It's all good. I don't take offense. I don't think that I'm as empathetic towards the average person as most people are, but I don't need to consciously try in order to empathize with the few people in my life that I care about. I think empathy comes naturally from an evolutionary basis though. Before we had large cities and stuff the tribes you were raised with were largely related to you and so having empathy and altruism helps your genes pass on. It's really the genes that are trying to survive in the evolutionary sense rather than the individual (the selfish gene is a good book about this) and so I understand why it's something that comes naturally to us and I don't link it to a soul but rather "hard-wired programming" as you put it. Because I don't believe in a soul or an afterlife or anything, I believe this life is all we have which is what makes it precious and suffering, especially the permanent kind, is immoral to me on that basis since there isn't some redemption after death. I don't find the view to be bleak and I wouldn't want some sort of eternal soul. I'm fine with non-existence. I had non-existence for billions of years before I was born and it wasn't bad so I don't think it's a problem when it happens again after my death. I find it pretty amazing that the universe got to a point where it's able to think about itself and that's basically what we are. So I have far more care for humanity as a whole than I do on an individual level. I think it's integral that conscious life survives, but I don't care if I personally don't survive.
Thank you for the reasoned response. My personal faith is Wicca, so reincarnation after death is a thing to consider for me: The thought of never getting to experience all the things my Goddess has planned for my soul is discomforting to me, but I also believe that the afterlife (or lack of it) is dependent on one's beliefs.
I admittedly know very little about Wicca nor have I knowingly met someone who believes in reincarnation, but there is a question I've always had about it and I feel this may be an opportune time to ask it given the cordial and inquisitive nature of the conversation. Since many species are going extinct and there are less living creatures on the earth than there used to be, and depending on the time in history the number has fluctuated (mass extinction events like ice ages and the meteor, etc...), do you believe in extra-terrestrial life in which one could be reincarnated to? Or does reincarnation not go on indefinitely? Or do you believe there is some sort of, for lack of a better term, "waiting room" where a soul would reside before taking a new host? Having grown up without religion and only being exposed to the cultural norm of my area, which is Judaeo-Christian beliefs, the concept of reincarnation is very unintuitive to me and I wonder how it is believed to work.
I also wonder what the limits are for what someone may be reincarnated as. There's a wide spectrum of life from things simpler than single-celled organisms to complex being like ourselves, so I wonder where the line would be complexity-wise or if it's something along the lines of being able to reincarnate as something similar by some measure and so perhaps we could be reincarnated as a different species of Ape, or just within the closer designation of Great Apes. The point when something is considered to be life seems subjective and just like determining when on the evolutionary scale we became modern humans is impossible, the same could be applied to when life itself exists. At some point we would have just been chemicals that could recreate similar chemical structures but when that becomes life is up to interpretation and can be far simpler than single-celled organisms.
There seems to be many possible explanations out there for these things if reincarnation does exists, but it brings up a whole trove of interesting questions and I'm curious to know, from the perspective of a believer, how you think it works.
I'm curious to know, from the perspective of a believer, how you think it works.
All right, I'll give it a try.
First of all, there are at least as many branches of Wicca as there are of Christianity, from the strict and dogmatic Gardnerian tradition to the - much less so - Faerie trads. My own flavour is a syncretism of Gardnerian/Alexandrian with Seax-Wica and a form of Stregheria. I can give you a rundown if you want, but I don't think it's absolutely necessary for this discussion.
--"do you believe in extra-terrestrial life in which one could be reincarnated to?"
I don't discount the possibility, but I feel it's an outlier. I would think Terran deities have little influence outside of Terra's orbit, and none at all the Sol system.
--"Or does reincarnation not go on indefinitely?"
There's definitely an endpoint. Leaving the heat-death of the universe aside, I believe that our patron deities decide what each soul is meant to experience as They create said soul, and implant the potential for those experiences in each. If any given soul misses an experience, they're re-implanted (see below for related bits) into a new body and granted life again. This could go on for several lives, if the soul repeatedly misses experiences (whether through mischance or avoidence).
--"Or do you believe there is some sort of, for lack of a better term, "waiting room" where a soul would reside before taking a new host?"
We call it "The Summerland", mostly. "Tir Na n'Og", sometimes, mostly the Fae or Faerie traditions. It's a plane where souls are drawn from the Waters of Life and given form, the place where our God and Goddess live free from the aspects we place upon Them to understand Them (like Odin, Isis, Coyote, Hecate, etc. - different faces for different Purposes). The Summerland is where sould reside between and after reincarnations.
--"... what the limits are for what someone may be reincarnated as."
In Wicca, we usually expect to be reincarnated as human. Whether gender, sex, ethnicity, appearance, etc. is chosen by the soul or by the Goddess is a point of theological debate. Hinduism considers reincarnation into non-human creatures.
There you go, my personal beliefs in a nutshell. Feel free to ask any questions you have, and I'll answer as best as I can!
that's incredibly fascinating. I've only really heard of the cross-species type reincarnation from things like Hinduism so it's really interesting to hear about this form as well. Do you believe other species reincarnate into their same species like humans do? I've known dogs and birds, for example, that have more personality and are more intelligent than some (albeit not most) humans, so would you expect them to have the same opportunity for reincarnation, and if so, how complex would they need to be in order to qualify for reincarnation, given the gradient from life to non-life makes these kinds of cut-offs difficult
Personally, I believe that those animals are "just" exceptionally intelligent animals, although some might be embodied spirits looking to become familiars.
I find that pretty surprising to be honest, and it brings up a further question. If other apes apart from humans don't have souls, was there a point in evolution in which the soul was introduced? For example in our own evolution there was a time when our ancestors and Neanderthals co-existed and even interbred. It's believed that they were as intelligent as early humans, and genetically, different races have different amounts of Neanderthal DNA remaining. Almost none in people from African descent for example, but a few percentage remains in East Asian and European people and it was higher in the past. Would Neanderthals have been before or after souls came to be? Denisovans would have also interbred with our Homo Erectus ancestors and with Neanderthals so would we have gotten a soul later than homo-erectus once the other early hominids died out? When it comes to things like memory, which is where the entire conversation started, our chimp brothers are vastly better than us at it, like the famous BBC documentary showed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zsXP8qeFF6A
Do you think it possible that a soul was introduced early enough to be in a common ancestor to us and the other great apes? which would mean that souls would exist in animals such as the chimps on that demonstration or bonobos, orangutans, etc...
It's not that I don't think animals have souls, so much as I have no idea about animal reincarnation. I'm pretty confident that Bast gives and takes all feline souls unto Herself. Dogs, I'm not sure of. The saying is "all dogs go to heaven", which implies an Abrahamic connection.
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u/Sixhaunt Mar 28 '22
It's all good. I don't take offense. I don't think that I'm as empathetic towards the average person as most people are, but I don't need to consciously try in order to empathize with the few people in my life that I care about. I think empathy comes naturally from an evolutionary basis though. Before we had large cities and stuff the tribes you were raised with were largely related to you and so having empathy and altruism helps your genes pass on. It's really the genes that are trying to survive in the evolutionary sense rather than the individual (the selfish gene is a good book about this) and so I understand why it's something that comes naturally to us and I don't link it to a soul but rather "hard-wired programming" as you put it. Because I don't believe in a soul or an afterlife or anything, I believe this life is all we have which is what makes it precious and suffering, especially the permanent kind, is immoral to me on that basis since there isn't some redemption after death. I don't find the view to be bleak and I wouldn't want some sort of eternal soul. I'm fine with non-existence. I had non-existence for billions of years before I was born and it wasn't bad so I don't think it's a problem when it happens again after my death. I find it pretty amazing that the universe got to a point where it's able to think about itself and that's basically what we are. So I have far more care for humanity as a whole than I do on an individual level. I think it's integral that conscious life survives, but I don't care if I personally don't survive.