How does Buddhism explain the growth of the Earth’s population if the soul is constantly being reborn?
Buddhism denies the existence of the soul as understood in theistic religions. In other religions, the soul is a part of the deity, something whole, unchangeable and permanent that is created by the deity. Here is John, he has a soul, and that soul will always be John, even if John dies and rises again, or if John is reborn in the body of a cockroach, it will be John the cockroach, it will be his soul. In Buddhism, this position is clearly denied. In Buddhism, there is the concept of anatman — the illusory nature of the permanent, immobile, unchangeable Self. The world in Buddhism is a moving collection of elementary particles of being-dharmas. Dharmas are both material and immaterial. Accordingly, the personality in Buddhism is a stream of instantaneous states. That is, if you can talk about any John, it is only for a moment. In the next moment, John will no longer be his past self and will become his new self as his consciousness changes. That is, a person is an illusion, like the illusion of a moving person on the screen of a movie theater, in a movie consisting of many frames.
Therefore, in Buddhism, they do not talk about the rebirth of the soul. They talk about the existence of a beginningless, unbroken stream of mind in a new body. The universe in Buddhism is beginningless. If we try to go back in time to the beginning of the world, we will find infinity. This never-occurring stream of mind does not belong to anyone in particular. You can roughly compare it to a smartphone passed down in the family by inheritance. None of the owners of the smartphone does not know who bought it. But in the end, John got it. Here John dying gave a smartphone to his son David. David erased all of John’s photos and contacts, updated some of the details, inserted a new memory card, and left the same number. This phone number conventionally combines the previous and next state of the smartphone, while everything else has changed under the influence of external reasons. Then David will die, give the smartphone to his son Steve, and so on.
There is such an ancient Greek myth and paradox “The Ship of Theseus”. If all the components of the original object have been replaced, does the object remain the same object?
According to a Greek myth recounted by Plutarch, the ship in which Theseus returned from Crete to Athens was kept by the Athenians until the time of Demetrius of Phalerus, and was sent annually with a sacred embassy to Delos. When it was repaired, the planks were gradually replaced, until there was a dispute among philosophers whether it was still the same ship, or already another, new one? In addition, the question arises: in the case of building a second ship from old planks, which one will be the real one?
Here in Buddhism, the flow of the mind is such a ship. Conditionally, it can be considered as a whole. But its constituent elements, both material and immaterial, are constantly being replaced by others. The combination of these elements forms a new quality-consciousness.
In Buddhism, the number of mind streams in samsara (in a state of causation) is finite. This number is very large. It is believed that our world of people is not the only one. The streams of the mind can exist either on the basis of matter or without a basis on matter. The condition for the existence of the mind is the presence of at least one organ of perception. Every mind has the potential for enlightenment, and in this they are all equal. This potential of enlightenment is realized sooner or later. You can compare this to how a person can not notice the hair on his own head. He may not see his hair, he may not feel it, but if you prolong this state for a very long time, sooner or later there will be such suitable conditions under which a person will find his hair, because they will begin to bother him. And with the potential for enlightenment, the opposite is true. A person reveals this potential when he stops worrying about something.
As soon as a mind has passed into the state of nirvana (being, but not existing), in the state of samsara, the number of consciousnesses has decreased by 1. Therefore, the number of consciousnesses in samsara is constantly decreasing over time (new ones do not arise). Why then are there more people? Because more consciousnesses from other worlds, including non-material ones, are ready to incarnate in human form. The human form is considered in Buddhism to be favorable for the development and unfolding of the potential of enlightenment. The beings in the lower worlds suffer too much, there are too many hindrances to enlightenment. Beings in the higher worlds suffer too little to understand their dependence. And the person is somewhere in the middle, in the right conditions. Therefore, increasing the number of people is beneficial for all living beings. As there are more conditions for the cessation of the existence of samsara. In time, all consciousness will pass into nirvana.