"The correct course of action in these situations is to withhold judgement until detailed exploration has occurred and sufficient evidence has been gathered; not to jump eagerly to outlandish conclusions at the slightest hint of a difficult question."

i'd tend to disagree somewhat, I think a simplified explanation can be interesting at times. And if explained properly can lead to more questions which leads to investigation... that is, saying the 'Khepri is pushing the Sun across the sky again' may have some use at times...

"The correct course of action in these situations is to withhold judgement until detailed exploration has occurred and sufficient evidence has been gathered; not to jump eagerly to outlandish conclusions at the slightest hint of a difficult question."
NO! If that was the case nothing owuld ever get done

There are loads and loads of "super convincing anecdotes" out there.

If reincarnation really was real don't you think we would all know it? If we were all reincarnated?

"If reincarnation really was real don't you think we would all know it? If we were all reincarnated?"

Do you remember being born? If you're like every other human on the face of the earth, you don't. But it still happened.

"the simple explanation is usually the correct one."

Defining what is 'simple' and what isn't requires judgement on our part that can easily be influenced by a variety of factors. Believing Khepri pushed the sun around every day was a far simpler explanation in Ancient Egypt than creating a bizarre theory of a solar system held together by a mystical magical invisible force called 'gravity', and that doesn't have the Earth at the center (which everyone at the time 'knew' was the case). Today, however, no one believes the 'simpler' explanation because new evidence has altered our understanding.

"Tolstoy, even if science couldn't provide an explanation (which I'm sure has been posted already, or will be soon), the idea that therefore reincarnation must be true is asinine."

More or less asinine than instantly assuming 'X' simply doesn't happen, and refusing to examine the evidence with an open mind because it 'sounds silly' based on one's present understandings and biases?

"Those who subscribe to scientific thought don't claim to have all the answers, or at least shouldn't do!"

While I suppose it's fairly obvious I believe in reincarnation, I don't think I've said anywhere here that it is definitively proven. It is a working hypothesis, alongside "people are just making it up to sell books" or "kids are just making it up to play along with the parents' lines of inquiry" (there are literally hundreds of documented cases like this one). I don't see that there's any more or less hard evidence for one hypothesis than the other (quick, someone strap Carol Bowman to a polygraph machine!). Where I seem to differ is that I believe the reincarnation hypothesis should be taken seriously and investigated with an open mind (like any other scientific hypothesis), where everyone else is dismissing it out of hand much the way an ancient Egyptian would've dismissed the idea of a heliocentric solar system held together by gravity, or the idea that giant lizards once ruled the earth, or that the universe is constantly expanding into nothingness, or that there are 12 dimensions.

(incidentally, science has yet to fully explain the mechanics of how and why exactly gravity works. This does not mean that gravity does not exist. By the same token, the fact that the hows and whys of reincarnation escape our understanding (and will probably continue to do so for a loooong time) doesn't mean it can't be happening.)

A question for the skeptics: what kind of evidence would it take to convince you of reincarnation?

answer to your last question:

you'd have to show me the wrinkles in the brain that represent memories that by rights could not have been yet formed in a brain so young.

there must be a chemical trace of memories, and if i actually have a whole lifetime's or more plus my own, then show me where they are. that would constitute proof for me

science is a ways off from that though, but not as far as you might think i think

"Defining what is 'simple' and what isn't requires judgement on our part that can easily be influenced by a variety of factors. Believing Khepri pushed the sun around every day was a far simpler explanation in Ancient Egypt than creating a bizarre theory of a solar system held together by a mystical magical invisible force called 'gravity', and that doesn't have the Earth at the center (which everyone at the time 'knew' was the case). Today, however, no one believes the 'simpler' explanation because new evidence has altered our understanding."

i'm pretty sure that your arguement here is that IF we live in today's world with today's knowledge, cultural understanding and accepted common sense. Then reincarnation is not real and this is the 'simplest' explanation.

Which i presume means we brand these people idiots/crazy and leave it at that.

Not to claim this is fundamentally true, just that this *should* be the response from reasonably educated people in today's society.

At which point i think i can reliably rest my case.

"A question for the skeptics: what kind of evidence would it take to convince you of reincarnation?"

evidence of a mechanism which allows 'memories' as we understand them transfer form one body to another (perhaps including an explanation of HOW memories are stored which can handle such a transfer) . Practical demonstration of such and how we can control it. A reasonable explanation as to why only some children have past-life memories and MOST do not. (given your theory that this child is the reincarnation of a pilot who died 60 years ago, i hope your explanation will include the 60 year jump in time... and also consider the implications for the second part if these jumps in time are possible, as there are hundreds of billions of potential people to reincarnate AS...)

explanation of what happens in reincarnation when world population declines or grows. (perhaps related to you why MOST do not have these memories)

It is interesting that a family in which several members believe in reincarnation instinctively used reincarnation as an explanation for their son's behavior. One wonders if another family, perhaps held strong beliefs in guardian angels, who have said the same behavior was strong evidence that their son had a guardian angel who used to be a WW2 pilot... or whether a family that believes in exorcism would have said this was proof that their child has been possessed by a spirit desperate to cling on to life...

All a bit silly, if you ask me. Until my cousin (who is of a similar age and has a pirate obsession) tells me he used to be John Henry Every in a past life, and takes me to a stash of gold, I shall probably remain skeptical.

yeah i think you could potentially certify it if more than one person claimed they had some knowledge in public under oath or something and it was later certified true, such as knowledge of some stashed object that could be carbon-dated.

even that wouldn't be foolproof but i admit it would raise my eyebrows.

Fasces (and Orathaic I guess), are you accusing me of claiming that we need to be absolutely certain of something in order to claim it is true? That's not what I'm saying here. My point is that if we don't have a good amount of evidence supporting a theory, it's best to hold off on forming strong beliefs as to its veracity. I'm not saying that you should rarely or never hold beliefs; no, what I am advocating here is *further investigation* - once data has been collected, claims can be more credibly made. This would prevent us from believing and acting on things that later we discover to be erroneous.

Where you go wrong, Tolstoy, is in believing that reincarnation is as likely as the many other explanations put forward. That a few people want money or fame, or that they already believed in reincarnation and are falling victim to Confirmation Bias etc., or that everyone's looking for causal relationships where there are none or any number of other credible explanations or even some combination thereof is vastly more likely than the argument that by some mysterious mechanism one's mind or memories or 'soul' is caused to live on in another shell and that this is why a young child is interested in planes.

In a broader sense, the idea of reincarnation itself falls to many pitfalls; not just the ones specific to this situation. For example, why aren't people reporting past-life memories far more frequently? Why isn't the amount of life, or human life, a constant? The list goes on. Some of these questions may have answers but they are *all* complications for reincarnation theory and require its proponents to bend over backwards in an attempt to justify their humiliatingly ill-thought out views.

Finally, you talk of open-mindedness. I am open-minded. Being open-minded does *not* mean considering each and every theory proposed to be of equal merit. Here I have weighed the idea of reincarnation - rather than rejecting it immediately, as someone with a closed mind would do - and found it wanting, for the reasons given above. Now, I wonder how open-minded *you* are, hmm?

"it's best to hold off on forming strong beliefs as to its veracity."

there i disagree, i hold a strong belief that my senses tell me about a true external world, though i acknowledge that they are not always perfect sources of information. I have a very strong belief that this True world exists, yet it can never be verified by any means.

Ah, no! I would argue that your senses are, while imperfect, enough to go on most of the time. Obviously, they can and are often fooled, and it's a good idea to accept that when making judgements based on your senses, but most of the time they're pretty good. If they weren't, and we were getting inaccurate information about the world, how long do you think we'd have lasted before being eaten by the tiger we couldn't hear or the python we couldn't see? A better example would be that I see a mug on the table in front of me, and so I would say that it is in fact *extremely likely* that a mug is in fact on that table. This little mug theory of mine is backed up by my other senses when I pick it up and feel it, and when I uh...lick it I guess? Whatever, you get the point. I'd say it only really gets murky in pretty specific situations, like when ultrasound makes us think or feel differently to normal.

you can't know anything for sure, including how likely your beliefs are to be true.

thus everything must be accorded equal merit, at least intellectually. that doesn't make it wrong to live as though the real world is real though, it just means you need to acknowledge it could all be hogwash. anything can be.

you have no idea how trustworthy or not trustworthy your senses are, or your memory for that matter.

if it could be false, you don't know it.

"you can't know anything for sure, including how likely your beliefs are to be true.. thus everything must be accorded equal merit"

I am not so sure about "equal merit". Will the sun rise tomorrow? It might not but does this mean we should say the sun is equally likely not to rise tomorrow as it is to rise? Surely not.

if this principle "of equal merit" were true, we could never know anything as being reasonably certain (that is extremely likely).

"we could never know anything as being reasonably certain"

you can't

you can know nothing for certain, ergo you can't know *how* certain something is in relation to something else. you can only say that you are not certain.

it definitely *appears* to me that the sun will rise tomorrow but i have no certainty of that. nor do i have any certainty of how certain or uncertain it is, only that it is as equally uncertain as any other proposition.

* Philosophically,* when Thucydides writes that " *the sun will rise* what can he mean by * the *?

* Scientifically* there is no * chaos * except for - what? On a human scale, certain S-bahn or Underground stations always follow in the same, certain order. This had been * one * argument for the * existence * of a higher * being *. I cannot parse, much less say Beingness.
*The* action, * an* action; * one * A, * some * Actions .. someone please shoot down this fugue on a verb, a-k-a "Doing-an-action". Existing. Being.
Gets back to Sartre, L'etre et neant. Being and nothingness.
WHERE are the Monty Pythons when u need them?

I think the fact that Tolstoy does not take me up on my offer says everything that needs to be said in this matter.

Thucydides lets assume your line of reasoning is valid... (and I hope I am not twisting your words)

Let's you and I play a betting game with this coin (that I'll pretend I am holding). I'll throw it four times. If it lands on heads four times in a row I pay you a dollar, but if it doesn't you pay me a dollar. Sound fair? after all both possibilities "are equally uncertain".

Thucydides, you have only noted that you can come up with creative ways in which our beliefs may be false. What you need to demonstrate is *how* the way explanations you can come up with for everything are as credible as other explanations.

It long became a tedious form of argumentation to insist that everything is equally plausible simply because we seemingly cannot know anything with 100% certitude.

This is what the creationists/ID people do with evolution and all scientific theories, and this is apparently what the reincarnationists are doing here. It's a transparent excuse used in order to feel entitled to believe any absurd thing you want to believe. Ironic that believers in the supernatural and the magical transplanting of brains and souls would use skepticism and post-modernism as their shield from accountability.

What seals it for me is how dependent the mind is on the brain... that when one is seriously brain injured that they change... in predictable (based on the structures damaged) and in severe and often irreversible ways... and that in a demonstrable way, that the mind ceases to exist when the brain ceases functioning... I saw it in myself when I got general anesthesia for the removal of my wisdom teeth... There was no light at the end of a tunnel, no dream state, no voices, no viewing from the ceiling - nothing. Indeed I shut off like a light switch from me saying "2" when I was asked to count to 10 to the moment I started regaining consciousness over an hour later. It was completely unlike any dream state - I was convinced that no time had passed at all and actually the first thing I said was something like "You can start anytime now". It was not like sleeping - it was a little death (and yet even then not as complete from a standpoint of brain activity, of course). I was already an atheist and not a believer in reincarnation... but that experience truly sealed it for me. My mind simply doesn't exist outside of my brain. Period. So... reincarnation is nonsense as well. So, Tolstoy, you like anecdotal evidence? There is some. ...and it is evidence that falsifies your theory. This should be the end of it for you and your theory... unless, of course, you like to cherry pick your evidence to support your wishes. ...which is what I suspect.

You're not understanding me. If you cannot know anything with any certainty, including in what you do not know is how certain or uncertain you can be of any proposition.

Thus the proposition "this coin is less likely to land heads 4 times than to do something else" is a statement of fact which cannot be known to be true. Not can it not be known to be true, but one cannot say how likely it is or isn't that it is true, since that too is a proposition one would be claiming to know with certainty.

I personally would not take the bet spyman, because my belief is that it is unlikely. But it absolutely must be acknowledged that this is just a belief. It's faith, if you like.

On faith, I choose to accept my appearances as true and act on them. My appearances in this case align with the mainstream materialist viewpoint. But I cannot and will not tell someone who believes something otherwise that I know he is wrong. I don't.

If he thinks something can be known though, I will tell him he is wrong and should rethink his beliefs.

And Putin, what I find ironic is that scientists love to proclaim their skepticism, when really they are defining a very narrow skepticism, a skepticism based totally in the apparently real physical world. Only the best of them, and they do exist, admit that in truth everything they think they know could be wrong. A great many have an almost entitled sense to their "knowledge."

So before you say I am being inconsistent or ask me how can I say Hitler was wrong or something like that, let me tell you on what grounds I find what you call "absurd" beliefs less desirable than "normal" ones.

The grounds are not that "normal" beliefs are more likely. I do not think that can be known. The grounds are this: I choose on faith to accept what seems to be reality as I have told you.

From there I perceive that others have the same worldview. They say they believe in the real world, in logic, etc. and so on.

But if they claim to believe in reason, logic, reality, etc., and then go on to advance a claim that is ridiculous within that framework (like witchcraft or something), then I can call them crazy.

If however they took the route that the real world is an illusion, and that witchcraft is true in the "*real*" real world, then I would have nothing more to say to them than I disagree and belief differently. I can not at all claim that this is objectively impossible, because the truth is that it is possible.

All belief systems amount to a shot in the dark and the criteria for choosing one can be based on nothing more than personal choice.

I belief, as I said, in the material world, though. So if someone says they belief they have to kill everyone, then despite my acknowledgement that they could be right, it won't stop me from apprehending him or calling the cops etc.

Putin it is unfortunate that you see true skepticism as a pawn in the culture wars... it's nothing of the kind. It questions *everything*, including religion.

SynalonEtuul:

If you would like for me to prove to you that nothing is known, I think the easiest way is to play a game.

Supposing first that "knowledge" is the state of absolute certainty that a factual statement is true, tell me something you know. I will tell you how you don't know it.

@Thucydides: Sensory impressions.
Please step outside and kick a rock. Hard. (Not that hard!) And that is Dr Saml Johnson on Bishop Berkeley's theses.
Next, numeration & Plane Geometry. Socratic dialogue with the youth in Plato's "Meno".
Synthetic A priori, anyone? Sorry to drag in "Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics". Apologies to neoKantians.
Que sais-je?
Today's academic philosophers don't debate these notion. Once heard Richard Rorty sum up a weekend of lectures & panel discussions on William James's "Varieties of Religious Experience". [ James who died before his brother, Henry, had agreed to send a spiritualist messag.e from the back of beyond, if such were possible. ]
Prof. Rorty concluded by wiping the floor with the previous speaker's fallacious errors & also by saying that Science and Religion are separate.

"I personally would not take the bet spyman, because my belief is that it is unlikely. But it absolutely must be acknowledged that this is just a belief. It's faith, if you like."

It is a belief that is consistent with known facts. Faith on the other hand does not need to be consistent with known facts. There is a big difference.

If you believed that you would win my bet, it would make no difference to the outcome. The truth of the outcome is independent of your belief. This is the difference between a belief and a fact.

While it is true that nothing, aside from tautologies can be known with *certainty*, we can say that some things are more known to be highly probable - thus when we say we are certain we really mean we are "almost certain", but it is easier and quicker to say "certain".

Ludwig Wittgenstein once said something along these lines: If every speaks for a proposition and nothing against it, we may call this true (not his exact words but along those lines).

Wittgenstein also said something about the very argument you are proposing.
"If you are not certain of any fact, you cannot be certain of the meaning of your words either."
And...
"If you tried to doubt everything you would not get as far as doubting anything. The game of doubting itself presupposes certainty."

You may read some Wittgenstein for yourself if you are interested:
http://budni.by.ru/oncertainty.html

typo... if *everything speaks for a proposition and nothing against it...

Not reading the rest of this thread, I would say that the presentation of the story itself is quite biased. We only get about 40 seconds total of a grumpy guy going through a summery of why he thinks it's not legit. The rest is all evidence in favor of the parents' claim. We see no detailed layout of why the kid is not that pilot's reincarnation! I doubt that cold reading (unconscious) and leading questions and suggestions (unintentional) did not play a part in this. Also, the kid was being treated by a psychologist who believes this too and who could also have been doing the cold reading and leading suggestions and questions.

In short, we don't have enough information from this short and biased review.

@Thucy: "Supposing first that "knowledge" is the state of absolute certainty that a factual statement is true"

Your argument is a tautology. It is circular nonsense. Basically you are saying "knowledge is that which cannot be known". Really and how do you "know" *that* if it can't be known?