The Arguments For and Against Reincarnation

By: Dr. John Ankerberg, Dr. John Weldon; ©2004
The belief in reincarnation is attracting a growing following in the Western culture. Drs. Ankerberg and Weldon critique and answer the major arguments usually used in support of reincarnation.

Introduction

In Eastern cultures generally, reincarnation is accepted as a fact of life. But even in America and Europe, polls indicate a belief in reincarnation among the general public at a significant 20% to 35%. This means that well over 100 million Westerners now accept this occult doctrine. Below we present a brief critique of the major arguments in support of reincarnation in an argument/response/counter response/final response format.[1]

ARGUMENT 1:

Reincarnation is taught in the Bible.

RESPONSE 1: It can be demonstrated that no Scripture teaches reincarnation. One reason is because the God who inspired Scripture never contradicts Himself and the philosophical premises of reincarnation are antithetical to major biblical teachings: e.g., self-perfection vs. salvation by grace apart from good works and individual merit; self-atonement (paying off one’s own karma) vs. Christ’s atonement for other’s sin. Indeed, if Christ paid the divine penalty for all sin (Karma) no karma remains to be worked off individually. Regardless, “man is destined to die once, after that to face judgment” (Hebrews 9:27).

COUNTER RESPONSE 1: Reincarnation was originally a teaching in the Bible, but it was deleted by church authorities due to theological bias.

FINAL RESPONSE 1: The Jewish authors of the Bible would never originally have taught a pagan teaching that contradicted and denied their own religious beliefs. This explains why no evidence anywhere in church history supports the fanciful notion of biblical expungement.

ARGUMENT 2:

Since more and more karma is increasingly worked off along the path toperfection, reincarnation provides for an inevitable moral and spiritual progress for all humanity.

RESPONSE 2: All evidence suggests otherwise (reincarnation according to the law of karma is not working as it should).

COUNTER RESPONSE 2: Reincarnation provides the opportunity for progress, not the inevitability.

FINAL RESPONSE 2: It is still not working; mankind is morally unimproved historically. What suggests reincarnation will ever work, given its (alleged) billions of years of impotence so far?

ARGUMENT 3:

Reincarnation circumvents the nihilism of materialism.

RESPONSE 3: Each incarnation involves an entirely new person; each person’s life is for­ever expunged at death, leading to the same nihilism of materialism. Every individual person exists only once in a meaningless personal life and is then extinguished for eternity. This offers similar consequences to the nihilism of materialism.

COUNTER RESPONSE 3: But there is individual life in the soul that reincarnates.

FINAL RESPONSE 3: It is still not the previous personality, and, in the end, is absorbed into the final impersonal reality regardless. In a universe where the individual person is a cipher and

the Impersonal Divine the only infinite reference point and absolute reality, even the entire trajectory of the personal soul is finally meaningless.

ARGUMENT 4:

Reincarnation offers a credible explanation for and resolution to the problem of evil.

RESPONSE 4: Not only does it not explain the origin of evil, in theory, it encourages and perpetuates evil eternally.

COUNTER RESPONSE 4: Evil results from spiritual ignorance of our own divinity; universal realization of our inherent Godhood will lead to the elimination of evil.

FINAL RESPONSE 4: First, no evidence anywhere suggests man is one essence with God or part of God. Second, the allegedly God-realized have never proven themselves sinless. Characteristically, they only redefine sin or evil as an illusion—which does nothing to end evil but does tend to increase it. Third, reincarnation leads to even greater inequities, e.g., callous­ness towards the suffering of others, which must logically be interpreted as their karmic justice; (the horrors of the caste system in India is illustrative); Fourth, most religious monistic systems ultimately reject absolute morality and imply the “illusion” of evil exists forever. In Hinduism the trajectory of the soul is eternal: the final absorption of the soul in one cycle is only one of an infinite number of similar cycles. Practically speaking, evil, therefore, exists forever.

ARGUMENT 5:

Because of the associated law of karma, reincarnation provides perfect justice.

RESPONSE 5: You cease to exist at death; the person punished in the next life is not you but a new entity entirely. The fact that it is punished for your sins, is hardly “just.”

COUNTER RESPONSE 5: But my soul still lives on.

FINAL RESPONSE 5: Again, it is not your soul, since you will not exist; nor does it remember “its” sins to help it improve in the next life. Not only is this unjust, it is impractical. One cannot strive to improve to a better standard without knowing the previous standard one failed to attain.

ARGUMENT 6:

Reincarnation is a universal belief found in all cultures.

RESPONSE 6: Many, but not all. It is usually found among pagan and spiritually primitive cultures. They are pagan and primitive largely from the spiritual and other consequences of their religious philosophies, including reincarnation.

COUNTER RESPONSE 6: That’s just an opinion.

FINAL RESPONSE 6: Given absolute moral standards and biblical teachings, such cultures are primitive morally and spiritually—by theological fact, not opinion. For example, in India one sees the real fruit of its spiritual philosophies.

ARGUMENT 7:

Reincarnation allows for the time needed for true self-perfection.

RESPONSE 7: Actual self-perfection is impossible for a fallen race.

COUNTER RESPONSE 7: Not over billions of years.

FINAL RESPONSE 7: Neither the extent of human sinfulness nor the holiness of God isadequately comprehended. If the biblical view of human nature is true, then in all eternity men could not perfect themselves.

ARGUMENT 8:

Reincarnation engenders personal responsibility.

RESPONSE 8: As documented in occult writings and pagan history, it rationalizes or engen­ders amoralism, selfishness, immorality, and all sorts of sin, often “justifying” them by recourse to allegedly spiritual principles and “truths.”

COUNTER RESPONSE 8: People are held accountable for what they do.

FINAL RESPONSE 8: People are not held accountable. They will never experience future judgment, either in the next life or any other life.

ARGUMENT 9:

“Past life” experiences and past-life therapy has proved reincarnation true.

RESPONSE 9: “Past life” experiences, whether in therapy or outside it, are psychological or occult delusions. Such experiences do not help people, but harm them by seeming to justify a false and destructive philosophy or providing a false diagnosis and solution to people’s prob­lems.

COUNTER RESPONSE 9: Therapists claim it has cured thousands of their patients.

FINAL RESPONSE 9: Such therapists are violating “their” own tenets in seeking to counter the “justice” of karma. People who suffer from supposed past-life karma should be left to suffer. To seek to counteract karmic justice is a moral violation of the canons of reincarnation belief, and will only result in additional karma. Presumably the therapist will also reap his or her karma for the sin of interference.

Notes

  1. For a comparison of reincarnation philosophy to the resurrection see John Snyder, Resurrection vs. Reincarnation (Moody).

5 Comments

  1. Alexandre Cavalcante on May 23, 2017 at 1:01 pm

    First, Jesus says that John the Baptist was Elijah. Second, men die once and then comes judgement, but not FINAL judgement: There is a judgement after each incarnation. Third: Mankind is indeed evolving morally; there are less evolved spirits that come back to learn from more evolved spirits, that’s why there a patent variance in current level of moral development, but on average the moral development is clear. Fourth: Reincarnation does perpetuate the problem of evil; reincarnated people suffer what they made others suffer, unless they do enough good in order not to need the trial of suffering – love covers a multitude of sins. Western society could development greatly because of Christian Ethics. You are the one denying the positive impact of the Gospel throughout History. The purpose of Past Life Therapy is not to break karmic law, it is to heal traumas that date back to past lives. God is good and none of His children will suffer forever for sins that lasted less than one hundred years. God is more intelligent and loving than that. Please read Kardec.

    • Jacko on February 23, 2018 at 7:21 am

      My post DID NOT CONTAIN BLOODY SPAM WORDS!!!!!!!!

  2. Jezmond on November 24, 2017 at 9:41 pm

    These arguments are based on Christian Tautologies and prejudiced distortions of other world faiths. Hindu and Buddhist believers have had a huge influence on the contemporary world. To write off one of their central beliefs as occult and primitive is very disrespectful and presumptious. Early Jews and many of the philosophers who inspired the Church Fathers believed in reincarnation. Check your logic and your facts.

    • Jacko on February 23, 2018 at 7:13 am

      Why is doubt always an excuse for snivelling white people [just a guess] to leap to the defence of no more than speculative philosophies? You forgot to accuse him of ‘racism’.

  3. dem on June 2, 2018 at 11:47 am

    There are some faults in your arguments, the most obvious one is that you haven’t mentioned birthmarks and the like that DIRECTLY link to a person’s past life, that is not any delusion.
    There was a man who shot himself in the head in a past life, and in his current life he has two birthmark exactly where the entry and exit wound were.
    Karma is not the same as morals.
    What makes you think that people who are more morally developed would continue incarnating here?
    Using anything biblical as evidence or an argument is the same as using the Vedas, the Qu’ran, the Tora as evidence. It holds no water.
    It’s not counteracting karma in therapy, it’s resolving it.

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