Reincarnation is the basic system for the 779 million Hindus, for the 324
million Buddhists, the 6 million Jains... for a variety of cults
reincarnation is an essential aspect of their teachings: Hare Krishna,
Theosophy, New Age, Unity School of Christianity, Rosicrucianism, Urantia,
Gnosis, Spiritualism... Almost all the Eastern cults and practices of Yoga
and Transcendental Meditations base their quest for higher consciousness
on the premises of reincarnation...
Scientology proposes to remove the traumas of past lives by the use of a
device called E-meter... now many psychiatrists practice "past-lives
therapy", and have their calendars full of appointments... and some
statistics show 60% of Americans consider reincarnation a reasonable
probability... the classic inquiry "Who am I?" is being replaced
by the puzzling question "Who was I?".
Edgar Cayce was an advocate of reincarnation, and
today's foremost secular "expert" is the Canadian psychiatrist
Dr. Ian Stevenson who has documented 1,800 actual cases of reincarnation.
The concept of
reincarnation is very popular. There is an increasing interest in this
topic today, sustained especially by books and magazines, TV broadcasts,
movies and conferences. Most of them are related to the world of
esoterical wisdom and occult phenomena. Reincarnation is a hot topic also
on the Internet, as you may have already noticed. Not only adherents of
Eastern religions or New Age spirituality accept it currently, but also
many who don’t share such esoteric interests and convictions.
However,
Reincarnation is totally opposed to the teachings of the Bible and of the
Koran. You can no believe in Reincarnation and proclaim that you are a
Jew, a Christian, or a Muslim... Reincarnation is a grave heresy against
these three religions.
Reincarnation
came to Europe during the Middle Ages with the Hermetism and
Catharism who had taken it over from Neo-Platonism. It was promoted in the
Western world only in beginning with the last century, by the efforts of
Theosophy, and later Anthroposophy. Their intense ministry, combined with
that of many Eastern gurus, and especially the efforts of the New Age
movement, determined a wide acceptance of reincarnation in our society
today, so that this concept became one of the most fascinating doctrines
in explaining the origin and meaning of life... though all of
reincarnation is a lie of the Devil as we shall see, and totally opposed
to the doctrines of the Bible and Koran.
However, its
modern version is substantially different from what Eastern religions
stated. Far from being a torment out of which man has to escape by any
price through abolishing personhood, New Age thinking considers
reincarnation as an eternal progression of the soul toward higher levels
of spiritual existence... Although this tendency proves the soul’s
yearning for a personal destiny, it doesn’t bear too much resemblance to
classical Hindu spirituality, which rejects it as totally perverted... and
it is totally opposed to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
Both are mutually exclusive. If you believe in reincarnation, you are not
believing in the Bible; if you believe the Bible, reincarnation with the
law of karma is a contradiction to the Bible, because it offers no loving
God, no forgiving grace, and robs the Almighty of his attribute of mercy.
The sacrifice of Christ on the Cross and the shedding of his blood cannot
be compatible with a system of belief that denies his atonement.
The Bible teaches over and over that you and I
will go to Heaven or Hell after our only life on earth, without any
reincarnation, "as it is appointed unto men once to die, and after
this the judgment" (Heb.9:27).
In Acts 16, "a slave-girl had a spirit of
divination and brought her owners a great deal of money by
fortune-telling... Paul cast out the devil from her in the name of Jesus,
and he went out the same hour".
"The devil is a liar and the father of
lies" (Jn.8), he is a murderer, who comes to steal to kill and to
destroy, and he does it using Spiritism, divination, witchcraft... and he
is deceiving 2 billion people with the trick of reincarnation... because
"Satan disguises himself as an angel of light", and uses persons
to do wonders and divinations to deceive people (Jn.10:10, 1Cor.11)... and
the Bible teaches to avoid any doctrine which comes of demonic inspiration
(1Tim.4:1).
Reincarnation is lie of the Devil, a false theory to enslave about 1,500
million people today on earth, and one the main reasons to perpetuate the
infamous Caste System in India.
In the 1,800 cases of reincarnation of Dr.
Stevenson, some of them are obviously fraudulent involving people raised
in cultures with predisposition to believe in reincarnation... but most of
them are the work of the devil who can provide any data necessary
apparently to confirm a previous existence; specially when hypnosis is
used, a trance-state could be manipulated by demonic forces to simulate
previous existence.
Those who advocate reincarnation are against the
most elemental teachings of the Bible; they do not believe the Bible!...
however, they quote the Bible, Matt.14:2, claiming that Jesus was a
reincarnation of John the Baptist, which is impossible, because Jesus was
a grown adult when John was beheaded. They claim that Jesus was the
reincarnation of Abraham based on Jn.8:58, which is ridiculous; and they
quote Matt.11:4 to say that John the Baptist was a reincarnation of
Elijah, ignoring the answer given by the Baptist himself to those who
raised this possibility: "I am not", he emphatically declared in
Jn.1:21.
The doctrines of karma and reincarnation result in the infamous
"caste system"; and the Untouchable has no hope of bettering his
lot, because his miserable destiny has been predetermined by a former
existence.
If
reincarnation and the law of karma are so beneficial on a practical level,
as reincarnationists claim, then how do they explain the immense and
ever-worsening social and economic problems - including widespread
poverty, starvation, disease, and horrible suffering - in India, where
reincarnation has been systematically taught throughout its history?
To be a "good samaritan", according to reincarnation, would only
interfere with the divine order of karmic punishment... one needs only
glimpse at the lands where karmic and reincarnation doctrines have sway
for centuries to see the poverty and subhuman view of life fostered by
these teachings... next time a Transcendental Meditation or a Zen teacher
offers you to end all your problems, tell him to go to India, they need
him!...
The Logic:Even the mere logic dismisses most of the claims of
reincarnation: What good does it do to be punished for something you can't
remember having done?... if suffering is the result of sin in other
peoples' life, what recompense or purification is there for the sacrificed
mother or the pain of cancer?... and why lift a man from the gutter to
clean his sores and feed his belly, if some impersonal law of retribution
is perpetuating his hunger?...
Reincarnation seeks to provide the ultimate answer for
understanding suffering and injustice. The ancient philosophers used the
theory of karmic reincarnation to explain away such things as birth
defects, physical handicaps, low I.Q.'s, retardations, etc., because they
had no knowledge of genetics and DNA code.
They assumed that all birth defects had a mystical or
religious explanation, instead of being just a genetic problem, or the
result of any kind of intoxication or sickness of the parents...
1- Reincarnation
can't be true because it is numerically impossible.
If there is one soul per person, and if the population
of the world is increasing (which it is), where are all these new souls
coming from? In other words, the population has more than doubled from
around two billion at the turn of the century to over 6 billion today. If
each of these 5 billion souls have lived at least ONE past life, where did
the over 4 billion souls come from which did not exist before 1900 AD ? It
seems there are several possible solutions to this problem:
(A) These new souls are coming
from animals or inanimate matter.
(B) These new souls are coming
from other planets (Shirley Maclaine has offered this as a solution I have
heard), ETs and stuff.
(C) New souls come out of
"thin air" or are somehow created by God or perhaps have always
existed so they are actually "old" souls.
(D) or there are people with
several souls -- perhaps 3 or more.
Since the standard definition of reincarnation involves
one soul per person, that rules out option (D). Now if you accept the
classic Hindu concept of reincarnation -- the idea that you could come
back as a cockroach if you lived a really bad life -- then option (A) is a
possible solution. If you are nuts, then option (B) is possible.
Again, if the standard definition of reincarnation
holds true, new souls are not created out of thin air, but already exist
and are just taking on new lives and new bodies. So option (C) is out.
The Catholic concept is that souls are indeed created
immediately by God (see the Catechism paragraph 366). One soul and one
body (Mt 10:28).
2- Reincarnation is not true because it contradicts the
Resurrection.
To quote some Bible, "it is appointed for men to
die once, and after that comes judgement" (Heb 9:27) is probably a
text you've heard.
The teaching of
the resurrection of the dead is one life, one soul, one body. There will
not be multiple bodies for one soul which is what reincarnation requires.
The body is not something to be discarded and forgotten but will be
reunited with the soul at the final judgment.
Thus, reincarnation contradicts the historical
Christian teaching and Bible concept of the resurrection of the dead.
Now I realize there have been some who have tried to
show they are compatible, such as Anglican priest Geddes MacGregor who has
a couple of books on the subject of Christianity and reincarnation. A good
book that answers his arguments is The Reincarnation Sensation by Norm
Geisler and J. Yutaka Amano (Tyndale House, 1986).
3- Reincarnation is not true because it simply makes no
sense.
It makes no sense because the reason we live further
lives is to supposedly improve upon and do restitution for what wrong we
did in our prior lives. But who remembers their prior lives? I have no
conscious memory of any prior lives. So how in the world am I supposed to
improve upon what I did if I can't remember what I did?
Now I realize some people claim to remember their prior
lives through various techniques, particularly hypnosis. But it has been
documented that hypnosis is notoriously unreliable. We have people
claiming everything under hypnosis -- from UFO abductions, to Satanic
ritual abuse, to prior lives. Is all of this stuff true?
A good recent book on hypnotherapy written from a
skeptical psychologist point of view is Robert Baker, They Call It
Hypnosis (Prometheus Books, 1990). I believe that is the correct title.
4- Reincarnation is not true because it perpetuates the
problem of evil.
Contrary to what you said about karma and reincarnation
being just, the concepts are unjust because evil is perpetuated and there
is no forgiveness. To quote what you wrote --
PC> To me, the ideas of karma and reincarnation
seemed more just. If God is just, then the punishment should fit the
crime.
Therefore, if I am a murderer in this life, does not
the law of karma require that I must come back as the victim of a murder?
If I am a wife beater in this life, don't I have to
come back as a woman who is beaten by her husband (or something equivalent
to have "justice" done to me) ? Each crime committed in this
life requires the perpetrator to return in a future life to have the same
thing done to him or her!
Do you see how evil is perpetuated? There is no
forgiveness here. That's why the Hindus refer to this as "the wheel
of reincarnation" since there is no getting off. It is a hopeless
cycle. And where is God in all of this?
A question that must be asked -- where did evil
originate according to the laws of karma and reincarnation?
I think you will discover that "evil"
originated with God according to this view which is generally pantheistic.
God is good, God is All, therefore All is good. Evil is just an
"illusion". Now we're getting really heavy. I'll stop here and
you can tell me if I am giving you too much. Everything you ever wanted to
know about hell but were afraid to ask is next. See the Catechism
paragraphs 1033 - 1037. Please tell me if you got these posts.
