Past Lives and Regression

You are so good, so wise, so advanced! :worship::worship::worship:

 

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What a waste of an opportunity to explain yourself. If your posts have no content, why bother to post at all?

 

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It's funny that you would make a post, this one, that serves a very similar function to the post you cannot seem to understand the function of.

Hint:
Mine is part of this set.

Implicit psychic claims like this one are also a part of the set.

 

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All I have to do is point out your assertion is weak, which it is. The kind of speculative deduction you are using would have ruled out things like particles also being waves. It can create an illusion of certainty, but if you do not know the playing field it is relatively meaningless. (Oh, and yes, I realize evidence was found that backed up the particle wave duality, but it was obviously a possibility BEFORE that evidence was there, despite what deduction would have indicated. And please do not respond to what I am saying as if I am putting it forward as proof or evidence. I am only saying things here to show that your deduction is weak.)

As far as my wild claim: 'here' meant earth, rather than them having memories of being on other planets, though this happens also.

If you had said you were unconvinced I would not have reacted. It makes perfect sense to me you are unconvinced. That you think you can rule out the possibility with your deductive reasoning as presented so far, that I think is silly.

Please read that a few times. I have not the slightest problem with someone being unconvinced.I have not the slightest problem with someone being unconvinced.I have not the slightest problem with someone being unconvinced.I have not the slightest problem with someone being unconvinced.

That you make it seem like this is the issue is disingenous.

Who said he had proven reincarnation?

You are a liar, implicitly.

You state there is no science in reincarnation.

I mention a work that does in fact approach the issue scientificallly.

You respond: If he had proven re-incarnation, it would be accepted scientific fact.

I am sick of people like you who argue so irrationally, but think it is OK because you are on the rational team. Is there only science in things that are raised to generally accepted theory? This will be news to scientists everywhere. Stevenson approached the issue as scientifically as he could, given the problems in such an investigation. He was a very careful researcher and very careful to point out exactly how compelling evidence he found was or wasn't. He considered the result of his work intriguing and that it indicated that it was a subject worth investigating further.

Fine, you don't believe in souls, but your original deduction was weak.

No? Phlogistan says he is not making a claim.

See if you can find the claims in there.

I am tired of doing the work for you. You rational people cannot seem to notice what you are doing. Sure you ask questions, then draw absolute conclusions based on your certainty about what the answers must be. Guess what, ask a few scientists if you made any claims and you will find them saying 'Yes'. They will agree with your assertions, probably a strong majority of them. But that is another issue.

Why do you get to not make sense and not notice what you are doing?

I am not interested in convincing you that reincarnation is real. What I was interested in doing is pointing out that your argument 'showing' it couldn't be true was weak. You seem incapable of understanding the difference. You seem incapable of actually responding to what I say, adding assumptions to it that I am trying to prove reincarnation and you seem oblivious to some basic logic and the fact that you are indeed making claims.

I do not respect you. And I do not think you are the kind of person who can admit any of this because you are so pissed off at people you think are irrational, you feel it is fair game to not make sense yourself.

I won't read another thing from you. Because of the sloppiness of your thinking I have to do too much work.

 

And your assumption is, about work you have not read, that Dr. Stevenson did not know this.

Please read that again.

And you would be WRONG.

If you had read the book you would know this. Even if you had read some of his critics you would know this.

But you, the rational person - right, that is what you think - are still talking about a book you have not read AND OBVIOUSLY are incorrect about - as if you know what you are talking about.

With rational people like you who needs..........

I don't respect what you are doing here and you shouldn't either.

Stevenson went to unbeleivable lengths to try to verify claims made by children about past lives. Where he could not, he ABSOLUTELY did not accept their claims. DUH.

You pissed me off so much here I cannot even tell you. If you were simply being skeptical OK. But you and Phlog think
for
some
reason
that you represent rational thinking.

And then you say stuff that is really embarrassing.

A bit of general advice. If you don't know something, don't write about it as if you do, ESPECIALLY after this is pointed out to you.

Jesus.

I will not read your crap again.

 

woah, what have I started here?

 

And you have entirely failed to rebut my criticism, in spite of seeming to be familiar with Dr. Stevenson's work. It's no coincidence that the children he studied in India and Sri Lanka happened to live in a culture that believes in reincarnation!

There are several problems with Stevenson's method. He often worked with translators in countries about which he knew very little. Questioning anybody is tricky, but questioning children is especially tricky. "Interviewer bias is the central driving force in the creation of suggestive interviews" (Bruck, Ceci, and Helmsbrooke 1998; quoted in Mills and Lyon: 303). Questioning children and adults via a translator introduces another element of uncertainty regarding the bias of the questioning technique. Most of the interviews took place in countries where reincarnation is an accepted belief. So, the translator would be "typically imbued with the cultural expectations that past-life recall is a valid phenomenon" (Mills and Lynn: 303). Stevenson, being non-fluent in the language and the culture, was in no position to assess the reliability of the questioning by the translator.

There is also the obvious problem of confirmation bias. The ideal, according to Stevenson, was to seek out PLE stories and then try to confirm them. Failure to confirm, however, did not count against the reincarnation hypothesis. In fact, nothing could be discovered using Stevenson's methods that could ever disconfirm the reincarnation hypothesis. Many scientists would consider this a fatal flaw in his methodology.

Another problem is that there seem to be alternative, non-paranormal, explanations for all of his data. Stevenson was aware of the fact that many of the features he was detailing were culturally driven.​

http://www.skepdic.com/stevenson.html

Yup, that's what I thought.

What possesses a man of Stevenson's intelligence to chase after chimeras and produce thousands of pages of detailed reports that amount to a heap of rationalizations? As Michael Shermer succinctly put it: "Smart people believe weird things because they are skilled at defending beliefs they arrived at for non-smart reasons."​

 

Well, you posted in a place that goes by the name of sci, as in science, forums. So past lives will likely be seen as an irrational idea by a good % of those drawn to such a forum. It seems to me that once people, who see themselves as scientific and rational, discuss ideas with those they consider irrational, this former group feels free to ignore rationality when it suits their purposes. They are, after all, 'right'. So the means justifies the ends. If you point out they are being irrational - for being critical of a book they've never read, for example - they either simply start criticizing from a new angle, without ever acknowledging that perhaps they were talking out of their asses - or continue to do this. If they make claims that reincarnation is not possible, and you are critical of their logic, they will either start telling you your ideas are illogical - as if this somehow would excuse their own illogical reasoning - or even deny that they are asserting anything.

you didn't start this, of course, but your thread triggered this latest instance.

Of course, only people who believe in 'irrational' ideas have a strong emotional component to their beliefs. (this was sarcastic)

 

There are certain hypotheses that are a hard sell to science in it's present state. Pseudosciences should and are taken seriously, but as yet, the evidence is not compelling and is full of methodological errors. This includes the hypotheses of God, homeopathy, the soul, reincarnation of individual souls, ghosts, ESP, much of so-called "natural" medicine, crystal healing, touch therapy, and many others. These fields can be dismissed rationally and logically. Scientists would welcome any real breakthrough in these fields, as it would revolutionize science, which is how science advances.

 

I can't see the point in making digs like that.

 

I still don't understand why this thread was moved into Pseudoscience from Philosophy. I would say that people's beliefs on life before birth and after death was a very real science as most scientific discoveries were people proving that their beliefs are right. I think it's fair that talks on reincarnation and such like are in the Philosophy section tbh. Hmph.

 

Our soul dies with us. There will only ever be one you.

 

You silly. If you had actually read the thread, you would see what my position on reincarnation is.
And if you wouldn't be so hell-bent on interpreting my posts in an uncharitable manner, you wouldn't ask me the things you do.

 

It's up to the person making the claim to come up with the evidence. If the evidence is good, it can stand peer review, and be published in a scientific journal. This has not happened, so the evidence is NOT scientific, and all of my criticisms are valid.

The only claim I have made is that re-incarnation is ill thought out bunkum, and I posed two questions that back up that viewpoint. Answer those questions satisfactorily, and maybe you'll debunk my claim.

I await your answer.

 

Reallly. To me it seems important. I recognize a pattern of behavior that I think interferes with a discussion of a subject. I point it out. This may or may not affect the people exhibiting this pattern. Even if they do not openly acknowledge what I am pointing out, perhaps in the future they will be more careful and respectful. I have see this happen.

You are pointing out what you feel was inappropriate behavior on my part. I did that in relation to others. I expressed it with much more anger and exasperation than you did. But then, perhaps, this is a product of the amount of work I have done around the pattern I mentioned.

If, when a certain issue is brought up, certain kinds of irrationality are never pointed out, this is problematic. The skeptics in relation to reincarnation, this specific case, are very likely to point out weaknesses in the logic of believers. Which I think is a good thing. However if I notice that their own logic is weak and point this out, one would expect this to be treated with respect, given the emphasis on logic in their approach.

When it isn't, I get irritated.

I am human after all.

 

It was, as you might put it, a dig.

 

All the skeptics keep falling back to the point that, well if it were true, peer review would have proved it.

My challenge for the skeptics is to find another study as comprehensive as Stevenson's which could actually be called a peer review.

 

And I want every skeptic to

1. Watch documentaries about nature, animals and humans - how they are all born, get old, get sick and die; how they struggle for survival, how they fight, how they eat and get eaten. And watch these documentaries for a month, every day for 8 hours.

2. Consider that if reincarnation is true, then their own past lives would mostly be like what they have watched in those documentaries.

3. Consider if they would really want to remember their past lives.


Reincarnation could be proven by scientific standards if people could be made to remember all of their past lives, with all the details.

But who would want that to remember that?!

Who would want to be the test subject in a scientific experiment where they would be made to remember billions of lives filled with pain, struggle, suffering?

Who would want to know the pain of a billion tootaches?

I think nobody. And given this, reincarnation is off limits for scientific research because nobody in their right mind would want to be the test subject for such an experiment.

 

No point in talking to me about it! I'm not the one you're getting irritated at.

 

I think it was more a difference of opinion between me and a moderator.