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Reincarnation Anybody? Past lives or not?

josh3623 said:
That is all well and good, however it does not explain the birthmarks.
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A while ago, when talking to the people on the Past Life forum, we discussed Stevenson's work and the later follow-up of his studies by Prof. Erlendur Haraldsson. Haraldsson's papers on Stevenson's two 'best' (according to Haraldsson) birthmark cases are still pretty weak - one where the reincarnation story emerged after the child knew of the deceased, and the birthmarks were only 'within the area' (side of chest) of the fatal injuries (see purnima.pdf), and the other where the reincarnation story was noted prior to knowledge of the deceased, but the core elements of the story were unremarkable, and the correspondence between the tiny birthmarks (near left ear) and the deceased's injuries (head & neck bandaged) was vague; also, a birthmark on the right upper arm was claimed to correspond to a broken left arm (see chatura.pdf). The interesting stuff is in the discussion sections, towards the end of the papers.

Even the sympathetic Haraldsson had reservations about the quality of the available evidence in these, the two 'best' of the 49 of Stevenson's cases that he followed up, and even the admin of the 'Past Life' forums admitted to finding these studies 'unsatisfactory'.

To my reading, there were far too many uncertain 'facts' and wishful leaps on circumstantial evidence even in these two 'best' cases, and we shouldn't forget than, out of 49 cases, one might expect to find one or two that have interesting coincidences, purely by chance. Here's Haraldsson's background paper. Again, the discussion section makes interesting reading.
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I highly recommend reading the threads with dlorde's participation on The Past Life Forums. They had a highly respected regular (Night Train, iirc) who presented highly convincing misrepresentations of the scientific method and scientific consensus. Dlorde presented a model of patient, polite, and thorough corrections of those misrepresentations along with excellent analysis of various claims. I don't think anyone's overarching view of reincarnation changed, but I am sure that at least a couple changed their minds on specific claims.
 
SusanB-M1 said:
And I definitely defer to dlorde's far better knowledge.
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:blush: I just read a few articles & papers.

I have to admit my memory is faulty too - on re-reading, I find that of the 42 cases Haraldson investigated, only 30 were from Stevenson's original study, and only 12 were directly collated by Haraldson himself.

What came out of all these studies is how difficult it is to gather reliable evidence in the field, where the majority of data is anecdotal, has been widely discussed, and there are biases and vested interests, with all the changes and embellishments that usually involves.
 
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dlorde said:
:blush: I just read a few articles & papers.

I have to admit my memory is faulty too - on re-reading, I find that of the 42 cases Haraldson investigated, only 30 were from Stevenson's original study, and only 12 were directly collated by Haraldson himself.

What came out of all these studies is how difficult it is to gather reliable evidence in the field, where the majority of data is anecdotal, has been widely discussed, and there are biases and vested interests, with all the changes and embellishments that usually involves.
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Dr. Haraldsson is an interesting fellow, and he responds to inquiries, though I am not impressed with his conclusions.

In the October 2011 issue of the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, there was an article by Dr. Haraldsson entitled A Perfect Case? Emil Jensen in the Mediumship of Indridi Indridason, the Fire in Copenhagen on November 24th 1905 and the Discovery of Jensen’s Identity.

I won’t go into details of the case unless someone asks, but I was less than convinced by the article. A cursory reading seemed impressive, as most such tales do, but a careful scrutiny revealed the many leaps of logic and absence of evidence that threw holes in the claim.

I wrote an email to Dr. Haraldsson with four questions outlining my concerns. They were all “Yes or No” questions. Dr. Haraldsson responded quickly, concisely, and honestly. All his answers were “No,” which meant that my concerns about absent evidence were correct. If this is the "Perfect Case" then there is no case at all.

As an aside, Dr. Haraldsson asked for me to identify myself because he likes to know with whom he corresponds. I told him, with more detail than he asked for. I thought it was interesting not that he asked but that he only asked after he answered my questions. As I said, an interesting fellow, and I think an honest one, though one with some logical blind spots when it comes to his favored topic.
 
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Mary Roach's book, Spook, is on the subject of "science investigates the afterlife". She talks at one point with an Indian scientist investigating reincarnation. He's a devout Hindu, and admits he's biased. Still, his scientific training has led him to conclude that he hasn't found a single compelling case....
 
josh3623 said:
Did your lies create scar like birthmarks on your body which corresponded anatomically with fatal wounds of the deceased individuals whom you were lying about?
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How many six year olds ride bikes, skateboards, run in the woods, fall down, and have all sorts of random scars, scratches, bruises, etc that can easily be shoehorned to match a preconceived notion of some past person's death scars?

Seriosuly, you are grasping at straws. There is no actual evidence. When you die, you die.
 
I don't believe in it, but that is because in a past life I was too credulous and am thus being punished in this life by being too skeptical.
 
I think I may have mentioned it before, but I'm entirely convinced I was a rock in my last life. I believe this because all the past memories I've been able to bring up are entirely consistent with those a rock would have. :)
 
josh3623 said:
Did your lies create scar like birthmarks on your body which corresponded anatomically with fatal wounds of the deceased individuals whom you were lying about?
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Birthmarks are birthmarks, not deathmarks.

What exactly needs explaining?
 
josh3623 said:
Did your lies create scar like birthmarks on your body which corresponded anatomically with fatal wounds of the deceased individuals whom you were lying about?
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That's a new one for me.
I knew there are people who claim that birthmarks are caused by the pregnant mum not being indulged in her food cravings, but never this.
 
josh3623 said:
While not specifically proof, here we have something which most certainly can be regarded as circumstantial evidence.
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No it can't. But let's go along. Look at the first example in the paper. The correspondence between the present and previous "incarnation" is very weak. Your claim of "anatomical" correspondence fails right out of the gate.

And, btw, through how many incarnations do these marks occur. If you go back far enough, our collective ancestors probably have wounds or birth marks/defects from head to toe.
 
The birthmark claim seems to be the weakest part of the whole thing. People love to make up explanations for things that seem random, rather than accepting they're random. So there are lots of stories about why birthmarks exist. I hadn't heard the food craving one that pakeha mentioned, but have read lots of crazy explanations, like the mother being scared by X so the child had a birthmark shaped like X, or whatever. It's a widespread enough phenomenon that scars from a past life can be assumed to be one more permutation of the usual attempts at explaining something that's essentially random, with mythology.

The concept of having lived before or having an obsession/connection to another life seems to be common enough that I do think it's worth studying in itself. Reincarnation seems an attempt at explaining that through mythology, just like the various mythological explanations for birthmarks.

But strip away the mythology, and one still does have child prodigies. A lesser form of that mechanism could be what makes a child obsessed with World War II airplanes, or a family across town, or whatever, rather than an obsession with writing symphonies or playing chess. But they'd still pick up enough details about their pet subject, that they'd be just as above the average on their pet subject, as if they were writing symphonies at age six. The need to explain such unexpected expertise might lead a family to jump right to reincarnation as the answer, while those less desperate for an immediate answer can slowly work on understanding the brain and childhood development.
 
pakeha said:
That's a new one for me.
I knew there are people who claim that birthmarks are caused by the pregnant mum not being indulged in her food cravings, but never this.
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LOL!
A birthmark that looks like an axe blow to the head?

Now that's a new one...
 
SezMe said:
No it can't. But let's go along. Look at the first example in the paper. The correspondence between the present and previous "incarnation" is very weak. Your claim of "anatomical" correspondence fails right out of the gate.

And, btw, through how many incarnations do these marks occur. If you go back far enough, our collective ancestors probably have wounds or birth marks/defects from head to toe.
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I was born with a mole on my thigh...

I wonder what it means...

The doctor chopped it off when I was a kid...
Now there is a scar.

I was thinking... Maybe its like a viscious cycle...

Like now that I have a scar on my leg... maybe when I reincarnate I will have a mole there... which the doctor will chop off leaving a scar, consequently when I reincarnate again...

You see? Its like a catch 22...
 
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