Remaking America by George Shollenberger, Idea XXXVI (The science of Gottfried Leibniz, Part XV)

Today, many religious teachings are being questioned because God is one and infinite and cannot be known. For instance, Muslims say wrongly that the Qur’an is written in the language of God. And throughout the Old Testament, Jews read verses saying wrongly that ‘God said.’ And Christians say wrongly that Jesus Christ will appear a second time in the same body. Muslim, Jewish, and Christian teachings are questioned because most scientific teachings in scriptures are not taught.

Thus, in free nations, attendance is decreasing rapidly with the result that new forms of religions and societies are emerging such as the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion (click), New Age (click), New Thought (click), and Scientology (click).

In this blog, I discuss a scientific subject known as reincarnation and discuss the thoughts offered by Leibniz. His thoughts begin on p. 118 of G. H. R. Parkinson’s book on "Leibniz: Philosophical Writings."

First, Leibniz rejects metempsychosis, which says that bodies pass on from one specie to another specie. So a human being is always a human being, a deer is always a deer, etc. Since Leibniz sees life as a developmental process, he is not concerned with death. He concludes that time of death cannot be known. So, he would not pull the plug on a person before more evidence proves that the pass on has occurred.

Since God has no beginning or end, development has no beginning and end. Accordingly, Leibniz says that there is no first birth or entirely new generation. Darwin’s evolutionary theory is thus rejected again by Leibniz. He draws support from many ancients, Hippocrates, Parmenides, Melisus, and Aristotle, who also say that animals neither are born nor die.

Leibniz rejects those atheistic modern scientists who say that all things are machines that differ only between the great and the small. Instead, he says that a true unity corresponds to what we call ‘I’ in us. The symbol ‘I’ does not represent the meaning of anything in artificial machines. He says that ‘atoms of matter’ (or physical atoms) are contrary to reason because the relations between the parts of a machine do not destroy their diversity. Only the ‘atoms of substance’ are without parts and are sources of activity.
He thought that the atoms of substance are vital and could be called metaphysical points.

Since a one and infinite God cannot appear in his created world, it seems that it was necessary that God include vital things (or atoms of substance) in the creation. So the purpose of humans in the universe is very clear because we are vital things who have a degree of wisdom higher than the lower animals.