Reincarnation - The Numbers Game

According to a 2005 Gallup poll, 20 % of U.S. adults believe in reincarnation. The belief that our souls live on after our bodies die is as old as the earliest semblance of religion. Many people debate whether this means the soul goes on to an afterlife existence, or reincarnates on Earth in living form. There is seemingly a numerical problem with reincarnation if one considers population growth, though. Consider at one point in the early history of humanity a total population of 100 people. Under an assumption that more people are born than die in a given period, this number will increase to 300 people at some later time. The question that arises is, “Where did the extra 200 souls come from?”

Reincarnationists have provided numerous possible explanations for this. One model of circular migration suggests a fixed number of souls, let’s say 10 billion, may have existed before the first human came into existence (See Bashai’s article: http://www.scientificexploration.org/journal/jse_14_3_bishai.pdf). Those souls that do not occupy human bodies wait in some other form of existence for their chance to occupy a human form. As the population grows, the “dwell time” decreases. For instance, in 50,000 B.C. each soul would have needed to wait 57,114 years to reincarnate. Today, the “dwell time” would only be 30 years. What will happen when the souls run out?

Another school of thought is that some new births coincide with the creation of new souls, while still other births involve reincarnated souls. This limits the frequency of reincarnation, and thus provides a potential solution to the numbers problem. This also implies that the majority of souls go on to exist in some other realm, or that souls are destroyed at the time of death. Why would a soul then be reincarnated? Many accounts of past life regressions describe tragic deaths due to accidents or murder. Could a premature or traumatic death be the reason that a soul would come back?

Still others believe that reincarnation can occur across dimensions and forms of life, which helps address the numbers problem. Others suggest that past civilizations, undocumented through history, might make up for the missing souls.

Here is a link to an interesting story about a young boy believed to be the reincarnation of a WWII pilot.  http://www.reversespins.com/proofofreincarnation.html