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Reincarnation Is A FACT!!!!!!!!

Space_Ed said:
Ofcourse their methodology is flawed. I don't think there could be a methodology for this type of research that wasn't flawed. How would you go about finding evidence for fraud? I don't think that you could invent any method that is any more effective than their methods of reasoning. Unless they built a time machine and and invisibility cape..... lol
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Actually I don't think it would be that difficult. For historical cases, a paper analysis is all that can be done obviously. However, in cases where you are interviewing the actual people involved, it would not be difficult to think of tests that could done under controlled conditions of the alleged reincarnated person's knowledge. For example, get an item of clothing from the decedent's family, and then purchase 5 similar items brand new. Have the alleged reincarnated person try to pick out the right outfit with no one else in the room and bring it out. The same thing could be done by giving lists of names, places, etc.

There is no guarantee that the person might not have seen the clothes or heard the names before, but this is at least a start in the right direction. It is not that difficult to get some modest controls in place if you want to do it and are willing to try to avoid fraud as much as possible. The most important aspect is to eliminate any chance that the person will be cued by someone else, even unintentionally.

As for the "reasoning" of the researchers, it is atrocious. It amounts to no more than an argument from incredulity that they cannot understand why people would make up stories like this. Every believer in every phenomenon over the hundreds of years these sorts of claims have been investigated has made this exact argument. However, we know beyond doubt that countless times these sorts of claims have been shown to be frauds or mistakes of one kind or another. Given the history of these sorts of claims falling apart under scrutiny, and given the fact that the researchers seem completely oblivious to this history and did nothing whatsoever to test the subjects, why would you trust any of these stories? The fact that they apparently did not even attempt to apply controls of any sort to the subjects is for me an open and shut case that their methodology is beyond sloppy and completely worthless.

They might as well have saved their money for plane tickets and just had people write down their stories and send them to them in the mail. Their methodology is just that bad.
 
An excerpt from Life Before Life:

Experimental Birthmarks

As I described earlier, experimental birthmarks are practised in several Asian countries. Someone, usually a member or close family friend, makes a mark on the body of a dying or deceased person, often with soot or paste, in the belief that when the individual is reborn, the baby will bear a birthmark that corresponds to the mark made on the body. The marker often says a prayer while making the mark, asking that the dying person take the mark with him or her to the new body. A child is later born with a birthmark that is said to match the marking made on the body.

Dr Stevenson was the first person in the West to fully document this practice, but other authors have mentioned it. For instance, the Dalai Lama wrote in his autobiography about a case that occured in his family. His younger brother died at two years of age. A small mark was made on the boy's body in the same place where the first body had been marked.

That case is fairly typical of the cases that we have found. Dr Stevenson describes twenty such cases in Reincarnation And Biology, and Jurgen Keil and I found eighteen more during trips to Thailand and Myanmar. In these cases, the mark is usually made with the expectation that the reincarnated individual will be born into the same family as the deceased individual, and fifteen of our eighteen cases were same-family. This would seem to lessen the chances that the marking and the birthmark matched simply out of coincidence, compared to a situation where any baby in the area could be considered the re-birth of the deceased individual.

In addition, in six of our eighteen cases, the children had also made statements that related to the previous life, and some of the other children were so young when we saw them that they may have later made statements. Some of the cases feature behaviours as well as statements that suggest a connection between the subject and the previous personality, while in others, the birthmarks are the only sign of connection.

One case that Dr Keil and I investigated can serve as a good example. Kloy Matwiset is a boy who was born in Thailand in 1990. Eleven months before he was born, his maternal grandmother died of diabetes. Before she died, she told her daughter-in-law that she would like to be reborn as a male so that she could have a mistress as her husband did. The day after she died, her daughter-in-law used white paste to make a mark down the back of her neck sp that she could recognise her mother-in-law when she was reborn.

Kloy's mother had an announcing dream when she was three months pregnant in which the grandmother said that she wanted to be reborn to her. His mother said that she wanted to be reborn to her. His mother had seen the mark made on his grandmother's body. When Kloy was born, she noticed that he had a birthmark on the back of his neck in the same place where the mark had been made. we met him and saw a very noticeable vertical pale discolouration on the back of his neck. The marker confirmed that this unusual birthmark was in the same place that she had marked his grandmother's body.

When Kloy was quite young he made several statements about the previous life. He said that he was his grandmother and told his mother that he was her mother. He also said that his grandmother's rice fields belong to him. In addition he showed a number of feminine behaviours. He said that he wanted to be a girl, and as a young child, he generally sat down to urinate (Space Ed- the ****?). He also enjoyed wearing women's clothing and wore his mothers lipstick and earrings, and dresses many times. At school, he enjoyed playing and studying with the girls rather than the boys, and he did not engage in typical male behaviours for boys in that area such as climbing trees. Both of his parents complained about his feminine behaviours, and they said that they never talked to him about being the rebirht of his grandmother.

His feminine behaviours suggest that he has what is known as a gender identity disorder....



At last! An explanation for Bangkok Chick-Boys!
 
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I just thought of something.... they should write a number or something like a pattern on someone. See if that gets through.
 
blutoski said:
I'm reading a textbook that was intended for psychology undergrads that is focused on distinguishing between scientific versus pseudoscientific approaches. I'll post the author's checklist when I get home.
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Here we go:

Title: Scientific Perspectives on Pseudoscience and the Paranormal
Author: Timothy J. Lawson
Published: 2007

Here are his three signs of scientific investigation:
  • Systematic
  • Independent Verification
  • Explicit Solvable Problems

And the signs of unscientific investigation:
  • Imprecise Claims/Questions
  • Lack of Progress
  • Overreliance on Testimonials / Personal Experience
  • Appeals to Questionable or False Authority
  • Extraordinary Claims Supported by Merely Ordinary Evidence
  • Investigations Are Exercises in Confirmation, Rather Than Attempts at Refutation
 
Space_Ed said:
I just thought of something.... they should write a number or something like a pattern on someone. See if that gets through.
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I think there's still a lot of wiggle-room and opportunity for misremembering or fraud here, though.

I did some ghost investigations last summer, and one of the kids had a 'birthmark' shaped like a K, which they interpreted to be a sign from a deceased person who may have lived on the property. The historians in our group hit the archives, and discovered that somebody whose middle name started with K had lived about five km away for a few years before moving to Ontario. Apparently, this was proof that the guy was communicating through the boy's skin or something (I never understood the actual conclusion about this)

I pointed out that the previous summer, we had bee presented with fresh scratches in the shape of a K in this exact location.

Somehow over the year, a K-shaped wound had morphed into a K-shaped birthmark. Either way, the parents were sure it was a sign from beyond the grave.

So, this anecdote brings four thoughts to light:
  • it wasn't really shaped like a K. Just a little bit, and that wiggle room created a 'fit' where one might not normally be.
  • it wasn't there when the kid was born, yet a few years later, it was referred to as a 'birthmark'.
  • with a mind to point #2, it could have been added on purpose (my opinion is that it was three independent scratches, happening over time)
  • the parents were almost certainly sincere - but there's no doubt that they were wrong about this being a birthmark. I had taken photos of the scratches the previous summer.

The point is that even stuff that seems clear-cut can be iffy when investigated.

The original scratches were so utterly ordinary and so unlike a proper K that I had to suppress a laugh when making my notes in front of the family.
 
blutoski said:
I think there's still a lot of wiggle-room and opportunity for misremembering or fraud here, though.

I did some ghost investigations last summer, and one of the kids had a 'birthmark' shaped like a K, which they interpreted to be a sign from a deceased person who may have lived on the property. The historians in our group hit the archives, and discovered that somebody whose middle name started with K had lived about five km away for a few years before moving to Ontario. Apparently, this was proof that the guy was communicating through the boy's skin or something (I never understood the actual conclusion about this)

I pointed out that the previous summer, we had bee presented with fresh scratches in the shape of a K in this exact location.

Somehow over the year, a K-shaped wound had morphed into a K-shaped birthmark. Either way, the parents were sure it was a sign from beyond the grave.

So, this anecdote brings four thoughts to light:
  • it wasn't really shaped like a K. Just a little bit, and that wiggle room created a 'fit' where one might not normally be.
  • it wasn't there when the kid was born, yet a few years later, it was referred to as a 'birthmark'.
  • with a mind to point #2, it could have been added on purpose (my opinion is that it was three independent scratches, happening over time)
  • the parents were almost certainly sincere - but there's no doubt that they were wrong about this being a birthmark. I had taken photos of the scratches the previous summer.

The point is that even stuff that seems clear-cut can be iffy when investigated.

The original scratches were so utterly ordinary and so unlike a proper K that I had to suppress a laugh when making my notes in front of the family.
Click to expand...

Ha.
 
Space_Ed said:
We are of one mind.

You cannot dismiss the evidence as anecdotal until you have looked at it and as I put this thread up 3 minutes ago that is hardly enough time for you to make a fair evaluation.
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Ed- keep in mind that this is not the first time this subject has been considered here.
Three minutes is too many.:rolleyes:
 
Space_Ed said:
Kloy's mother had an announcing dream when she was three months pregnant in which the grandmother said that she wanted to be reborn to her. His mother said that she wanted to be reborn to her. His mother had seen the mark made on his grandmother's body. When Kloy was born, she noticed that he had a birthmark on the back of his neck in the same place where the mark had been made. we met him and saw a very noticeable vertical pale discolouration on the back of his neck. The marker confirmed that this unusual birthmark was in the same place that she had marked his grandmother's body.
Click to expand...

This keeps getting worse by the minute. Here is what this amounts to: a family with obviously extremely deep beliefs in reincarnation tell a "researcher" this story, and the "researcher" swallows it hook, line and sinker. The possibility that the mother is misremembering or engaging in active fraud is dismissed. The boy has a birthmark, and this is seen as proof of the entire story. This is not sloppy methodology, its no methodology at all. People tell this person stories and they simply record them as fact. This is not an investigation at all, it is simply transcribing alleged accounts.

Space_Ed said:
When Kloy was quite young he made several statements about the previous life. He said that he was his grandmother and told his mother that he was her mother. He also said that his grandmother's rice fields belong to him. In addition he showed a number of feminine behaviours. He said that he wanted to be a girl, and as a young child, he generally sat down to urinate (Space Ed- the ****?). He also enjoyed wearing women's clothing and wore his mothers lipstick and earrings, and dresses many times. At school, he enjoyed playing and studying with the girls rather than the boys, and he did not engage in typical male behaviours for boys in that area such as climbing trees. Both of his parents complained about his feminine behaviours, and they said that they never talked to him about being the rebirht of his grandmother.
Click to expand...

Yes, I'm sure they never, ever mentioned the idea that they were convinced he was his grandmother reincarnated either to him or in front of other adults when they didn't think he was listening. :rolleyes:

Space_Ed said:
His feminine behaviours suggest that he has what is known as a gender identity disorder....
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Right....or, perhaps, it suggests that all the adults in his life convinced him that he was a reincarnated old woman, and so that is his self image. And now they are upset that the boy is playing the role they have created for him.
 
Space_Ed said:
I just thought of something.... they should write a number or something like a pattern on someone. See if that gets through.
Click to expand...

There's absolutely no reason for that. Besides the fact that it encourages people to mutilate babies to create matching "birth marks", simple tests done under carefully controlled conditions of the person's knowledge could determine if there is any "there" there. The critical point is that the tests have to be controlled to ensure the person being tested isn't "cued" by someone else, the same way you test a cold reader. It's really not that difficult to think of some controlled tests that could be done if the goal is to actually investigate the claims and not just report them.
 
Space_Ed said:
The problem with the explanation of fraud is that for the vast majority of cases, the family has absolutely no reason to make up such a story.
Click to expand...

And yet, fraud is a vastly superior explanation than reincarnation, simply because we know it exists.
 
Space_Ed said:
I just googled 'birthmark' to see if anyone had tried my idea. This is subjective ofcourse but there is an apple, a christmas tree and a guys name written in arabic.

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/46/144300100_0b0cb45151.jpg

http://www.jamd.com/image/g/2791396?partner=Google&epmid=1
http://cache.viewimages.com/xc/2791...35F8FA9CA92A67473C8527B7DC6F59930FDCFC4C15FBB
http://blogs.knoxnews.com/knx/southern/birthmark.jpg
Click to expand...

See: [Pareidolia]

The key being "this is subjective of course".

I'm betting that arabic-language speakers will attest that the kid's face birthmark is letters the same way that old man's liver spot is a christmas tree. ie: if you sqint just right.
 
Space_Ed said:
Hi. I just did the dramatic thread title to get your attention... buuuutt there does appear to be pretty strong evidence of reincarnation. The evidence is predominantly events where young children appear to know many facts about other places that they could not have been to and people that they could not have met in their life. They claim that they know these facts because they were someone else in a previous life. Some of these claims are backed up by correlations between birth marks and wounds on the body of the 'previous personality'.
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Why assume that they're reincarnated? Maybe children telepathically pick up random memories of deceased persons!

Theres a whole slew of wooish interpretations you can make of the alleged phenomenon :p
 
Space_Ed said:
Anyone got any comments on the video I linked?

Here it is again: http://www.ial.goldthread.com/clips/tucker.wmv
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Ya, the guy goes to India and Sri Lanka to find cases where people claim one person they know is the reincarnation of another dead person they knew?
Is reincarnation more common among people who believe in it? 'Cause that would sure seem to taint the results?

The supposedly reincarnated child did not know the person that they are supposedly reincarnating, but the person making the claim must have. Otherwise how would they be able to report the behavior was the same?
It seems obvious there would be both conscious and unconscious clues given to the child and pressure placed upon the child. This explains why the phenomenon is more common is countries that believe in the phenomenon: placebo.

Also, statistics dictate some children will necessarily bear striking resemblance to someone who is dead. Even if there is no influence by the people around, its still bound to happen and have no implications for the paranormal.

Have you ever heard of hot and cold reading? My first explanation is the analog of hot reading and my second is the analog of cold reading.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, these don't even pass the muster of a very lenient science(say anthropology). At the very least they would need a statistical study to demonstrate that these cases are happening more than often than chance. He says they have 100s of cases out of billions of people....actually they are finding this far less than statistics would suggest they should, even with a cultural bias.

The speaker claims that the families have no incentive to generate these claims...sure except for validating their most deeply held beliefs.

The speaker says he'd like to find more cases in the united states so that he can find cases where cultural bias isn't a factor. What? It's a factor in every case? That seems to disprove his claims.
 
zosima said:
Ya, the guy goes to India and Sri Lanka to find cases where people claim one person they know is the reincarnation of another dead person they knew?
Is reincarnation more common among people who believe in it? 'Cause that would sure seem to taint the results?

The supposedly reincarnated child did not know the person that they are supposedly reincarnating, but the person making the claim must have. Otherwise how would they be able to report the behavior was the same?
It seems obvious there would be both conscious and unconscious clues given to the child and pressure placed upon the child. This explains why the phenomenon is more common is countries that believe in the phenomenon: placebo.

Also, statistics dictate some children will necessarily bear striking resemblance to someone who is dead. Even if there is no influence by the people around, its still bound to happen and have no implications for the paranormal.

Have you ever heard of hot and cold reading? My first explanation is the analog of hot reading and my second is the analog of cold reading.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, these don't even pass the muster of a very lenient science(say anthropology). At the very least they would need a statistical study to demonstrate that these cases are happening more than often than chance. He says they have 100s of cases out of billions of people....actually they are finding this far less than statistics would suggest they should, even with a cultural bias.

The speaker claims that the families have no incentive to generate these claims...sure except for validating their most deeply held beliefs.

The speaker says he'd like to find more cases in the united states so that he can find cases where cultural bias isn't a factor. What? It's a factor in every case? That seems to disprove his claims.
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Thanks for the reply :)

I do not agree with all of your assertions. But firstly, yes they do find it easier to find cases in countries with a belief in reincarnation. These people will be more willing to share their stories and ofcourse more likely to take the child seriously. This would be the case if reincarnation was taking place and if it wasn't. The fact that more cases are reported in these countries does not sway the argument either way. I would actually say that the fact that people who do not believe in reincarnation report having children saying this type of thing is potentially more persuasive of prorenincarnation than the fact that people who initially believe in reincarnation report children saying these things is persuasive against reincarnation. The argument that these people are more likely to be deluding themselves is ofcourse extremely valid.

They report that the behaviour is similar to the previous personality when they meet people who knew the previous personality. Sometimes the reincarnees are from the same family (which ofcourse is more likely to do with genetics or body language obtained from individuals who knew the PP). But other times the child has no connection to the previous personality. Anyway you shouldn't take this as evidence because its far too subjective. You cannot analyse this scientifically.

I completely disagree when you compare the phenomenon to the placebo effect. The mind is extremely complex and powerful and is able to distort and/or create reality but how could the brain implant a series of extremely verifiable facts about an individual that the child has has no (apparent) contact with? Like Dr Tucker says- coincidence in these incidences is 'preposterous'.

Ofcourse some people will look similar this is innevitable. This type of evidence should not be taken seriously as it is subjective. Although it does contribute to the suggestive evidence. I agree, this is not necessarily an indication of the paranormal.

Your assertion that because the have only a few hundred cases (+2,500 to date) this implies that the phenomenon cannot be real because there are billions of people, I feel is silly. The obvious objection to what you said is that perhaps they have a small team? Perhaps these cases are hard to find? Perhaps reincarnation is a rare event and usually people do just die? Your rationalisation there is not, to my eyes, rational.

I agree that Dr Tucker is wrong to say that the families have nothing to gain from it. But a lot of these cases occur with people who have no inclinations towards this type of thinking. It would be strange for them to suddenly think this to make themselves feel better. Although there is always the possibility. Doubtful though for all these cases.

Er the last paragraph you wrote... cultural bias is not a factor in many of the cases and even if there were cultural bias (which there is) this does not disprove his claims. It only makes them less credible.
 
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