Concerns over reincarnation

Faith & Science Conversation
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Have you looked at the 50 year study done at UVA?

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About

Over the last 50 years of active research, the UVA DOPS faculty have collected 2500 cases, most of which have been found outside of the United states. Members of the research staff at the Division of Perceptual Studies have published numerous articles and books about these cases. Of these 2500 cases, over 2300 have been coded and entered into our SPSS data base to date. During most summers for the past 15 years, first year UVA medical students research interns, assist us in coding the field notes on 200 variables. They develop research projects based on access to the original research files. These research interns apply various statistical analyses to look into the accumulated data thus far, for patterns and trends.

Publications about the research being done at DOPS into memories of previous lives:

We invite you to view a list of books on reincarnation written by our research faculty. The list includes books written by our director, Dr. Jim Tucker, as well as the long list of books authored by our esteemed founder, Dr. Ian Stevenson. Among the many ground breaking books by Dr. Stevenson is his comprehensive two volume set, Reincarnation and Biology: A Contribution to the Etiology of Birthmarks and Birth Defects, Volumes I and II. In this 22268 page, two volume set, Dr. Stevenson wrote about his extensive research into cases of birthmarks and birth defects which appeared to strongly correlate to memories of a past life in particular subjects. Dr. Stevenson also wrote an abridged version of this research called Where Reincarnation and Biology Intersect.

In 2013, Dr. Jim Tucker, authored his second book on the topic of cases of children who report memories of a previous life. In his most recent book Return to Life, Dr. Tucker describes the research into strong American cases being carried out at DOPS. In Tucker’s first book, Life Before Life, he reviews forty years of research into children who report memories of previous lives. This book contains some accounts of interesting American cases, as well as descriptions of Dr. Ian Stevenson’s classic cases in Asia.

In addition to books, the faculty have published many academic papers on this subject in a wide variety of professional journals. For a list of academic papers specifically on the study of past life memories written by our faculty, please see Publications on Past-life Memories.

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I know Reddit is not always the best source for commentary, but I’m not personally going to invest the time in reading Ian Stevenson’s research papers myself. But I found this detailed analysis by someone who posted there which seemed useful. I quote:

I gave it a good read. I am not convinced.

First, the complete lack of description of his experimental methods isn’t encouraging. The only source linked in the article is his organization’s website, and the link yields a 404. I searched again, this time from the website’s front page, but couldn’t find anything about his experimental methods. I’ll come back to that later.

Secondly, the alleged sample size. The article claims he found 2000+ children with memories matching events from a dead person’s life they probably knew nothing about (wikipedia says 3000+).
The article states that only 1 in 500 children were “in the right emotional space to remember their past lives” (which itself is an unproven assertion). That implies the 2000-3000 affected children were part of a 500x larger sample size. That means 100 000-150 000 children interviewed in total over a period of 40 years, that’s 7-10 children interviewed on average every single day over 40 years. That’s a MASSIVE sample size with a very small portion of positive results. That will also matter later.

Then, there’s the evidence. Children who hint at events that took place before their birth. Those include an unknown number of the following :

  • Deaths related to their phobias.*

  • Deaths related to their physical defects or birth marks.*

  • An alleged strong reaction to their assumed killer.*

If asked for how they died, the children might have perceived an expectation for an answer and felt pressured into making things up on the spot. They would most likely have used elements from the environment, including their own bodies and experiences, as a base for their stories. They might look at themselves and use that as inspiration to make up a story that would include these details. And if asked for how you might have died in another life, wouldn’t you instinctively think of the things that scare you the most ? What is fear if not the suspicion that something might kill you ?

How did Ian control for these potential interferences from his results ? We don’t know. I can’t find any information about that, not in the article, nor on their website.
We also don’t know how many of the 2000 children had marks that matched lethal wounds (besides the 3 examples given in the article). The fact they could be matched to just about anyone that ever died, and that despite this, the single most convincing example of the girl who claimed to have drowned after being pushed by her brother had several elements contradicting her best match. They’re most likely all coincidences, unless there are enough cases to be significant, but if it was the case they would say as much instead of listing the 3 cases. Whether among a total sample size of 2000 or 150 000, 3 instances of it happening isn’t statistically significant.

As for the third point, how did they notice those strong reactions to their alleged killers ? Did they cross them in the street and catch the murderers this way ? Did they visit the murderers in jail ? How did they safely expose the children to convicted murderers without telling them those were murderers ? Wouldn’t the children be scared of strangers locked up in a jail cell anyway ?

How did Ian control for these problems ? And how many of the 2000 kids reacted this way ? Again, we don’t know. Without further information, it all sounds… if not made up, skewed to fit a preexisting expectation

And i’m not the only one who thought that, even among his peers. According to Ian’s wikipedia page, several people criticized his work including fellow philosopher Paul Edwards. Paul was anti-reincarnationist and might have looked to fit his own preexisting expectations, but it’s not the case of another philosopher and “psi researcher” C.T.K. Chari (who was head of department of philosophy a Madras Christian College in India).
They pointed out instances where Ian asked the children leading questions, the fact that some children or the children’s parents might have lied to him, that he often relied on translators to communicate with the children who might have inaccurately translated his questions or the children’s answers, and that Ian didn’t count children who didn’t fit his theory as evidence against it.

They reached the conclusion that Ian fell victim to motivated reasoning/confirmation bias driven by his personal belief that reincarnation was real without considering the possibility that it might not happen at all.

Overall, i commend his work as professor of psychiatry, but i wouldn’t qualify his work on reincarnation as coming “from the point of view of a materialist skeptic”, far from it.

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I am very opposed to reincarnation. The very idea of it seems rather demonic and creepy to me. Having some person of the past invading a child is as bad as pedophilia.

Clearly the only evidence is very subjective, and it is in the same category as the beliefs in UFOs, psychics, ghosts, fairies, etc… I have seen nothing that lends any credence to any of these things but then the beliefs in the things of my own religion are just as subjective, and the limits of my experiences do not define reality.

How do I handle this? Well… I believe there is an irreducibly subjective aspect to reality. So some of these thing may be very real to other people even if they are not real to me. So while I am unlikely to find any evidence for reincarnation with anything like scientific objectivity the same is true of an atheist with regards to my Christian beliefs.

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That’s about the conclusion I came to this summer when I took my kids to hear a “Bigfoot investigator” speak at our library. So many of the things he’s experienced could easily have been explained many other ways or are coincidences, but since he knows what he’s looking for, he’s starting with a conclusion and then assuming anything that even remotely fits it “must” be Bigfoot.

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That’s a problem when talking about confirmation bias. Some biases are correct (rather fewer than more, however ; - ).

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Great topic, Dayne!! I would be wary of such research because it presumes something to be provable which ultimately is not. “Accurate” stories —in what sense?

There is more to this issue though. The Bible says “once to die, and then the judgment”. Some philosophies may believe in reincarnation. But it does not fit into Judeo-Christian theology anywhere…not at all. Doesn’t matter if the stories sound real — or “kinda OK.” It’s not what God says happens after death.

And if it does not fit into biblical thinking in general — then the question is, Which text do you believe?

Stevenson, who died in 2007, had some intriguing stories to tell, for sure. But this is like recent accounts in some Western countries of people believing they died and then returned to tell lurid stories of the afterlife…As the saying goes, “if you don’t stand for something, you will fall for anything.” I just think it is better to draw a line under subjects like reincarnation and move along to another matter.

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Why is it funny and how does the rest of the NT rule out God’s sovereign ability to send a soul back for another go? All I see is Christian proof-text hunting putting God a box.

Now I have no beliefs about reincarnation either way. My gut says it’s bogus but my gut is not an actual argument and that is just my post Enlightenment, methodological naturalism bias shining through. If evidence for reincarnation is found in reality then it would be wise to not be so wooden and assuming in how you take Hebrews 9:27. So many Christian’s think just quoting a one off verse like this does anything. Not to mention Hebrews is drawing a comparison to emphasize Jesus. It’s hardly intending to teach anything for or against reincarnation.

We could proof-text hunt scripture and claim the earth doesn’t move. It happened before. There is nothing systematic in scripture against the possibility of reincarnation. It’s certainly not in favor of it but to tell God what He can and cannot do when there is next to no evidence either way is bad theology.

Vinnie

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Conjecture what you will. I won’t.

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Statistically significant isn’t a consideration unless the proposal is that everyone has past lives and should remember them. But if the suggestion is that these are all instances of violent death, there just aren’t enough that we should expect more than a small percentage of children born in the last century to have such memories.

Again not a consideration if you’re tracking something that is acknowledged as being rare. It’s akin to pursuing a report that diamonds wash down one certain stream from the Himalays but only after mild earthquakes and you’re trying to verify the story; finding a hundred streams without diamonds doesn’t prove anything about the story.

You switched from an introductory sentence about reincarnation to talking about something else – reincarnation isn’t about “some person of the past invading a child”, it’s about the child actually being that person from the past. That’s a huge difference.

The creepy aspect would be that parents want to have a child and instead they get a recycled person who already had a life!

So I still think the Jungian racial subconscious is a better explanation than reincarnation, especially considering that these kids tend to drift away from these memories and develop their own lives – that suggests it’s not a person returned, it’s a batch of memories that somehow landed in a kid’s brain.

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  • Dayne: So far, you’ve been given a potpourri of reasons to discount any tale of reincarnation of some memories that seem to have once been those of a person who lived, as a human, on earth before another person–commonly a child–who, in some very strange manner, incorporates those memories as if their very own who is born years after, and most often, distant in space from the person believed to have first experienced the events.
  • And yet, none of the reasons given, actually explains–the phenomena called “reincarnation” in any way that you or I can take seriously.
  • Are accounts of “memories inherited from other persons who lived and died before the birth of the person who inherited them” true accounts or false accounts? False, if you believe the people here. And I say: “Whoa! not so fast.”
  • The most important allegation, IMO, is the claim that God Himself says, in words attributed to Him, “Just as people are destined to die once, and after that to face judgment…”
  • In fact, however, that phrase is just part of an argument given by the anonymous author of Hebrews. which goes something like this:
    • Major Premise 1. Humans die once.
      • Minor Premise 2: Then each faces post-mortal judgment, implying that they live twice.
    • By analogy
      • Major Premise 3: Jesus died once, for one purpose, i.e. to take away sin.
        • Second Premise 4: Jesus will come again, to save believers, implying that He lives twice.
    • Conclusion: Humans live twice. One life leads to death; the second leads to eternal life.
      • [Note: the second, eternal life may be favorable or unfavorable, but we are encouraged to believe that it will be as “real” as the first life, although “real” can vary quite a bit over lifetimes.]
  • Obviously, anyone who believes that humans only have one life, is unlikely to believe in reincarnation. By the way, I am not an authority on the subject, but it’s my understanding that the Hasidim (ultra-Orthodox Jews) believe in reincarnation, which raises the question: Can you “be” a Jew in one life and a non-Jew in a second, third, or subsequent life?)
  • Apart from all that, there is the novel feature in Hebrews that the author wrote in Greek to Jews, and clearly quoted from the Septuagint (Greek Bible), not the Hebrew Bible, which kind of spoils the claim that “God says we live twice, and die once.” [Reason: Hebrews has a major erroneous reading of Genesis in it, which leaves one wondering how the error slipped by God.]

To be continued …

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Continued from previous message.

  • Dayne:
    • What I find interesting is that no one here has suggested that Reincarnation Phenomena may be manifestations of quantum entanglement of two separate people: one who lived and died and is now living in an uncommon/unearthly realm and one who is living on earth, now.
      What Are Quantum Effects and How Do They Enable Quantum Information Science?
    • The quantum theory of reincarnation
    • Quantum entanglement is “as good as butter holding two pieces of bread together” as far as “explaining everything else”, why can’t QE be used to explain “memories shared by two people, one on earth now, and the other not”?
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Your conjecture is that reincarnation is not compatible with the Bible unless you think modern Christian punchlines via proof-text hunting are universal axioms.

Limit God how you want. I won’t.

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I don’t think it is a case of limiting God. What’s the point of revelation if anything goes?

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I’m more than sure he’s my Father and he won’t ‘send me back for another go’. Reincarnation also belies the familial metaphor (or original reality) in other ways. I can spell a couple out for you if you would like me to.

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In the 1980’s I had a crisis of faith as a result of reading a book by Dr. Ian Currie entitled ‘You Cannot Die’ in which he made an apparently strong case for reincarnation. When I wrote my Kindle book ‘The God Debate - Dawkins in Denial’ several years ago, I did a lot of research into out-of-body experiences and this is presented in Chapter Six of my book. It included a section headed ‘Past-life memories: reincarnation or haunting?’ Here is an extract which I think is relevant to this debate. I hope you’ll all forgive its length.

"Among those familiar with NDE research, Dr. Alexander is by no means alone in believing in reincarnation. Ian Currie’s You Cannot Die advocated it and, as we’ve seen, Dr. van Lommel also gives the idea qualified support. Opinion polls show that a significant proportion of westerners believe in it, including many Christians. Originating in eastern religions hundreds of years before Christ, belief in reincarnation was widespread in the ancient world into which Christ was born, and the writer of Hebrews may have been responding to such beliefs in first century pagan converts when he wrote: “… human beings die only once, after which comes judgement …” (Hebrews 9:27).

"Ian Currie’s book has a chapter presenting evidence he thought supported reincarnation, including research into hypnosis induced past-life memories. However, other research and re-hypnosis tests have suggested that material recalled in such memories actually originate in this life. For example, a case that sparked great interest in America concerned a housewife, Virginia Tighe, who claimed that in a past life she had been a nineteenth century Irish immigrant named Bridey Murphy. When investigated, no historical trace of Bridey Murphy could be found, but what did emerge was that Tighe’s description of this woman bore a strong resemblance to an elderly Irish immigrant with whom she had spent a lot of time in her childhood. Her claim was sincere, not fraudulent, because she simply had no conscious memory of the stories told her by her talkative childhood friend.

"Currie also referred to the famous work of psychiatrist Ian Stevenson. A notable thing about Stevenson’s approach to researching reincarnation claims is that he did not feel comfortable with past-life memories induced in adults by regression hypnosis. This is because the brain is thought to record everything a person experiences in this life, but the vast majority of it is irretrievable except by techniques that resurrect the long-forgotten past. Secondly, the brain under hypnosis is highly susceptible to suggestions by the hypnotist. If a hypnotherapist believes that his patients’ psychological problems may stem from a previous life, he will regress them to their time in the womb and then suggest that they go back further and talk about past lives. But readers may well wonder what happens if there is no past life to recall, especially if the patient also believes in reincarnation. In those circumstances, will they sub-consciously endeavour to follow the therapist’s suggestive lead, dredging up material relating to the past that in fact originated in magazines articles or historical novels and films they have forgotten seeing, using it innocently to fabricate a plausible past-life scenario?

"Detailed investigation of such cases has, I believe, unearthed inaccuracies in the ‘recalled’ historical setting, e.g., in the use of language, that is traceable to Hollywood style fiction. In addition, the reliability of hypnosis in this context is very doubtful. Professor Ernest Hilgard (died 1989), formerly director of the Hypnosis Research Laboratory, Stanford University, warned that hypnosis was a “very dangerous tool” that should only be used by trained specialists. He stated that claims of new identities by patients undergoing hypnosis were “not uncommon and very easy to produce.” He said they were invariably due to long buried memories, and contrary claims were not justified from a scholarly viewpoint.

"When I first read Currie’s book in 1978, I found from further research that re-hypnosis of subjects confirmed the fact that their past-life recall used forgotten information learnt in this life, but I cannot now cite the source I used. But readers might like to consult an interesting Wikipedia article headed ‘Past Life Regression’ which reinforces this explanation. In view of van Lommel’s citation of past-life memories as an occasional component of NDE life reviews, it is of interest to note the article’s observation that once hypnosis has implanted a ‘past-life memory’ in the brain, it takes its place in the subject’s consciousness on an equal or even superior footing to genuine memories. During an NDE, therefore, a person may well be unable to distinguish such ‘memories’ from genuine ones.

"Ian Stevenson ignored hypnosis induced memories and focused his research on young children who at the age of two or three began to ask about another family whom they saw as their ‘real’ family, sometimes causing great distress to their parents whose parenthood they seemed to reject. He carried out hands-on research into hundreds of such cases, piecing together information provided by the child on names, places, circumstances and other details to see if he could track down the dead person with whom it identified and verify the child’s memories. In many cases, he was able to do so, even in some cases taking the child to meet members of its supposed other family and watching clear evidence of recognition. In over half the cases, the dead person with whom the child identified died in violent or tragic circumstances. However, by the age of five or six, the child’s past-life memories would fade away.

"Ironically, the previous chapter in Currie’s book offers an obvious alternative explanation for ‘past-life memories.’ Its title is ‘I Want a Body – Possession Experiences’, and the evidence it presents is just as credible as the evidence he used to support reincarnation. Of course, many people say they don’t believe in ghosts, but in fact there is great deal of data suggesting that, for a variety of reasons, a person whose death takes them by complete surprise may not realise they’re dead. Van Lommel mentions one NDE report in which a woman who had visited the familiar realm of light said she also saw another world, grey and dismal, whose spirit-inhabitants wandered apparently without hope or purpose, shuffling this way and that, pausing, then changing direction, as if confused and unable to decide what to do or where to go.

"Currie suggests reasons why some spirits may be unable to see beyond the world which trauma has forced them to leave. They include: obsessive love or hatred for persons, objects, situations or ways of life; earthly desires for sex, food, drink, drugs, money, power, revenge, sadism; negative personality traits like greed, lust, selfishness, religious fanaticism; and (sceptics please note) long-held beliefs that death equals oblivion and that, whatever is happening to them, it cannot be an afterlife and so they must still be alive.

"Such spirits seem to be earthbound and become very distressed that they can no longer deal with whatever may have been preoccupying them before their death and urgently seek an outlet for their frustrations. They want to re-enter the physical world, and as their own bodies are no longer available, find themselves attracted to what psychics term another person’s aura. They seem to see another’s person body as somehow their own and try to take it over, unconcerned by or unaware of their victim’s age, sex, identity or personal needs. Apparent availability is the sole criterion. If communication through mediums is to be believed, the possessor/haunter cannot connect the body they feel entitled to use with their victim. But they also cannot free themselves from the presence of the victim, who is therefore perceived as a very annoying person always hanging around and being a nuisance. Almost comically, they feel they’re the victim in the situation, not an unwelcome and disruptive intruder. The medical establishment tries to deal with the real victim’s resultant mental illness without any awareness of its cause.

"So, what happens if the victim is a psychically sensitive young child who can sense the resolve of their haunter to resume its former life? Has he/she become a medium? In Reincarnation: A Christian Appraisal , Mark Albrecht writes:

"One of the more obvious explanations of genuinely paranormal cases of reincarnation recall would seem to be direct spirit influence, as the great majority of cases exhibit features parallel with those of spiritism, seances, mediumship and demonic possession.

"Stevenson says that if information about a past life could be proved to come from spirit communication, it would cause serious problems: “Such a case, if we find one, would severely shake confidence in the subjective experience of memory.” It would also disturb reincarnation theories based on past-life recall. Stevenson agrees nonetheless that “the influence of some discarnate personality” is indeed an option, along with telepathy and clairvoyance. He even admits that mediums can duplicate the feats of detailed recall, saying, “Perhaps the children who remember previous lives really add to this number.” While he himself leans toward reincarnation as the genuine meaning of past-life recall, he notes that many features of the cases “do not permit a firm decision between the hypothesis of possession and reincarnation.” He does state that a “significant minority” of his subjects exhibited ESP or mediumistic tendencies.

"Of course, Stevenson cannot rule out the possibility that all his subjects actually had such psychic sensitivity. In his postscript, Albrecht notes that even believers in reincarnation do not accept Stevenson’s case studies as evidence for it:

"Third, recall of past lives does not prove reincarnation. There is nothing in the reported experiences of spontaneous recall or hypnotically regressed subjects that has not been observed repeatedly in mediumship, seances, spirit contact, demon possession, UFO contactee cases, and other forms of occult / psychic trance utterances … An orthodox Hindu swami, Sri Sri Somasundara Desika Paramachariya of south India (who accepts the traditional Hindu doctrine of reincarnation) wrote the following in an open letter to Ian Stevenson: “All the 300 odd cases reported by you do not in fact support the theory of reincarnation. . . . They are all spirit possessions, ignored by the learned in south India.” A Hindu swami from India would certainly be in a position to speak authoritatively on this subject. His refutation of Stevenson’s work in light of his knowledge and experience of spiritism is a devastating blow to the validity of recall in proving past lives.

[Extract from Chapter Six (p.72) and extract from Postscript (p.130), Reincarnation: A Christian Appraisal by Mark Albrecht, IVP 1987, The Evangelical Christian Library. Used by author’s permission.]

I hope that the above addresses the stress that some contributors have experienced by the concept of reincarnation.

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I’ve been curious about the quantum side of it as I’ve seen some supporters of reincarnation use the theory of “quantum consciousness” as evidence for reincarnation. Does anyone have a physics standpoint for this?

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Revelationt doesn’t tell us everything, it is accommodated through the worldview and language of its time and there is nothing explicitly forbidding reincarnation. Just a wooden literalism and failure to understand the main point of Hebrews 9:27. Claiming that must exclude reincarnation is like claiming Jesus’s reference to Noah must be understood literally or that Paul’s reference to Adam in relation to Christ must be based on a literal Adam. The essential point of Hebrews 9:27 is about Jesus and references the obvious and empirical finality of death on this planet to draw the point.

The literalism is so wooden one wonders how Jesus could raise people from the dead if it’s always, 100% of the time appointed for men to die once. If p then q. One acts as if there can’t even be exceptions to general rules when scripture has several (Jesus raises multiple people from the dead and Matthew has thousands of Jewish saints coming out of their tombs). It’s not reincarnation but it is an exception to a wooden interpretation of “men . . . die once.”

I am aware of nothing on the issue either way. Many Christians are just culturally conditioned to reject the possibility of reincarnation through poor proof-text hunting. If God wants a person to take another spin that is His choice. He is big on the second chances IMHO and I don’t think everyone gets an equal shake at life to the point where they are all equally ready for judgment. It’s certainly not unimaginable nor is the Catholic idea of purgatory.

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An other Bible-pounding proof text that absolutely authoritatively finally and dismissively limits God’s power (@Vinnie1 ; - ) that I think speaks to NDEs experiencing an unspecific and even comfortable or comforting light is this:

…even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light.
2 Corinthians 11:14

…and therefore not to be trusted as legitimate.
 

1 I left out woodenly literalistic, sorry.

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The closest possible case is JBap/Elijah. But we do have examples of people who didn’t die and/or who died more than once (the people Jesus raised). A wooden literalism doesn’t work with Hebrews 9:27 because the Bible has multiple examples at odds with it.

My whole point is God’s judgment is God’s judgment, whatever it is. Exactly what happens after death is unknown. Jesus told a criminal on the cross TODAY you will be with me in paradise. Elsewhere it says people wait for the resurrection of the dead does it not? I’d say scripture is hardly even uniform on exactly what happens and when when we die. There is no real Biblical basis for or against it.

Vinnie