Thoughts on strength of reincarnation evidence?

Hello fellow Psiquesters!

I have been following a lot of reincarnation research recently, reading papers, and currently watching a presentation by Ian Stevenson.

What are people's thoughts on the strength of the evidence for reincarnation?

In my view the evidence is pretty strong, if not the strongest evidence for an afterlife, followed closely by NDE's. What do you all think?

I would probably advocate more resources into this area of research - I feel we could go much further with this area of research.

If one is interested in evidence for an afterlife*, I do feel it is necessary to look at research from a variety of fields. And also within those fields, consider diverse evidence.

There seems to be a tendency to home in on particular aspects, for example near-death experiences during cardiac arrest within a hospital setting. Or reincarnation cases involving young children. These represent small subsets of the whole. Maybe in doing so, there's a danger of failing to notice the mountains of evidence piling up all around. For example some NDE accounts talk of being aware of past lives. Some reincarnation cases involve recall by adults, sometimes quite late in life. Some reincarnation evidence is spontaneous, some is recalled during hypnotic regression therapy, and so on.

Of course some evidence may not stand up to scrutiny, even as an advocate of reincarnation, there are plenty of cases which I think are flawed, or maybe simply erroneous. But that cannot account for the entirety of the data, it merely prunes away a few instances, much as a gardener may trim away some parts - but doesn't decide to concrete over the whole garden.

* Though I used the word 'afterlife' here, I consider it a misleading term, since it seems to suggest a model where this life here is the starting point, and then there is something tagged on afterwards. I'd prefer to just use a term such as 'life', with no concept of a beginning or an end.

I’m glad you posted this thread Roberta. I do think reincarnation research is among the strongest out there as far as supporting  the notion that there’s more to it than pure physical reduction.

Like Typoz said, it has always frustrated me to an extent how much people tend to focus on certain areas (which is fine) rather than the whole, because it invites (admittedly simplified) responses like: “NDEs are hallucinations; the person wasn’t actually dead; the experience may have been real but it’s just an evolutionary trick; etc., QED consciousness reduces to the brain,” at least from the more immature crowds.

It is nice to have a more wholistic picture of the evidence, and I’ve always felt that any discussion about consciousness or the hard problem really ought to involve reincarnation research. It is strong, in numerous cases there have been studies that have done a pretty good job all things considered of making the studies as scientifically rigorous as possible, and perhaps most notably, I personally have seen and heard far and away the least skeptical pushback on reincarnation research of perhaps all prominent psi phenomena.

I have never seen an argument from someone challenging the reincarnation research that I’ve considered to be especially challenging to address, or one that makes me seriously question the study being discussed. It seems to always focus on fraud or mistake of memory, and to me ascribing that to explain every case just isn’t a very strong argument against the research. Perhaps the lack of stronger critical arguments is a result of this type of research taking a backseat to NDEs and other psi topics to some extent, but I think the research is known enough that at least some sound challenges ought to have arisen by now, if there are any beyond fraud, misremembering, and accusations of coincidence.

While I of course am open to those challenges in any given case, I feel that they are just very, very weak explanations in numerous cases/studies, something of a last possible defense against the research. And to attempt to explain all cases of alleged “reincarnation” (for lack of a better term because that obviously has baggage to it at times) that way, given the number of cases and the strength of many of them, is not satisfactory to me and I personally don’t think it should be satisfactory to anyone attempting to be intellectually honest.

So I do thing the reincarnation studies are both strong and important, and I’m glad you posed a thread for a discussion on that topic.

If one is interested in evidence for an afterlife*, I do feel it is necessary to look at research from a variety of fields. And also within those fields, consider diverse evidence.

There seems to be a tendency to home in on particular aspects, for example near-death experiences during cardiac arrest within a hospital setting. Or reincarnation cases involving young children. These represent small subsets of the whole. Maybe in doing so, there's a danger of failing to notice the mountains of evidence piling up all around. For example some NDE accounts talk of being aware of past lives. Some reincarnation cases involve recall by adults, sometimes quite late in life. Some reincarnation evidence is spontaneous, some is recalled during hypnotic regression therapy, and so on.

Of course some evidence may not stand up to scrutiny, even as an advocate of reincarnation, there are plenty of cases which I think are flawed, or maybe simply erroneous. But that cannot account for the entirety of the data, it merely prunes away a few instances, much as a gardener may trim away some parts - but doesn't decide to concrete over the whole garden.

* Though I used the word 'afterlife' here, I consider it a misleading term, since it seems to suggest a model where this life here is the starting point, and then there is something tagged on afterwards. I'd prefer to just use a term such as 'life', with no concept of a beginning or an end.

Yes there is a point I'd like to stress pretty hard here: majority of the "proponents" for the survival of consciousness on this forum and elsewhere are not here because of one small group of experiences (ie NDEs during cardiac arrest). They are convinced by a broad spectrum, as Typoz points out. 

Skeptics, as much as I see them having valid criticisms sometimes, really gotta give up all this "wishful thinking" crap. To their accredit, it would be jumping the gun to say you were wholly convinced of an afterlife by just one NDE you read alone or something. However, that's not the case. Speaking for myself, I'm only at the point I am because of, once again, the whole picture, and still I'm not 100 percent convinced! 

Then again, I don't think anybody else here is. But some are as close as they can be to it and yet still leave a healthy bit of skepticism in there

Skeptics, as much as I see them having valid criticisms sometimes, really gotta give up all this "wishful thinking" crap. To their accredit, it would be jumping the gun to say you were wholly convinced of an afterlife by just one NDE you read alone or something. However, that's not the case. Speaking for myself, I'm only at the point I am because of, once again, the whole picture, and still I'm not 100 percent convinced! 

Well for myself I wouldn't particularly address any members of this forum when I say this, but there is a lot of very weak and wishy-washy stuff out there (youtube comments etc.) masquerading as scepticism, when I don't really know for sure what it is. For example the idea that any mention of afterlife is really just a fear of death, as though that explained anything. I came across that particular old ploy (fear of death) being put forward a few days ago, as an explanation for reincarnation.

Then again, I don't think anybody else here is. But some are as close as they can be to it and yet still leave a healthy bit of skepticism in there

Well, I suppose a few near-death experiencers and others with various types of direct experience may have a feeling of certainty, to which they are presumably entitled. But still, the function of this forum is to discuss these things, with evidence in mind, not just to promote a single viewpoint.

There appears to be evidence that children can come into possession of information that has not be gained from their own learned experiences. I can see how people may have attempted to explain this using popular ideas about reincarnation. But I think this popular explanation is inaccurate. Personally I think there is something much more fundamental and startling going on to do with information, and how it is stored, accessed and processed.

This is where I think that the scientific, or objective, approach sometimes loses sight of the human aspects of these experiences. Categorising them as "popular ideas" seems to me to be devaluing them while promoting some kind of scientific methodology as the "proper" means of formulating a theory. Again and again I have made the same point on this forum and elsewhere that the subjective is important and is not to be dismissed so arrogantly.

What do I mean by the human aspects? I mean the feelings a child has for the family he believes he still belongs to even though they were part of another life. Objectively, we can speculate about some kind of information retrieval that science has only just begun to investigate but how accurate these details are and how information science can evaluate them still leaves out the very subjective nature of the emotional trauma of a past life that may be felt viscerally during the present life. 

I just think that, in our desperation to appear to be rational and scientifically grounded, we may have a tendency towards a kind of reductionism that expunges feelings and human subjectivity and leaves us with informational bits and bytes. Much of strength of evidence, whether from NDE, reincarnation or deathbed visions, etc., is contained in the emotional component: the feeling of the subject that her/his friends or family are just beyond that flimsy veil and are occasionally accessible, perhaps during some traumatic event.

I just don't think you've understood what I've written.

That would not be unusual.

Well, I suppose a few near-death experiencers and others with various types of direct experience may have a feeling of certainty, to which they are presumably entitled. But still, the function of this forum is to discuss these things, with evidence in mind, not just to promote a single viewpoint.

That's true. But for we people who haven't been graced with a transcendent experience, it's the best we can do.