As to what is On topic. From http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
"Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity."
56 (as of now) people thinks this gratifies intellectual curiosity.
in addition to the idea of reincarnation being offensive to the scientifically inclined
Is all that true.
I like to think us scientifically minded people are above being actually "offended" by such things!
I don't much like the story, and I don't believe in reincarnation, but to suggest that serious philosophy cannot be contained in a story that involves reincarnation is a pretty shallow view. At any rate, the whole "learn to become a god" thing that's the ultimate crux of the story is much more closely affiliated with Mormonism than Buddhism or Hinduism as far as I know.