Frankly I think there’s already a gap on this with religious belief. If SO many people truly believe in god and an afterlife, there should be more suicides. Okay, it’s a sin. Fine. But then why aren’t people happier when a relative passes? It’s almost like no one actually really believes this shit at the end of the day.
I’ve always said that if I were to believe that there was an eternal afterlife that entry depended on how you lived your relatively short life on Earth, then why would I waste any time in life doing anything other than securing my chances at the good afterlife. Like if you actually believed that, then wouldn’t you live your life as a model person according to how the Bible says you should? It’s shortsighted to do anything else with your life.
I’ve always had the same thought. You’d think funerals would be celebrations for the religious.
It would depend on how reincarnation works. Do I know I’ll be reborn in a better life? They say the grass is always greener, everyone has problems and perceives others as better off. My old guidance counselor’s husband said that if everyone sat in a circle, wrote down their problems, put them in a hat, and randomly drew other people’s problems, everyone would want their own problems back
It would be a lot like speed runners in games. You just keep resetting until you get a good spawn.
I read a short story back in college about a woman who helped people remember their past lives. Somehow she gets transported to a universe where reincarnation is completely real and everyone remembers all their previous past lives. Suicide was rampant and the world generally sucked. She somehow transitions to helping people forget their past lives to make the world a better place. I really wish I could remember the title of the story.
Cultists are already kinda like that, even christians that believe in the afterlife. They don’t care if they’re destroying the environment, because the real life begins after the current one.
Trouble is they want to take the rest us with them. See how they attacked Iran.
I know a lot of Christians, and they have normal views on pollution and the environment. They are about as apathetic about the issue as the rest of us.
…they make similar arguments about atheists. “Since they don’t believe in sin, they are selfish and violent.”
Hindus and Buddhists would be dying left and right. Wait, actually, we (Hindus) do believe that if your life’s ruined beyond saving, then ending it so your soul can go back to the universe/come back in a better form is a sensible thing to do. At least, we have legends and stories to that effect.
Heck, the Bhagvat Geeta has God saying that killing others or getting killed is not something to be afraid of, since the essence of a being can never be created nor destroyed.
I think this is why the Catholic Church declared suicide a sin, to keep people from killing themselves to get to heaven
the first religious leader coming up with the idea, watching all his followers off themselves: “well, should have seen that one coming”
They promised this superduper ultra happy afterlife.
If it were not a sin offing yourself as a would be a no brainer.
Wait till Rocko’s basillisk comes online, and we will see about that.
Not if it worked like in Beetlejuice. In that setting, when you commit suicide, you basically ‘volunteer’ for an office job for an eternity or two.
I started thinking that it’s crazy that those who do believe in reincarnation always seem to think they are gonna end up back here on Earth. If that shit was real, it would have to be a part of the laws governing the entire universe. Maybe it is real, but nobody on Earth has ever reincarnated back to Earth. They became an alien on another planet trillions of lightyears away.
They became an alien on another planet trillions of lightyears away.
That sounds like an improvement.
If this were the case, what if your soul also had to adhere to the speed of light on its way to reincarnation. So iw you were reincarnated into a creature 1000 LY away, it wouldn’t happen for 1000 years.
imagine it’s FTL.
We manage to preserve messages between reincarnations.
Gets studied to bits by science. Someone develops FTL communication by giving someone a message, offing them and them delivering the message at the new place.
Except that there are a ton of potential places to reincarnate at. So every message needs massive redundancy to properly deliver
reincarnation based FTL communication
What if it didn’t and the spiritual space your soul inhabits between bodies is discovered and exploited as a means for faster than light travel.
So you’d have a non zero chance of being run over by a starship on your way to your next corporeal form
What happens if you die in transit? Could you? 🤣
Now we got a book idea. 😃
Life Speedrun would become a thing.
Reincarnation into what?
“Hey, if you die in this life, you can come back as a bug that gets eaten by another bug shortly after hatching. And then you can do this for the next 10,000 years until you get lucky enough to come back as something remotely sentient.”
Sounds like that shit sucks, man. You have a real pivotal moment in this life to embrace dharma and appeal to heaven for a higher place in the great pattern. I’ll admit, I’m not much of a mystic, but I don’t think eating a bullet after a night spent guzzling whiskey is what gets you up the ladder.
Not if you declare that animals do not have souls, and only people can feel things.
I mean, ok? I’ll live as a billion bugs until I come back as a human or something… but I will come back.
But what if all that “bug life” drives people insane and is actually why human beings dont remember past lives.
Still kinda means you can reset your current crap life and hope for a better future one, even if you don’t get to remember everything about the previous one(s). I mean, I’d personally argue it’s functionally different lives at that point, but there’s still a primitive part of me that feels like it counts as a continuation of me even though everything that makes me will be lost.
I ain’t appealing for shit. Bugs are awesome. If I get eaten, I’m just coming back again, bitches. I can do this all day.
Yeah, but I have to go to work, you know?
So time to spin the wheel!
And get chopped up in the bardo to return as a tapeworm? I don’t think so, you’re supposed to meditate so hard you return as a lotus flower
That part would just be ignored by the masses. “It’s a numbers game, bro!”
True, but they would all end up as vermin, and then hungry ghosts
But after you’re chopped up, you do it all again. Presumably you can’t stay a tapeworm forever if everything is as chill as Buddhists say.
Indedd, but if you keep wanting stuff (in the case of the tapeworm i guess it’s poop or half-digested food), you’re gonna end up stuck in samsara foreva
I saw Samsara, terrible plot, but seems like an okay fate.
Isn’t there some religion that believes good people come back as dogs. Imagine coming back as a little dog owned by a rich white woman, pampered as heck… hell yeah.
I could see it, though if you’re unlucky you’d come back as a dog in one of those “in the arms of an angel” commercials
Surely reincarnation is a fate worse than death. Most religious afterlives sound this way. I hope no religion is right about anything. I want to cease to exist after I’ve lived a full life.
Just a quick stat reroll…
Its funny because the part of you that gets reincarnated isn’t your soul its the matter/energy from your body. Law of Conservation of energy and all.
There would be reincarnation preachers, coaches, and scammers, promising you an ideal reincarnated life.
Well those already exist.
Ya but this time the koolaid would be on the poster
I legitimately don’t follow the analogy?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonestown
Basically any reference to drinking koolaid is referencing a suicide cult.
Because reincarnation was proven they would advertize the suicide part instead of brainwashing them
Gotcha. I guess I agree those already exist (see your link). But I agree that’d be way more popular maybe. Except doesn’t suicide guarantee a shittier re-roll?
The whole thing is a hypothetical so who knows?
They’d also probably make it so that debt carries over into your next life.
And it would work.
there’s a sucker born every dayYou mean there’s a sucker reborn every day!
Birth me once, shame on you; birth me twice, shame on me
They made that movie already
bleh, romantic scifi? Bram Stoker’s Dracula was better
Not a lot of romance as far as I recall. Kinda bleak.
I liked There Will Be Blood.
The Mummy was a lot of fun.
