Challenge: I'm willing to convert if.......

[danieldemol]

When I say they eliminated cases where the child could have got the info from neighbors, I included in the group all PPL he/she could have come in contact with, including teachers.

Even unknown people such as people visiting neighbours and then the neighbour forgets about their visitor? I'm not sure how you would completely eliminate contamination without raising the children in isolation.

Look, read the case files of their work and the reviews thereof. I cannot detail here all the precautions taken to remove false positives.

Why not link to the reviews?

"No. It was clearly mentioned in the video discussions that 2-3 years is the developmental age when explicit referential "I" memories can start to form in a child. Hence it is natural that it as that time older "I" memories appear in the consciousness of the child. Nothing to do with souls."

But for reincarnation to be true it should have everything to do with souls in children older than 3 in my view, why does the influence of the soul disappear at 3?

 

[YoursTrue]

Yeah your definition forgot to include 'scientific laws'

Miracle definition - an extraordinary and welcome event that is not explicable by natural or scientific laws and is therefore attributed to a divine agency.

Disagree, 1 and 2 can be most likely be explained because of natural or scientific laws and not by a divine agency, so in other words they are not miracles.

I'll make it easier for you, what if, in the context of religious miracles, I only need to 'know' 50.1% to be convinced. I'll accept that. No need for a high degree of certainty.

Miracles are such, as I understand your explanation above, events that are not explicable by natural or scientific laws. Let's take one thing for starters -- that of abiogenesis. The conjectural jury is out, I suppose, for the start of evolution. I am not saying evolution is a miracle or not a miracle, because the claim is that it started from -- something -- (unknown as of yet) and continued by "natural selection."

 

[Rational Agnostic]

Or, you might reflect on why someone would want as a convert a person who would pose such a silly ask.

Why do you think a religion that can't provide the answer to such a "silly" ask deserves any converts?

 

[YoursTrue]

And the religious have murdered millions and stunted education and stomped on basic civil rights. They certainly seem incapable of providing a moral dimension to humanity.

In general, I agree.

 

[sayak83]

Even unknown people such as people visiting neighbours and then the neighbour forgets about their visitor? I'm not sure how you would completely eliminate contamination without raising the children in isolation.

Why not link to the reviews?

"No. It was clearly mentioned in the video discussions that 2-3 years is the developmental age when explicit referential "I" memories can start to form in a child. Hence it is natural that it as that time older "I" memories appear in the consciousness of the child. Nothing to do with souls."

But for reincarnation to be true it should have everything to do with souls in children older than 3, why does the influence of the soul disappear at 3?

Please see the list of papers in Google scholar to know details about their work.
Google Scholar
Your objections are now like creationist against evolution. How do the scientists certain that they have removed all contaminants during their radiometric dating of samples? They can never know. Hence there is room for doubt. Hence earth is 6000 years old as per Bible.....you have seen the drill here. Don't go into that trap.
Once again. Other research groups are free to do their own work and investigation and if they can find reason to doubt and debunk these works. Then fine. It's a scientific enterprise after all. What I see is that there is a 40 year long set of published papers and academic monograms (see above) by various groups and no work that suggests that the data is defective. So unless you find contrary studies or do your own peer reviewed work debunking these studies, what justification do you have of rejecting the findings?
I do not understand the question about souls at all. Children start developing I type autobiographical memories from the age of 3 onwards. Past life memories are narrative autobiographical memories. So it stands to reason that past life memories begin to emerge when the children's brain start gaining the capacity of having such memory types.

 

[YoursTrue]

Please see the list of papers in Google scholar to know details about their work.
Google Scholar
Your objections are now like creationist against evolution. How do the scientists certain that they have removed all contaminants during their radiometric dating of samples? They can never know. Hence there is room for doubt. Hence earth is 6000 years old as per Bible.....you have seen the drill here. Don't go into that trap.
Once again. Other research groups are free to do their own work and investigation and if they can find reason to doubt and debunk these works. Then fine. It's a scientific enterprise after all. What I see is that there is a 40 year long set of published papers and academic monograms (see above) by various groups and no work that suggests that the data is defective. So unless you find contrary studies or do your own peer reviewed work debunking these studies, what justification do you have of rejecting the findings?
I do not understand the question about souls at all. Children start developing I type autobiographical memories from the age of 3 onwards. Past life memories are narrative autobiographical memories. So it stands to reason that past life memories begin to emerge when the children's brain start gaining the capacity of having such memory types.

Actually the Bible does not say that the earth is 6000 years old.

 

[Madsaac]

Miracles are such, as I understand your explanation above, events that are not explicable by natural or scientific laws. Let's take one thing for starters -- that of abiogenesis. The conjectural jury is out, I suppose, for the start of evolution. I am not saying evolution is a miracle or not a miracle, because the claim is that it started from -- something -- (unknown as of yet) and continued by "natural selection."

Yes, but from the Big Bang onwards, everything can ne explained to some degree of certainty (Nothing is 100%) by natural or scientific laws, but the miracles described by religious people over the past have NO degree of certainty.

 

[Madsaac]

Living in the present moment can grant you your spiritual proofs

Gathering proofs from events in the past, and using them to prove things about Spirituality won't work

I have searched, witnessed and experienced miracles, so I have plenty of proof

If you want proof, you need to search for it yourself, that's the only way it works in this world (university degrees, as well as Spirituality).

Professors can point you in the right direction, but you need to search and find yourself, the professor won't do your exam for you; the same is true, even more so, in Spirituality.

Thanks, being a Veteran Member, I imagine you have been on a journey, could you please share some of the miracles you have encountered and/or explain how I could search for it myself.

 

[Madsaac]

Well the big bang was an extraordinary event (it only happened once in the last 14B years) and cant be explained by the laws of nature…………………..

So the big bang fits pretty good in to your definition of “miracle”…………… and I am pretty sure you would grant that we are more than 51%+ certain the event known as the big bang took place.



Really, do you reject the first law of thermodynamics?.......... well good for you, but you definition of miracle is about “events that cant be explicable by the laws of nature”………. Wether if you personally agree with these laws or not is irrelevant.

No I said '1 and 2 can be most likely be explained because of natural or scientific laws and not by a divine agency, so in other words they are not miracles'.

Anyway, maybe you are just trying to be annoying but just to keep you happy, I'll say the Big Bang was a miracle.

Can you show any evidence of a miracle occurring in the last 13.8B years, especially the last 2000 years.

Anything, yes still waiting........

 

[Spice]

Even unknown people such as people visiting neighbours and then the neighbour forgets about their visitor? I'm not sure how you would completely eliminate contamination without raising the children in isolation.

Why not link to the reviews?

"No. It was clearly mentioned in the video discussions that 2-3 years is the developmental age when explicit referential "I" memories can start to form in a child. Hence it is natural that it as that time older "I" memories appear in the consciousness of the child. Nothing to do with souls."

But for reincarnation to be true it should have everything to do with souls in children older than 3 in my view, why does the influence of the soul disappear at 3?

Possibly for the same reason innate love disappears and is replaced with environmental norms. The World begins to press down on them.

 

[danieldemol]

Please see the list of papers in Google scholar to know details about their work.
Google Scholar

I clicked that link and didn't see the critical reviews of the interview you posted from the psychology podcast, so I looked at "Children's Reports of Past Life Memories: A Review" by Jim B. Tucker MD. It had a section under the title, "Questions about the cases" which began "Some have challenged this work..." but was cut off after about a paragraph. I'm guessing the rest is behind a paywall.

Your objections are now like creationist against evolution.

ROFL! Evolution is one of the most well evidenced scientific theories and it's mechanisms mostly fairly well understood. By comparison you have not addressed my question concerning the neccesary isolation from idea contamination and instead thrown an ad-hominem at me, proposed a hypothesis which competes with other hypothesis such as ESP and demon projection which explain the alleged facts just as well, and it is *YOU* who have defaulted to your preferred religious narrative.

How do the scientists certain that they have removed all contaminants during their radiometric dating of samples? They can never know. Hence there is room for doubt.

Hardly, if any of the contaminants are older than 6000 years the Bible's case is thrown out. See how easy it is to answer a question rather than make an ad-hominem when there is solid evidence for well understood mechanisms?

Hence earth is 6000 years old as per Bible.....you have seen the drill here. Don't go into that trap.

Exactly, Ignorance of the means of information transmission does not warrant a leap to the trap of one's preffered religious conclusion (in your case reincarnation) in my view.

Once again. Other research groups are free to do their own work and investigation and if they can find reason to doubt and debunk these works. Then fine. It's a scientific enterprise after all. What I see is that there is a 40 year long set of published papers and academic monograms (see above) by various groups and no work that suggests that the data is defective. So unless you find contrary studies or do your own peer reviewed work debunking these studies, what justification do you have of rejecting the findings?

I'm no expert, but I'm open-minded up to a point. But so far you aree preferring appeal to authority, ad-hominem, and leaping to your preffered religious conclusion to adequately explaining away reasonable doubt in my view.

I do not understand the question about souls at all. Children start developing I type autobiographical memories from the age of 3 onwards. Past life memories are narrative autobiographical memories. So it stands to reason that past life memories begin to emerge when the children's brain start gaining the capacity of having such memory types.

Watch your own podcast from 39:07 onwards, the psychologist is asked why are these memories so fleeting and he states, "typically they lose these memories when they lose all childhood memories." So if soul -> conciousness -> memories why does this process stop when they lose all childhood memories if the soul is still there, stilll able to effect consicousness and therefore still able to generate these memories? It is a major piece of contrary evidence to your conclusion of reincarnation in my view.

 

[danieldemol]

Possibly for the same reason innate love disappears and is replaced with environmental norms. The World begins to press down on them.

Please try to clarify using alternate terms, what is "innate love", and what does it mean by the world pressing down on them?

 

[Spice]

Please try to clarify using alternate terms, what is "innate love", and what does it mean by the world pressing down on them?

Innate love is the natural innocence and trust that babies and toddlers have. They have no prejudices, no fears, no worries. They're free and generally happy -- until the world presses down with rules, and lessons, and strangers, and NO, NO, NOs.
They fairly quickly become a product of their environment.

 

[ajay0]

"The function"?
There is that singular function, & no other?
I see more....
- Coerce people into tithing.
-Urge them to fight wars against the other.
- Impose moral values other than the good kind.
- Provide power over others to those who seek it.
-And to simply behave as scripture prescribes & proscribes,
with no rhyme or reason other than it says so.

Obviously it is not authentic religion then. It is more of an organized religion that deals with the peripheral rather than the core.

 

[ajay0]

Who serves humans? Protects? Feeds? Houses? Transports? Connects? Who does the most good and serves the most? All of the world's homes, airplanes, telephones, hospitals, roads, water purification plants, radios, telescopes, microscopes, computers - walk away from your house and most of what is in it if you think engineers are evil.

You need to read the story - of who founded the noble peace prize, and who really created bombs.

As the saying by Werner von Braun suggests, science and be used for both good and evil. You have mentioned the good parts.

Why don't you suggest how science can get a moral dlmension, and scientists and engineers stay away from creating wmd and other harmful stuff !

 

[ajay0]

And yet all those weapons of mass destruction have come nowhere near the death toll humanity has suffered at the hands of religious people armed only with swords and zealotry.

Are you sure ? German Nazi methods of automation and poison gases killed more people efficiently than the religious zealots armed with swords and pikes.

 

[ajay0]

Also, to quote Neil deGrass Tyson when he was asked if it bothered him that "scientists" are always painted as the "bad guys" in movies: it's a scientist that creates skynet; it's a scientist that creates the killer virus; it's a scientist that creates the wmd that ends the world: it's the scientist that creates the killer robot;....

His response was: "You know.... when the dust settles and the curtain opens... there is always a politician who's ordering and funding that research".

So blame the politicians as well who's ordering and funding that research, and the foolish masses who elect such politicians to power and fund such projects with their tax payer money.

 

[ajay0]

And the religious have murdered millions and stunted education and stomped on basic civil rights. They certainly seem incapable of providing a moral dimension to humanity.

Morality is not synonymous with religion though religion emphasizes morality.

Andrei Sakharov was an atheistic nuclear physicist, who sought universal disarmament of nuclear weapons on the grounds of moral and civilized behavior and conduct.

'I tend to believe that only moral criteria, coupled with mental objectivity, can serve as a sort of compass in the cross-currents of these complex problems. ' ~ Andrei Sakharov

Moral behavior can thus stem from clear thinking and compassion, which need not necessarily be religious values, but are universal in nature.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

So blame the politicians as well who's ordering and funding that research, and the foolish masses who elect such politicians to power and fund such projects with their tax payer money.

Bottom line is that science is a methodology of study to find out how things work.
That is all. Humans are moral agents. Methodologies aren't moral agents.

Science however does inform moral reasoning. An understanding of the consequences of actions and the nature of well-being is necessary to make accurate moral judgements.

You can use atomic theory to make medical equipment to save lives, to create GPS systems to get around more efficiently, to create nuclear power plants to provide energy to households or to make nuclear weapons.

Science provides knowledge. How one wields that knowledge is upto humans.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

Morality is not synonymous with religion though religion emphasizes morality.

I'ld say that most religions emphasize obedience to a perceived authority and try to sell it as "morality".

Moral behavior can thus stem from clear thinking and compassion, which need not necessarily be religious values, but are universal in nature.

I see no reason at all why clear thinking and compassion would be "religious values" or why such would require religion in any way.


In fact, I'ld say that "clear thinking" requires the exact opposite. It requires free thinking, which is the opposite of religious vaues which tend to be assertions from authority, unquestionable and confined to the "religious box".