Reincarnation: Are You a Skeptic?

Discussion:

- Concerning Reincarnation, do you consider yourself to be a skeptic? Where does this term come from and why do so many people claim to be skeptics? There are various schools of skeptical thought, but mostly skepticism is a response to the claims of the major religions concerning the existence of God and everything that comes after that; in other words, the claims of the Church. In my opinion, maintaining a skeptical attitude about religion is a healthy thing especially when it comes to asking for proof of the claims of religion that must be accepted by faith alone.

However, one must be careful not to be so skeptical that one becomes closed-minded. At a Christmas dinner (2014) I was able to speak with dear old Uncle Ed, a kind mild mannered man who lives alone in a tiny apartment near Chinatown in San Francisco. He’s never been married and doesn’t indulge in deviations from the ‘straight and narrow’. What I find interesting is the fact that he has no belief in God or the Afterlife. So I challenged him saying, “Ed, if you have no belief in the afterlife, heaven or hell, then you could lead a life of total abandon, yet you chose not to. Why do you think you are the way you are?” He had no plausible explanation, but I secretly felt that he may have been involved in a strict religion in a recent past life and so that his current life may be a reaction to that sort of confinement. (Without a regression we may never know.)

I have tried on a number of different occasions to get him to look at how life is continuous whether we are in a physical body or not; at the concept of living many lives (reincarnation); about the concept that what you die believing can have a powerful effect not only upon your next incarnation but what happens or doesn’t happen to you in the life between lives.

For instance, in all my research I have found that if one does not believe in an Afterlife, then that soul may sleep for hundreds or even thousands of years as we measure time here on Earth. I have now read so much material on Reincarnation that I am always shocked when I come across someone who denies its validity. Like Uncle Ed, when presented with the facts of numerous cases, they might say that they are a ‘skeptic,’ but what exactly is a skeptic?

According to the Free Dictionary a skeptic is defined as, “a person who questions the validity, authenticity, or truth of something purporting to be factual, esp. religion or religious tenets.” Another definition from vocabulary.com; “This word comes from ancient Greece, where a philosopher named Pyrrho taught his followers that we can never really understand the true nature of things, only how they appear to us. (So basically, we should stop searching for the meaning of life and just relax.) In Pyrrho’s view, the true sage was someone who realized that it was impossible to be certain about anything. His followers were called Skeptikoi, or Skeptics; the Greek word skeptikos means “given to asking questions.”

Let’s now continue my conversation with Uncle Ed about proof of on-going existence. This field of research would include the work of hundreds of mediums in the Spiritualist movement since the mid-1800s who have brought through the spirits of the so-called dead, and the work of Dr. Ian Stevenson and his successor, Dr. Jim Tucker of the University of Virginia, who have investigated over 3,000 cases of young children who have somehow retained memories of their past lives.

Dr. Stevenson and now Tucker tend to focus their energies on investigating only cases that provide hard evidence. This would mostly include things like physical scars like rope burns on the neck or knife wounds that would have been the cause of the death in the previous life that can be verified. In many of the cases, the child can name the town they lived in, state their correct name and the names of relatives still living, etc. This is the kind of hard evidence that you would think would have some effect on a true skeptic.

Dr. Stevenson and Dr. Tucker were both TRUE skeptics when they started their investigations and maintain that attitude in order for their work to have scientific validity. As a noted atheist, George Smith concluded in his article about skepticism, “Only reason can tell us whether a knowledge claim should be rejected, or perhaps accepted as possible, probable or certain.” I have therefore come to the rational and reasonable conclusion that Dr. Stevenson and Dr. Tucker were able to maintain their objective skepticism in a true scientific manner and have provided proof beyond a reasonable doubt that reincarnation does in fact exist and that therefore life is indeed continuous!

Children Who Remember Previous Lives

Here I include a brief description of one of Dr. Stevenson's seminal works as conclusive proof of Reincarnation. This is the revised edition of Dr. Stevenson's 1987 book, summarizing for general readers almost forty years of experience in the study of children who claim to remember previous lives. For many Westerners the idea of reincarnation seems remote and bizarre; it is the author's intent to correct some common misconceptions. New material relating to birthmarks and birth defects, independent replication studies with a critique of criticisms, and recent developments in genetic study are included. The work gives an overview of the history of the belief in and evidence for reincarnation. Representative cases of children, research methods used, analyses of the cases and of variations due to different cultures, and the explanatory value of the idea of reincarnation for some unsolved problems in psychology and medicine are reviewed.

I also have much respect for Spiritualism. Since its inception it (collectively) has been trying to investigate and thus provide proof of the Afterlife. Along the way the S.P.R. (The Society for Psychical Research) has provided a very valuable service to the movement by applying scientific investigative techniques to determine the validity of the claims of the mediums. With this concentrated investigation, Spiritualism should be viewed as a rational religion because it is trying to offer proof based on actual experimentation and communication with the souls who have passed over. They are not asking you to accept anything concerning God and the Afterlife on faith alone as most religions do.

In conclusion, it is important to keep an open mind when it comes to matters of consciousness and religion and to remember that the true skeptic is one who questions in a rational manner, not one who has pre-conceived or fixed opinions that they are unwilling to examine. Bottom line: keep an open mind, or as Ernest Holmes, the founder of Religious Science, used to say, “Remain open at the top!”