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Wednesday, January 22, 2014

The mechanics of reincarnation


Those who defend reincarnation think it's a direct and straightforward explanation for certain phenomena. But even if that's the case for the front-end of the operation, the back-end of the operation is very complicated. Lots of moving parts. It takes some heave-duty metaphysics to make it work, and traditions which sponsors reincarnation lack the metaphysical resources to ground their dogma. Even for theistic Eastern traditions, not just any god or gods would be up to the task. It would require a very powerful, very knowledgeable deity (or collaboration of deities) to control and coordinate the process. And the situation is even more problematic for traditions which deny personal gods: 

There are, after all, major non-theistic religious traditions that affirm an afterlife. Noteworthy in this connection are Jainism, Buddhism, and non-theistic varieties of Hinduism, all of which affirm an afterlife in the form of the doctrines of karma and reincarnation. However, these traditions face a major internal difficulty, which if recognized would tend to push them in the direction of theism. This difficulty is what Robin Collins has termed the “karma management problem.” He writes, 
Traditionally Buddhists have believed that by and large the circumstances of one's rebirth are determined by one's karma — that is, one's deeds, whether good or bad in this and previous lives. This, however, seems to require that there exist something like a “program” that arranges your genes, the family conditions you are born into, and the like to correspond to the moral worth of your past deeds (Collins 1999, p. 206). 
For theists, such as many Hindus, this minute arrangement of one's life circumstances to match one's karma can be viewed simply as the work of God. But if there is no God, what is this “karma program,” and how was it initiated? We know today, by means that were not available to the ancient Hindus and Buddhists, that “nature” — the nature that is known and studied in the natural sciences — simply doesn't work this way. The laws of nature are subtle and marvelously complex (though also, in their own way, “simple”), but it is abundantly clear that they do not work in such a way as to determine physical situations in accordance with the moral worth of persons, or in accordance with any moral considerations whatsoever. The laws of nature, we might say, are no respecters of persons — or of morality. Rather, they are impersonal in character, and in many cases are expressible in mathematical formulae that are far removed from the teleology that permeates human existence. So if there is a “karmic moral order” of the sort postulated by the Indian traditions, it must be something radically different from the order of nature that (so far as science can discern) governs the physical processes of the world. And yet the two orders must be intimately related, for it is precisely these physical processes which, in the end, are said to be disposed in accordance with one's karma. It is wholly implausible that two diverse systems of cosmic order such as this should arise from unrelated sources and come together accidentally; they must, then, have a common source. If the common source of the natural order and the karmic order is impersonal, we are still in need of some account of how and why it would be such as to produce these two quite different sorts of order in the cosmos. These questions, it would seem, are much more readily answered if we postulate a personal source of both the natural and the moral order — that is to say, a God who desired that there be created persons, and who wished to provide a stable natural order within which they could live and exercise their varied powers. 
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/afterlife/#MetSupSur

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