brabbit1987 said:
Then of course there are tons of issues with reincarnation in general.
Human life is increasing in size. If everyone was reincarnated, where are all the new people coming from? If you believe in a god, I would assume you wouldn't believe in reincarnation as the two don't really work together all that well. Though I can't vouch for every religion, I suppose there might be a couple out there that believe in reincarnation, not sure.
Then you would have to begin questioning on how it even works .. and why would it work?
Do animals get reincarnated? Is reincarnation only limited to human to human, or could it go back and fourth between species?
Then on top of that, you have people who claim they remember their past lives. It's usually a little absurd because it's always of a famous person or someone who went through some crazy crap. It's never of a person like ... "In my past life I was a loser who died by choking on a bean"
Then you have people claiming they where an animal in their past live. Yet you never seem to hear anyone claim they where a roach, or an ant. It's always some cool animal typically.
Point being ... sure .. it's possible. But incredibly unlikely. XD
Not saying that reincarnation is real, but I can make a shoot from the hip explanation for this, that obviously isn't based on any facts.
It could be that reincarnation isn't an immediate process, like the spirit kinda floats around for a little while. If there was a fluctuation on the frequency of reincarnations, then the increase in population could be explained by saying that the time in between each reincarnation has increased, so the frequency is faster and there are less spirits waiting around for a body.
Also, if reincarnation includes animals, like cows in the Hindu religion, then it could be that we all started off as other animals and then reincarnated into people, considering that humanity has done a really good job at wiping other animal life off the face of the planet, you would have to ask where did all of that spirit life go, that could explain the increase in human population.
Anyway, I don't actually believe in reincarnation, but I actually think it is an interesting idea for an eternal life model, and probably has less of a stretch on explanations than trying to explain where the all powerful being God came from. Almost everybody religious believes that humanity has a spirit, so if there was not a God involved, then reincarnation makes a lot of sense, to say that the spirit naturally moves towards a body, would explain why it did it the first time. To include a God in the view of the universe, means not only do you have to explain the existence of a spirits, but you also have to explain how God became so powerful, and a lot of other things.
We should totally chat it up in the Atheist group about this if you want though, since this thread isn't really about if reincarnation is or isn't feasible.