Reincarnation driving evolution

[Saitek]

I was thinking about this the other day, could evolution and natural selection prove that reincarnation exists?

 

Basically an organism needs a constant life/death cycle to improve itself.

 

Through DNA it can keep track of things from one life to the next.

 

The DNA code is constantly making random changes to itself, if something is so undesirable natural selection will cause those combination of genes not to be passed on. So that particular mutation will die out. Whatever is desirable gets passed on in the DNA during procreation.

 

What has me stumped is how its keeping track and not repeating that particular mutation. Or its not thus we have things like identical twins etc?

What has me curious is at the moment that someone dies are they born elsewhere? I guess we will never know. Now they wouldn't be born a baby at that moment since it takes 9 months~ to grow the baby in the womb. They say people can only recall from a certain age. Now this is where it gets a bit spiritual, when they die do they then pass to a baby and when they arrive it is this when they can start remembering things?

Edited May 9, 2014 by Saitek

[Spyman]

And how would the spiritual entity from the dead person affect the inherited DNA in the possessed baby?

[pwagen]

A lot of brain functions don't develop until a certain age, including the ability to store memories. There's absolutely no need to invoke spirits that don't arrive until a few years after birth to explain a somewhat understood process.

[Delta1212]

DNA doesn't keep track of what mutations have previously existed or not, but this has nothing to do with the existence of identical twins, who will almost certainly wind up with at least a few different mutations from each other, anyway.

[Phi for All]

Isn't reincarnation supposed to be working towards some sort of ultimate perfection? We don't see that in evolution. Not all adaptations are "improvements", and some can be quite a pain in the back. Or retina. Or coccyx.

 

How would you test this idea? What is passing from the dying to the newly born that you could classify as an evolutionary trait? How does it pass? If it's a form of energy, how is it moving and how does it choose where it's going?

[Greg H.]

What has me stumped is how its keeping track and not repeating that particular mutation. Or its not thus we have things like identical twins etc?

 

It doesn't. We have occasionally found the same mutation appearing and vanishing, and then reappearing again. For example,

 

[t]he sabertooth morphology has appeared several times during the history of the mammals. Saber-toothed members of the Carnivora, (the mammalian order that contains cats, dogs, bears, weasels, and others) appeared independently at least twice.¹

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1. See http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/mammal/carnivora/sabretooth.html

[Endy0816]

Evolution doesn't assume as a human would. What ended badly before might end well the next time.

 

It does have some limited memory. The code itself and epigenetic mechanisisms. It is not so stupid that it overlooks the obvious, but it also doesn't claim "5 fingers will always be better than 4".