What Evidence Would Be Sufficient To Prove Reincarnation?

[Illiadus]

I know, Sledge. The stupid little prick doesn't know his aircraft.

Let's say the kid had gotten it right, though, would that have convinced you, personally? Wouldn't you, like me, get suspicious if he knew too many details?

Is it a lose-lose situation, or could that case have convinced you if it had played out differently?

 

[Illiadus]

Iaca, I don't know what you mean by that. Maybe it's a cultural thing, but I'm unsure about the metaphor. I'm Swedish, we don't go to the doctor unless we're dying.

 

[Sideroxylon]

Sideroxylon, I hesitate to mention this, because I'm not a believer in reincarnation and I'm certainly not defending the existing evidence, on the contrary, but a man named Arthur Flowerdew, who claimed a past life in the ancient city of Petra, actually went to Jordan with an archeological expert who claimed that Flowerdew "filled in details... consistent with known archeological and historical facts" and supposedly identified the locations of many landmarks that had yet to be excavated.

So, obviously, that type of evidence is not going to convince the world of reincarnation. Judging by this and your first post, I can't help but wonder if you're really familiar with the accumulated evidence that's generally held up by believers in reincarnation?

Either way, thank you for your contribution and I hope I didn't offend you.

No offense taken. I don't claim to have a wide knowledge of reincarnation but I do have an interest in questions like what makes for good evidence and why people believe various things.

I am unfamiliar with Arthur Flowerdew but I am currious to know why you find it interesting enough to bring up. Should we regard it as more than just an anecdote?

I'll state again that good evidence would have to be repeated and rigorous.

ETA: Searched Flowerdew and remember this one.

 

[laca]

Iaca, I don't know what you mean by that. Maybe it's a cultural thing, but I'm unsure about the metaphor.

Guy: "Hey Doc, my friend has this problem that he sleeps around and now he's got a burning sensation when he pees!"
Doc: "OK, how long have you had the burning feeling?"
Guy:

 

[Illiadus]

Canis, thanks to you this thread just took a quantum leap, so I'll cut to the chase and ask everyone the following:

If belief in reincarnation started to spread in the general public and lead to things like appointing a child President of the USA, publishing books by untalented hacks because they're believed to have been Hemingway in a past life, teaching your kids that the universe is like a nice old grandfather that looks after you -- sometimes by killing you -- and your world suddenly became a twilight zone from which there was no escape, would you not then make an effort to come up with criteria that the public could agree on had not been met, to stop the madness?

It seems that, since belief in reincarnation has no negative practical consequences for most people, unlike e.g. creationism (in the US) or belief in witchcraft (in Africa), it's okay to neglect it, even though 20-25% of Americans and Europeans believe in it.

I'm just trying to be one step ahead, but clearly this is not the way.
Thanks to everyone who posted. Stay skeptical!

Thomas

 

[Sledge]

Which leads into something I mentioned earlier: surely belief in reincarnation would lead one to try and make the world a better place? If you don't know where you'll come back, or as what, wouldn't you do as much as possible to improve things so you're not born as an AIDS-infected baby in a shanty town?

 

[dafydd]

I'll try again:

If reincarnation was a real phenomenon, what evidence would prove its existence?

The population of the world is increasing.Where do all the new souls come from?

 

[Jack by the hedge]

Surely it can work the other way too. I'd read that one part of the Japanese culture which made them willing to fight to the death in WW2 was a belief in reincarnation. (I'm a bit vague, but I think in Shinto a soul is expected to be reincarnated in a new unborn after 40 days.)

Anyway, the crack about junior remembering grandpa's Swiss bank acount number made me think: You could hypothetically set up a blinded experiment, but it would take a fearfully long time. You would need a large number of volunteers who agreed that, when they were dying, they would make a deathbed random selection (pick five Zener cards in random order, maybe) show nobody, memorize it and seal it in an envelope. If you had witnesses to attest that they told nobody what they chose, then you have verifiable information which nobody but the dead person ever knew.

It would be a preposterous experiment, of course. Expecting a dying person to memorise some cards is unlikely enough without then expecting witnesses to watch over them until they died. Then you'd have to decide who to test to see if they were the reincarnation of that person and you'd have to repeat it a huge number of times to demonstrate a greater than guesswork effect. After all, it's not remotely usual for people to remember where grandma hid the share certificates etc, so you are chasing after an infinitessimal effect if it even existed at all.

 

[sadhatter]

Illiadus, you sound more and more like the guy who goes to the doctor and starts with "I have this friend who won't go to the doctor with this-and-that".

I might be wrong.

There has been a flood of these type of posters as of late. I find myself rolling my eyes enough that it is creating electricity.

As far as the op and saying " you wouldn't accept anything." lets look at the flip side of that kind of argument.

What if, maybe, just maybe reincarnation has been specifically designed to not be falsifiable, and moreso to be easily confirmed to people willing to believe it.

What if, someone sat down when thinking up the concept of reincarnation, or when attempting to promote it, and said " a decent minority of people have birthmarks that look , in some way like death wounds." or " Some kids can really excel when they are interested in a topic, and obtain skill levels as good or better than adults." or even " people have strange phobias sometimes." . And then said " if i work these in as the proof of reincarnation, then people will be more likely to believe it".

What would i accept as proof of reincarnation? Well a 4 day old child speaking would be a pretty good indication they had memories of a previous life. And while we are at it, why is that never the case? Why can they seem to remember the details of a plane they were in , but such a simple skill as speaking only comes about when the child has learned to speak?

Seriously, if people are being reincarnated the evidence would be obvious. Children within weeks of birth showing such things as the ability to speak, the ability to put together electronics ( if they were someone who could do this. ) or the ability to paint at or above an adult level. Why is it that the proof of reincarnation only comes when it would be possible to teach a kid knowledge, if there is knowledge being passed, it should be obvious from hour one of the kid being born.

To boil it all down, my statement on reincarnation is the following " proof for me of reincarnation would be time based. If a child were to show adult level aptitude in within a day or two of being born this would be very solid evidence for reincarnation. Unfortunately after the child is at a reasonable age to process thoughts and communicate, the child is open to manipulation thereby tainting the data. It seems very suspect to me that only when a child already would be able to process data, and receive instruction do signs of reincarnation show. "

 

[Marduk]

PixyMisa, as I say in the opening post, I'm looking for what to tell reincarnation researchers who'll say: "Whatever we do, you skeptics aren't going to accept it as evidence, so we might as well not listen to you."

whats your personal interest in proving reincarnation Illiadus
do you have a story ?

What would i accept as proof of reincarnation? Well a 4 day old child speaking would be a pretty good indication they had memories of a previous life. And while we are at it, why is that never the case? Why can they seem to remember the details of a plane they were in , but such a simple skill as speaking only comes about when the child has learned to speak?

Culture shock

 

[Aepervius]

I agree with sadhatter here. Every now and then we have a 4 or even 5 year old kid having enough knowledge of calculus or history or whatnot to go into bachalaureat. It is definitively notn reacincarnation, but parents pushing a kid on borderline child abuse teaching.

So really one would need to have a very very early kid already speaking long before kid normally speak, when it is physically possible (is that possible from birth or do the throat / tongue and so on ened to develop past a certain stage ?).

Or heck even writing long long before kids normally do. Making compelte sentence with for example cubes with the alphabet on it at a few day or week.

The things with the pilot fighter is that the kid could have snapped it somewhere else and more improtantly part of the info was incorrect.
So it is a really really dubious piece of evidence at best.

 

[Paulhoff]

What questions would reincarnation answer? None that I can think of that aren't silly to begin with. And who are all these new souls among us if it was true. This is just one more question that at its heart only shows the need not to die by many people.

Paul

 

[Sun Countess]

When we hear about a little boy supposedly remembering the name of a pilot he flew with in his past life, we assume the parents are making it up, putting some frills on it or just remembering it the wrong way.

There's a mundane explanation for that. If this boy was actually the reincarnated pilot, he should remember other things than just the name of a plane or a certain battle that's documented in books. What was his dog's name? Where did he hang out when he was a kid? Who did he vote for in the elections? Who was his first girlfriend? What did he think about the civil rights movement? etc. etc.

If belief in reincarnation started to spread in the general public and lead to things like appointing a child President of the USA, publishing books by untalented hacks because they're believed to have been Hemingway in a past life, teaching your kids that the universe is like a nice old grandfather that looks after you -- sometimes by killing you -- and your world suddenly became a twilight zone from which there was no escape, would you not then make an effort to come up with criteria that the public could agree on had not been met, to stop the madness?

Get off that slope before you twist an ankle!

There are laws against children becoming president, publishers already spend money on talentless hacks, and civil rights won't be suspended because somebody is suspected of being a ghost, alien, or reincarnation of a war criminal.

 

[PixyMisa]

PixyMisa, as I say in the opening post, I'm looking for what to tell reincarnation researchers who'll say: "Whatever we do, you skeptics aren't going to accept it as evidence, so we might as well not listen to you."

Read my post. Read what I actually wrote.

Reincarnation is known to be impossible. That sets the bar for evidence rather high.

What I need to know is what you think would prove reincarnation

I told you that.

but if you say that nothing would prove it to you

I didn't say that. I said the opposite.

whether or not it exists, then of course that's a belief and I respect your belief

It's not a belief. It's established fact. Reincarnation is impossible.

I just can't use it to argue with.

Of course you can. Just come up with evidence that contradicts established fact.

You'll need a multitudeinstances where the information is objective, verifiable, and correct, where the chain of evidence is reliably documented, and where there is no plausible mechanism for that information to have been obtained by other means.

Because reincarnation contradicts the laws of physics and all of neuroscience, you need truly remarkable and indisputable evidence and lots of it.

The level of evidence the reincarnation proponents have on offer would not be sufficient to establish that fish can swim.

It's the same as if you believed that the world were flat. If you could actually produce hard objective evidence showing that this were true, you would overturn everything. You can't do that, because the world is not flat. That's not my fault as a skeptic, it's just reality being real.

People who believe in reincarnation believe in something that is not true. They will never find solid evidence to support their belief because their belief is not true. We can define what would be acceptible evidence. We have done that. They will never find it. That's not our fault.

 

[PixyMisa]

Canis, thanks to you this thread just took a quantum leap, so I'll cut to the chase and ask everyone the following:

If belief in reincarnation started to spread in the general public and lead to things like appointing a child President of the USA, publishing books by untalented hacks because they're believed to have been Hemingway in a past life, teaching your kids that the universe is like a nice old grandfather that looks after you -- sometimes by killing you -- and your world suddenly became a twilight zone from which there was no escape, would you not then make an effort to come up with criteria that the public could agree on had not been met, to stop the madness?

We have already come up with solid scientific criteria. Believers in reincarnation will not accept those criteria, because it would require them to give up their beliefs, because those beliefs are not true.

It seems that, since belief in reincarnation has no negative practical consequences for most people, unlike e.g. creationism (in the US) or belief in witchcraft (in Africa), it's okay to neglect it, even though 20-25% of Americans and Europeans believe in it.

Because (for the most part) they don't actually believe in it. People who do are regarded as slightly crazy. Or not slightly. They would perhaps like to believe in it, but that's an entirely different question.

 

[PixyMisa]

Seriously, if people are being reincarnated the evidence would be obvious. Children within weeks of birth showing such things as the ability to speak, the ability to put together electronics ( if they were someone who could do this. ) or the ability to paint at or above an adult level. Why is it that the proof of reincarnation only comes when it would be possible to teach a kid knowledge, if there is knowledge being passed, it should be obvious from hour one of the kid being born.

If we had newborns popping out speaking German and insisting on finishing their symphonies - or French and seeking a larger margin for their theorems - then that would be fairly convincing, yes.

Note for Illiadus: This does not actually happen.

 

[SusanB-M1]

Thank you, Countess, for your post.

Would a hypnotized three-year old with the type of knowledge you mention be acceptable as evidence? Or would it have to be spontaneous?

A three-year-old has already picked up enormous amounts of information via the five senses, peripherally as well as directly, which his/her brain has been working flat out to consider, analyse, re=-combine again and again etc.

 

[Illiadus]

Thanks to everyone who has posted here today so far.

My hope for this thread is to have as many people as possible state what criteria would satisfy their need for evidence to accept reincarnation as real. My question is:
"What evidence would be sufficient to prove reincarnation?"

The answers so far have been variants on the following:

- Detailed anomalous information collected with rigid controls
- Talking babies
- "It can't be proven"

If you have an answer that requires a fourth category, I'd be very thankful if you'd post it. Keep them coming!

Thank you!
Thomas the New Guy

 

[SusanB-M1]

When we hear about a little boy supposedly remembering the name of a pilot he flew with in his past life, we assume the parents are making it up, putting some frills on it or just remembering it the wrong way.

One of the first things I learnt when I came to this forum was to check out the evidence behind a report such as that of the boy who is supposedly (and 'supposedly' is the operative word here) the reincarnation of a WWII pilot. And in fact the same subject has cropped up again on another forum, because the parents are still making money from the case, with books, films etc. There is evidence, from a Pittsburgh newspaper for a start, that the boy had had access to the information in perfectly normal ways.

I am responding to posts as I go along, so this might well have been posted already.

 

[sadhatter]

Thanks to everyone who has posted here today so far.

My hope for this thread is to have as many people as possible state what criteria would satisfy their need for evidence to accept reincarnation as real. My question is:
"What evidence would be sufficient to prove reincarnation?"

The answers so far have been variants on the following:

- Detailed anomalous information collected with rigid controls
- Talking babies
- "It can't be proven"

If you have an answer that requires a fourth category, I'd be very thankful if you'd post it. Keep them coming!

Thank you!
Thomas the New Guy

I have to ask at this point, what is the point of this thread?

You have several examples as to what we would accept. Now what conclusion are you going to draw, or what useful information has been gained by you from this?