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Saturday, November 03, 2018

Reflections on reincarnation

1. I rarely write about Hinduism and Buddhism because it's fairly specialized. Reincarnation is neglected in Christian apologetics because most Christian apologetics is focussed on challenges to Christianity in the West. 

2. Before addressing the specifics, I'd like to make a general observation. Not all paranormal claims are mutually consistent. Compare reincarnation with crisis apparitions. There are reports of dead relatives appearing to a loved one to warn them or give them encouragement during a crisis. But if that's true, then how can reincarnation be true? According to a standard paradigm, reincarnation involves a memory wipe. When a person is reborn, they forget their past lives. Start all over again. 

That rules out crisis apparitions. The dead relative has moved on. Been reincarnated. Started from scratch in a new body, as a baby. Immersed in a new life history. 

They don't remember their loved ones from past lives. At this point they are younger than their children. Reincarnation resets the lifecycle. Your late mother can't appear to you as your late mother. She's now a little girl. 

Reincarnation and crisis apparitions can both be false, but they can't both be true. And I think there's unambiguous evidence for crisis apparitions, whereas the evidence for reincarnation is ambiguous at best. 

3. To my knowledge, apologists for reincarnation offer three lines of empirical evidence: déjà vu, transgenerational birthmarks, and memories of a past life. 

4. Déjà vu

i) I think this is the weakest evidence. Not just weak evidence for reincarnation, but weak evidence that it's even paranormal. 

In my own life I've had déjà vu experiences. One time, sitting at a fast food joint, years ago, I suddenly had the intensive feeling that I'd done this before. I'm pretty sure that I hadn't done it before in this life. But since the establishment was built in my lifetime, it wasn't even possible for me to have been there in a past life. So whatever the explanation, it can't be reincarnation.

Likewise, I've lived in at least two consecutive locations where I had déjà vu experiences. But both of them were built in my lifetime, so that can't be chalked up to a past life. And even if they hadn't been constructed in my lifetime, what are the odds that in a past life I lived in both places–not to mention both places in succession?

iii) Moreover, the sensation I've had is more like a time loop than remembering a past life. It's not the sensation that I was in the same place in a different life, but that this life is repeating itself. 

iv) Sometimes our minds play tricks on us. That's my explanation. 

But assuming for argument's sake that déjà vu demands a paranormal explanation, telepathy is a simpler explanation. What if one person's memories occasionally leak into another person's mind? 

5. Transgenerational birthmarks

i) The claim is that babies sometimes reproduce the unique birthmark of a dead person, like an ancestor. In fact, this has become a TV trope:


ii) I haven't studied the literature in sufficient depth to know if such a phenomenon actually exists. Of course, the appeal is circular. If some babies reproduce the birthmarks of a dead person, then those aren't unique birthmarks.

iii) However, let's stipulate for discussion purposes that the phenomenon exists and demands a paranormal explanation. How would reincarnation be an explanation for replicated birthmarks? On a standard paradigm of reincarnation, the soul (mind, consciousness) transfers from the dead body to a new body. A body-swap scenario. But how would that cause any physical traces? 

iv) Why would reincarnation duplicate birthmarks rather than duplicating the body? If the body is not a double, why the same birthmarks? 

v) What reincarnation have to do with heredity? Why would someone be reborn in the body of a lineal descendent? Isn't reincarnation just the idea that the same soul is reembodied? But that's not a genetic or genealogical relation–as if, to be reincarnated, you must be a reincarnated ancestor. Assuming (ex hypothesi) that reincarnation is true, why can't the soul transfer to a body in a different family tree? To my knowledge, reincarnation is usually treated as independent of lineage. 

vi) It would be interesting to know if there's a history of witchcraft or necromancy in these families. If a baby has the birthmarks of a dead ancestor, is that a family curse? Was the baby hexed? Are the dead (damned) casting a malevolent influence on the living? 

6. Past life memories

i) Suppose for argument's sake that reincarnation is true. Suppose someone underwent 100 past lives. In fact, that's a conservative estimate. How would they remember 100 life histories? Wouldn't their recollection be hopelessly scrambled? How would they remember what they did in each life? Who they knew in each life? 

Memory has a sense of relative chronology. You remember childhood, adolescence, young adulthood, middle age, &c. You remember that some things happened to you before other things. 

But if you underwent 100 past lives, how could you possibly keep the timelines straight? Assuming that some people remember events before they were born, that would actually constitute prima facie evidence that reincarnation is false, since it's hard to see how you could keep all those life histories separate in your mind.

ii) An alternative explanation is that those aren't your memories. You're tapping into someone else's memories. They are invading your mind. That doesn't require all the machinery of reincarnation, so it's a simpler explanation. 

iii) To my knowledge, Hinduism has a dualist anthropology while Buddhism has a physicalist anthropology. In Buddhism, humans have no perduring soul. So how is reincarnation even possible? Who's the you that's reincarnated? Weren't you extinguished at the moment of death? A new brain and body won't be you, but a blank slate. 

2 comments:

  1. Just a few random thoughts for now:

    1. I know some déjà vu can be explained by neurological dysfunction or related. For example, déjà vu has been strongly associated with some seizures and epilepsy. Likewise, déjà vu can be induced by certain drugs that act on certain areas or regions of the brain which suggests there's strong correlation with déjà vu and these areas or regions of the brain.

    Of course, this doesn't explain all déjà vu, and it's the unexplained déjà vu that's most in question. The psychiatrist Alan S. Brown is a leading déjà vu researcher.

    2. I've never looked into birthmarks as evidence of reincarnation before, but medically speaking it's possible for some genetically unrelated babies to have very similar birthmarks. That's due to commonalities in human anatomy, physiology, and/or pathology. To use a prosaic example, I suppose it's sort of like how most people with the flu exhibit very similar symptoms even though technically speaking each infection is a novel infection.

    3. To my knowledge, Buddhist scholars argue consciousness isn't tied to humans. They would argue one can be reborn as a different animal.

    Playing along, even if consciousness can be reborn as a different animal, that doesn't explain a significant problem like the mathematics of reincarnation. After all, it's obvious there are way more people and animals today than there would've been millennia ago. Hence, if there's a one to one correspondence between death and rebirth, then the numbers simply don't add up.

    Not to mention the many issues involved in the psychology of humans vs. the psychology of various animals (e.g. insects, mammals). For instance, as Thomas Nagel has asked, what's it like to be a bat? How would we know?

    Buddhist scholars state it's possible for consciousness to be reborn in a different planet or even universe. However, that strikes me as special pleading. It's not as if ancient Buddhists thought in terms of the multiverse, though some Buddhist texts might be finagled to suggest it. In any case, there's no empirical evidence of other planets with life, and the multiverse is highly dubious on scientific grounds, so all this is speculation at best.

    The last card I've seen Buddhist scholars play is they'll argue consciousness isn't necessarily a single entity, but consciousness can be split into multiple consciousnesses. They'll say things like consciousness is like a body of water where one ripple or wave can result in multiple ripples or waves. Something along those lines. However, how can consciousness be split? Is it supposed to be like multiple personality disorder? That has its own issues.

    Besides, if consciousness can be split, then it would seem consciousness is more like a stem cell than a developed cell. A starting point rather than an end point. Consciousness has the potential to be anything or anyone rather than having its own personality. However, our experience is that each human consciousness is its own personality. Hence that wouldn't seem to be congruent with our empirical evidence and firsthand experience of consciousness.

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  2. Skeptics joke that whenever someone says they have lived a previous life it is always Cleopatra or Alexander the great. Never some anonymous slave.

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