Past life and Reincarnation

Recently I come across an interesting daily column in Shin Min Daily News. The column has tables that describes a person's past life, based on the lunar date that they are born in the present life. For example, how a person looked like, or what his/her career was, or/and most recently how a person died in his/her past life!

We often see star charts, horoscopes in newspapers, magazines and so forth. I believe most of the population see such things as leisurely and nothing more. It is quite useless to provide contrary views as these "predictions" are mostly vague and "unprovable". Mostly, the charts encompass everyone who reads it. For example, one's birthday must fall within a day within a year, say 18th April 1998, and as such that person is a Aries. It is impossible to prove that a person does not belong to a particular horoscope.

But this particular column has a major flaw. Which can be proven wrong empirically. What is more, one can prove that it is wrong using simple logic. Here it goes:

The premise to determine how a person was in his/her previous life, according to the table, is the lunar date that he/she was born in the present life. For the latter part, regarding a person's lunar birth date, is a classic "all-encompassing" premise, and as such one cannot debate against it without being enveloped into a circular argument.

The problem with this particular column is that it assumes that a person has a previous life.

But, if every person has a previous life, that means the population must be constant. As such, the equation should be:

(Those who were living) minus (Those who died) = (Those who are still living) plus (those who are born)

Therefore, those who died = those who are born. This is explained by the consideration that those who died are reincarnated as those who are born.

But, the world population has been growing. The world population in A.D. 1970 was estimated at 3.7 billion, while the world population in A.D. 2000 was estimated at 6.23 billion. To bring this a bit closer, if i assume that the world population in 2007 was 7 billion, and that the world population in 2008 is 7.1 billion, then i must necessarily concede that the extra 0.1 billion "new" people has no past lives!

And, if those new 0.1 billion people have no past lives, then surely the column which purports to be able to tell how one was during his/her past life, must necessarily be missing out on the new 0.1 billion population.

Surely those new 0.1 billion population have a lunar birth date in their present lives. But since they have no past lives, then the column must be wrong when it provides a "description" of their non-existent past lives.