Rebirth and the Western Buddhist - Khamkoo

66 Rebirth and the Western Buddhist
goes back enough generations, the ancestors of that hen
were less and less hen-like, passing through various
kinds of birds to Archaeopteryx (part reptile, part bird)
some 150 million years ago, and before that, reptilian
ancestors. These descended from amphibians, who descended
from fish, who probably descended from wormlike
creatures, whose ancestors as one goes still farther
back must have been more and more primitive. This
description of the descent of the hen from fish is deduced
from the verj assumption that any animal is born from
parents which are similar to it, together with careful
examination of living and fossil animals.
Few would deny that the ancient fish and the modern
hen were different "types," yet they are linked by a direct
line of descent in which each animal is no more unlike its
parents than we are unlike ours. Over 300 or 400 million
years, trivial differences between parents and children
add up to the difference between a fish and a hen.
Applying Postulate P1 in the strict form assumed by
Losang Gyatso, the ancestors of the hen 400 million years
ago would still have ,had to be hens. Thus the theory
based on repeated application of the postulate breaks
down in practice, since types are not absolute but merge
gradually into each other.
When one extrapolates from the known to the unknown,
the farther one extrapolates, the more likely one
is to be wrong; and if one extrapolates to infinity, as in
the prediction that my personal continuum as an individual
sentient being is infinitely old, one is almost certain
to be wrong. Within the theory, it is a logical deduction;
but to assert that it is actually true is the wildest speculation.
Not only is there continuity between fish and hens:
there is continuity between plants and animals, since
there exist single-celled organisms such as Chlamydomonas,
Euglena, Polytoma and Volvox which have charac-