first retrofuturist wrote:
Is a "Rebirth Denier" someone who denies the Buddha taught post-mortem continuance, or who does not believe personally in post-mortem continuance despite what the suttas say?
then BlackBird wrote:
1. Could be both, could it not? I must admit I have never seen an instance of the latter, is their a brief summary of their reasoning?
So now we have three definitions of “rebirth denier”?
A. someone who denies the Buddha taught rebirth
B. someone who does not personally believe in post-mortem continuance
C. someone who denies the Buddha taught and does not personally believe in post-mortem continuance
Are there any “deniers” of any kind in this forum willing to speak up and say what category they are in? I am in A, myself. I'm hoping we can get the proponents of each of these views to come up with their own labels to use as short-hand for their positions.
separately BlackBird wrote:
If one wanted to get polemical then it's easy and effective to link 'rebirth denial' with 'holocaust denial' especially in light of the scriptural evidence of rebirth. Eg. "There is a lot of evidence of the holocaust too, but it doesn't stop people from denying it happened."
I would note that scriptural evidence for rebirth is on an entirely different level from factual evidence of the holocaust. Comparing denial of rebirth to denial of the holocaust is using the rhetorical device of prejudicial language and I suspect right speech would require that we be a little more circumspect in our choice of metaphors. If there were factual evidence for rebirth that your category B folks were denying, I'd still say comparing that to holocaust denial was a bit much, but at least it would be a little closer analogy, since “fact” would be in use in both cases. As it is you're comparing denial of factual evidence for a horrifying series of events to denial of one interpretation of scripture that has been passed on by humans for two thousand plus years.