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Michael Shermer's "Instant Refutation of Reincarnation"

Joey McGee

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Joey McGee
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From his tweeter...

My instant refutation of reincarnation: 6.9 billion people alive today, 100 billion people lived before: where did all those extra souls go?
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Perhaps every soul doesn't reincarnate. Perhaps some reincarnate on new worlds or in higher dimensions. There, I refuted your refutation... AND that's what the believers say to explain it! Why do people bother saying stuff like this? I don't understand! Why not say that there is no evidence for it?

I haven't been that impressed by Ian Stevenson and Jim Tucker's work at the University of Virginia on this, but there are some interesting anecdotes and documented cases. A lot of skeptics have worked them over already, I don't know what to think and I don't study it anymore. I'd never use this kind of argument to refute it. It just shows a willingness to entertain simplistic methods of debunking.

Kids giving details that about another life and the parents finding a match in the real world? Hey, that's interesting stuff even if it turns out to be completely coincidental. If someone presents me with evidence of reincarnation I'm not going to say "Hey what about those missing souls! This can't be real!"

It's actually not even a reason to doubt anything.

Thoughts?
 
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I thought reincarnation included all types of animals, not just humans.
 
Joey McGee said:
From his tweeter...

"My instant refutation of reincarnation: 6.9 billion people alive today, 100 billion people lived before: where did all those extra souls go?"

I'd never use this kind of argument to refute it.
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Then your logic is vastly superior to Shermer's. 100 billion is the total number of people that most scientists believe have lived on earth, not the number that were alive at any given past time. In fact, most reincarnation opponents use the exact opposite of Shermer's logic; i.e., how can there be more people alive today than were alive at any given past time? There are several possible answers to this -- the most simple of which is that there are other inhabited planets in the universe or other dimensions of existence.

I await Shermer's supporters here conceding that, whatever the merits of the arguments supporting reincarnation, his logic in this instance is absurd.
 
Just goes to show that even intelligent rational people can sometimes make stupid comments.
 
Rodney said:
Then your logic is vastly superior to Shermer's. 100 billion is the total number of people that most scientists believe have lived on earth, not the number that were alive at any given past time. In fact, most reincarnation opponents use the exact opposite of Shermer's logic; i.e., how can there be more people alive today than were alive at any given past time? There are several possible answers to this -- the most simple of which is that there are other inhabited planets in the universe or other dimensions of existence.

I await Shermer's supporters here conceding that, whatever the merits of the arguments supporting reincarnation, his logic in this instance is absurd.
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It was an ill-considered throwaway line. So what? Shermer piss on your cornflakes once?
 
He can easily evoke the same excuse the people who believe in this sort of thing do, he's talking about his own personal opinion of reincarnation, and you're mean for challenging such a thing. I refute it thus.
 
The 100 billion souls are split between the 6 billion.

That's why sometimes you're in the mood for something and other times you're not. Why someone will insist you've said something and you disagree.
 
saraban said:
The 100 billion souls are split between the 6 billion.

That's why sometimes you're in the mood for something and other times you're not. Why someone will insist you've said something and you disagree.
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I think I'll have Italian tonight. Mama mia.
 
Resume said:
It was an ill-considered throwaway line. So what? Shermer piss on your cornflakes once?
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How many times have you seen skeptics here rake a believer over the coals for saying something not even within hailing distance of this breathtaking level of erroneous logic?
 
Rodney said:
How many times have you seen skeptics here rake a believer over the coals for saying something not even within hailing distance of this breathtaking level of erroneous logic?
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So how about making a logical case for reincarnation?

Oh, sorry, you can't.
 
Rodney said:
How many times have you seen skeptics here rake a believer over the coals for saying something not even within hailing distance of this breathtaking level of erroneous logic?
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Logic? Reincarnation? Got some?
 
Rodney said:
As mentioned by Joey, you might want to look at Ian Stevenson's and Jim Tucker's work at the University of Virginia on this subject.
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Well, Joey said he wasn't all that impressed, so I'll go with that.

ETA I am least of all impressed with anecdotes.
 
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I'm a huge supporter of Shermer. This event going to be a real tweet :P

I'm debating Deepak Chopra March 31, Chapman Univ.: "Is there an Ultimate Reality? Can it be accounted for by science?" http://bit.ly/ei4KCb

This time I have Leonard Mlodinow on my side, Stephen Hawking's co-author, so we've got the quantum consciousness flapdoodle woo woo covered
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Nice!

I don't want to make a mountain out of a mole hill or split hairs but this isn't the first time he or someone prominent has used a "reason to doubt" as a "refutation" which only feeds the believers. Some reasons to doubt are almost complete refutations. For example, homeopathic remedies have nothing in them and water doesn't have a memory. But we did double-blind studies anyway to actually refute it. For us, it doesn't really matter. But if you're in the business of debunking, I think you should split hairs
 
Rodney said:
In fact, most reincarnation opponents use the exact opposite of Shermer's logic; i.e., how can there be more people alive today than were alive at any given past time? There are several possible answers to this -- the most simple of which is that there are other inhabited planets in the universe or other dimensions of existence.
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I'd say the most simple is that there's a waiting period between reincarnations, which has gotten shorter. Not that that's evidence reincarnation exists, just that it's an easy objection to refute.

But yeah, I totally don't get the objection the other way around. The whole point of reincarnation is that those earlier souls are constantly recycled.
 
I wasn't all that impressed because even Ian and Jim said that they didn't have conclusive proof. And several of the cases I investigated fell apart after long periods of looking into them which was demoralizing.

The last time I investigated a case was when CNN had a kid and his parents on and I thought Wow, that's amazing! Then I came across some devastating analysis by Skeptico on the case and I thought wow, if I keep this up my brain will turn into mush. Well, more mushy than it already is. ;)

:alc:
 
I had just assumed that because there are more people living on Earth now than at any time before, there were souls either waiting "on deck" for their first attempt, or that reincarnation was BS. One of the two.
 
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