I hadn't learned to use the quote feature then, so it wasn't obvious that it was in response to a question directed at me.
I find your example childish and overworked. There is no research being done into the existence of grues. There is research being done into the existence of reincarnation, and has been for several decades.
As much as you and others want me to throw you the ball so you can hit it, you can't make me change my agenda, which is to find a way to pursue reincarnationists that their research WOULD be accepted if it had certain qualities that are agreed upon by the majority of skeptics.
That's what this thread is about, whether you like it or not. It may be time to end it, but that's what it's about, to me at least. I'm not the boss of this thread, but I'm the boss of me.
Well, I did say, “Of course, this is all silly.” It is an analogy to demonstrate the problems inherent in attempting to provide proof of reincarnation. Specifically, that it is an obsolete theory and resurrecting without cause is like the grue—a solution in search of a problem.
We are expected to devise a test that can prove reincarnation. Yet we have unexplained phenomenon for which we are using reincarnation as a hypothesis to begin building a test. We have no logical explanation or theory of reincarnation by which we could attempt to investigate segments of the reincarnation process or logically required prediction of the theory that could be tested. We don’t, as we might expect if reincarnation were true, have tens of thousands, or even millions, of accounts of people exhibiting strong evidence of reincarnation that we can analyze.
So in what direction do we go to find this proof? Well, the grue analogy was meant to point out that in this type of situation, you end up with a solution in search of a problem, and the search end up directionless. If a person pursues this proof, what we get is something like the life’s work of
Dr. Ian Stevenson. We get a large pile of rambling data, with some confirmation bias thrown in. Nothing to prove reincarnation (even as Stevenson admits), and also no evidence that is accepted as falsifying reincarnation. This, of course, allows reincarnation researchers to go on and on and on forever and never getter nearer to the truth.
This brings us back to the original question: WOULD BE SUFFICIENT TO PROVE REINCARNATION?
I think the answer is fairly obvious (in regards to past life memory). We would first need observable data of an unexplainable phenomenon for which reincarnation is a more plausible explanation than cheating, subconscious memory, logical deduction, or coincidence or lucky guessing. Of course these things are very difficult, if not impossible to measure. And this does not give a specific, concrete example of what skeptics would accept as proof of reincarnation.
The original post seems to be asking this: What is the specific X that reincarnation researchers could provide that would result in skeptics believing that reincarnation is real so that I can go to the reincarnation researchers and tell them, “You just need to provide evidence X and skeptics will accept reincarnation.”
Of course, there is no X. Or if there is an X, it would be something like “A few hundred extremely well-documented case where a child provided information that could not be known or logically deduced and is that would be completely off the charts in terms of probability or coincidence and that was verifiable and was verified as 100% accurate where there is absolutely, positively no chance that the child could have known the information by any other normal means whatsoever.”
In a “set up” thread this is the point where the original poster does the “gotcha” and points out that skeptics are close minded and won’t accept any evidence or will only accept entirely, ridiculously, impossible-to-obtain evidence and won’t be open to the truth and reincarnation is beyond the realm of science because science can’t explain everything and science is just a religion and pseudo-skeptics are just worshippers of Randi who blindly dismiss any claims according to what the pseudo-skeptic dogma decrees, and so on.
I’ve tried to point out why reincarnation (or more specially, past life memory) would be so difficult to prove and why there is no “X marks the spot” that reincarnation researchers can provide that will be convincing evidence of reincarnation, and that the mountain of combination of very excepted evidence that could fit the bill is probably not obtainable, and that it is not a worthy pursuit.
The actually answer is: only overwhelming extraordinary incontrovertible evidence lacking another possible explanation would begin to open the door to the plausibility that reincarnation is true. You can take that truth to the reincarnation researchers that you are trying to debunk, but that answer seems quite obvious and I have a hunch its not going to get you very far.
