask what is the mechanism is for memories to be blocked or let through?. If they are blocked, how are they getting through? Why can't they all get through?
6) And if your old memories are lost forever, then what is the point of being reincarnated?
7) The point of reincarnation is to extend life, but if you can't retain memories or lessons or knowledge from those past lives, how exactly have you extended your life?
8) It's not much better than saying you achieve immortality by living on in the hearts and minds of your friends.
9) I want to live forever by living forever. I don't want some memory or trace of me living on.10) Where were all the souls before the earth existed?
11) Where will they go when the earth is destroyed?
12) Will they continue to exist and be sentient, to interact in soul-land?
13) Then why come into bodies at all??? the spiritual body is much superior why leave it for bleak flesh and blood
14) And then what if the ratio of bodies-to-souls is off, say more souls than bodies?
15) Do the souls just hang out in soul-land waiting for a new body to inhabit?
16) Or what if there are more bodies than souls? Are new souls born?
17) Or are there some people who are just automatons - functioning robots without souls at all? Could we tell the automatons apart from the real people?
18) Now let's deal with animals, if you accept trans-special reincarnation. Clearly some animals have different sorts of mental functioning abilities.
19) We can reason better, rats can discern smells better, bats can hear well. Different animals can see in different colors, very much a mental process of the mind.
20) How does the soul make up for these things?
21) When we get transferred to a chicken, do we lose our ability to reason?
22) When we are transferred out of a wolf, do we lose the knowledge of how to hunt?
23) Are our souls restricted in what they can express on their host? And then of course, what's the cutoff point of creatures imbued with souls?
24) Do rats have souls? Bees? Roaches? Bacteria? Viruses? Replicating proteins like Mad Cow?
25) Even if you restrict reincarnation to just humans; at what point in the human evolutionary chain was the first soul imbued?
26) How do we explain Hitler heck what karma was he working off??? 27) Now how about the idea that the creature you get to inhabit depends on how good you were in your past life. Who keeps track? Who is the great record-keeper that sends you to your new body? What criteria are used? Is it objective, could it be objective? Does it make mistakes? How does it force our souls into the hosts? Could the soul refuse? And you have to wonder; is your fate graded on a curve?
28) What if everyone in one generation acts perfectly and kindly and loving to everyone?
29) Surely the less desirable bodies are still being born and need to be inhabited.
30)) Would a couple of hugs be the difference between a hawk and a slug?
Etc , etc , etc adinfinitum adinfinitum
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My problem with reincarnation and karma (Read 37934 times)
