[iamthat]

Originally Posted by Altair

Go back a few centuries in time and almost nobody (outside of East Asia and SE Asia) believed in it (reincarnation)

This is open to question. For example:

Benjamin Franklin: Thus, finding myself to exist in the world, I believe I shall, in some shape or other, always exist; and, with all the inconveniences human life is liable to, I shall not object to a new edition of mine, hoping, however, that the errata of the last may be corrected.

Henry Ford: I adopted the theory of Reincarnation when I was twenty six. Religion offered nothing to the point. Even work could not give me complete satisfaction. Work is futile if we cannot utilize the experience we collect in one life in the next. When I discovered Reincarnation it was as if I had found a universal plan I realized that there was a chance to work out my ideas. Time was no longer limited. I was no longer a slave to the hands of the clock. ... The discovery of Reincarnation put my mind at ease.

David Lloyd George: The conventional heaven with its angels perpetually singing etc. nearly drove me mad in my youth and made me an atheist for ten years. My opinion is that we shall be reincarnated.

Voltaire: It is no more surprising to be born once than to be born twice: everything in nature is resurrection.

Honore de Balzac: The virtues we acquire, which develop slowly within us, are the invisible links that bind each one of our existences to the others - existences which the spirit alone remembers, for Matter has no memory for spiritual things.

Origen (early Christian theologian): It can be shown that an incorporeal and reasonable being has life in itself independently of the body... then it is beyond a doubt bodies are only of secondary importance and arise from time to time to meet the varying conditions of reasonable creatures. Those who require bodies are clothed with them, and contrariwise, when fallen souls have lifted themselves up to better things their bodies are once more annihilated. They are ever vanishing and ever reappearing.

Pythagoras: Souls never die, but always on quitting one abode pass to another. All things change, nothing perishes. The soul passes hither and thither, occupying now this body, now that... As a wax is stamped with certain figures, then melted, then stamped anew with others, yet it is always the same wax. So, the Soul being always the same, yet wears at different times different forms.

Not to mention Plato, Aristotle and Socrates who also taught the idea of reincarnation. Just a small sample of those outside Asia who believed in reincarnation.

Peace