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What Evidence Would Be Sufficient To Prove Reincarnation?

Le Jab said:
I use hypnosis with sports people, and whilst under hypnosis, I asked an athlete to re-live an experience of when he was successful. He went on to tell in me in explicit detail about winning a national title at 14 yrs, and even described the cup and his acceptance speech for 'athlete of the year'. So theres me getting him to 'anchor' those feelings of success in order to re-experience them at points in competition when needed, only to find out that it was a completely fabricated story !
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Just curious, did the athlete knowingly fabricate the story? Or was it something he really 'remembered' under hypnosis?
 
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I don't know what would reincarnate. I have no idea. Maybe it's because I don't believe in it, but I've never tried to formulate a reasonable theory of reincarnation.

My criticism of reincarnationists have mostly been commonsensical and based on my view that the 'cases' presented don't hold water.
 
Akhenaten said:
What then, are you proposing as a vehicle for whatever it is that continues from one life to the next?
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Karma. Which is what the Hindus believe. Which is fairly meaningless since it consists only of the accumulated good and bad deeds, not any sort of consciousness.

ETA: As I understand it. My source of information may be incomplete.
 
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Aggle-rithm, I didn't forget to insult you, I just found your post #99 very insightful and worth pondering over. I should have commended you on it. I'm sorry.

Kudos.
 
Illiadus said:
I don't know what would reincarnate. I have no idea. Maybe it's because I don't believe in it, but I've never tried to formulate a reasonable theory of reincarnation.
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Youve apparently been studying it for 15 years
and you havent really thought about it much

are you interested in an experiment ?
;)
 
aggle-rithm said:
Karma. Which is what the Hindus believe. Which is fairly meaningless since it consists only of the accumulated good and bad deeds, not any sort of consciousness.

ETA: As I understand it. My source of information may be incomplete.
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For what it's worth, Wiki does use the word soul to describe the vehicle that carries these accumulated deeds.

A soul is by definition a transcendent aspect of the self, be it supernatural or material. Reincarnation requires such a thing.
 
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aggle-rithm said:
Karma. Which is what the Hindus believe. Which is fairly meaningless since it consists only of the accumulated good and bad deeds, not any sort of consciousness.

ETA: As I understand it. My source of information may be incomplete.
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I don't do Hindu, so my version of a soul would prolly be the ka and ba, or the 'life force' and 'personality' as believed in by the former ancient Egyptians.

According to us still-living ancient Egyptians it's all superstitious nonsense though, until someone shows some evidence to the contrary.

My source of information may also be incomplete, or demented, or something.

:)
 
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The concept of reincarnation basically comes from people observing that they are alive, and people die and then are not alive, and new people are born and become alive. Therefore, it is a logical hypothesis that living people have a “life force” (or soul or spirit) and that when they die the life force leaves the body and then “reincarnates” as the life force of a newborn person. This explains the observations and is a nice logical hypothesis because it doesn’t require an explanation of where a life force goes (like heaven or hell) or where a life force comes from (like a god).

People later made more observations came up with testable hypothesis that provided more information about how death and life and birth work. With this new information, the hypothesis of reincarnation was no longer needed. Therefore, it was dismissed.

There is no need for scientific “reincarnation research” because we do not have an unexplained observable phenomenon for which reincarnation would serve as a suitable hypothesis. People that wish to research reincarnation are resurrecting a dead hypothesis and searching for unexplained observable phenomenon that requires the hypothesis, which is not at all a good way to go about scientific exploration.

In order to even consider a reincarnation hypothesis, we first need an unexplained observable phenomenon for which reincarnation could potentially be a hypothesis. A case of anomalous information might do. However, we then need to consider the logical plausibility of all possible explanations:

1. The person somehow had inside knowledge, so it wasn’t really anomalous information.
2. The anomalous information is not significant because it could have been obtained by a likely guess or based on logical assumptions.
3. The anomalous information was just an unlikely coincidence.
4. There is some unknown logical explanation.
5. The anomalous information occurred as a result of some paranormal or seemingly impossible or illogical means.

These are listed in order of most logical/plausible to least logical/plausible. If there is a single case of anomalous information, it is more likely to be a case of coincidence than reincarnation because even if the coincidence is extremely unlikely, it is probably considered even more likely than the probably impossible (and unexplained) explanation of reincarnation.

There is no way to measure exactly how unlikely a coincidence is; nor is a there some specific point of improbability where reincarnation would become accepted as a possible hypothesis. If there were many cases of unexplained anomalous information, the explanation of coincidence lose weight, which would mean that reincarnation (despite not having gained any weight) would enter the arena as one of the few unproven hypotheses and could gain some attention and exploration.

However, in order to test the reincarnation hypothesis, we would need a testable hypothesis. This would mean defining reincarnation and probably providing some logical explanation of how reincarnation seems to work (at least to the extent of explaining how it explains the observed phenomenon.) I’m not sure how this would be done. It would probably depends a great deal on the nature of the observed phenomenon. Then we could test the hypothesis.

As it stands, reincarnation is not even worthy of consideration of a hypothesis. It is a dead concept, and continued belief in it is just a pre-conceived solution is search of a problem.
 
Marduk, I once did believe in reincarnation, yes, and studied it, but the logical flaws made me stop believing in it. When I did believe in it, I didn't find the theories behind how it supposedly might work sensible at all.

What experiment?
 
Illiadus said:
I don't know what would reincarnate. I have no idea. Maybe it's because I don't believe in it, but I've never tried to formulate a reasonable theory of reincarnation.

My criticism of reincarnationists have mostly been commonsensical and based on my view that the 'cases' presented don't hold water.
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I've never tried to formulate a reasonable theory of reincarnation either. If a person claims that reincarnation is a very real phenomenon, and further posits the existence of a soul as the vehicle for reincarnation, the first step that you can take as an amateur debunker is to ask them to first prove the existence of a soul.

Are you really claiming 15 years of engaging and debunking with reincarnation enthusiasts? You seem to have no understanding of the material.

It's not up to the skeptics to come up with theories and definitions; the woos generally give up plenty of material to work with (necessary because goalposts don't generally move themselves!).
 
Illiadus said:
Marduk, I once did believe in reincarnation, yes, and studied it, but the logical flaws made me stop believing in it. When I did believe in it, I didn't find the theories behind how it supposedly might work sensible at all.
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Congratulations on posting something somewhat truthful. :)
 
I never said I was good at it, SunCountess. Seriously, though, where'd you get that number from?
 
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Is it always this way on this forum? My first day here was yesterday, so I don't know. Is it par to attack and belittle and to accuse people of not meaning what they say?
 
Pup said:
The person claims to be the reincarnation of the dressmaker and remembers making that dress. Their proof is they can tell the color, fiber and weave of the lining, what stitches were used on the inside, and all the interior construction details like which way the seam allowances were ironed, whether there's any boning and what material the boning is made of--without ever seeing anything but the outside of the dress from across the room.

After that's all told, everyone examines the inside of the dress. The answers aren't 100% correct but they're way, way better than chance, up there around 90%--well within the range of what a real dressmaker could remember about a dress she made a couple years ago.

If, hypothetically, we could prove all the above facts were true, would you consider that an example of good evidence for reincarnation?
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I would assume the "Dr. Joseph Bell" affect. The person probably has some knowledge of dressmaking and from the outer appearance of the dress was able to make logical conclusions about the interior of the dress. If it looks like a dress made in a style particular to a time and place, and has a certain quality of construction, the person could make an educated guess of the materials normally used on such dresses and from the quality of the outer construction could make an educated guess of the construction methods used for the interior.

If it were proven that the person did not have knowledge of dressmaking, or if the interior was completely uncharacteristic based on the outside, I would chalk it up as a lucky guess or coincidence.
 
Illiadus said:
I never said I was good at it, SunCountess. Seriously, though, where'd you get that number from?
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I was mistaken in that you'd mentioned 15 years. I looked through the thread and can't see where you noted that, but took it from Marduk's post. If we're both wrong, I apologize.


Is it always this way on this forum? My first day here was yesterday, so I don't know. Is it par to attack and belittle and to accuse people of not meaning what they say?
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No, but it generally helps to be upfront about your intentions. You claimed for nearly 50 posts that you're a skeptic who's trying to prove to reincarnation believers that they're wrong. Now you've admitted that you "once" believed in it yourself. (Getting closer to the real truth!) You've done some insulting of your own, and also misrepresented what other posters have said, as you've essentially tried to get skeptics to define not just what would prove reincarnation exists, but to also define what it would look like and by what vehicles it could operate unseen and undetected.

Like I said many posts ago, you're trying to get the skeptics to do your homework, and find a way that you can prove to them for once and for all that reincarnation is real. You're going for a "gotcha!" but you've come to the wrong place for that.
 
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Illiadus said:
Is it always this way on this forum? My first day here was yesterday, so I don't know. Is it par to attack and belittle and to accuse people of not meaning what they say?
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It's the 'lively' part that you see at the top of each page.

Belittlement is, for better or worse, pretty normal. So are other forms of heated debate. You have, however, called much of it on yourself by blatantly misrepresenting other posters in a belittling manner. You've been informed of this politely and repeatedly, yet you have not ceased it. It's very insulting to the posters you misrepresent, and does not make you appear particularly smart or nice. As such, it's to be expected that people aren't very nice to you either.

This place is a lot of fun to talk in, but you do need to have a tough skin. It's much easier if you avoid broad, sweeping insults, though.
 
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