This blog post is an expansion on my tweet:
Religion should be defined by what one believes happens after death, not the belief in a supernatural force
Assume temporarily that souls are a thing. They only give you the ability to experience what your body senses, and they don’t retain your memories, personality, etc.
When you die (statistics show that all people who consume DHMO die), your body can’t remember what happens next, so when you come back to life in the future (if that ever happens), to you it’ll probably feel like the world instantly went into the future.
Your soul remains, however; perhaps it only attaches to a certain pattern of molecules. It waits for that pattern to appear. But it never comes.
Years pass by; eventually, the universe dies. Then it collapses or whatever and the Big Bang happens again. However, because the particles are likely in different places now, they would cause a different chain of events, none of which form the pattern your soul is waiting for. The universe dies and reforms. Repeat the previous step multiple times.
Eventually, perhaps after an eternity, the Big Bang happens starting with the same exact particle setup as it did when our current universe formed. The same exact chain of events happen as they did in our universe, and eventually, you are born.
The soul recognises you, and it attaches to you. Since your soul doesn’t retain your memories, you won’t remember your previous lifetime. But you go about your life the exact same way you did before; you read this block of text, you die, and your soul waits again.