Never the twain shall meet
I hope I am not repeating myself, but I really get tired of Buddhists questioning karma and, especially, rebirth from the standpoint of the natural and physical sciences. The Buddha explained karma and rebirth from first-person introspection—not from the third person, perception which is the enterprise of the natural and physical sciences.
As I read the philosopher Colin McGinn we have come to an impasse where we simply lack the needed ability to understand the mind-brain link. This results in what he terms "cognitive closure" in which there is an unbridgeable gap between "introspection-based view of consciousness and a perception-based view of the brain" (The Mysterious Flame: Conscious Minds in a Material World, p. 51).
I like where McGinn is going with this. Simply put, we have first-person apprehension of consciousness or mind vs third-person apprehension of the brain—and never the twain shall meet—at least not from the side of third-person oriented science. It can go no further, although I don't foresee neuroscience, for example, admitting that it lacks the ability to overcome this daunting impasse. You know, it's the Western arrogance thing. It will simply re-conceptualize mind or consciousness as natural, not supernatural, treating it as brain derived.
Where this all begins to really stink in Buddhism is when people, who are strongly sympathetic with third-person science, enter the sacred temple of Buddhism that is only reserved for potential first-person experiencers, in particular, those who are committed to realizing the substance of pure Mind in which ultimately the world is found out to be, Mind-only (cittamatra).
As I see it, the agenda of the Buddhists who are strongly sympathetic with third-person science are making a conscious effort to exclude or ignore anything in Buddhism that does not fit within the framework of the physical sciences.
No amount of toleration or handshaking can change the fact that first-person and third person worlds are entirely different as are their sciences (let's not forget that Buddhism is an introspective science). Because of the differences, it will be a long cold war that we face in Buddhism as the sides marshall their forces.
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