Texts for this class
2. Jim Tucker on possible explanations of “past-life memories”
2. Andreas Sommer, "Anomalies and the 'Scientific Community': What Research on Alleged Reincarnation Cases can Teach us about Myths of Scientific Practice."
3. Ian Stevenson on the Evidence for Reincarnation
J. Good Lecture Notes / Spring 2020
1. What is good evidence?
The skeptical musings of a famous philosopher on what good evidence for reincarnation would have to be like: “One such piece of evidence might be this. A Japanese woman might claim to remember living a life as a Celtic hunter and warrior in the Bronze Age. On the basis of her apparent memories she might make many predictions which could be checked by archaeologists. Thus she might claim to remember having a bronze bracelet, shaped like two fighting dragons. And she might claim that she remembers burying this bracelet beside some particular megalith, just before the battle in which she was killed. Archaeologists might now find just such a bracelet buried in this spot, and at least 2,000 years old. This Japanese woman might make many other such predictions, all of which are verified.” Actually, the evidence is much better than this!
2. The distinction between Evidence and Proof
Logically speaking, no scientific hypothesis can be proved due to the Problem of Induction, i.e. all predictions refer to the future which has yet to occur. Evidence can be found which supports or undermines an hypothesis, but never evidence which conclusively proves an hypothesis. E.g. there is much evidence but no ‘proof’ that cigarette smoking causes cancer. An hypothesis is considered ‘proved’ when all alternative hypotheses have been disproved (aka “critical realism”).
3. Epistemic objections to studying ‘paranormal’ phenomena
4. “This is not a rational or scientific phenomenon.”
Ideological debunking versus real skepticism (being fair and open-minded, open to evidence, open to questioning background assumptions like materialism) - ideological debunking conflates (confuses together) the scientific method (a procedure for empirical/logically verifying beliefs) with scientism (the view of science as a metaphysical belief system not open to being questioned)
5. “Consciousness cannot exist separate from the physical brain so all of this is just impossible.”
- This objection expresses the metaphysical postulate of materialism, sometimes called physicalism, which holds that to be real is to be measurable or empirically quantifiable - this is a methodological assumption made by scientists but not provable or valid unconditionally. Many scientists believe that the advent of quantum mechanics as already refuted the materialist postulate, e.g. Max Planck (co-founder of quantum mechanics) “I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness.”
- Easy vs Hard Problem of Consciousness (David Chalmers) holds that there is currently no scientific explanation for why or how or if the brain creates consciousness; neural correlates of consciousness only tell us what is going on in the brain during experience, not what is producing the experience.
- There is much positive evidence for non-local consciousness (awareness not linked to or limited by the sensory organs of a human body, e.g. the Sense of Being Stared At, Distance Healing, Telekinesis (e.g. test to affect random number generators), and psychic functioning generally, e.g. Controlled Remote Viewing (CRV), the CIA-developed program to weaponize psychic functioning.
6. Kinds of Evidence for the Continuance of Consciousness/Self/Soul outside of (separable from) and before/after death of body self.
7. Near Death Experience (NDE) Witness testimony to Out-of-Body Experience (OBE), between life review process, encounters with spirit beings, choosing new lives, etc.
8. Interesting data-points: information received through NDE that was not previously known or could not have been known by witness; radical change in behavior and life attitude after NDE; third-party witnesses.
9. Objections: merely ‘anecdotal’ information or violation of the postulate of materialism; ad hominem critique of the motives of someone who believes in the veracity of the NDE.
10. Regression Hypnosis Use of the officially sanctioned medical procedure of hypnosis to retrieve memories of past lives.
11. Interesting data-points: Emotionally-charged response to memories; therapeutic efficacy in retrieving the past life trauma, i.e. leading to real healing and behavior modifications; retrieval of information which should not be known by witness
12. Objections: Non-objective (suggestive) nature of hypnosis, non-quantifiable or ‘merely anecdotal’ nature of first-person reports.
13. Scientific Studies of Children with spontaneous memories of seeming past lives
Components of the “Complete” Case of the reincarnation type
1. Prediction by a dying or elderly person about parents and/or circumstances desired for the next reincarnation
2. Announcing dream
3. Birthmarks or birth defects corresponding to wounds of the deceased person.
4. Statements by the subject about persons, places and events of the previous life - unexamined knowledge.
5. Unusual behavior corresponding to behavior shown by the presumed previous personality, phobias, philias, aversions, intense longings for prior relationships.
6. Vengefulness and Inclinations to Crime related to features of a previous life.
7. Play in childhood corresponding to vocation of a previous life.
14. Alternative Hypotheses of the phenomenon
A) Normal Interpretations
1. Fraud
2. Fantasy
3. Cyptonesia (source getting information then forgetting how)
4. Paramnesia (source being influenced by witnesses, e.g. family)
5. Genetic memory
B) Interpretations that include paranormal/non-physical? processes
6. Extrasensory perception + dev of secondary personality
7. Possession / imposition of false memories into subject
8. Accessing genetic memory via non-local consciousness
9. Reincarnation
C) Requirements for a Case to be considered Strong Evidence
1. The subject’s statements correctly correspond to events in the life of only one
deceased person.
2. The two previous families had no previous knowledge of each other
3. The subject’s statements were recorded before verification
4. The case was investigated with a few weeks or months of its development.
15. A Modern Day Revelation about Reincarnation: The RA Contact and the Law of One
A highly-technical and systematic, yet intuitively compelling, account of the reincarnation process as articulated by an advanced non-human intelligence millions of years ahead of us in terms of understanding and moral progress.
“I wonder if the journey we take through time when we are born is really the center of life? Perhaps our more real existence is a steady state that exists outside of time - being fed by the experiences we collect during these temporal lives. We are fishermen along the riverbank of time. The part of us that is cast into the physical state no longer knows the future and the past, and so acts out of our deepest innocence, our truth. We, the anglers on the riverbank, cast this poignant bait that is ourselves into the flow of life in order to use experience to discover by the way we react to life’s novelties and temptations who we truly are. If life does not end with the body, then it would seem wise to attend more carefully to the consequences of our actions.” From Whitley Strieber, The Supernatural: Why the Unexplained is Real
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