Evidence Standards for Afterlife/Reincarnation

[enjinear]

I recently finished Sam Harris' book Waking Up, a great read. I was listening to his podcast by the same name recently and he remarked that he is open to the possibility of evidence for things that most atheists consider moot, such as psychic phenomena and reincarnation. The psychic stuff interests me far less for the purposes of this discussion, because the evidence supporting it, were it to exist, would be easy to formulate. Reincarnation or the continuation of life after death seems, on the other hand, far more murky. How would one formulate evidence requirements for such things?

Cheers for freethought,

enjinear

[brimstoneSalad]

Typically, past life experiences which can be remembered with confirmable details that we know the person could not have known.

E.g. somebody claims to have been George Washington, and we discover a journal that had been sealed in a time capsule for 100 years and contains information not found anywhere else the person can recount in a blind experiment.

Spirit channeling or talking to ghosts could also be evidence, and would be tested in a similar way.

[AlexanderVeganTheist]

Insofar as an afterlife per se is concerned, that is unfalsifiable, if there's no claimed interaction between the afterlife and our plane. If there is a claim of interaction, such as channeling spirits, or reincarnation with some retaining of memories, that makes predictions, such as making statements about the real world, or past lives and such, that are statistically more often true than would be expected by chance.
So in general it would depend on what type of afterlife, is it hermetically sealed from our world? Then it is unfalsifiable, even though continuation of personality beyond the death of the brain is unlikely in light of the observed dying and fading away of one's personality already in the living, with diseases such as Alzheimers or brain trauma. If it's not hermetically sealed, there would have to be some kind of significant evidence of the type of communication that is claimed by the spiritualist, in the form of the statements of the medium or the claims of past-life memories performing better than expected if it were a quasi-random process, such as imagination.

I believed in spirit channeling for a number of years, and to a large extent discussing this with brimstoneSalad was what changed this. Primarily the concept that channelings do not perform better than just going along with ones imagination. So I would hereby like to extend my thanks to him thank you, I feel much better returning to atheism.

[brimstoneSalad]

You're welcome, I'm glad to have helped

The distinction of a hermetically sealed afterlife is a good one to make.

To remove the supernatural from the equation, we could even imagine an alien space probe orbiting the Earth, scanning brains, and uploading them to an internal server representing heaven after death of the body. Seemingly plausible, just not much of a reason to believe such a thing would exist.

[PsYcHo]

Seemingly plausible, just not much of a reason to believe such a thing would exist.

Of course before the beginning of the known universe, our entire existence would have been implausible as well.

Evidence of any "supernatural" phenomena would be very difficult to obtain for two reasons. Re-creating any evidence in a lab setting would be all but impossible (at least currently), and there are so, so many people who will fake anything just for fun.

I did hear a story about a child who was supposedly the reincarnation of a man who was murdered, and "proved" it by taking villagers to his former body and identifying his murderer, who confessed. Even if the story is true, there are so many other possible explanations that calling it a "fact" that the child was reincarnated is a bit of a stretch to say the least. (Weird story though...)

[brimstoneSalad]

I did hear a story about a child who was supposedly the reincarnation of a man who was murdered, and "proved" it by taking villagers to his former body and identifying his murderer, who confessed. Even if the story is true, there are so many other possible explanations that calling it a "fact" that the child was reincarnated is a bit of a stretch to say the least. (Weird story though...)

There are so many layers of wrong to it, it's hard to get at the core.

It's "reported" here: sfglobe.com/2015/03/26/little-boy-solves-old-murder-and-claims-it-was-his-own/
Among many other places. And inaccurately.
Dr. Eli Lasch is not the source.

There are no direct sources, and no names: not of the village, not of the boy, not of anybody involved.

The only source is a man (a hardcore spiritualist nut) in a book he was selling full of anecdotes (he had motivation to lie) who claimed to have been told the story by a witness who was also a spiritualist nut (Eli Lasch, who also had a bias and a motivation to lie) who is now dead and can neither confirm nor deny any of this. All of the details are clearly fabricated.

Straight dope has a thread on this: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=724045

It's a story told by a man who claims that a man who is now deceased told him the story which supposedly was witnessed by the dead man to some degree, yet somehow there are no names. You'd think you'd remember the name of a 3 year old boy who led you to his previous life's murderer; I know I would. Hell, I 'd remember the supposed murderer's name and the name of the guy he supposedly murdered, you know, the guy the 3 year old was supposed to have been?

"Here's a link to an article about a book an author wrote that included an anecdote about a guy who told him a story one time about some kid."

And even if it were even partly true (it probably isn't), this bit of information throws a wrench in the statistical significance of the story:

2) The cited story from the epochtimes.com says that reincarnation isn't just part of the culture, it's customary for elders to lead 3 year olds to their previous life villages. Customary. I guess you don't go very far after you die. Usually just a village or two up the road.

Apparently people there do this all of the time. It's inevitable that somebody will stumble on a body at some point. And the rest as a retelling of a retelling with no information at all can fill in the blanks.

And, as mentioned, Eli Lasch is not in himself even a credible source (even if it were direct from the supposed witness).

In 1984, Dr. Lasch realized that he had fulfilled most of his goals and started looking for new challenges. After a series of spiritual revelations, he left behind a thriving medical and academic career and went to stay with the Findhorn Community in Scotland. Here, during long periods of meditation and reflection, he was given insights into the hidden meaning of the Bible. This resulted in his first book about the Bible which is meanwhile out of print.
Back in Israel, Dr. Lasch started on a spiritual pathway which combined teaching of kabbalah, reincarnation therapy and spiritual healing.

http://israelseen.com/2008/03/29/a-new- ... visionary/