Would Finding Alien Life Change Religious Philosophies?

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35. I understand what you're saying. And I don't really disagree with it.

But I'm a student of consciousness, and I've done a lot of investigation into the subject.

The University of Virginia has an annex devoted to the study of consciousness. One of the things they investigate is reincarnation. They currently have 2000 documented cases, collected over 50 years, that might be evidence of it--or at least, of some form of consciousness persisting after death. This is not in their Religion Department; it's part of their medical curriculum.

Medical science is also changing its definition of when death actually occurs, since neuronal activity in test animals can be restored long after brain death.

None of this means that reincarnation is a real thing, but it does show that there may be something going on. I don't believe in the religious versions of reincarnation myself (I'm a science-trained atheist), but I find some of these examples to be intriguing.

Quantum mechanics suggests that subatomic particles may have some form of consciousness. This is what caused Einstein to reject the theory out of hand; he never accepted it. Yet today we are building quantum computers. QM is established science. We still don't know what it might mean that "particles are conscious," but the experimental results are thought-provoking. If--and that's still a big if--it turns out that this is the case, it would be only a short step to positing a continuance of consciousness after physical death. This would fit in with the Buddhist concept of reincarnation, which is a little bit different than the Hindu version.

There are documented cases of people who have received organ transplants, and who afterward take on aspects of the donor's personality. Might this be a form of reincarnation?

My attitude about all this is: The universe created me. If it can do it once, it can do it again. That doesn't mean I'll be who I am now, or even that I'll reappear on Earth. (In fact, I highly doubt it.) To take Carl Sagan out of context, if I can only exist on Earth, then the universe is a real waste of space.

As to your other point, Buddhists believe in the doctrine of Anatman, which means "no soul." So your assertion is incorrect.