Even though I believe in a soul, I also believe that it dies when the body does and all this belief in either an ‘afterlife’ or the ‘transmigration of a soul’ is just an attempt by mankind to allay some of the fear associated with death and dying…but that’s just me.
This is not just you, this is a common atheist view. It is a stawman though and an adhominem. It is true that some people have tried to replace their ignorance and suffering with faith in god, supernatural to comfort them. However god and the supernatural is also the pursuit of philosophers and scientists, who pursue these questions using valid and objective methods - or inadvertently discover these ‘truths’ through scientific discovery.
Reincarnation is completely logical and can easily be demonstrated through a set of logical arguments beginning with real facts as your premise. However, I will not get into this, because I have already mentioned this many times in the past on this forum and in some current threads. It will only suffice to say that physical matter does not just arise in a vacuum but it has precursor stages, and if you reduce it to its ultimate, it will be found to be just consciousness. There is pure consciousness, then there is mind and then there is physical matter. Observe accurately, and you will see mind turning into matter and matter turning into mind all the time. They are the same substance, the mind is just a finer form of it. The reason you reincarnate is because you have desires to fulfill that require objects. At the time of physical death of the body, your mind exists disembodied in the mental plane, full of desires. You experience those desires very vividly but you cannot fulfill them because you have no vehicle to express them through. It is then that your deep impressions thrust you back into the physical and you start to develop a new body and new personality.
You clearly are not your body, for you are the ones that is aware of your body. Like the spider is aware of the web. The web is projected out of the spider and returns to the spider. Similarily, your body is projected out of your mind and returns to the mind. Yet, just as the spider can project a new web, your mind can project a new body. If your soul was present in the physical world, then you would be able to see it. Like all things in the physical world the soul would also be subject to change and decay. This is not true, the soul always remains present and still, unchanging, watching your body change and decay and your minds content, but itself remains still.
This is a case of scientific fact now and as I said extensive cross-cultural studies have been done on people with past life memories with over 2000 subjects, and they have found that the memories do indeed refer to real people. Physical traumas from past lives have been shown to continue in new bodies. For example somebody shot in the throat in a past life has a physical trauma in their new body in that region corresponding to the place where they were shot in a previous life.
You don’t even have to wait until the death of your physical body to find out. You can practice cetain exercises and project out of your body(OBE) to realise you are not the body, but simply in association with your current body. This also is backed up by vigorous scientific research.
Skepticism is great, I would not have it any way, but irrationality is not. The skeptic needs to constantly revise your worldview as new information becomes available. Unfortunately, many skeptics do not do this, they stick like a leech to flesh to their worldviews and never revise them.
It is important the very basic fact of the soul, the nature of reality be understood in a world religion. That we are all spiritual beings and are on a journey towards the divine. It is not a choice to believe in reincarnation or not, as much as it is not a choice to believe in atoms or gravity. It is scientific law of the mind. Hinduism and Buddhism are the best religions that explain the nature of the self, time and space, causation using plenty of arguments and examples that no rational person can reject. This is why I suggest that a world religion needs to draw valid points from each other. In Hinduism, Buddhism that is true philosophy. When it comes to philosophy there is more philosophy more scientific, sublime and elevated than the dharmic philosophy, compared to which modern Western philosophy looks a trifle.
Notice I made distinction between science and technology. I attributed to secular humanism technology but not science. This is because modern science doesn’t have a clue what real science is. They have recently been startled in the previous century with the double slit experiment how the particle and the wave depends on their observation of it. If they are observing the wave it becomes a particle. Now, they have been forced to admit the priority of consciousness before physical matter.
In fact, considering the constant abuse and hatred I get thrown my way, my behaviour in response is quite dignified.