If we follow the number of people who believe in this or that, we should all be Christians apparentlyCircle5 wrote:In order to know what happens with consciousness after death, one first needs to know through what mechanism consciousness originated. If one does not know that mechanism, then he can never know if it will originate again through the same mechanism (the he does not know) or not. And today in 2017, the mystery of origination of consciousness has not been solved and is called "the hard problem of consciousness". More than this, materialism has been refuted through numerous scientific discoveries.
Understanding rebirth is one of the difficult parts of buddhism that requires first understanding other things such as no-self, how the 5 aggregates work and many more. But even for a random not knowing anything about buddhism, rebirth should be the natural, most plausible expectation. Just like you appeared in this life, you will appear again in the future through the same mechanism. Dreamily you appeared now, dreamily you will appear again. And because it's the most logical thing to expect, it has been the most popular view in ancient times at the beginning of first religions. And it is still a popular view today, about 30% of europeans believing in rebirth no matter if the country is strongly christian or strongly atheist.
Christianity 2.2 billion[3] 31.50%
Islam 1.6 billion[4] 22.32%
Secular[a]/Nonreligious/Agnostic/Atheist ≤1.1 billion 15.35%
Hinduism 1 billion 13.95%
Chinese traditional religion[c] 394 million 5.50%
Buddhism 376 million 5.25%