"Lots of people believe in reincarnation--the idea that the soul moves on after death, and is eventually reborn into a new body, with a clean slate on life. The concept started out with the thought of the soul being reincarnated as the infant of one of its relatives from its past life. This? Kinda was how family resemblances were explained, since no one had a clue about DNA or heredity. Pythagoras was the first one to really define it, as he taught that the soul was immortal, even though the body wasn't. He believed that the soul rested in the Underworld between lives, and drank from the waters of the Lethe so as to forget the previous life before embarking on the next one. Plato took that one step further, and said that the soul was impure when embodied.
Plato? Kinda iffy on that one in my book, but then again, that view that the material world is corrupt is kind of an old one.
The concept of reincarnation is pretty old hat in Eastern society too, and it's similar. The soul goes through a series of incarnations. Eventually? You were removed from the cycle of reincarnation. Once you'd earned it, anyway, by transcending materialism. I'm simplifying.
Here's a nice, long, interesting wiki entry
handout for you on the subject.
A lot of people, however, don't believe in reincarnation. Here's a
handout for you on the skeptics and how they feel about reincarnation.
What I'm mostly interested in, though? Is how you feel about it."
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