Vincent, It might have more than a little to do with gaining research money. I don't think it's a matter of handily claiming rebirth doesn't occur/exist as much as it doesn't really seem to have anything in it that represents material gain: there's no medical application that's been imagined, there's no direct societal gain anyone can imagine, and so on.

It's a bit of capitalism flying in the face of doctrine me thinks. There's no major research being undertaken on the Xtian doctrine of life after death at the moment...

Mitsu, I'm 111% in love with the word paraconventional. Thank you!

well, hmmm... I don't think Batchelor's our Christopher Hitchens, but it would be great if he were!

I think karma is the tip of the spear here, not rebirth. There's not much to rebirth, doctrinally, anyway: it happens and if you fuck up it'll be bad. Personally there's not much I can do with that, scientific study or philosophical speculation notwithstanding.

Karma, on the other hand, is fairly juicy. It's hugely macro, cosmologically so, and ridiculously micro. It's implicated in human memory and learning, and somehow manages to imply that the entire cosmos has a similar operational layer. That notion alone could be worth 20-40 double-spaced typewritten pages right there. 40 pages on rebirth would just be pushing a cautionary bedtime story into some slightly different shape.

My question is whose practices and what specific practices depend upon the doctrine of rebirth? Technically. When has rebirth as a teaching been presented in any other way other than a rationale for practice?