[carlo]

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Did you really just debate against an argument saying we stop existing when our bodies are no more, by claiming that 500B.C and before some people believed we existed before we were born?


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I'll paraphrase my previous posts. If the present scientific thinking remains predominant then one can only come to the conclusion of annihilation at death, never to return.This is not because the thinking is correct but because it contains within itself its own destruction: this destruction is that man is only matter;SCIENTIFIC MATERIALISM.Skirting the issue via energy is removing the issue to another site but its still the same. You cannot explain life via the nebulous concepts of modern science, nor should you attempt to do so.It's the SCIENCE OF EARTHLY DEATH(MATERIAL DEGENERATION) not life.

Back to the 500 B.C. and Aristotle. Man has not and will not always be the same throughout ages. Also, because Man thought differently 3000 years ago does justify seeing them as practicing child-like foolishness. Throughout the ancient world the knowledge of reincarnation and karma, body ,soul, spirit was appreciated through imaginative(picture) thinking. The intellect and its offspring(logic,rationality) was just beginning(Aristotle-Logic). The consequences of this "new thought" was the gradual loss of the previously predominant atavistic clairvoyant consciousness. The intellect, at present, is unable to enter these realms but in no way does that make the intellect the final judge of these matters. Of course, if a man only uses the intellect he can be absolutely right in his world but definitely wrong . Tantamount to living in a box or better yet the cave of Plato.Really not a criticism, the intellect is a gift to mankind in which he obtains a sense of self which is that ego referred to previously. But the ego if too self centered dives into destructive tendencies and in this we have egocentricity. If Man enters into the selfless realm the ego ameliorates and in this Man grows while developing his ego.