~_o Not sure if you're saying that the common perception of reincarnation is sophistic, or if what I'm saying is sophism, but it's how I feel. I suppose you probably mean the latter.

The way I understand it is probably already existent somewhere on the netterwebs, probably with a really simple, pretty, picture and some text over the image, but I don't feel like looking for it. Basically, it's this:

There is no 'you' but for the one right now. The you that came out of your mother, wet and pink and tiny, is completely gone. If I asked you to physically show me that you, they don't exist. The you that read "There is no 'you'" no longer exists either. The 'you' buried in the ground, or cremated or whatever else similarly doesn't exist. It hasn't happened yet. In that way, the past and future are completely inaccessible. We witness evidence of one, and can expect the other based on that evidence. In seconds, there is an infinite number of slices in time where you exist, then re-exist, different - only in tiny changes in your cells, the connections between synapses, and so on. But different. When you die, you'll be completely gone but for your molecules, which will slowly change and disperse over time. The building blocks that make you up will remain and be altered, the same way they were originally present to fit into your shape.

There is no transfer of 'spirit' or 'awareness' - only ideas, views and beliefs. If we are the only sentient life in reality, when we're gone, maybe that'll be it. But the rest of it will still be here without us. Maybe the process will repeat, and some other matter will coalesce into an intelligent enough shape to be able to question itself the way we do.

I believe you 'die' and are 'reborn' constantly, along with every single thing around you. It's just that some do it more noticeably than others, the difference between change over milliseconds or a million years.

I believe that the realization that this reality and this lifetime is all we have, applied to a view of every living creature around oneself, means a greater empathy for pain, a greater appreciation of pleasure, and an understanding of the connection shared by the extremely special and relatively short-lived phenomena of humanity that makes every life suddenly precious simply for the reason that it exists.

Gods, demons, spirits, karma, dharma - it's unnecessary. We exist, we change, we cease to exist, but the reality in which it happens remains constantly. Just one totality viewing itself from multiple view points.

That is what I believe reincarnation is.