Reincarnation as a scientific hypothesis

[Normal Dude]

You beat me to it.

I suspect we are going to end with a final score much higher than 10.

I pulled that score out of my hindquarters, feel free to adjust it.

 

[Slimething]

I pulled that score out of my hindquarters, feel free to adjust it.

The score, I hope!

 

[wogoga]

First sentence from members.lol.li/twostone/E/psychon.html :

"The reductionist scientific world view as many religious world views is based on the premise that we humans are outside nature."

What the hell? Could you explain this before I bother reading any further?

Here the continuation (The Psychon Theory, The Reductionist Scientific World View):

"It is admitted that human behaviour depends on objectives, values, intuition and a tendency towards order. However every attempt to admit analogous principles of finality in nature is criticized as anthropomorphism.

Hardly anyone would seriously suggest that houses, tools, vehicles or computers could evolve through blind chance and selection. Yet very effective housing for animals, such as bird's nests or termites' mounds, are explained by just that means.

(Individual) consciousness is denied on the one hand and regarded as essential on the other hand, depending only on the context. It is denied when animal behaviour is explained solely by material processes in the brain. It is ignored in Darwinism. It is essential when dealing with social behaviour, religion or human rights. Most scientists are not aware of this inconsistency."
Don't you understand what I want to say?

It seems quite probable to me that Jörg Haider (an Austrian politician) is Hitler's reincarnation. In future it will be more problematic to escape one's responsibility by committing suicide.

So, do you believe it is just and fair to punish the person animated by the reincarnated soul of someone as heinous as Hitler?

Why is this question so important to you? You probably cannot even imagine that evolution actually works by reincarnation.

First I think that Hitler's last years already were a very embarassing and painful punishment for him. Second I do not believe that the whole catastrophe of world war II with all its violations of human rights can be attributed to Adolf Hitler. As we all, Hitler is the result of evolution and therefore he was also a plaything of evolution. The Third Reich in Germany can be seen as an atavism. I don't think that apart from technology, there have been principal innovations. Mass murder of 'the others' has always been an important factor in human evolution.

It was also the many failings in his live caused by bad luck, which made out of this soul a person like Hitler still in the 20th century. In order to better understand Hitler one should also deal with his previous life as Bernhard Förster (who committed suicide 44 days after the birth of Hitler). In the time when the European monarchies got weaker and decomposed, many of the souls of outstanding figures of these monarchies became born without the accustomed previlege of nobel birth.

Missing success and respect from the others then easily could result in hatred, and this hatred (by the psychological mechanism of projection) was then easily directed against a group (or rather against what they considered to be a group).

The contrast between 'we, the good' and 'the others, the bad' is still a basic principle of the psychological makeup of many humans. In the case of Jörg Haider this contrast showed up in the form of native Austrians versus foreigners. Before the rise of Haider, Austria was exemplary in the treatment and integration of foreigners.

Cheers, Wolfgang

 

[Ladewig]

Why is this question so important to you?

Because by understanding the limits and ramifications of your theory, I can better understand your theory.

You probably cannot even imagine that evolution actually works by reincarnation.

You are right. I cannot imagine it.

First I think that Hitler's last years already were a very embarassing and painful punishment for him. Second I do not believe that the whole catastrophe of world war II with all its violations of human rights can be attributed to Adolf Hitler.

Fine. Let's ascribe 10% of the human rights violations to Hitler. That would still mean that he was directly responsible for the kidnapping, enslavement, and murder of hundreds of thousands of innocent people.

His last years were embarassing and painful?! WTF? Do you have any evidence to support that claim. Even if it were true, his embarassment and pain were not large enough to stop murdering people. As such I cannot believe that either was large enough to be worth mentioning.

As we all, Hitler is the result of evolution and therefore he was also a plaything of evolution. The Third Reich in Germany can be seen as an atavism. I don't think that apart from technology, there have been principal innovations. Mass murder of 'the others' has always been an important factor in human evolution. It was also the many failings in his live caused by bad luck, which made out of this soul a person like Hitler still in the 20th century. In order to better understand Hitler one should also deal with his previous life as Bernhard Förster (who committed suicide 44 days after the birth of Hitler).

And yet, 99.99% of the population does not engage in "mass murder of 'the others.'" Murder is murder. Murderers should be held to justice. There is nothing that could ever happen in a previous life (or any amount of bad luck in a current life) that could ever excuse, justify, or in any way mitigate the murder of hundreds of thousands of innocent people.



But more importantly - the evidence for this claim to be raised to the level of a scientific hypothesis is what?

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
ETA: reformatted post to improve flow of thoughts.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

It is admitted that human behaviour depends on objectives, values, intuition and a tendency towards order. However every attempt to admit analogous principles of finality in nature is criticized as anthropomorphism.

The first sentence does not excuse the glib remark that "The reductionist scientific world view ... is based on the premise that we humans are outside nature." What does "outside nature" mean?

The second sentence is incomprehensible.

Hardly anyone would seriously suggest that houses, tools, vehicles or computers could evolve through blind chance and selection. Yet very effective housing for animals, such as bird's nests or termites' mounds, are explained by just that means.

So what?

(Individual) consciousness is denied on the one hand and regarded as essential on the other hand, depending only on the context. It is denied when animal behaviour is explained solely by material processes in the brain. It is ignored in Darwinism. It is essential when dealing with social behaviour, religion or human rights. Most scientists are not aware of this inconsistency."
Don't you understand what I want to say?

No. In particular, what do these two paragraphs have to do with each other?

~~ Paul

 

[Ladewig]

The critics of the psychon concept essentially react in the same as the critics of Kepler's new astronomy 400 years ago: "As long as you cannot show the gravitational forces between objects in a visible way, your theory as just an unfounded hypothesis". Modern reductionism is simply a more sophisticated variant of naive realism: souls cannot exist, because we cannot see them.

To paraphrase Robert Park: "To wear the mantle of Kepler, it is not enough to be persecuted by an unkind establishment. One must also be right."

 

[Slimething]

But more importantly - the evidence for this claim to be raised to the level of a scientific hypothesis is what?

Precisely. Either Wolfgang has no idea what science is or he has a very low opinion of it. This psychon thing would be better described leaving off the "n". No substance in it at all. I just hope I have a trash bag large enough to hold it.

 

[GeeMack]

It has always been a pleasure for me to defend my theories from counterarguments, for it is easy to defend something as correct as pandualism and difficult for the other side to defend something as inconsistent and absurd as pure materialism. (In principle I know that the best way to force others to continue with their erroneous believes is to call these believes 'absurd', 'grotesque' and so on.)

The critics of the psychon concept essentially react in the same as the critics of Kepler's new astronomy 400 years ago: "As long as you cannot show the gravitational forces between objects in a visible way, your theory as just an unfounded hypothesis". Modern reductionism is simply a more sophisticated variant of naive realism: souls cannot exist, because we cannot see them.

It is a fact that the information of the genetic make-up of a human is a far cry from what is needed in order to transform a fertilized egg only into a human body, let alone into a person with intelligence and consciousness.

There are two approaches to this problem:

1) The dogmatic approach either ignores (i.e. psychologically suppresses) the argument or assumes a miraculous (logically impossible) information increase during ontogensis.

2) The logically consistent (i.e. scientific) approach leads to the simple conclusion, that apart from the material information another kind of information must exist.

Is that you, Mozina? Okay, maybe not. Same distorted misunderstanding of science, though. Different woo. Cousin, brother, daughter maybe?

 

[EHLO]

Wolfgang, although your hypothesis seems sound, how would you reconcile it with my quantum condensation theory of soul? This theory suggests a zero-dimensional energy field called the 'ethereal unity' that came into existence with the universe, and may have actually spawned the universe in the first place.

When modeling consciousness, and more specifically self-awareness, as a quantum resonant state (akin to a thought trapped between two mirrors) it can be shown that an energy well manifests into which a reciprocal component of the ethereal unity will condense, forming a localized coherency which binds with the consciousness forming what we have come to call 'the soul'.

Thus, any self-aware consciousness can manifest a soul and furthermore receive from and imprint upon that soul psycho-physical traits which will be imparted to the ethereal unity upon death and passed with various efficacy to future manifestations.

The quantum condensation theory of soul neatly explains human notions of reincarnation and, in a generalised form, God, ghosts and many of the so called 'Psi' phenomena.

Unfortunately to directly test this theory requires an artificial consciousness capable of controlled levels of self-awareness which we don't currently posses. So until we do it's just the best theory I can think of that fits all the facts.