Resurrection or Reincarnation?

Hi there.

I haven't been writing as frequently lately, so I thought I'd get back to it. This question came to mind when I skimmed through A2 Philosophy Past-paper questions earlier today, and realised I'd never really put these two wide-spread beliefs together in a critical comparison.

For those who don't know much about either, I thought I'd start with a brief explanation.

Resurrection 

Resurrection is the belief of Christians, Jews and Muslims. It is the belief that God will raise the dead back to life on Judgement day. The righteous will form an eternal kingdom of God from which all sinners will be excluded. This life is often understood as a testing ground for the next. It is traditionally a monist view i.e body and mind are inseparable. However, some do take a more dualistic approach:

“The resurrections of the Divine Manifestations are not of the body.  All Their states, Their conditions, Their acts, the things They have established, Their teachings, Their expressions, Their parables and Their instructions have a spiritual and divine signification, and have no connection with material things.” {Baha'i writings}

Therefore, the resurrection and ascension of Christ are both spiritual and symbolic, but not material.   

Reincarnation 

Reincarnation literally means 'to take on flesh again'. Sikhs and Hindus believe in this. Belief in reincarnation also depends upon belief in an immortal and eternal soul, called an Atman, that passes from body to body depending on the life it has lived. In every person there is an Atman which animates the body and is the essence of the person. Hindus use reincarnation to explain the presence of physical, social and financial inequalities among humans and believe that the goal of life is to escape the cycle of reincarnation (samsara) and achieve unity with Brahma - the ultimate reality.

People say that there is evidence for reincarnation in past-life memories i.e. the sense of deja-vu, and in hypnosis. Some have taken on new characters and even spoken in different languages.

Now, the main problem with disembodied existence is the issue of body and mind/soul identity. Are you really yourself without your body? I didn't find it difficult to think I could be myself without by body, but after having a look at these questions, I had to think again:

1) Are you the same person that you were when you were seven? If you had scribbled on the wall when you were seven and it was only discovered today, would it be fair for you to be punished for it now?
2) If someone committed a war crime forty years ago, but then lead a charitable life, would it be fair for them to be punished today?
3) Is someone who has suffered a total memory loss still the same person? This relates to problems with Reincarnation quite well...As Peter Geach points out, "How is the new body YOU if it lacks your body, memories, and feelings?"
3)Is someone who suffered both physical and mental changes still the same person? E.g. Someone who is confined to a wheelchair and brain damaged by an accident, so that the body is changed, the memory is impaired and the personality is altered? Try to think of a way in which they are the same.
4) Suppose scientists made an exact replica of you, with your exact DNA produced in another being  who is cloned to be the same age as you. Would you and the clone be the same person?
5) Imagine someone who had been a recipient of of every organ donation possible - skin, grafts, face transplant, heart and lungs, corneas, new kidneys. Say a brain transplant was possible too. Person A had the organs, and Person B was the donor. Is Person A now Person B?
6) Person C dies. What aspects of person C must continue to exist so that he/she is in fact the same person?

Descartes said, "I think therefore I am." So therefore, we are primarily a "thinking thing". Basic knowledge of the self is independent from the body; the immortal soul is the source of conscious life. This thesis is called “mind-body dualism.” He reaches this conclusion by arguing that the nature of the mind (that is, a thinking, non-extended thing) is completely different from that of the body (that is, an extended, non-thinking thing), and therefore it is possible for one to exist without the other. 
This argument gives rise to the famous problem of mind-body causal interaction still debated today: how can the mind cause some of our bodily limbs to move (for example, raising one’s hand to ask a question), and how can the body’s sense organs cause sensations in the mind when their natures are completely different?

St.Paul & Resurrection

St Paul's explanation of Resurrection is what I like to call 'Theology in the Making'. You'll see why. 

When Paul went to Athens to share the good news, he received a terrible response to resurrection from the Athenians. The Athenians had a history of philosophical thought through Plato's Academy and Aristotle's Lyceum. Paul clearly hadn't done his research, he hadn't thought about the philosophical problems that are implicated in a resurrected body. Although there aren't letters to the Athenians in the New Testament, we can imagine it went something like this: 

Followers of Plato were dualist, and since Resurrection is a monist theory, would have argued that the body could be seen as the source of flaws and limitations i.e. desire and disease and if Life after Death was really perfect, we couldn't live in our bodies. The Aristotelian, being monist, argued that the soul cannot be separated from the body.  Aristotle used the analogy of the eye. If the eye were an animal, sight would be its soul. When the eye no longer sees it is an eye in name only. Likewise a dead animal is only an animal in name only. It has the same body but it has lost its soul. What is important for Aristotle is the purpose of something. The soul is simply the form of the body and is not capable of existing without it, when we die, our body and soul cease to exist together. Clearly, Resurrection was alien to Greek thought, they didn't believe it possible that Jesus rose again. Paul had no answers , he left, embarrassed.

When Paul arrives in Corinth he explains resurrection again. Most of the  Corinthian converts denied resurrection. They thought the spiritual gifts they had received from Jesus' message constituted the new life: already they were 'kings'. Paul didn't agree, he emphasised that what was most important lay ahead. They will all be transformed:

We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. 

(1 Corinthians. 15: 51-2) 

Paul had difficulty in saying precisely what the transformed body would be like. He knew the body would be both visible and identifiable but he also believed "Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of heaven." He realised that flesh and blood was perishable, and the body in the kingdom was imperishable. 

He came to the conclusion that we would become a 'spiritual body'. (Isn't that a contradiction of terms?) There would be continuity of sorts between the ordinary and the resurrected person. To express this, Paul used the simile of the seed, which, when planted, is in one form, but, when grown, in another. Or as I like to think, a caterpillar that is transformed into a butterfly. He also said it was like 'putting on' immortality (like a cloak). "The living...would be further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life."

The problem when Paul goes to Thessalonica is that some members of the Christian community had died, and the survivors worried about their fate. You might wonder, why? If they were good Christians, they would go to heaven, surely? Actually, no. Paul's original message was that the return of the Lord would be in their lifetimes, and that they would live to be saved. Death was not expected and so when people died before the second coming, the Christians considered this unfair. The idea that people go to heaven when they die is not a scriptural teaching from Jesus, but rather a teaching that Paul came up with to solve this problem. Paul wrote to reassure the survivors that the dead would not miss the return of the Lord:

We who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, shall not precede those who have fallen asleep...And the dead in Christ will rise first; then we who are alive; who are left, shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air; and so we shall always be with the Lord. (1 Thessalonians. 4:15-18) 

Paul began to worry. The Christ had not returned. He was imprisoned and facing death at the time he wrote Philippians. Paul began to envisage the ascent of each person's soul at death, rather than the transformation of the entire group of believers, whether living or dead, at Christ's return. So Paul put two ideas together. If he died, he would immediately be with Christ, and at the end of time the Lord would return and resurrect everyone. 

General arguments for Reincarnation 

As a caterpillar, having come to the end of one blade of grass, draws itself together and reaches out for the next, so the Self, having come together at the end of one life and shed all ignorance, gathers in all its faculties and reaches out from the old body to a new. (Brihadaranyaka Upanishad III.) 

I thought people that claim to have been reincarnated was a good argument. Unlike Resurrection, you might say there is more evidence for Reincarnation. I particularly like this example from 'Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation' written by Ian Stevenson. Stevenson took examples mainly from India, Ceylon and Brazil, of children who had 'memories' of past lives, and whose memories bore an unusual resemblance to the lives of deceased people they had never met. He chose to confine his study to children rather than adults, because he thought they were less likely to be motivated by attention-seeking desires. 

Swarnlata, a child in India, was taken at the age of three to a town called Katni 170 miles away from the place she had lived all her life. When she arrived in Katni, she pointed out the road where 'my house' was. She described how she had lived there as a member of a family called Pathak, and she commented on the ways in which the place had changed. She performed songs and dances for her family that she claimed she had learned when she was a member of the Pathak family. The language of these songs were Bengali, but she had grown up only knowing Hindi. The Pathaks' daughter Biya had lived to adulthood, learned Bengali songs and dances, married and then died. Swarnlata recognised Biya's brothers and sisters when she was introduced to them, greeting them as if she knew them. 

Stevenson looked at the ways in which this could be explained. He considered the possibility of fraud, but thought this unlikely; the child had little to gain from sharing this experience. There was no money or favourable publicity for them, and they found the media attention (if any) to be a nuisance. Swarnlata was actually offered an education from the more wealthy Pathak family but her father refused it. The experience would also have a negative effect in that a young girl talking about having previously married, would not be advantageous when it was her time to marry. He also considered the possibility where a person thinks they remember something but in fact they heard it from another source. There was no link between the two families however. Another idea he considered was genetic memory: i.e. birds that remember how to build nests even though they've never been taught. However there was not a genetic link between the remembering child and the deceased

Hick argued that the case comes from a country where reincarnation is an accepted belief. Why doesn't cases suggestive of reincarnation happen in Europe etc? Similarly, why don't people see Resurrected bodies in the East like Paul claims to have saw Christ?

SO. Resurrection or Reincarnation?

Well that's for you to decide. Perhaps you'd like to put both together like Peter Novak has suggested.

Basically, Novak's theory states that the soul body and spirit body separate after death. The soul body is discarded and the spirit ultimately reincarnates with a new soul body. After a large number of reincarnations, the spirit has discarded a large number of soul bodies. At the time of the "Final Judgment," a doctrine held by all Middle Eastern religions, the so-called "resurrection" will occur. Novak theorizes that at this time, all the discarded soul bodies will reunited with the spirit body. The result will be a world of highly enlightened people knowing all their past lives and their associated life experience and knowledge. Thus, reincarnation and resurrection are not mutually exclusive concepts according to Novak's theory.

Or perhaps you're a Dawkins follower i.e. Neither! 

"There is no spirit-driven life force, no throbbing, heaving, pullulating, protoplasmic, mystic jelly. Life is just bytes and bytes and bytes of digital information." 

With all this in mind, it seems more difficult to choose. That's because we don't tend to think as much about the philosophical implications, and when we do, we have to re-assess everything. I don't particularly like the idea of suffering in this life because of a previous mistakes that I in no way remember. However, it does seem to me to be more logically coherent than a resurrection. Where is this heaven when we die? & If the end time is on earth, how can we live as a spiritual entity on a physical one? I quite like Novak's theory to be honest. But none the less, the theory of dreams holds strong. (see a few posts below) 

Bye for now.