The Pros and Cons of Believing in Reincarnation

There are some reincarnation sites that post the signs they believe tell a person if they were probably reincarnated. I am merely repeating these signs, not validating them, so here is what they say:
If you have recurring dreams which are of another life and could show specific places and people. Young children are said to be very sensitive to prior memories so if you had these types of memories when you were young you might have been reincarnated. Do you believe in déjà vu? This could be an indication the same thing has happened to you in another life. If you have the ability to obtain information about past events and it wasn’t obtained from any outside source it could mean you have experienced these events before in a previous life. Do you feel an affinity for a past race or culture? This might mean you once were part of that race or culture. Lastly, if you have a phobia and can’t figure out why, it could be because something caused it in a previous life.

Sometimes reincarnation and mental illness get mixed together and some people, because of their mental condition believe they are reincarnated from some famous person in history. There have been thousands and maybe tens of thousands of people who believe they are Jesus reincarnated. Sometimes these people don’t show signs of mental illness, except for this belief, so these people may not be classified as mentally ill and really may not be, but for some reason they have this belief. I have personally met several of them, but the ones I met all were diagnosed with a mental illness. Remember Jim Jones? He was the founder of Peoples Temple. He said he was the reincarnation of Jesus, Akhenaten, Buddha, Vladimir Lenin and Father Devine. According to him he was all these people at once. We know he was unbalanced, because of what he did. He was the one who established the settlement at Jonestown, Guyana and gave all his followers poison Cool-Aid. After they died he shot himself. I think we can safely say Mr. Jones was a very sick man.

If reincarnation is an actual event why can’t people remember those lives after a certain age? What do people who believe in reincarnation say about this? They claim young children can access their subconscious and get to these memories, but as we get older we can no longer do this, because we are only able to access a very small part of our memory. They claim this is a good thing for several reasons, one of those being we don’t feel guilty about things we may have done in other lives and it gives us a sort of clean start. Another example they give is how terrible it would be if died at a young age, maybe in our 20s and were reincarnated and our former wife and maybe some children were still alive and we met them. What would that do to you psyche? I have to agree with this, it would be a terrible heart-wrenching experience and they wouldn’t believe you if you told them your story. Remembering past lives as an adult might turn out to be one of the worst things which could happen to a person. I guess the problems is when young children remember past lives and their parents encourage this by taking them to where they used to live and letting them talk to previous relatives and such, because then they remember this experience as an adult and it could be very unpleasant.

One doctor stated there are problems with believing in reincarnation and one problem is there is no way to verify it prospectively in an objective manner and we have no mechanism to explain how reincarnation might occur. I would like to add to this and say we have no way of knowing if memories of past lives are passed to other people making them believe they might have been reincarnated. How could we ever prove our actions cause us to be reincarnated and does this mean some people will get everything right and this is the end of their reincarnation events and they go to their eternal reward? How do we prove that? People have been trying to prove what happens to us after we die for thousands of years and not one has been successful. Could it be the only way we will ever find that out is to actually die ourselves? For those who claim to have had paranormal experiences and tell us the ghosts or spirits of dead people have had interaction with them, even if there was some interaction with something, can they be sure it was the  ghosts of people who died?

Sometimes we hit upon a subject which seems to be impossible to prove or even to disprove and we can only speculate. Reincarnation, the soul and the afterlife are some of those subjects. Some say you just have to use common sense and believe in nothing. Others say we must have faith and that is how we will be saved. There are many different religions and each might have a different approach to salvation, but most of them believe in the same thing, being good is pleasing to God and if we carry out his wishes our souls will go to heaven. Let’s try and believe this, it seems like the best option.