Philosophy Discussion Forums

ReasonMadeFlesh wrote: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?

In Sri Lanka, a toddler one day overheard her mother mentioning the name of an obscure town (“Kataragama”) that the girl had never been to. The girl informed the mother that she drowned there when her “dumb” (mentally challenged) brother pushed her in the river, that she had a bald father named “Herath” who sold flowers in a market near the Buddhist stupa, that she lived in a house that had a glass window in the roof (a skylight), dogs in the backyard that were tied up and fed meat, that the house was next door to a big Hindu temple, outside of which people smashed coconuts on the ground. Stevenson was able to confirm that there was, indeed, a flower vendor in Kataragama who ran a stall near the Buddhist stupa whose two-year-old daughter had drowned in the river while the girl played with her mentally challenged brother. The man lived in a house where the neighbors threw meat to dogs tied up in their backyard, and it was adjacent to the main temple where devotees practiced a religious ritual of smashing coconuts on the ground. The little girl did get a few items wrong, however. For instance, the dead girl’s dad wasn’t bald (but her grandfather and uncle were) and his name wasn’t “Herath”—that was the name, rather, of the dead girl’s cousin. Otherwise, 27 of the 30 idiosyncratic, verifiable statements she made panned out. The two families never met, nor did they have any friends, coworkers, or other acquaintances in common, so if you take it all at face value, the details couldn’t have been acquired in any obvious way.

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

Reality does not have time for your stories.

Quotidian wrote:In Sri Lanka, a toddler one day overheard her mother mentioning the name of an obscure town (“Kataragama”) that the girl had never been to. The girl informed the mother that she drowned there when her “dumb” (mentally challenged) brother pushed her in the river, that she had a bald father named “Herath” who sold flowers in a market near the Buddhist stupa, that she lived in a house that had a glass window in the roof (a skylight), dogs in the backyard that were tied up and fed meat, that the house was next door to a big Hindu temple, outside of which people smashed coconuts on the ground. Stevenson was able to confirm that there was, indeed, a flower vendor in Kataragama who ran a stall near the Buddhist stupa whose two-year-old daughter had drowned in the river while the girl played with her mentally challenged brother. The man lived in a house where the neighbors threw meat to dogs tied up in their backyard, and it was adjacent to the main temple where devotees practiced a religious ritual of smashing coconuts on the ground. The little girl did get a few items wrong, however. For instance, the dead girl’s dad wasn’t bald (but her grandfather and uncle were) and his name wasn’t “Herath”—that was the name, rather, of the dead girl’s cousin. Otherwise, 27 of the 30 idiosyncratic, verifiable statements she made panned out. The two families never met, nor did they have any friends, coworkers, or other acquaintances in common, so if you take it all at face value, the details couldn’t have been acquired in any obvious way.

I am skeptical because these things invariably happen in remote areas rather than in highly populated areas with an abundant availability of verification methods, with people who are perceived to be incapable of lying, coercion or other forms of deceit (children, mentally-challenged, elderly) rather than average adults and that there is always an intentional (non-even number) degree of error (27 out of 30) involved just to make it seem legit rather than a perfect correlation which would be far too unbelievable.

It has all the signs of a classic fake.

Spiral Out wrote:
I am skeptical because these things invariably happen in remote areas rather than in highly populated areas with a high degree of verification methods, with people who are perceived to be incapable of lying, coercion or other forms of deceit (children, mentally-challenged, elderly) rather than average adults and that there is always an intentional (non-even number) degree of error (27 out of 30) involved just to make it seem legit rather than a perfect correlation which would be far too unbelievable.

It has all the signs of a classic fake.

Exactly my point. The other recipe for deceit is, ambiguity, secrecy treated as an everyday spoken word and appeal to authority.

Stevenson was quite careful in his research, and he discarded many cases which he thought had been contaminated or where he believed the subjects were trying to exploit his interests. The cases he did publish eventually exceeded 3,000, so fakery on that scale would, I think, be impossible to sustain. But I do understand that it is a taboo subject and very confronting for a lot of people.

Spiral Out wrote:these things invariably happen in remote areas rather than in highly populated areas with an abundant availability of verification methods...

And you know this how?

It's exactly the same as with the inevitably blurry photos and shaky, out-of-focus videos of UFOs, squatches, Nessie, Ghosts and Elvis.

The story Quotidian referenced is a classic fake.

Quotidian wrote:And you know this how?

Am I wrong? Are there cases that are 100% verified and that don't meet the criteria I had proposed?

Ian Stevenson was not a fraud, he compiled data on many such cases, and published a number of books about it. If it makes you feel more comfortable, by all means you can say that, or even believe that, but the evidence says otherwise.

Up until responding to this post, have you ever heard anything about Ian Stevenson, or read any of the information? Or is it simply a reflex on your part that 'such information must be false'?

How can you be certain that Mr. Stevenson wasn't a fraud? Does "data compilation" and "book publishing" automatically preclude him from fraud status?

Quotidian wrote:Ian Stevenson was not a fraud, he compiled data on many such cases, and published a number of books about it. If it makes you feel more comfortable, by all means you can say that, or even believe that, but the evidence says otherwise.

Up until responding to this post, have you ever heard anything about Ian Stevenson, or read any of the information? Or is it simply a reflex on your part that 'such information must be false'?

Sorry, but he who speaks of the author, not the author's work, is an accomplice to the author's deceit.

Earthellism appears to be too complicated for those with a closed mind on a philosophy website. Atheism is an acceptable way to look at everything in the world and dismiss anything you cannot see or hear. Reincarnation all comes down to the concept of the existence of a human soul. Denial of the existence of a human soul makes further discussions regarding God a waste of time. Anyone who has closely experienced a human death or seen a person die in front of their eyes can sense a human soul in and around the human body. Those who choose to believe they themselves do not have a soul live in a world where true love cannot exist and have found their own hell.

Darshan wrote:Anyone who has closely experienced a human death or seen a person die in front of their eyes can sense a human soul in and around the human body.

That's odd. Exactly how closely must one experience a Human death to sense this soul? Do you think I've not experienced the death of another? I've not sensed this. Did I do something wrong?

Stevenson wasn't a fraud. An academic chair had been endowed at the University of Virginia to investigate the evidence for past-life recall, by the late Chester Carlson, who made his fortune by inventing Xerography. (His wife was interested in theosophy and such things which led to his interest in these questions.) Stevenson was originally a research psychiatrist, and already an academic, when he got the appointment, which he held for about 30 years. During this time he conducted quite a few thousands of interviews. Many people would love to say he was a fraud or incompetent, but I really don't think he was either.

For a summary, see this recent blog post from Scientific American - http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/ber ... st-cynics/

People in the West used to say to Stevenson, 'why do you waste your time researching this nonsense? Everyone knows it could never happen'. People in the East used to say 'why do you waste your time on this subject? Everyone knows it happens all the time'.

I have an open mind about it, but I think at the very least, those offering theories about 'why it couldn't possibly be true', ought to be aware of these cases.

Darshan wrote:Earthellism appears to be too complicated for those with a closed mind on a philosophy website. Atheism is an acceptable way to look at everything in the world and dismiss anything you cannot see or hear. Reincarnation all comes down to the concept of the existence of a human soul. Denial of the existence of a human soul makes further discussions regarding God a waste of time. Anyone who has closely experienced a human death or seen a person die in front of their eyes can sense a human soul in and around the human body. Those who choose to believe they themselves do not have a soul live in a world where true love cannot exist and have found their own hell.

Sorry, but that's not how the truth works. Truth opens the close-mind - yours is not the truth, so people aren't going to accept it, which will seem close-minded, but in the end, there's a huge difference between not agreeing with nonsense and simply deflecting.

What you're doing is deflecting, so... good job. You have committed an act that is against the truth.

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

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.

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.