Reincarnation

[jon88]

First of all hi all, I joined the forums the other day and have been browsing some of the topics and found lots of interesting discussion.

Over the last couple of months I have become a spiritual person. Im not talking about crystal balls or palm reading, but about spiritual ideas taught by the Buddha and Eckhart Tolle and various other teachers. I dont see these ideas as religious at all, I see them as a philosophy and a great way to live your life.

One idea that is mentioned when it comes to spirituality is reincarnation. This is obviously the belief that you have had many past lives and that you will live again after you die.
Now I can understand this is hard to believe, as its very hard to prove something like this and I've had problems myself coming to terms with this idea.

However I came across a man by the name of Professor Ian Stevenson. He was a scientist who devoted his life to the research of reincarnation. He traveled the world interviewing children and their families over the claims of the children that they had lived past lives. The child could answer many questions about their past lives, for example their old names, how they died, the names of their friends and family plus many other things. Stevenson would then go to the part of the world were the child claimed to have lived and died in a past life and the information turned out to be true. He would find the families of the person who the child had claimed to be and the way they died, their names and other information was all correct.

He had a very scientific approach and had many criteria that he used to ensure he could be as accurate as possible. Unfortunetely, his research was never taken seriously by the science community because it challenged so many ideas that I think they chose to just "ignore it".

Its my first post so I cant post any links, but search Ian Stevenson in wikipedia or google and also "reincarnation research" into wikipedia. It is a field that has had a lot of research but most people dont know because the science community has just ignored it.

Anyway have a search on Stevenson and reincarnation, and post back your thoughts and ideas.

Cheers all

 

[Fnord]

He had a very scientific approach and had many criteria that he used to ensure he could be as accurate as possible. Unfortunetely, his research was never taken seriously by the science community because it challenged so many ideas that I think they chose to just "ignore it".

Ideas like verification of experiment and data by independent replication and research? It's called the 'Scientific Method' - you should read up on it.

 

[Hokulele]

Reincarnation and Stevenson most recently demolished discussed in this thread.

 

[jon88]

Thanks for the link. After reading the thread I cant say that it has changed my opinion. Sure his research probably did have some flaws and I agree the bit about birthmarks is debatable. His work is not scientific proof of reincarnation I agree, but how can you scientifically prove it anyway? And how can you scientifically prove it does'nt exist? Even sceince has to accept the fact that its impossible to say what happens when you die because no 'Scientific Method' can be carried out on what happens after death. However most people are quick to dismiss the theory that there is something after the death of the physical body because it cant be proven.

I suppose if your coming from a scientific skeptical mindset this is not a belief that you could take on yourself as it goes against western science. If you require scientific evidence to believe in something then reincarnation is not for you. However personally I dont need science to tell me it does or doesnt exist. Human conciousness is a vast topic and quite simply for me the view of science is too black and white. For me the buddha knew more about it than a scientist could ever know.

However we are all free to have our beliefs and ideas, and I simply see reincarnation as a better belief. Its more comforting to believe you have many chances at life instead of just one. For me that feeling outweighs the need to scientifically prove it.

Cheers all

 

[Rufo]

Welcome to the forum!

Reincarnation is a difficult subject to research properly. I have heard about these works as well, but I have never read them. However, if you want these ideas crash tested mercilessly (as all scientific ideas should be), then you have come to the right place.

In fact, the Wikipedia article links to a review of one of Stevenson's books written by one of this forum's long-time contributors, Claus Larsen. If you are interested in a critical take on "Children who Remember Previous Lives", the review is here.

 

[jon88]

Thanks I'll have a read

 

[kerikiwi]

However we are all free to have our beliefs and ideas, and I simply see reincarnation as a better belief. Its more comforting to believe you have many chances at life instead of just one. For me that feeling outweighs the need to scientifically prove it.

Cheers all

We are of course free to believe whatever nonsense we want.
You see reincarnation as a 'better belief'. Better than what?
It may be more comforting to believe in reincarnation, but comfort does not make things true. I may well prefer it not to rain when there are things I want to do outdoors. I would be more comfortable, but that won't change the fact that it is raining.

 

[Magyar]

Here is a question for you. If reincarnation works how does it work?

I mean lets say I die in a minute - how long does my whatever wait around to find another body to be reborn into? Is there a Que? Do I have to take a test in the - where do I go anyway? --- to qualify for the next body? Like if I get an A on the test do I get to come back as some swank millionaire who gets to have menage a trios every night but if I get a C I come back as Ben Stein or something?

and if people are jsut in this spinning wash machine from beginning to end how do you explain the increase population?


Hey MAYBE that's it. All the new souls are born again fundies with their souls up their buts!? Or do the soul(?) just divide - maybe that's why there are so many knuckleheads out there.


Oh also, WHY is EVERYONE a reincarnation of some FAMOUS person like Kings and queens and such but are total losers in this life? You can't believe the number of people I've met who were Louis the XIV for example.

 

[Frankenstyle]

And how can you scientifically prove it does'nt exist?

A lot of people get hung up on the statement that "science can't prove ____ doesn't exist", and use it to validate their position. It's true that no amount of scientific research can prove that "X" does not exist, but the fact that it's not possible to prove a negative is part of the basic foundation of the scientific method.

I can claim that the reason lids on pickle jars are hard to open is because invisible demons who love pickles are pressing down on the lid, trying to get in the jar. A scientist can study the jars, and say "Well, the jars are as proportionately difficult to open as the amount of friction between the lid and jar, combined with the efficiency of vacuum packing".

I can claim, "Nuh-unnh. It's because of invisible demons that your fancy testing gear can't see. You can't prove they don't exist". True, science can't prove they don't exist, but because a reasonable alternative has been presented that can be independently verified with consistent results, then there is no reason to presume the existence of invisible pickle loving demons. At this point the scientist would be expected to back away slowly without breaking eye contact, and go off to busy himself with other more productive things.

Not to sound nit-picky, but when talking with people inclined toward critical thinking this is often a big barrier to real dialog.

Its more comforting to believe you have many chances at life instead of just one. For me that feeling outweighs the need to scientifically prove it.

I may not agree with your point, but I want to commend you for recognizing your belief system as a source of personal comfort and preference, rather than a universal truth that must be justified by any means necessary, and embraced by all for no other reason the validation.

Umm...I was trying to be nice there, but it sounds a little stiff, sorry.

 

[Showmeproof]

Children have a remarkable imagination.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

This is obviously the belief that you have had many past lives and that you will live again after you die.

This "you" you refer to is actually a bunch of stuff that we know beyond any reasonable doubt are functions of the brain (memory, thinking, perception, language, etc.) That is, these functions correlate with various brain activity measures (fMRI for instance). Changes in these functions correlate with changes in the brain, as from injury or drugs.

Let's take memory, as just one of these. How do you get memory from one brain that is dying or dead to another brain that is just developing? Is there some extra-somatic carrier of this stuff?

Someone on one of the OBE threads suggested there is a "spiritual" body (with a corresponding "spiritual" brain). He said that body couldn't interact with normal physical stuff. The problem is that he didn't think seeing was an interaction (it is). More to the point here, this notion doesn't address the relationship between a physical brain and a non-physical brain (which most people call "the soul").

Given this huge burden of unanswered questions facing the reincarnation theory, what level of evidence do you think would be sufficient to accept the claim?

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

More on memory:

If the part of "you" that is your memory were controlled by something other than the brain, then memory should remain unaffected by brain changes such as stroke, brain trauma, age-related atrophy, plaques and tangles from Alzheimer's, and so on.

After all, the reincarnation theory claims that memory can survive death. If that were true, then how come all these things that are far short of death can have such profound effects on memory?

 

[CurtC]

And how can you scientifically prove it does'nt exist? Even sceince has to accept the fact that its impossible to say what happens when you die because no 'Scientific Method' can be carried out on what happens after death. However most people are quick to dismiss the theory that there is something after the death of the physical body because it cant be proven.

It's not that we're quick to dismiss the idea, it's that the evidence has been examined and found to be not credible. You're claiming, at the same time, that you don't need evidence, AND claiming that Stevenson provides evidence. What he provides is worthless. If you want to believe reincarnation happens in spite of the resounding lack of evidence, go ahead, but you should probably drop the references to Stevenson.

I suppose if your coming from a scientific skeptical mindset this is not a belief that you could take on yourself as it goes against western science.

Goes against western science? Well, if you consider the fact that everything we have learned about the brain strongly indicates that our personalities are the result of electrochemical processes in the physical brain, then yes, reincarnation goes against that. But it's not "western" science - it's science as in the search for the truth of how the natural world works.

 

[Showmeproof]

"And how can you scientifically prove it does'nt exist?"

Ah, a last ditch effort to prove something by saying "science cant prove it doesn't exist." When someone uses this argument, you know they are running out of good arguments.

 

[lupus_in_fabula]

Hi Jon, welcome!

After reading the thread I cant say that it has changed my opinion. Sure his research probably did have some flaws and I agree the bit about birthmarks is debatable. His work is not scientific proof of reincarnation I agree, but how can you scientifically prove it anyway? And how can you scientifically prove it does'nt exist? Even sceince has to accept the fact that its impossible to say what happens when you die because no 'Scientific Method' can be carried out on what happens after death. However most people are quick to dismiss the theory that there is something after the death of the physical body because it cant be proven.

Is there any other reason to accept the theory of reincarnation except from personal liking of it?

I suppose if your coming from a scientific skeptical mindset this is not a belief that you could take on yourself as it goes against western science. If you require scientific evidence to believe in something then reincarnation is not for you. However personally I dont need science to tell me it does or doesnt exist. Human conciousness is a vast topic and quite simply for me the view of science is too black and white. For me the buddha knew more about it than a scientist could ever know.

Is there any reason to believe Buddha knew something more about what happens after death?

However we are all free to have our beliefs and ideas, and I simply see reincarnation as a better belief. Its more comforting to believe you have many chances at life instead of just one. For me that feeling outweighs the need to scientifically prove it.

Well, it’s pretty obvious that you, and many other, don’t actually require scientific investigation and reasoning at all (personal comfort seems to be enough). Thus one might ask why you don’t go for the full prize and believe in, well, heaven and such – why settle for reincarnation when you can have whatever you wish to believe?

 

[Sunstar]

The concept of reincarnation from the Hindu perspective is that everybody has an astral body that is a double exactly almost of the physical body (except for things like chakras). When you die your astral body goes to an astral heaven and after a while the soul and body go back into the united sperm and ovum.

So far so good. Except...

There is no evidence of an astral body at all. Vitalism is pretty much had its day. And people are not born aware of any astral body - they claim it exists after they do meditation exercises.

There are undoubtedly many experiences people can have that cannot yet be explained by science. Likewise, there are things in the universe that science hasn't come around to grappling with and understanding yet. But wheneven science DOES understand something, anything supernatural or paranormal ceases to exist. These gaps in our present understanding do not need to be filled with supernatural explanations, especially when such explanations explain nothing anyway.

There are untold problems with the idea of reincarnation. Too many to mention.

Probably part of the belief in reincarnation stems from the OBE.

 

[Bikewer]

Of all the afterlife ideas, I always kind of liked reincarnation. Makes a lot more sense than the "one-shot-lifetime" promised by the Abrahamic faiths.
None of these people have ever reconciled the problem of all the different paths life may take, and it's disparate length...
Presumably, a dreadful sinner who lives to be 90 can have a last-minute conversion experience and then zip! Into Heaven....
While the 17-year-old first-time wanker who's run over by a bus the next day is Hellbound for sure...

Having lots of lives to somehow "refine" one's...whatever...makes more sense in terms of cosmic justice. No more sense otherwise, however; it's still just another religious idea to somehow cheat death.

Funny stuff.... I once read a book by a Wiccan fellow who hypothesized that the souls of "inferior" humans were actually the souls of great apes who were on their way "up".
Hard to reconcile with the numbers of idiots contrasted with the shrinking numbers of gorillas.....

 

[Correa Neto]

...snip...Is there any reason to believe Buddha knew something more about what happens after death?
...snip...

Chances are even now he does not know...

Now, seriously, how could one seek for reincarnation evidence?
To this issue, one must add the problems which lie within the very reincarnation concept.

For example...

How can we talk about souls passing from one body to another when we can't even agree on what souls are and the evidence for their existence is shaky at best?

What about population increase? How are the new souls created?

How can one reconciliate evolution with reincarnation?

I could go on, even on the specifics of certain doctrines such as Kardecism. When I think about them, despite their initial appeal when compared with other religious systems such Christianism, severe inconsistencies appear. And these inconsistencies or implausibilities can be as big as those found say, at Mormonism.

 

[Soapy Sam]

The notion of transmigration of souls is one I found interesting in my teens, but I rejected it on fairly commonsense grounds, mostly already mentioned in the thread.
We need a method whereby some memory can be transmitted to later generations- an apparently fragmentary and unreliable method. Now while I can think of no way this can happen via the germ plasm, the one thing we know that IS passed from generation to generation, is DNA, with all it's associated junk and HERV relicts.
It therefore seems hugely more likely that any genuine evidence of memory transmission would be due to some as yet unknown quirk of DNA than due to the transmission of an etherial entity for which we have no evidence at all.

This , I stress, assumes that there IS any evidence for memory survival. This is an assumption I have yet to see seriously supported, Stevenson included.

Recently, there has been speculation about heart transplant recipients acquiring personal characteristics of the donor. While I do not personally accept that a valid case has been made, there is at least a clear transmission of physical tissue in these cases, so there might be some unknown molecular memory effect involved, unlikely as it seems. If any such mechanism is ever proven, it would , I suggest, be the final nail in the coffin of the transmigratable soul.

 

[Correa Neto]

Well, in the hypothetical memory transmition by DNA case (transplants apart) the transmitted informations would be from the parents or some other ancestor. If the person whose memories were transmitted is still alive, reincarnation can be ruled out.

Of course, one could say its an evidence of amoeba-like soul reproduction...