Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Club for Open-Minded Discussion & Debate

[Spiral Out]

Or maybe you just experienced what you wanted to experience. It's a trick of the subconscious to fulfill one's mystical desires.

[Subatomic God]

Yes, you closed your mind to what you saw and did not let your soul experience the presence of another soul. Put another way, you refused to accept that your creator really exists and you accepted the idea that you are just a product of your parents. Ask any mother or father, their child's soul was not created by them.

Sorry, but I know this Universe far more than you. There's no "soul", there's energy and by "soul", you mean electromagnetic shield, which a mere penny (the coin) has. Pennies don't have souls, but they have electromagnetic shields.

[Quotidian]

Well, I'd wager that the model I had proposed fits these reincarnation stories fairly consistently. Am I right?

Confirmation bias works in both directions.

[Subatomic God]

Confirmation bias works in both directions.

Truth can only be spoken in one way.

Truth is not a cloud, Quotidian; truth is the beating heart of this Universe that flows through very few men, destroying their mask and teaching them that there is one task in life - do not treat life as a task.

[Jklint]

The real reason is that it simply doesn't make sense at any level. What could possibly be it's purpose and why would nature in any way require it? That for me is the bottom line. What for?

It makes sense to Buddhism, because there are actions that give rise to consequences that come to fruition over the span of more than one life.

The consequences of many lives can ripple into the future after they're dead. There is nothing new here so of course it would make sense to Buddhism as it would to every other philosophy or religion.

Or to put it differently, whatever the consequences of my life, I don't imagine would be carried forward into some other life by means of any mystical propinquity between myself being dead and IT being born. Reincarnation in this sense seems to be merely another version of an after death heaven or hell only in this case the "ending" merges into the beginning of another life. These two views are not in principle unlike.

The background to Buddhism and Hinduism is that living beings are bound to the cycle of birth and death until they learn to free themselves from it; that is the aim of the various 'paths' ('marga').

I've been long aware of these ideas. I respected them for a long time, considered them profound without question as something virtually inviolable in Eastern wisdom which according to Jung far exceeded our Western insights.

I no longer submit to these views and find them thoroughly nonsensical. What in nature would bind us to a cycle of birth and death that we have to "free" ourselves from? Life continues, that's the cycle. Death and birth in all its multitudinous forms throughout the cosmos. That's the "economy of Nature. You're free when you die. There is no "moral imperative" in nature that demands a method by which to free ourselves from rebirth. It becomes obvious that like every so-called sacred teaching ever created it is purely man-made and as deficient as the Old Testament God.

This teaching path of Buddhism and Hinduism by which to accomplish this makes no sense. To so "free" ourselves we have to remember the lessons of our "prior lives" but when we're born it always seems to be for the first time and consistently learn from scratch.

BTW how would we know when we have managed to release ourselves from this cycle of rebirth? Under what circumstances and where would we be to acknowledge this release

[Quotidian]

If you think it's all nonsense, stick to your guns.

[Subatomic God]

If you think it's all nonsense, stick to your guns.

What are you inferring? There's only one truth.

[ReasonMadeFlesh]

Reincarnation is a conceptual truth when you acknowledge that consciousness continues to exist in the universe and that each person feels as if they are existing one body at a time because we don't remember each others experiences from the first-person point of view because each brain (system of information) is disconnected from the rest.

So what do you think accounts for cases like this? Simply coincidence, or fraud, or some other factor?

Aha!!!

So you agree with what I said!?

[Quotidian]

How can my asking a question amount to 'an agreement'?

What do you think? Fraud? Wishful thinking? But it might be worth reading the recent blog article that provides some facts (although facts seem easily discounted in such matters).

[Subatomic God]

How can my asking a question amount to 'an agreement'?

What do you think? Fraud? Wishful thinking? But it might be worth reading the recent blog article that provides some facts (although facts seem easily discounted in such matters).

Sorry, but the truth is not personal, but rather practical. This article is the epitome of reassurance - truth does not reassure itself. You cannot purport "facts", when there are not factors.

[Okisites]

If you post more of these stories as they were originally submitted I'll bet I can pick them apart based on their related structures.

If you are ready for this, then you should be ready to read some long articles. Let me know if you were ready for this. Also understand the stories regarding Reincarnation are interesting, not boring to read, if you are open-minded, and not came to conclusion at first place.

When you say something like Fraud(which is unscientific), you are not saying fraud to Ian Stevenson and other host of scientist, but you’re saying Children of 2-7 years old to be Fraud. Please note this. Your main perpetrator is not Scientists but Children(sometimes grownups after few years). So, please say everything in regards to child’s statement, there is generally no need to talk about scientists. This can only be considered scientific, if you say everything in regards to Child’s statements and what the phenomena shows. This is how the other skeptical scientist criticize these cases, though they also commit ad hominem attacks towards Stevenson and other scientists, which is not really necessary. Also note that if you indulge yourself in these cases, it will be difficult for you to discard it simply, when you will here 2-5 years old talking about previous life and describing most of the things correctly. You can discard this here, but you cannot discard it there. So please note this also.

Below is the links concerning honest criticism of one of the highest regarded cases suggestive to Reincarnation of Ibrahim Bouhamzy as Imad Elawar, both from Lebanon. It is very long article, but you can directly jump to tables below in this site. Table shows the list of the facts, and information given by informants, and facts verified by the member of family and comments over it. There are three kinds of tables over there, all of which are important to consider. Please do not be biased about ratio of Correct to Incorrect statements, and look the bigger picture, because cases are many. I will post more small but not very small stories afterwards.

The links are as follows:-

http://www.criticandokardec.com.br/imad ... sited.html

http://www.scribd.com/doc/213438894/Ian ... nard-Angel

A quote to learn something good (Read only bolded parts)

Jesse Berring (Assistant Prof. of Science Communication, Otaga University, New Zealand wrote:


Science has an obvious history of putting the cart of empirical observation before the horse of theory, as the field of epidemiology can clearly attest with regard to the precise mechanisms of viral bacteriology, or Darwinian evolutionary biologists can surely sympathize with respect to formal genetics.

The documentation of anomalous data, including a feverish attention to ruling out mechanisms currently known to science, is no more and no less than evidence of the inexplicable. Such inexplicable data, in my opinion, Stevenson established surely enough. In fact, it’s not just my opinion. In The Demon-Haunted World, Carl Sagan, no less, identified Stevenson’s research program on children’s memories of previous lives as deserving of serious scientific scrutiny. (Sam Harris also alluded to these data as being so worthy in his book, The End of Faith.)

Now, perhaps you’re a better scientist than Carl Sagan, David Cummings(general poster), but the fact that the man who penned the well-trod atheistic credo of “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence,” which you clearly subscribe to as an atheist, saw Stevenson’s work as fit to analyze in close detail suggests, to me, that it’s not a collection of “mere anecdotal data” and a far cry from Creationism. As for the cognitive construct of apophenia, I’m more than familiar with the concept and wrote about it at some length in The Belief Instinct, especially its symptomology in schizophrenia and the tendency to promiscuously attribute causal links where none exist. But having read many (in fact, most) of Stevenson’s case reports closely, I see no evidence whatever of this being a satisfactory explanation for his observations. And as a general note, it’s rather easy to dismiss an entirety of a work on the basis of a broad theory (of “apophenia,” “anecdotes,” “fear of death,” “confirmation bias,” and so on), but should you ever wish to actually engage in the work itself, rather than simply comment on second-hand accounts such as this one, I assure you that you would find it considerably more difficult to wave off individual case reports as breezily as you’ve attempted to do here. Almost none can be easily brushed aside with stock from the skeptic’s go-to barrel: fraud, cryptoamnesia, apophenia, chance, distorted memories, parents’ reincarnation beliefs, culture, leading questions, conflating conversations, and so on. He was aware of them all. (Earlier in his career, he’d written *the* textbook on psychiatric interviewing techniques, don’t forget, so he was impressively well-versed on these issues). And that’s the rub for you … when the occasional rebellious, stubborn data refuse to fit your preferred theoretical model, it’s rather annoying, isn’t it?

None of this is to say, alas, that I personally believe in reincarnation. I don’t, at this stage in my thinking. But neither am I afraid to engage meaningfully in the possibility, however remote, that I’m dead wrong. What is the mechanism? I’ve no idea. Stevenson had no idea, either, and he admitted as much. Would you rather he invented or concocted some explanation simply to satisfy your demand for answers? He could only surmise that his data suggested the brain and mind were orthogonal. “Certainly the mind expresses itself through the brain,” Stevenson once wrote. “Anyone can prove this to himself with an ounce or two of whiskey. [This] does not, however, prove the identity of mind and brain. When we squeeze a sponge, water runs out, but this does not make water a product of the sponge.” In the tradition of Victorian parapsychology, Stevenson saw the brain as, essentially, a kind of lens or prism through which the mind, as “energy” (and he hated that word just as much as I do, but he knew there was just no way to properly describe such a hypothetical entity) is filtered. An individual’s consciousness is canalized by his or her brain, in this sense, rather than created by it. Or to use yet another metaphor, the brain is like a radio receiver, with the airwaves existing whether or not there’s a device around to receive and transmit these signals.

Reincarnation, he stressed, only complements rather than contradicts what we already know about evolution and genetics, helping to fill in some of the (big) gaps about embryology and an individual’s personality that modern science presently allocates to “chance” alone. In short, I’ve as healthy a disrespect for shoddy work as the next scientist and have earned my atheistic credentials, but I’m also willing to educate myself on opposing claims by reading firsthand accounts rather than another skeptic’s dubious take.

Reincarnation is just a theory which can be replaced, but Cases suggestive to Reincarnation are empirical observations, which cannot be replaced.

[Partinobodycular]

If you are ready for this, then you should be ready to read some long articles. Let me know if you were ready for this. Also understand the stories regarding Reincarnation are interesting, not boring to read, if you are open-minded, and not came to conclusion at first place.

Personally I find the subject of reincarnation to be rather mundane, because it's the same ridiculous phenomena that one finds in hundreds of other spiritual and occultic beliefs to which humans are prone, and it's quite easily explained.

To me the only really interesting question is why are people so stupid as to fall for this stuff? The question isn't, "is reincarnation true", but rather, why do so many people believe that it's true.

The massively interesting question is, why are people so stupid?

[Okisites]

If you are ready for this, then you should be ready to read some long articles. Let me know if you were ready for this. Also understand the stories regarding Reincarnation are interesting, not boring to read, if you are open-minded, and not came to conclusion at first place.

Personally I find the subject of reincarnation to be rather mundane, because it's the same ridiculous phenomena that one finds in hundreds of other spiritual and occultic beliefs to which humans are prone, and it's quite easily explained.

You came to the conclusion before even trying it. This is not scientific. You think that your prejudicial claims have some values, when it is not. Mundane, Ridiculous.... all of this type of words can be said to rule out anything. This is a normal behavior of ignorant. In our country many illiterate people also rule out these things for the sake of science. These people's are on 10th grader villagers. You have to understand that this type of accusations have no value.

To me the only really interesting question is why are people so stupid as to fall for this stuff?

Actually it's an ad hominem against the people like me, as well people like scientists(I will ask moderators to please not to delete your post, as well as no ad hominem posts in this entire thread), and this is not the way to tackle a scientific inquiry. Actually there is no need to accuse anyone with ad hominem, if you are sure that, and can prove the thing you claim. But you do not seems to understand it.

To me it is very clear from the opposition by posters of the cases SUGGESTIVE to Reincarnation, that these people are stupids and cannot argue properly, do not understand how to rebuke scientific theories, do not understand what exactly scientific methodology do, are heavily prejudiced and indoctrinated by society and ashamed of considering the possibility.

Did you noticed the only people whose arguments sounded stupid and ignorant are only those who are opposing the Reincarnation suggestive cases?

The question isn't, "is reincarnation true", but rather, why do so many people believe that it's true.

The massively interesting question is, why are people so stupid?

I can prove why this is so that majority people are happened to be stupids and ignorants, but it will prove you and the scientists in your favour of you to be stupids and laughable. For you and they cannot rebuke the theories instead of doing ad hominem attacks.

Thank you for giving me chance to say all this.

Okisites

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What I wanted to say to others is that, I think in my last post I said something that is impossible to attain for the posters of this forum. And I just wanted to correct it that keep it simple but the attacks like calling someone to be fraud, Bullsheet, is not right here. You can prove them to be Fraud, Bullsheet at alike, but you cannot call them or me to be fraud or BS.

You must consider it specifically and with valid arguments. If you cannot then you are certainly not capable to handle this kind of issues(argument with condition).

Thank you, Okisites.

[Jklint]

If you think it's all nonsense, stick to your guns.

I didn't say "nonsense" I said "nonsensical". Though the two may overlap a little their meaning still differs. As with most religions or religious philosophies, there is much brilliance contained in them. That does not make it correct or give it credibility just because it has a time honored ritual with it's corresponding mystic terminologies and where the lessons of "truth training" invariably follow. But the Buddha could also be eminently practical putting members of his own family in charge of the first Sanghas he established.

If the human race manages to exist long enough Childhood's End must eventually follow. All history is subject to revision and by that I mean a "recalculation" of what so far has been accepted without question. In the meantime feel free to follow the norm which conforms neither to nature or logic and exists only as another human metaphor, a thoroughly human construct. Had you been able to counter the points I made, I'm sure you would have made them.

[Subatomic God]

The massively interesting question is, why are people so stupid?

I can prove why this is so that majority people are happened to be stupids and ignorants, but it will prove you and the scientists in your favour of you to be stupids and laughable. For you and they cannot rebuke the theories instead of doing ad hominem attacks.

Thank you, Okisites.

Sorry, but you have resorted to hypocrisy because you are under a circle that is devouring you by the second. When you attacked Spiral Out, you were wrong then - you are wrong now for saying ad hominem, when you are using ad hominems because you already lost the entire point of supporting the onus, because scientists shape this world - you're sitting at a computer yelling at people like a hypocrite, with more make-believe nonsense that is equivalent to a child telling the teacher that the dog ate their homework.