Intelligent design

To me it's important to distinguish the story or narrative, which is a kind of separate thing in the way that a novel or a film are separate from ourselves. To distinguish them from the innermost state of our being, the things which we feel deep inside, despite the lack of any narrative or explanation.

This issue, the central role of who we are, this is at the heart of the mystery. For me it became a reason to seriously consider past-lives as the only plausible explanation, even if not having any tale to tell.

OK, but is it possible to extract what you do believe about reincarnation and multiple lives?

David

As long as one continuously refuses to look at the counter evidence, one might reach this conclusion.  There are other psi interpretations such as, for example, Akashic records.  These people, if they are not just making up stories or imagining things, might be experiencing somebody else's life.  I don't buy the wound/birthmark idea.  The birthmark could easily give rise to the belief in a previous wound.

I thought you don't believe in psi - so you can't logically invoke the idea of Akashic records to argue against reincarnation!

To me, the big conceptual hurdle is to believe in psi. Once you believe in psi most psi phenomena can be potentially explained in terms of other psi phenomena. For that reason I believe it is best to accept the data head on - not try to re-interpret it as something else.

David

As long as one continuously refuses to look at the counter evidence, one might reach this conclusion.  There are other psi interpretations such as, for example, Akashic records.  These people, if they are not just making up stories or imagining things, might be experiencing somebody else's life.  I don't buy the wound/birthmark idea.  The birthmark could easily give rise to the belief in a previous wound.

So the best interpretation is some kind of "record" that no one can physically verify? That seems like poor reasoning to me, which is what a lot of Super-Psi type explanations fall into.

One doesn't have to accept the birthmarks but I think you'd have to actually look at the cases and say why it isn't convincing.

Of course one can reject the evidence for Reincarnation, but I think it's some of the better evidence along with ghosts and OOBEs. Afterlife and In-between life descriptions of course are questionable, since they so often seem to involve people meeting religious figures & places they already believe in...but the continuity of identity given by Reincarnation seems credible to me.

To reject Reincarnation evidence would seem, IMO, to reject any other afterlife evidence because not sure it gets better than the CORT cases.

Do you accept any of the evidence for people remembering their periods between lives?

I am interested as to how much common ground we share here.

David

Not to answer for Typoz but I accept them conditionally. There are CORT cases where someone remembers an in-between life, but some of this seems t[o]o odd to be real and very culturally motivated. For example the stories of a soul trying to get their future mother to swallow the particular grain of rice that contains their essence.

Of course we know culture seems to influence afterlife vision, so much so that it can make one doubt many Survival cases altogether - like the IMO silly cases where people think a particular religion is the "right" one after an NDE..smacks of what the philosopher R.Scott Bakker calls picking the right "Belief Lottery" ticket to avoid Hell.

OTOH memories of in-between life have some commonality with NDEs - as noted by Chris Carter - and they often correspond to people who have the best memories of past-lives.

OK, but is it possible to extract what you do believe about reincarnation and multiple lives?

David

I'm not sure what it is you're looking for. I don't adhere to any particular philosophical system or -ism. Nor do I follow any particular religion. I do have a concept of God, even of good and evil, but not so much the idea of judgement in any formal sense. Reincarnation is something I came to believe was the most satisfactory explanation for my own existence more than 40 years ago.

I used the wording "explanation for my own existence" quite carefully as it isn't my intention to insist that anyone else should agree with me. In this area at least, each to their own.

I'm not sure what it is you're looking for. I don't adhere to any particular philosophical system or -ism. Nor do I follow any particular religion. I do have a concept of God, even of good and evil, but not so much the idea of judgement in any formal sense. Reincarnation is something I came to believe was the most satisfactory explanation for my own existence more than 40 years ago.

I used the wording "explanation for my own existence" quite carefully as it isn't my intention to insist that anyone else should agree with me. In this area at least, each to their own.

Yeah for myself the evidence for the afterlife is viewed in tandem with the fact that Materialism is nonsense which means Consciousness is irreducible and thus at least plausibly indestructible.

I do have a strong sense there are other realities than this one just as I believe there are other alien civilizations in the universe, but I recognize this is a personal feeling rather than something evidential I could use to convince others.

Yeah for myself the evidence for the afterlife is viewed in tandem with the fact that Materialism is nonsense which means Consciousness is irreducible and thus at least plausibly indestructible.

It's quite funny actually. I have in front of me an original issue of a "Captain Marvel" comic which I bought back in the day - inside it says September 1974 issue (the only issue I ever bought, it was a kind of random selection). I wasn't a fan of that sort of comic, but somehow the cover art caught my attention. I was interested in art such as that of Pieter Bruegel or Jan van Eyck and bought the comic simply as a sample of a style of art.

Interestingly the main cover image has the dramatic caption,
"NO-ONE CAN STAND AGAINST A MAN WHO EXPLODES INTO ATOMS -- THEN LIVES AGAIN!!"
       

It was a few years later that it suddenly jumped out at me as a kind of analogy for reincarnation.

(Full image is on this site)

I do have a strong sense there are other realities than this one just as I believe there are other alien civilizations in the universe, but I recognize this is a personal feeling rather than something evidential I could use to convince others.

Yes, I think there are huge areas which it is unwise to reject or dismiss. Certainly the so-called afterlife I don't think is a single thing, it seems to me quite likely that on entering it one is faced with another set of questions about what is beyond that...

As long as one continuously refuses to look at the counter evidence, one might reach this conclusion.  There are other psi interpretations such as, for example, Akashic records.  These people, if they are not just making up stories or imagining things, might be experiencing somebody else's life.  I don't buy the wound/birthmark idea.  The birthmark could easily give rise to the belief in a previous wound.

Stevenson and colleagues rejected your alternate explanations early on because of the evidence. For instance, a young child exhibiting the personality characteristics and talents and abilities and likes and dislikes of the past person is not plausibly any mere picking up of information from the so-called Akashic Records. Concerning the birthmark/birth defect evidence, it's not just a matter of someone bearing a mark or defect developing an unfounded belief that it is really from the death wound from a previous life's traumatic ending, but it is researchers developing verified evidence from records of a past death as to the location and nature of the death wound, which data closely matches the birthmark/birth defect on the present person whose apparent past life memories led the researchers to that probable past life. And further, it is this strange type of phenomenon and researched verification being repeated many many times over.

christianforums.com/forums/creation-evolution.70/
This site has a evolution debate forum open for non-christians.
apparently evolutionists have a edge on it

Stevenson and colleagues rejected your alternate explanations early on because of the evidence. For instance, a young child exhibiting the personality characteristics and talents and abilities and likes and dislikes of the past person is not plausibly any mere picking up of information from the so-called Akashic Records. Concerning the birthmark/birth defect evidence, it's not just a matter of someone's belief in them being a death wound from a previous life's traumatic ending, but it is verified evidence from the previous death as to the location and nature of the death wound closely matching the birthmark/birth defect on the present person.

Yeah I don't clearly see what reasoned standard would let someone reject the CORT cases but still believe in an afterlife.

Any explanation using Super Psi for CORT cases would be worse, IMO, for any other other lines of evidence.

I suppose one can say the best NDEs - like the ones collected in The Self Does Not Die - are stronger evidence because the interviews have been done without as much "lag time"...but AFAICTell even NDEs on their own don't give us the sense of continuity that the CORT cases do...

What might remain is some religious belief in a particular afterlife, or some philosophical argument for the plausibility of an afterlife, but the former is not really good for discussion and the latter is different than evidence.