The Logic of Reincarnation: Tertullian vs. Swami Vivekananda

Though separated by almost two millenia and coming down on opposite sides of the issue, both share the assumption that the question of reincarnation can be answered logically.

This is a kind of sidecar to the articles I’m writing on death and the survival of consciousness (a link to the list is below), and in this article I’ll compare two very different approaches to the use of logic to refute or prove reincarnation. I’ll look at the validity of each approach, along with an assessment of the whole enterprise of using reason to address such questions.

Just Say No: Tertullian

Tertullian was an early Christian and is considered one of the fathers of the church. Among his voluminous writings are his Six Arguments Against Reincarnation. Tertullian writes about reincarnation with the haughty dismissiveness of a modern-day skeptic: if he did reincarnate, he might have been James Randi.

Rather than go through all six arguments, which would make this a little long for a Medium article, I’ll examine one of the most commonly cited, which we might call the total number of souls argument.

Basically, Tertullian’s point is that the population is constantly growing, and that is not consistent with recycled souls. Rather, there must be a new soul made with each birth. If we reincarnated, Tertullian’s logic goes, the number of people on the Earth would be static. Since there are ever more people, we can’t simply be reincarnating.

In case you were thinking that animal souls might supply us with more people, in a supporting argument Tertullian denies the possibility of humans reincarnating as animals. Imagine, he says: if that were the case, you might wind up eating one of your ancestors (personally, I would think that’s a better argument for vegetarianism than against reincarnation, but that’s another issue).

The logical error that Tertullian makes in all is arguments is in applying terrestrial principles to heavenly realms. For example, he not only assumes that linear time on this plane of existence is real (philosophers would debate that soon enough), he also assumes that realm of the disincarnate works on the same time schedule as the Earth (metaphysicians everywhere have presented a variety of opinions on that).

The point is that you can’t expect nonphysical worlds to operate on the same principles as the physical world. Even baseline postulates like “you can’t be in two places at the same time” can’t be relied upon when considering other realms of existence.

You could also argue that God is making more souls as time goes on (an assumption if each soul is new, anyway), and so the Earth’s population is composed of both ‘old’ (reincarnated) and ‘new’ souls — an idea that’s popular in New Age circles and which does not violate logic, whatever its validity.

The Proof Is In The Pudding: Swami Vivekananda

In the late 19th century, Swami Vivekananda was one of the great proponents of Vedantic Hinduism, and is credited with bringing it to the West. He spoke a great deal in both England and the United States, and he founded the Vedanta Society of New York, which is still going strong.

Like Tertullian, Vivekananda uses reason in regard to reincarnation, but he goes in the opposite direction, attempting to establish the logical basis for it. After showing why a variety of objections to reincarnation are not logically valid, then goes on to offer his proof in favor of rebirth.

First, he notes that humans have a great deal of variation in the capacity to learn: some learn many things quickly, others learn a few things laboriously. He asks why this is, and answers that we all have a different range of experiences from our prior incarnations. New knowledge, Vivekananda states, must be related to something already known: without something to hang new information on, it would not be assimilated.

Thus, some of us have a large store of knowledge from past lives, while others have relatively little. With a great trove of past experiences, we can learn rapidly and easily, but it is more difficult to add in new information if there isn’t much with which to connect it. He adds that children cannot be born as a tabula rasa (a ‘blank slate’) because then they would be incapable of learning at all, having nothing upon which to assimilate new knowledge.

The ease with which we learn some things, like walking, is further evidence of reincarnation, as we in a sense ‘remember’ walking from past lives. So too with fears and such, things that we might classify as instinct. Very well, says Swami, you call it instinct, but how can matter encode instinct and higher level behaviors? (This was before the discovery of DNA, but the argument stands). Thus, he argues that instincts and easily learned behaviors are proof of reincarnation (a dialogue between Vivekananda and Jung would have been interesting, as the latter transitioned from a material to a metaphysical explanation for the archetypes, at least in his public writing).

Swami Vivekananda’s arguments are for the most part successful in refuting a materialist explanation for learning, although it’s questionable whether they necessarily point to reincarnation as the only solution. One other possibility that comes to mind is Rupert Sheldrake’s morphic fields.

Sheldrake would say that we tap into the morphic fields that develop around people, objects, and experiences, and that these fields guide everything from physical development to the behavior of individuals to the behavior of large groups. Habit, according to Sheldrake, is the one true law of nature. Watch a thirteen month old handle a cell phone, and you’ll see how this ‘hundredth monkey’ stuff works — and we can’t assume that all the newborns today are recently departed cell phone users.

Why Do We Argue?

Perhaps the greatest takeaway for me is that when it comes to reincarnation — and most metaphysical phenomena — logical argument is not the way to go. That’s not to say that we should be illogical, or that we shouldn’t use reason evaluate experiences and claims, but that reason alone is unlikely to be sufficient.

Here’s a link to the list of articles on death and the survival of consciousness…