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Atheism/Existence of God Debates (Please Read OP)

PDN

This new 'catch-all' thread will operate similar to the Creationism and Protestant/Catholic Debate threads.

Too many threads are spoilt and dragged off topic when a non-Christian poster demands, "What evidence do you have for God?" While some may enjoy such discussion, it is frequently off-topic and derails discussion of other subjects (the very discussion that is the reason for this Forum's existence).

So, in order to protect the Forum and facilitate on topic discussions, all that stuff now belongs here. Anyone who keeps trying to derail other discussions by demanding evidence for God's existence will be warned, and if those warnings are ignored then swift infractions and bans will ensue.

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Turtwig

If ye do. Benny and Me (well me anyway. Benny's got more integrity) are just going to assume each post is conforming to the charter. :pac:

Are you guys really sure you want to get into that argument?

nagirrac

Virgil° wrote: »

There is no evidence of God presented so far. And if you'd ever listened to any of the atheists here, pretty much anyone of them can tell you that you should NEVER have to support a lack of a position EVER.

Of course they would because that in reality is the lazy approach that you were accusing me of earlier. Sorry, once you engage in debating arguments such as the cosmological and ontological arguments, you lose the "lack of a position" excuse if you clearly take a position on these arguments.

The evidence for God that an atheist denies is the same evidence that a deist or theist is looking at, simply different interpretations of the same evidence.

It is two papers by the way, not dozens, they are not that long, but like most atheists I have met you prefer to put your hands over your ears and say "la, la, la". I don't have time to summarize Bitbol's paper right now, but will over the weekend. Doubt it will make any difference as it sounds like the combination of French and Philosopher may prejudge his position.

Do I really need to provide a list of scientists in history and today who believe in God?

nagirrac

Jernal wrote: »

Are you guys really sure you want to get into that argument?

There's only one guy claiming the other "knows" his argument is flawed. I fully respect the reasoning against the cosmological argument jernal, but it is dishonest to claim a lack of desire to engage yet again in an endless argument is the same as conceding it.

nozzferrahhtoo

nagirrac wrote: »

sigh.. I am a deist not a theist. I do not hold a religious position and do not believe in a God sitting in the clouds interfering selectively in the affairs of humans.

So, do you want to debate the Cosmological argument, really?

Actually you are someone id like to meet. I NEVER debate the theist position. EVER.

You might have seen me often enough citing the same old piece. My mantra around here is always:

"I would like to see ANY evidence, argument, data OR reasoning that even lends a modicum of credence to the idea a non human intelligence is responsible for the creation and/or subsequent maintenance of our universe."

Which is a DIRECT challenge on the deist position, not the theist one.

So "sigh" all you want. I have been speaking TO you longer than you might have realised.

nagirrac

Virgil° wrote: »

There is plenty of evidence that the mind is a result of the brain and none to the contrary.

The relevant question is not so much what is the "cause" of the mind, but what is conscious experience, the "what it is like to be" experience. We cannot directly measure mind, so we rely on indirect evidence. The Bitbol papers outline the mind-brain problem (the hard problem of consciousness) really well and take us beyond the simplistic easy problems of mind. There are two broad categories of thought when it comes to thinking about the problem, the monist materialist view which states matter is the only fundamental substance and everything including mind can be reduced to it, and the dualist position which states that matter and mind are separate substances, or perhaps different attributes of the same fundamental substance. If monist materialism is correct consciousness is an epiphenomenon of neural activity and cannot have any causal effect itself. If dualism is correct consciousness or mind can have a causal effect.

Regardless of whether it makes sense or not to humans the more compelling evidence supports the dualist position. The Placebo effect and neuroplasticity provide empirical evidence that mind can cause biochemical changes in the case of the placebo effect and neural structure changes in the case of neuroplasticity. This is paradoxical as how can something that has no "matter" that we can measure (a thought) have a causal effect on matter? Just because the evidence is leading us to a conclusion that makes no sense to us does not mean the conclusion is incorrect. A good analogy is up to the end of the 19th century the existing scientific belief was that space consisted of an ether and light travelled through that ether. We knew light had wave properties and to our knowledge all waves had to have a medium to travel through. Well, we were wrong and later realized that EM radiation can travel through a vacuum and there was no need for an ether.

The closest analogy we can make to the mind-brain is a modern computer which has hardware and software elements. The attraction of quantum (just for you sarky) models of mind is that in concept at least they are closer to how we experience our minds operating than a digital computer. Every event in a digital computer is determined by one of two states (0,1) and is entirely deterministic (a specific command always gives the same output) while the mind seems to operate in a much more indeterminate fashion. We are presented with a continuous flow of thoughts that well up from our unconscious mind, and we get to choose to act on or veto those thoughts (the ability to veto represents true free will).

The end result of all this is you have to question our assumptions about the fundamental nature of the universe. The lessons of modern theoretical physics is there are no fundamental particles with intrinsic properties in the classical way of thinking about particles and properties. It is not just mind that has a mysterious origin but matter itself, perhaps both emerge from a common source which is purely informational. While this may suggest everything we observe is an illusion, I believe the more correct view is simply that the universe is just not the way we think it is.

nagirrac

nozzferrahhtoo wrote: »

"I would like to see ANY evidence, argument, data OR reasoning that even lends a modicum of credence to the idea a non human intelligence is responsible for the creation and/or subsequent maintenance of our universe."

Which is a DIRECT challenge on the deist position, not the theist one.

Having been in both camps during my lifetime I would say there is very little that separates a deist from an atheist. In my experience it comes down to simply interpreting evidence and forming a personal worldview. For example, I find the evidence for something like reincarnation (some aspects of individual memories being maintained across lifetimes) quite compelling, having read every available source, supportive and skeptical, that I could find on it. I find the simple conclusion that reincarnation exists better supported by the evidence than the skeptical responses to it, based on current knowledge. Perhaps there is a better explanation for where these memories come from, but imo there are far too many strong cases that support the idea of reincarnation than explanations that reject it.

Related to that is the debate I am having with virgil on the mind-brain problem. There are many who think it isn't even a problem, that mind simply emerges as an aftereffect of neural activity in our brains. Our conscious experience of being a specific human or sense of self is just an epiphenomenon or an illusion. I have a hard time with this interpretation, and don't accept the evidence supports it. If our brain produces this "thing" that makes us who we think we are at least, then what do we do with the knowledge there are people who have multiple personalities, and completely different ones. We can just dismiss them as mad but that doesn't get us any closer to an understanding. I am wading through "The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick" for the second time and it is fascinating to read the first hand accounts of someone with this condition, literally an unrecognized stranger entering your mind, coming and going like an unwelcome intruder. What do we make of that?

joseph brand

nagirrac wrote: »

Related to that is the debate I am having with virgil on the mind-brain problem. There are many who think it isn't even a problem, that mind simply emerges as an aftereffect of neural activity in our brains. Our conscious experience of being a specific human or sense of self is just an epiphenomenon or an illusion. I have a hard time with this interpretation, and don't accept the evidence supports it. If our brain produces this "thing" that makes us who we think we are at least, then what do we do with the knowledge there are people who have multiple personalities, and completely different ones. We can just dismiss them as mad but that doesn't get us any closer to an understanding. I am wading through "The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick" for the second time and it is fascinating to read the first hand accounts of someone with this condition, literally an unrecognized stranger entering your mind, coming and going like an unwelcome intruder. What do we make of that?

Isn't he a science fiction writer? Much like L. Ron Hubbard.

Brian Shanahan

joseph brand wrote: »

Isn't he a science fiction writer? Much like L. Ron Hubbard.

Not quite, there were two differences:

1) Dick for the main part wrote intelligent SF, Hubbard was the worst kind of pulp author, a bad hack (trust me, I've read both authors).
2) Dick had the personal integrity to not found a religion.

Oh and Dick's "religious" visions were as a result of either his mental illness or hallucogenic drug usage.

Geomy

Brian Shanahan wrote: »

Not quite, there were two differences:

1) Dick for the main part wrote intelligent SF, Hubbard was the worst kind of pulp author, a bad hack (trust me, I've read both authors).
2) Dick had the personal integrity to not found a religion.

Oh and Dick's "religious" visions were as a result of either his mental illness or hallucogenic drug usage.

I think it's gas, id say when someone comes up with something interesting you'll try to dig up some dirt or controversy about their facts.

However I don't think everyone on the atheist side has a clean mental health record or short of having illusions from time to time. ...

Do you always believe what you read online ?

nagirrac

joseph brand wrote: »

Isn't he a science fiction writer? Much like L. Ron Hubbard.

Blade Runner, Minority Report, Total Recall, A Scanner Darkly, Next, Paycheck, Screamers.. and that's just the novels or short stories that have been made into movies, there are at least 6 others in production phase.
Just like L. Ron Hubbard

Turtwig

Seen as we talking about conditions. I recall vaguely reading about researchers finding some people who'd have one part of their brain that believed one thing but the other part believed the opposite. There was even one subject where the person was, well, an atheist and a theist. Now, honestly I can't say whether this research was thrash or not but it does sort of make sense. Or concepts for 'mind' 'person' are mostly intuitively based and it would stand to reason that for something as complicated as the mind intuitiveness is the last thing we should be expecting.

nagirrac

Geomy wrote: »

I think it's gas, id say when someone comes up with something interesting you'll try to dig up some dirt or controversy about their facts.

It's called confirmation bias geomy, which a lot of New Atheists think they are immune from, in much the same way they think the subjective experiences and overall minds of people with any kind of spiritual belief or religious belief are delusional as you cannot trust the human mind, with the caveat of course that the atheist mind is immune from delusion and can be trusted.

No question that Philip K. Dick had mental issues and was a heavy drug user (according to his biography he did not take hallucinogens, but massive quantities of speed so he could stay up all night to write). It is far too easy to say mental illness or drug use, rather than investigate the evidence of what he actually experienced. In a similar way that the memories of prior lives reported by many thousands of children (and that's only since serious study began a few decades ago) are dismissed as imagination without looking at the evidence.

The problem for those who deny that any form of dualism exists is that the evidence demolishes the materialist alternative. If mind is simply due to neurons firing in your brain and personality develops gradually as the individual brain interacts with its environment, how in the name of Zeus can a 3 year old have detailed specific memories of a past life (documented thousands of times and many cases where the specific details of past lives were validated), or how can a completely different personality from another era in history suddenly enter your brain and take it over, as happens in multiple personality disorder, which Dick most likely had.

nagirrac

Jernal wrote: »

Seen as we talking about conditions. I recall vaguely reading about researchers finding some people who'd have one part of their brain that believed one thing but the other part believed the opposite. There was even one subject where the person was, well, an atheist and a theist.

This short lecture by Iain Gilchrist may answer your question. I have to say it was the best 12 minutes I have spent in trying to understand why we humans are the way we are. He has a concise book called "The Divided Brain and the Search for Meaning", the Kindle version on Amazon is less than a Euro. He makes the point that while humans in earlier times had a more balanced brain, in today's modern Western society our left hemisphere has largely taken over and the right brain is suppressed.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFs9WO2B8uI

nozzferrahhtoo

Jernal wrote: »

Seen as we talking about conditions. I recall vaguely reading about researchers finding some people who'd have one part of their brain that believed one thing but the other part believed the opposite.

Yea VS Ramachandran has done a lot of work on this "Split Brain" phenomenon. Through a few techniques he was able to "interview" each half of the brain and found that one believed in god and the other did not. A lot of Ramachandrans work is insanely interesting.

nozzferrahhtoo

nagirrac wrote: »

I would say there is very little that separates a deist from an atheist.

Except one holds to the idea that the universe was created by an intentional or intelligent agent, while the other does not. I would find that to be no small difference.

nagirrac wrote: »

In my experience it comes down to simply interpreting evidence and forming a personal worldview.

I see no way of interpreting any evidence to support the above idea. You would have to lay out your reasoning. Simply declaring you interpret it differently but without laying out how is about as useful as me saying "The apple on my table proves OJ did kill his wife, you are just not interpreting the evidence like I am" and then running out the door.

nagirrac wrote: »

I find the evidence for something like reincarnation (some aspects of individual memories being maintained across lifetimes) quite compelling, having read every available source, supportive and skeptical, that I could find on it.

I am aware of no such evidence. You would, as before, have to lay out what it is for me to be able to evaluate it. There appears to be some consistency in threads like this of people discussing the existence of evidence for things without ever getting around to saying what it is.

nagirrac wrote: »

There are many who think it isn't even a problem

That might be somewhat disingenuous. It is not that people do not think things like that are "not a problem". They just see them as open questions. The "Problem" for people like me is that while questions are open people play "god of the gaps". As if an open question by proxy is capable of lending credibility to any old nonsense one makes up to explain it.

Why is there a universe. Why do we appear to have "mind". They are open questions, sure. But being open questions in no way lends credibility to the notion there is a god, an after life, reincarnation, the capability of the mind to exist independent of the brain, or any of the other things people simply make up in and around those open questions.

Fantasy and imagination are great. Through them we do find answers to our questions. But there is a long process involved after simply fantasizing an answer. All too many people are simply content to stop there however and act like their ability to imagine up an answer is alone enough to lend that answer credence.

Brian Shanahan

Geomy wrote: »

I think it's gas, id say when someone comes up with something interesting you'll try to dig up some dirt or controversy about their facts.

However I don't think everyone on the atheist side has a clean mental health record or short of having illusions from time to time. ...

Do you always believe what you read online ?

I'm pointing out that the religious "experiences" of Philip K Dick are explained by his mental illness, just like the vast Soviet anti-American conspiracy he thought fellow writers who praised his work were part of.

And you think I'm making **** up? Seriously? Are you that desperate for validation of your own beliefs that you have to diminish the mental issues of another in order that you can point out "nya, nyah, nyah, I have proof and you don't"?

Geomy

Brian Shanahan wrote: »

I'm pointing out that the religious "experiences" of Philip K Dick are explained by his mental illness, just like the vast Soviet anti-American conspiracy he thought fellow writers who praised his work were part of.

And you think I'm making **** up? Seriously? Are you that desperate for validation of your own beliefs that you have to diminish the mental issues of another in order that you can point out "nya, nyah, nyah, I have proof and you don't"?

Proof of what ?

There you go again with your cunning, baffling and condescending replies. ..

Mr Crystal Ball, tell me my beliefs.

Looks like you're more delusional than I, because I don't discuss my beliefs. ...

Geomy

Brian Shanahan wrote: »

I'm pointing out that the religious "experiences" of Philip K Dick are explained by his mental illness, just like the vast Soviet anti-American conspiracy he thought fellow writers who praised his work were part of.

And you think I'm making **** up? Seriously? Are you that desperate for validation of your own beliefs that you have to diminish the mental issues of another in order that you can point out "nya, nyah, nyah, I have proof and you don't"?

Turtwig

Brian, Geomy, CUT OUT the personal spat or cards and bans may follow

nagirrac

nozzferrahhtoo wrote: »

I am aware of no such evidence. You would, as before, have to lay out what it is for me to be able to evaluate it. There appears to be some consistency in threads like this of people discussing the existence of evidence for things without ever getting around to saying what it is.

Specifically on reincarnation, the evidence is from a variety of sources, but the strong evidence is from studies originally done by Dr. Ian Stevenson starting in the 1960s that have since been repeated by others working in the field. The significant confusion around the evidence is primarily around the claim being made, so it is important to state this clearly.

The claim is that "there is something essential to some human personalities that cannot plausibly be linked to brain states or properties of brain states, that persists after biological death, and that some of these irreducible traits of personalities come to reside in other human bodies either sometime during the gestation process, at birth, or after birth". There is no claim regarding the mechanism of how this happens, so no claim involving astral bodies, etc. that do not have empirical evidence to support them.

The empirical evidence in the scientific studies undertaken by Dr. Stevenson and others, based on memories that are documented under methodologically sound conditions is as follows: the memories must be verified as events that only the former personality could know, and/or the current personality has skills that could not have been learned during the current lifetime but were acquired from the prior personality (language being the most obvious one). It is important to point out that several thousand cases were investigated by Dr. Stevenson alone, but most were rejected from the evidence due to the risk of earlier compromise of the data (for example there had been any contact between the individual and say the family of the earlier personality). The two best collections of data by Dr. Stevenson's data are documented in the books: "Children who remember past lives: and "Twenty cases suggesting reincarnation".

Of course there are skeptical opinions on this, but by and large the skeptics either use straw man arguments like arguing against claims that were not made, or use dishonest arguments like ignoring the stronger cases, ignoring the stronger evidence, and focusing on specific cases which may be weaker. The attached paper by Robert Almeder against the arguments put forth in a book by Paul Edwards outline this well.

The hypothesis as outlined in the above claim is validated by the evidence, and there is no other explanation currently that better fits the evidence. It can be falsified as of course some other explanation could be involved that we are currently unaware of, but for now the reincarnation hypothesis is best supported by the evidence.

http://www.scientificexploration.org/journal/jse_11_4_almeder.pdf

Brian Shanahan

Jernal wrote: »

Brian, Geomy, CUT OUT the personal spat or cards and bans may follow

Well I wasn't trying to make it personal. I was just utterly mystified that a poster would dismiss out of hand a person's well documented mental illness in a discussion.

If I went too far I apologise to you.

smacl

nagirrac wrote: »

The closest analogy we can make to the mind-brain is a modern computer which has hardware and software elements. The attraction of quantum (just for you sarky) models of mind is that in concept at least they are closer to how we experience our minds operating than a digital computer. Every event in a digital computer is determined by one of two states (0,1) and is entirely deterministic (a specific command always gives the same output) while the mind seems to operate in a much more indeterminate fashion. We are presented with a continuous flow of thoughts that well up from our unconscious mind, and we get to choose to act on or veto those thoughts (the ability to veto represents true free will).

I think you need to differentiate between deterministic and demonstrably predictable for this argument to hold. The actions of a computer program running on an abstract computer are only entirely predictable for a given set of inputs, which for the sake of argument, we'll call a context. If the context includes unknowns (e.g. a random number generated from a digital thermometer sitting in a warm cup of tea beside the computer), the actions of the computer become difficult to predict. The context in which the human mind operates by comparison contains a massive number of unknowns, which makes predicting its behaviour impossible from a practical standpoint, but does little to suggest whether or not that behaviour is deterministic. It is also worth noting that in computer science there is also the idea of non determinism as well as quantum computers.

So IMHO, the essential differences between a computer program and human mind come down to their relative complexity, the environment in which they operate, what they're trying to achieve with respect to that environment, and the hardware on which they're hosted. Again, just my opinion, but pulling the power on either has a broadly similar effect, although I'd rather my chances of restoring the state of my computer from a backup than reinstating my essential self through reincarnation. YMMV

Geomy

Brian Shanahan wrote: »

Well I wasn't trying to make it personal. I was just utterly mystified that a poster would dismiss out of hand a person's well documented mental illness in a discussion.

If I went too far, I apologise to you.

No bother thanks Brian, sure we can all get a bit emotive on these topics, I apologise if I got a bit personal too...

nozzferrahhtoo

nagirrac wrote: »

The significant confusion around the evidence is primarily around the claim being made, so it is important to state this clearly

Yes it is. As I said often before the concept of evidence is a process for me. Not a thing. The process is:

1) State very clearly what it is you are actually claiming.
2) List clearly the things you think support the claim being made in 1).
3) Explain exactly how the things in 2 support the claims in 1.

Pretty simple. So if you think there is "reincarnation" they please follow the process above and present the positive evidence FOR the claim rather than an attack on the arguments AGAINST the claims such as your PDF link.

The issue people face when evidencing claims like this is how to verify that the person with a claimed memory could not have obtained that memory by any other way. Objectively showing this to be true is vastly difficult given the number of possible ways one has to come into information. Sometimes without even being aware oneself of having come into that information.

Brian Shanahan

Geomy wrote: »

No bother thanks Brian, sure we can all get a bit emotive on these topics, I apologise if I got a bit personal too...

No bother, I apologise if I caused any upset to you.

nagirrac

nozzferrahhtoo wrote: »

Yes it is. As I said often before the concept of evidence is a process for me. Not a thing. The process is:

1) State very clearly what it is you are actually claiming.
2) List clearly the things you think support the claim being made in 1).
3) Explain exactly how the things in 2 support the claims in 1.

Pretty simple. So if you think there is "reincarnation" they please follow the process above and present the positive evidence FOR the claim rather than an attack on the arguments AGAINST the claims such as your PDF link.

The issue people face when evidencing claims like this is how to verify that the person with a claimed memory could not have obtained that memory by any other way.

The paper I posted isn't an attack, it's a response to an attack. The author is defending the work of Dr. Stevenson against in his opinion a lazy and dishonest review of Stevenson's lifetime of work.

The reincarnation claim is that some aspects of a human personality are transmitted from one lifetime to another. There is an enormous amount of evidence as summarized in the attached with links to all the papers by Stevenson and others. By and large these are 2 - 4 year olds with incredibly detailed memories of past lives which are largely lost by age 5 - 7.

http://www.near-death.com/experiences/reincarnation01.html

I agree wholeheartedly that the problem we have with this evidence is how did the person acquire these memories. I have read all the papers by Stevenson and others and read all the arguments I could find against the reincarnation hypothesis, and agree with those that claim that currently reincarnation is the best hypothesis. Frankly, one of the most common arguments against the claim is one that I found compelling for many years and that is why the phenomena is much rarer in the West than in cultures where reincarnation is accepted as part of nature. I believe the distinction is that while children would be encouraged to talk about such memories in other cultures, the opposite is the case in the West where reincarnation would be regarded as heretical to Christian belief.

Memories are only one aspect of the evidence, secondary evidence such as phobias from past life experiences and birthmarks/deformities from past life violent incidents are also quite supportive.

nozzferrahhtoo

nagirrac wrote: »

The paper I posted isn't an attack, it's a response to an attack.

Which as I said is no good to me. If you think reincarnation exists I want to see the positive substantiation for that. The original substantiation. Not a reply to a reply to that original substantiation. You are bringing me into the conversation several iterations into it, and third or fourth hand.

Once again if you think "reincarnation" exists then by my three step process above (which I note you "thanked") I want to know exactly what you think that means, exactly what you think supports the claim, and exactly why those things support that claim.

nagirrac wrote: »

The reincarnation claim is that some aspects of a human personality are transmitted from one lifetime to another.

They are, even in early life, my exposure of the very young to older people around them. Our personality is formed by a combination of genetics and nurture, often from an early age. In fact in late stage pregnancy even voices recognised by the developing child, especially that of its own mother, have been shown to have massively different effects than the voice of complete strangers. As has playing music in and around developing children.

But something tells me you are talking about more than this which is why I am being a stickler for being specific about what your ACTUAL claim is. Because many people who subscribe to the idea of "reincarnation" are suggesting that personality and memory leave the dead body in some kind of "spirit" form at which point they transfer.... by means unspecified, unknown, and unsubstantiated.... in part or in whole into a new host.

And THAT claim I have never seen even the remotest substantiation for. Much less from anyone on this thread.

Again all my time spent reading your link seems to do is suggest that some children have said things the origin of which remains a mystery. An open question. And as I have pointed out numerous times on this thread and others.... open questions are NOT evidence for something you simply made up on the spot.

For example if one were to say "I do not know how or why child X knows information Y..... therefore reincarnation" this is at best a complete non sequitur and at worst a canard.

Your link is also horrifically undetailed for anyone who is versed in reading scientific papers. Not that this is a scientific paper you linked to, but an opinion piece on a blog.

For example in the opening lines it says "He thoroughly questioned the child and the child's parents, including the people whom the child recalled were his parents from his past life."

What questions were asked EXACTLY? What were the answers EXACTLY? This is important information but your link asks us to take it all on faith. However we know from painful experience, especially in the area of child abuse, that the wrong questions can get positive answers. People have been accused of child molestation because "leading" questions were asked to children and "positive" answers were received falsely.

So you will forgive me if I am unimpressed.... in fact the complete opposite...... by being told a child remembering past lives was merely "Questions Thouroughly".

Perhaps some actual peer reviewed science rather than an opinion piece on a blog would be a better move from you in such discussions in future? That way we can hope some of the Methodology and Information is at least cogent and useful and not so easy for me to dismiss.

Worse in the following sentence there is a link to the papers this man is meant to have published. I followed the link but his papers are not on that link. Perhaps they are somewhere deeper in that site but they are not where the link points to.

Worse there appears to be a lot of Chinese whispers and Memetic natural selection in what is being presented here. Rather than point out that there is a massive lack of supporting evidence one instead goes on about 12 or 20 or so specific cases. In other words out of a huge melting pot one cherry picks the 12 cases that most supports the conclusion the scientist in question WANTS TO REACH. That is massively massively bad methodology. If you presented this to anyone even remotely interested in epidemiology they would likely start bleeding at the eye balls.

Further, as I said with chinese whispers, there is a massive time lag between cases of this and the actual "research". In one of his "top 20" cases he not only did not interview the child involved when it was a child.... he did not even interview the PERSON involved at any stage but in fact over a decade later talked to OTHER people over the period of another decade.

But of course all possibilities of lies, mis-remembered facts, embellishment or Chinese whispers are dismissed in a fetid need to find a "positive case" to write about. This is the danger of a "scientist" with an agenda.

But from reading through your link, and from your post above, it really seems that NEGATIVE evidence is the only evidence you have. Which is, once again as above, the idea that since you do not know the source of a childs knowledge on a certain topic that this suggests reincarnation. And you, for some reason that escapes me entirely, appear to find this intellectually compelling.

Even worse again is that the "positive cases" come often from people or cultures that strongly believe in reincarnation. You attempted, quite poorly, to pre-empt that objection above by suggesting this is because such people are more willing to listen to reincarnated children. Another possibility you gloss over entirely however is that such cultures have a natural penchant to embellish and accept such stories. Which will compound the "false positive" of failing to interview the child at source but instead interviewing people second hand who are already believers and inclined therefore to give the answers that will also lead towards the positive that this "scientist" himself sought to find.

So in summary all I am seeing here is confirmation bias, compounded with horrifically bad methodologies, compounded further by this need to almost present lack of answers and open questions AS evidence for the desired conclusion. All of which leads me, as I said before, with nothing but a mounting awe that you find something here even remotely intellectually satisfying when all I can muster from it is vicarious embarrassment on your behalf.

All I am seeing here is a list of open questions. And the open questions are being presented AS evidence for the desired conclusion. This is horrific at best. They are NOT evidence for the conclusions. They are merely a restatement of the original problem.

nagirrac

nozzferrahhtoo wrote: »

So in summary all I am seeing here is confirmation bias, compounded with horrifically bad methodologies, compounded further by this need to almost present lack of answers and open questions AS evidence for the desired conclusion. All of which leads me, as I said before, with nothing but a mounting awe that you find something here even remotely intellectually satisfying when all I can muster from it is vicarious embarrassment on your behalf.

Yawn. Save your faux concern, the only embarrassment here is your haughty condescending pontificating superior language.

Having already informed you I have read as much as I can find on the subject matter, both supportive and critical, you post a summary of the objections raised by Paul Edwards from the paper I originally posted. Do you think I am a dullard who posts material without reading it myself? and people wonder why some atheists are regarded as arrogant.

In response to your stawman argument, read the claim again and my clarification of the claim. Nowhere does it talk about a "spirit" form or any other proposed mechanism for how personality traits and memories transfer across lifetimes, and Stevenson was careful not to make such a claim. There are several hypotheses for how this may happen, but there is no scientific evidence to support them. What Stevenson and others have done is to demonstrate without reasonable doubt that it does happen.

You seem appalled that a scientist would accept something without an understanding of an underlying mechanism. Do you accept there is a thing called gravity and that scientists regard gravity as one of the strongest scientific facts we have since the mid 18th century? Does it concern you to the same degree of indignity as expressed above that we have no scientifically based mechanism to explain gravity? The uncomfortable truth is that like many hardened skeptics who give the term skeptic a bad name, you put science and scientists into two boxes, the smiley box for those that support your own conformation biases and the loathsome box for those that refute them.

For me the individual issue of reincarnation is not so important, but part of a larger mystery of nature, how one views consciousness. If one is a materialist reductionist then consciousness from a causal sense is reduced solely to brain states. I'm not a material reductionist (which by default puts me in the bad box for you), and a careful review of the evidence leads me to the conclusion that there is correlation between brain states and consciousness, but the idea that epiphenomenal neural activity leads to the rich variety of states of mind I have personally experienced, let alone what others have reported, is a nonsense.

I'm pretty sure you are well aware of how obnoxious and offensive your comments are and intend them as such, and as life is too short unless you change your level of civility I have no further interest in discussions with you.

nozzferrahhtoo

I will skip over your on going need to get personal with everyone you disagrees with you with comments like " haughty condescending pontificating superior language" and words like "dullard" and "arrogant" and so forth. I am having a conversation on a topic YOU brought up and if you do not like my reply so be it. You can keep the personal rhetoric and attacks out of it thanks.

I presented MY assessment of your link. Not Paul Edwards assessment. If there are overlaps between them then so be it. But those overlaps do not justify suggesting I was summarizing someone elses arguments. My responses were my own, made after having respectfully taken the time.... over a space of three days.... to actually read the link you presented rather than just dismiss it out of hand as many others would. My assesment of that link not going the way you wanted to is not ground to launch a personal tirade of ad hominem.

Once again you brought up reincarnation. Not me. And you presented a link to a blog as support for that position. So the only response open to me was to take the time (which I did at length) to read that link and respond to it. Your response.... to vaguely refer to OTHER things you claim to have "read on the subject".

Perhaps you have read things as you claim but what use is that to me? I can only comment on what you have presented to ME in this thread HERE. So claiming to have read other things in no way progresses the conversation here and now.

And once again: Having read the blog you linked me to all I can see is massive methodological flaws, information that should be included but was left absent, claims based on interviews second hand with people who were not even the original person claimed to have been "reincarnated", and the actual problem being restated as if it is evidence for the conclusion.

Any ONE of which is enough to torpedo the idea that reincarnation is substantiated but taken all together simply leaves the idea in tatters.

Now if you claim to have read better evidence than that which you have presented thus far then I remain, as I was above, very open to reading and assessing it. I think, as I said, we can proceed without the personal attacks you opened your last post with however.

nagirrac wrote: »

What Stevenson and others have done is to demonstrate without reasonable doubt that it does happen.

Have they? Where? Certainly not in the link you gave above for reasons I have already explained at length. Perhaps you have better links to present, or better evidence, but one is left wondering why you chose the bad evidence if you claim to have better evidence.

You can claim, over and over, to have engaged in a "careful review of the evidence" but until such time as you present that evidence I can only take your word for this. Which I fully intend NOT to do.

nagirrac

nozzferrahhtoo wrote: »

I will skip over your on going need to get personal with everyone you disagrees with you with comments like " haughty condescending pontificating superior language" and words like "dullard" and "arrogant" and so forth. I am having a conversation on a topic YOU brought up and if you do not like my reply so be it. You can keep the personal rhetoric and attacks out of it thanks.

You can claim, over and over, to have engaged in a "careful review of the evidence" but until such time as you present that evidence I can only take your word for this. Which I fully intend NOT to do.

My last post was not a personal attack, unless one cannot distinguish between attacking the post and attacking the poster. The language in your prior post was "haughty, condescending, pontificating, and superior". If you don't agree that the phrase "all I can muster from it is vicarious embarrassment on your behalf" is uncivil and condescending then we will just have to disagree on the nature of "personal rhetoric and attacks".

Apologies about the blog link if you had difficulties opening some of the sub links. Stevenson published over 300 papers and this was the only site I could find that contained links to a good cross section of them.

Whether there is or is not something called reincarnation is not the larger question here, the intellectually stimulating subject is of course the nature of mind. Multiple personality disorder (or dissociative identity disorder as it is called now) is very well established in the field of mental health, although the origins of the disorder are mysterious. The most common hypothesis is that it stems from child abuse, and perhaps a unified personality never emerges as in normal development. In other words rather than different personalities, it is a fragmented personality. The problem with this interpretation is how clearly separate the "alters" are in terms of identity (name, history, etc.), vocabulary and general knowledge.

The attached case study by Stevenson and Pasricha is clearly one that would be diagnosed as DID in the west, and it fits with the general symptoms of DID. However, it also has all the classic features of memories of past life memories. It is an example of the kind of case that the most ardent pseudoskeptics hate to examine as it refutes their attacks on Stevenson for his "sloppy" methodology. He was a very careful researcher as anyone who has read his work extensively would attest to.

I would be interested in your thoughts on it.

http://www.medicine.virginia.edu/clinical/departments/psychiatry/sections/cspp/dops/dr.-stevensons-publications/STE7.pdf