There is a lot of scientific evidence of the soul, but materialistic scientists quickly debunk decades of diligent work by a number of scientists. There are two specific areas that are rich with data on the soul.
All of this work provides independent data points about the evidence of the soul. The work done by the University of Virginia documents the transfer of memories and physical injury from one human body to a newborn. The ghost research done by multiple medical professionals provides evidence that disembodied souls can be the cause of schizophrenia, depression and multiple personality disorder.
Science has not been able to quantify the energy or the substance of the soul, but it is clear it carries memory and energy. Energy has weight, so it should be possible one day to measure the mass of the soul (e=mc^2). The substance and energy of the soul is similar to Dark Matter and Dark Energy theorized by astrophysics. We just need more brave scientists to continue to investigate it.
I think that we are in trouble if we are trying to determine the Biblical definition of the âsoul,â psyche in Greek. It is the same word that is the basis for the word, psychology, the science of the mind.
I would say that psyche or mind is a good definition of soul, but not what theologians think. The4 mind is not material, but relational.
Not quite sure what youâre saying here. Energy doesnât have âweightâ like the energy of a photon - nobody would say has weight as photons are massless.
Er⌠um⌠hmm? What do you mean here? The soul is like the matter that doesnât interact via the electromagnetic force but it interacts via gravity? We can measure exact amounts of Dark Matter and make maps of it. This sounds like hobble gobble which makes me question the âscienceâ of the other work above but I will be sure to check it out when I have some more time.
In physics, energy has an equivalent amount of mass.
DM and DE are unknown mass and energy. All I am suggesting is if the universe truly so full of DM and DE we should be able to observe some in near space. The research done by Dr. Ian Stevenson and Dr. Jim Tucker at the University of Virginia suggests that there is energy and mass transferred from a deceased to an infant in the process they have documented as reincarnation. Both of these are unknown substances like DM and DE. I am suggesting that we have two unknown energies and masses and they might be related. It needs more research of course, but right now no one is looking that I am aware.
Kind of⌠but thatâs just the rest mass of the particles that actually have mass.
What if a proton starts moving? E doesnât equal mc^2 anymore but rather E=p^2/2m+mc^2 (in a non-relativistic case). You can see a few of these examples under:
Yes but this has nothing to do with anything you are talking about. If you want, you can read about The Local Dark Matter Density. There are also some galaxies without dark matter. But describing how dark matter interacts with matter is far beyond what the worldâs best physicists can currently do (other than we know for a fact it only interacts gravitationally and NOT with electromagnetismâof which the brain and both operate so it cannot interact with us outside of gravitationally) and dark energy is a whole different ballgame in the sense that the universe isnât âfull ofâ dark energy in the first place.
What are unknown substances? Their alleged âenergy and massâ that is transferred in a reincarnational sense? You donât get to just claim that âhey, we have some unknown stuff and your dark matter and dark energy are unknown, maybe theyâre the same!â
Perhaps you can be the one!
Maybe thereâs a reason for that. None the less, I still plan to get to your youtube video links soon!
Data? More like a handful of anecdotal stories from a culture steeped in reincarnation. Gonna have to go with the skeptic report on this one: http://www.skepticreport.com/sr/?p=482
These ones contradict the first set on reincarnation do they not? Which is it? What really happens after we die? How can both be true?
I thought with was a scientific discussion? The university of Virginia has continued Stevensonâs research after his passing and it is being led by Dr. Jim Tucker. There has not been even limited acceptance of this work, but I think science needs to heed the words of Dr. Robert Almeder of Georgia State University. He said, science cannot ignore the results, even though the process has not yet been uncovered. We donât need to know why it occurs, but the data shows reincarnation does occur.
The skeptic report you quoted was a book review of a summary of Stevensonâs work, not the rich data collected on over 3,000 cases. The team doing this work has been highly skeptical all the way through. They have followed forensic scientific methods meticulously and have gone through third party review. If you want to look at the data, I suggest at least reading the case study book: Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation.
This is not a theological issue for me. This comes down to the proper medical treatment for humanity. If our mental state is not 100% biological/chemical, then the treatment of our mental state cannot continue to be chemical. We are medicating children instead of listening to them, as Stevenson did for his whole life.
I have summarized the works of many Life After Life sources, including Stevensonâs work, in my post on Quora. The basis for the theory comes from the early Christian Church Father, Origen of Alexandria, and it is called âThe Restoration of All Thingsâ. This theory takes into account all Christian values including free will.
Free will is how both reincarnation and ghosts can be true. Ghost research has yet to discover a ghost claiming to be from earlier epochs. In other words, ghosts are not in a permanent state, but rather stuck in this state for various reasons. The work done by Wickland, Fiore and others has been to actually teach the ghosts and encourage them to âmove onâ and stop interfering in their patientâs lives. So, once they move on, they can enter the reincarnation or restoration process.
Again, the process is not import for science today, that can be left to philosophers. What science needs to recognize is there is yet another non-material cause of mental illness. Ignoring it, is causing human suffering.
Er do you feel that the article I linked from the skeptic report misreported any of the anecdotal evidence for reincarnation?
In many you have families who strongly believe in it and even times want any future offspring to come back as a deceased loved one. And then lo and behold, after lots of children hearing about it they realize theyâve been reincarnated!
What is UVA doing these days to continue Stevensonâs work you didnât quite say. Presumably you keep using them to legitimize this as scientific but please keep in mind:
Perhaps you can demonstrate how Stevenson listening to children who think theyâve been reincarnated is superior to medical treatment? Were there particular ailments that he helped treat? Where are the double blinded studies on those?
Yeah- the belief that ghosts and reincarnation are real is whatâs causing human suffering in many cases.
I do not have any direct data from Stevensonâs impact the children he spoke to. The related research I have seen is from Mel Levine, founder of âAll Kinds of Mindsâ. He demonstrated the great advantage of understanding children and not denying who they are. When parents, teachers and doctors said there was something wrong with the child, he worked side-by-side with the child, helping them to work within their reality.
I have two personal cases of a nephew who was put on Ritalin and a niece put on Paxil, both before they were 13. Both cases just led to drug addiction and did not cure them. They both have overcome this childhood trauma in their 30âs. They both were put in box and no one took them seriously, and there was no advocate for them.
Until children are taken serious by the medical community, there will be no double-blind studies. This is why I am advocate, and I am discouraged when âmen of scienceâ debunk or disregard this most important work. In my humble opinion, not understanding and accepting the reality of a child is the root cause of our opioid epidemic. My nephew was told by his parents, teachers and doctor - âWe do not like the way you think, we are giving you these drugs to change it.â After coming off of drugs in his late 20âs he told me - âRitalin did not change the way he thought, so I had find a drug that worked.â After trying them all, he was lucky to realize - it was his mind that is wrong, it was their perception of me that was wrong.
I think I understand you now, thanks for clarifying. You are saying that listening to children is helpful and beneficial for their overall mental and even physical health and because Stevenson listened to children, regardless of the context, it had a positive benefit. Is that correct?
Iâm sorry to hear that and glad they are doing much better. Iâm still not quite sure how this relates to reincarnation outside of the link that supporting children in an emotional way can lead to better potential outcomes.
What is the most important work? I am all for personally working with children and listening to them and hearing their hearts and encouraging them along the way⌠But what does that have anything to do with reincarnation?
âThis most important workâ refers to fruitier research into non-material causes of mental illness like past life trauma and ghost possession. There is sufficient scientific data supporting these two non-material causes of metal illness that I address in this thread. I am no way saying that there are only two, just that there is data on at least two.
The research from Stevenson showed young children with seemingly irrational fears, but he showed that these fears were related to how they died in the past life. His work demonstrates what other have discovered, there are no irrational fears to the person who has them. They are comforted when they understand the reason for the fear.
Iâve never heard of ghost possession! Do you think demon possession is also a cause of mental illness? Demon possession was once thought to cause epilepsy, and for that reason epilepsy was once called âthe sacred disease.â
btw, Iâd like to know if you are the reincarnation of anybody.
Gotcha, thanks for clarifying. I think it definitely one thing to tell someone they have a mental illness like schizophrenia because they are possessed by a ghost (and you telling them the alleged source of their schizophrenia may even help them) to demonstrating that ghosts are even real and can influence a person to such a high degree. Note: people believing that ghosts are real and experiencing certain phenomena that can be replicated in a lab is quite different from them actually existing.
Isnât that all young children, everywhere? My three year old was very afraid of the character Maui from Moana and would start freaking out everytime she saw his face or the song came on. Maybe the problem lies in that there was once an ancient demigod who was quite rude to her in her past life somewhere in the Pacific.
I recall one of the anecdotes of a small child who was very afraid of middle aged men and Stevenson discovered that she was brutally murdered by such in a past life. Yeah Iâm not buying this: oh I told a three year old sheâs afraid of such men because one murdered her in her last life and after hearing such, she was perfectly fine and comforted.
At the end of the day, if this is really true- reincarnation that is, it would actually be really important for all psychologists and researchers everywhere. But such phenomenon seem to be localized to only populations that believe in reincarnation already, talk about it often in front of their children, and sometimes even directly tell their children they are the reincarnation of their deceased older siblings/relative. I wonder how on earth then kids end up believing such and having fear/nightmares over such fanciful stories.
if you have not read it, Dr. Edith Fioreâs The Unquiet Dead is very instructive about ghost possession and shows how subtle it can be. Dr. Fiore tells an important story about twin sisters. When one dies in a traffic accident, the surviving sister pledges to âdo everything see can to help her sisterâ. This was an open invitation for her sisterâs spirit to possess her. For many years, this was a loving and benign possession. After some time, there started to be a battle of wills which presented as schizophrenia. The indecision between what to wear and what to buy because overwhelming. Dr. Fiore could recognize that the indecision was the will her sister at work. Once she was sent into the light, the schizophrenia disappeared.
Demon possession can only happen through invitation and it is not this subtle. Also, to my knowledge is rare.
I have not done any personal past life regression, so I cannot attest to being anyone particular in a past life. It is not a priority for me to live in the past, not to make a name for myself. This is what I wrote in the forward of my trilogy Torn Between Two Worlds:
I should say up-front that I am hesitant to write this book. I am inspired to do it by several friends that I have had the pleasure of sharing my journey with. They have found the knowledge that I have gained useful in their lives to unlock mysteries they were facing with their own research. This is the goal of this book and not self-indulgence nor to convince anyone of a truth. It is given in the tradition of BahĂĄâĂ as one of many works to consider in your own search for truth and wisdom.
Why are these always anecdotal stories- coming from people who make a living off of others believing such stories are true. Sure, they believe that they are honestly helping people and maybe sometimes they do- but thatâs not proof that any of this is real.
Take this story for example:
The two sisters already believe in ghosts
The surviving sister believes that she is going to help her sister see stuff
She believes she is actually talking with and interacting with her sister
This benign imaginary friend is not so healthy- leading to negative health effects
She believes that this woman has some mystical power to send her sister away and upon some sending away ceremony, believes her sister has moved on
Note: what happened to her was 100% dependent on what she believed and not whether any of this was real
You do not understand the reputational risk that people like Fiore and Stevenson faced to publish their work. Stevenson was ridiculed for years and his peers still do after his death. At the end of Fioreâs book, she makes a call to the medical community to âlisten to your patientsâ and specifically to the psychiatric community to look for these types of behaviors she wrote about. My hope for writing in BioLogos is to encourage researchers to start doing the type of research you keep asking for.
If this was a good argument then anyone who argues for anything can be legitimized.
Like young earth creationist scientists was ridiculed and therefore he was probably right.
Like the intelligent design community gets ridiculed and therefore are likely right.
Like the flat earth society and its scholars get ridiculed and therefore are probably true.
Like the psychic community, astrology community, anti-vaccine community, climate change community, any community ever that speaks out and gets some ridicule are likely true.
What kind of research are you looking for though? Just research of the impact of how what people believe affects their mental and physical health and how engaging people on that level can benefit them or ones that can somehow demonstrate the reality of the spiritual world, judging between conflicting claims of what the spiritual world is like in a rigorous scientific way.
There used to be some âevidenceâ for parapsychologal phenomena in the 20th century, and many big shots like Turing and Goedel found it convincing. However, many people tried to reproduce the data and all of it had been shown to be non reproducible or straight out fabricated. That is why parapsychologists are not taken seriously today. From time to time people still try to reproduce data from parapsychology papers and it always fails. So no, it is not an unfair bias of the scientific community, but a lack of reliability from parapsychology. And note that I say that as someone who believes in substance dualism!
A competing hypothesis is that the âpossessionâ involves nothing whatsoever from the dead person other than the possessed personâs empathetic, internalized sense of the other person. Voodoo and hypnosis demonstrate how a personâs mind can produce effects not consciously chosen. The âinvitationâ you mention is important not as spirit to spirit communication but only as symbolizing the possessed personâs acquiescence in the matter.
