The Paranormal: Can New Science Explain Old Phenomena?

The Paranormal: Can New Science Explain Old Phenomena?

(posted in the Psi Text Resources Thread, but figured it might be worth having a discussion thread for it)

Eric Haseltine Ph.D. in physiological psychology (a branch of neuroscience)

A 2015 review article by Dr. Brian Dias of Emory University Medical School on trans-generational learning through epigenetics in the journal, Trends in Neuroscience, described additional evidence that learnings and experiences of ancestors can be passed down to human descendants, including, transmission of PTSD and anxiety/depression from parents to their children.

Animal research cited by Dr. Dias demonstrates that it’s even possible for memories, such as fear of specific odors, to be passed from parents to their offspring.

Could experiences and learnings of your parents and ancestors explain phenomena such as deja vu, intuition or even why you pick up math or music skills so quickly? Did what happened to your ancestors directly influence your dreams, your memories or your emotions? 

In this hard scientist’s opinion, recent research has moved the answer to such questions from a firm “No” to a definite “Maybe,” although I’m still trying to figure out whether I believe that all on my own, or got the belief—through the magic of epigenetics—from my parents.

The Paranormal: Can New Science Explain Old Phenomena?

(posted in the Psi Text Resources Thread, but figured it might be worth having a discussion thread for it)

Eric Haseltine Ph.D. in physiological psychology (a branch of neuroscience)

Perhaps. But there is a basic problem with using such research to explain reincarnation evidence. The evidence uncovered by Stevenson and other investigators has been in the great majority where the previous person had no genetic link to the small child having the memories. They are generally unrelated. Try again, to come up with a strictly physical/biological mechanism. Of course, Haseltine if he wants to keep his job probably closed-mindedly rejects reincarnation evidence out of hand.

But there may be a genetic link? People have sex out of marriage, women get raped, children get brought up as an aunts child etc. etc. It's so common... and in the Asian subcontinent, particularly India with it's Caste system... it doesn't just bring shame/Ruin on the person/family... they may kill you for it in an Honor killing, so keeping things secret is important. That's not intended to an explanation of all cases BTW, just that there may be an unknown genetic relationship, or one that simply cannot be admitted because of the repercussions.

Even with this, it still leaves some room for anomalous affect between biological parent and offspring. And for me, I think children can unlock other peoples patterns anyway, they have more neurons than older adults, and enormous nonlinear bursts of network creation, which I believe has some affect where they can just stumble across a pattern which is not their own... but as they develop, and their networks erode, these anomalous memories tend to just fade away. That's certainly how I try and explain my childhood OBE, I wasn't out of my body, but I did gain access to anomalous information. I think from a third party.

I lived in digs for a while in my 20's, and another young guy there was having an affair with an older married woman. She got pregnant, decided to keep the child, and claimed it was her husbands. I met her around 7 years later crossing a road with a little girl of around 6-7 y/o... and I realized just who's father this little girl must be... the realization must have appeared on my face... because her eyes widened in alarm, and she shook her head from side to side very quickly, whilst pointing her eyes in the direction of the child, to warn me from saying anything... the little girl looked the double of the young guy she had the affair with.

Made me wonder how many children are passed off as say... a husbands, which are not biologically his.... looking this up quickly... European data seem to suggest anywhere between 1 in 50, to 1 in 500 families where a father is raising a child that is not his. Possibly higher before the advent of contraception, morning after pill, and before abortion was legal etc.

The genetic link suggestion appears to mainly be the appeal to ignorance argument (argumentum ad ignorantiam). This goes, we don't know of any relatedness or genealogical connection or how there could be any, but it probably exists because it is (extremely remotely) possible. For instance another sort of example of this fallaceous argument: “We have no evidence that the Illuminati ever existed. They must have been so clever they destroyed all the evidence.”

Consider the well-known case of James Leininger. From the Psi Encyclopedia:            

"James Leininger is the subject of a well-known American child reincarnation case.  In early childhood, James had frequent nightmares of being trapped in a burning plane that was crashing.  In further statements to his parents he said he’d been shot down in a plane near Iwo Jima, had been based on a ship named ‘Natoma’, and had a friend named Jack Larsen. These and other details were found to match closely with the life of James Huston, Jr., an American pilot killed in action in March 1945.  James’s parents wrote a best-selling book about their investigation, and the case received widespread media attention."

James Huston Jr. was killed in 1945, Leininger was born in 1998 in another state from Huston's family, and there is no known genetic connection - neither family had any awareness of one, and no one to my knowledge has ever suggested one. 

The Huston memories displayed by the young Leininger would have to somehow been conveyed genetically from a member of Huston's family that knew about them over the limited span of 2-3 generations - the logistics of this are beyond improbable given the absolute lack of any connection between the families. 

Looking into the genetic memory hypothesis a little more deeply shows it is untenable for other reasons in addition to the logistics of genealogy.

The things about Huston exhibited by the young Leininger weren't simply veridical information bits about his life that might have been known by some family member - these were vivid personal memories and personality factors, exactly as if he was Huston reborn and having personal memories of his own former life. Much of the information was in the form of personal memories and personality characteristics acquired in the war and combat, but of course Huston died with no descendant having those and able to pass them on to his progeny. 

Of course it can be hypothesized that dead is dead, but information constituting the memories and personality characteristics can still persist a while to float around like a sort of cloud and attach itself to and influence some vulnerable child, all without any sort of actual survival of spirit or soul. I don't think this is very plausible given the vividness of the memories, the sometimes transmission of actual skills like playing an instrument, and especially because of the many documented cases of veridical birthmarks and birth defects exactly where killing wounds were received in the former life. 

These sorts of ideas appear to be generated to desperately avoid at all costs postulating survival and reincarnation as it is by far the best explanation of the evidence.

I think if one wants to seriously make an attempt to explain reincarnation, it is first necessary to familiarise oneself with the phenomenon. It is a much richer, more overwhelming phenomenon than would ever be explainable via genealogical means, even with a following wind and under full sail.