You're welcome. Carol did a great job - and Steve writing this chapter in her book.
)
No doubt that anyone championing reincarnation by writing about well researched literature does a great job. And Steve's contribution must be appreciated too, even though, if I may be allowed to offer a little criticism from my own personal, and not a professional perspective. On this thread I noted a few posts where logic and reason were made objects on which we are to rely on in forming our opinions on reality, and for overcoming religious dogma. However, those same ones seemed to lack understanding of their own logical "dogma", as logic can also be dogmatic, especially for those that have little understanding of the dialectical process needed to assess logic itself.
Regarding the first post on the thread, Steve seems to disregard, as also those others, that if the Bible is truly the word of the Father and Creator, and meant for humans to receive and understand His word, there is no way in Hell that anyone of us, emperor or common pauper, can prevent that word from being communicated to us, just as it was initially meant. And one poster got close to this, when he cited that the Holy Spirit would be sent to explain everything. The only problem with that was that it's not the HS that had enlightened Origen, or any other Christian Confessor, or any of the other early church fathers. The Holy Spirit has yet to come, to explain everything, and reincarnation will be one of the things that will be explained.
Now I also observed that two posters made a big deal of Plato's cave allegory, using it to make out the Christians who believe in a being, an old man with a beard, and separate from anyone of us, to be those very prisoners of the cave too afraid to be released of their shackles, and see that there is no one God, as we are all, together, what forms God. But I say that these two are totally ignorant of the cave allegory, and what was being presented by Socrates/Plato. Little they must know that reading further on, we are given that to be released from the cave, is in order to be taken to the realm of the unchanging intellectual realm of reality, where on the last step, the freed prisoner can finally catch a glimpse of the absolute Good, or as we may call Him, God.
This entire allegory, I said, you may now append, dear Glaucon, to the
previous argument; the prison-house is the world of sight, the light of the fire is
the sun, and you will not misapprehend me if you interpret the journey upwards
to be the ascent of the soul into the intellectual world according to my poor
belief, which, at your desire, I have expressed whether rightly or wrongly God
knows. But, whether true or false, my opinion is that in the world of knowledge
the idea of good appears last of all, and is seen only with an effort; and, when
seen, is also inferred to be the universal author of all things beautiful and right,
parent of light and of the lord of light in this visible world, and the immediate
source of reason and truth in the intellectual; and that this is the power upon
which he who would act rationally, either in public or private life must have his
eye fixed.