Hey FrGamble!

Quote: FrGamble

We all live by faith supported by science.

Correct. I have faith the science behind flight
is correct, or behind the car I drive, or the
drugs I take. Science says unequivocally that
there is no evidence for a god and I have
total faith in their findings.

Your opinions on reincarnation have no weight
whatsoever, how could they. Everything your
religion teaches is in direct opposition to it.
We're back to Galileo again. He had a provable
theory that went against every doctrine the
Church had on how the universe worked. They
did everything they could, short of death, to
keep him quiet. If reincarnation is accepted
as true, as it is by more and more people, as
the evidence mounts, it will kill Christianity
dead. Yahweh religions totally depend on
a heaven and a hell to sell their product.
Reincarnation says we come back, there
is no heaven and hell.

At least Hinduism and Buddhism got some
of it right. They have always believed is
reincarnation, it's obvious if you just look
around. It doesn't even have to be explained.

Quote: Evenbob

Science says unequivocally that
there is no evidence for a god

That is blatantly false and is your biased interpretation of facts that I have shown actually point to the existence of God. Science makes no claim for or against God.

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Your opinions on reincarnation have no weight
whatsoever, how could they. Everything your
religion teaches is in direct opposition to it.

Everything in you seems to be in direct opposition to God so how can your opinions on God carry any weight?

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We're back to Galileo again. He had a provable
theory that went against every doctrine the
Church had on how the universe worked.

Copernicus, who was a Churchman, had the same theory and he was supported. Galileo had friends and supporters in the Church too, including the Pope until Galileo burned those bridges.

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At least Hinduism and Buddhism got some
of it right. They have always believed is
reincarnation, it's obvious if you just look
around. It doesn't even have to be explained.

It could be the furthest thing from obvious and you saying that makes you simply oblivious. I usually don't mind people believing in reincarnation because it usually shows an openness to the spiritual and the existence of the soul. Usually it is accompanied with some notion that how you live your life determines how you come back in the next life, which leads to awful abuses, but at least it recognizes the importance of living a moral life and the ultimate justice that is God's.

With you it is very strange. You accept the unexplainable evidence as scientific proof of reincarnation, which it is not. Then when science provides evidence I say leads to the conclusion that there is a God you ignore the evidence and say it does not point to God. You give no other solutions or ideas. You also deny reincarnation as a punishment or reward, which I appreciate, but then don't seem to recognize the hell you have condemned us all to live over and over again. I really don't think you are thinking clearly about any of these things and are thrown about by your passions and desires to believe what you want while ridiculing anyone who thinks differently or points out the flaws in your argument.

Quote: FrGamble

That is blatantly false and is your biased interpretation of facts

Science can find no god, if it could
there would be no atheist scientists.
And there are plenty.

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Everything in you seems to be in direct opposition to God

I can't be in opposition to something
that doesn't exist, it's not possible.

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until Galileo burned those bridges.

Of course it was Galileo's fault, in the Church
everything is somebody else's fault, they're
always blameless.

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You accept the unexplainable evidence as scientific proof of reincarnation, which it is not. .

No no no, go back and look at my posts. I
have never once said it was proof of
anything. In fact I go out of my way to
say it's evidence, not proof. I have used
the tobacco analogy several times to show
nobody has proven it causes cancer, yet the
evidence overwhelmingly points to it.

Most crimes are not solved by proof but
by evidence that points to the perpetrator.
The evidence points to reincarnation pretty
convincingly.

I know you think you've shown evidence of
a god, but it's not real evidence. Nobody
has real evidence or you'd all be using it
and there would be no atheists. If you could
come up with any, of what use would there
be in faith.

Quote: Evenbob

Science can find no god, if it could
there would be no atheist scientists.
And there are plenty.

There are plenty of religious scientists too. For the last time - it is not the role of science to find God or to disprove God. Atheist scientists don't make the choice to not believe in God because they have found evidence there is no God. Faithful scientists don't make the choice to believe in God because it is proved by science.

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Of course it was Galileo's fault, in the Church
everything is somebody else's fault, they're
always blameless.

I never said the Church was blameless. If you don't think in this complicated story there was not blame to share all around you haven't really looked at it.

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Most crimes are not solved by proof but
by evidence that points to the perpetrator.
The evidence points to reincarnation pretty
convincingly.

I think we are trying to open your mind to realize that the evidence you present does not point to reincarnation as convincingly as you think. Granted it is an option, but so are many other possibilities, surely you see that.

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I know you think you've shown evidence of
a god, but it's not real evidence. Nobody
has real evidence or you'd all be using it
and there would be no atheists. If you could
come up with any, of what use would there
be in faith.

Why does evidence mean there would be no atheists? Like the evidence that you say points to reincarnation, or tobacco causes cancer, or human causes of global warming - yet people deny all three of these things all the time. It seems as if you are using a double standard. If you happen to believe it the evidence points to it, but does not prove it. If you don't believe in it than there is no evidence or the evidence must reach the level of a mathematical proof until you will believe it. You don't hold yourself and reincarnation to that same level of proof but have no problem in holding belief in God to that unreal standard. Why is that? You have faith in reincarnation and in having such faith you show that faith has a very important use. It moves us from evidence to making a choice to believe in something.

Quote: FrGamble

it is not the role of science to find God or to disprove God.

And it has done a good job of
finding none. How could it,
god doesn't exist.

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the evidence you present does not point to reincarnation

It doesn't point to heaven and hell.
It doesn't point to saviors from sins
that don't exist. It points to cycles
of life that are very boring and
universal. But how would you know,
you haven't spent 10min looking at
it, you have an agenda to attend to.
Who cares, it's your life to waste on
nonsense, like the last one and the
next one. Forever.

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Why does evidence mean there would be no atheists?

Because evidence is just that, evidence. It's
not speculation, it's not wishful thinking, it's
not hearsay. There isn't a smoker in this
country that doesn't believe in his heart
that tobacco use causes cancer. Yet they
do it anyway. There is not an atheist in
this country that in his heart knows there's
a god, and is an atheist anyway. Find just one.

But you want to know what you could find?
Plenty of priests who know in their hearts
there is no god, and keep being priests
anyway, because it's all they know. They
aren't brave souls, like my friend Ed, a
former priest who said 'screw this', and
got out while he still could.

Ever see the video of Ed's where he shows
the 24 men (no women allowed in gods
world) who he graduated seminary with?
He has a pic of the graduating class and
points to all the eventual dropouts of the
ordained priests. There are 11 of them and
they went on to actual real lives of families
and useful careers. Why do you think that
happened? The glue of faith was not enough
to keep them spinning their wheels giving
useless communions and listening to
people confessing their thought crimes
against a god that doesn't even exist.

They wised up. Good for them. They are
the real men of conviction.

Quote: Evenbob

Are you a body with a soul or a soul with
a body. Are you a consciousness receiver
or a consciousness producer.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-consciousness-universal/

Please don't answer my question with a question. What gets "born again" when reincarnated?

Quote: Evenbob

Where do you think the memories come from, magic?
And you do NOT understand the work of these people
or you never would have used hypnotic regression in
reference to them. They have been opposed to it since
the start, it's totally corruptible. This research is not.

I understand their work, and lumped hypnotic regression in there with them.

My alternate explaination is just another example of a non-falsifiable explaination that can be used to fit the circumstances. That is my point - that other explainations can fit the phenomena, and there is still nothing to link the evidence to the explanation.

Did you read all of the criticism of this work, the issues that peers raised with the methods, or do you just dismiss them?

That is one of the problems with getting published in a peer reviewed journal - you get reviewed! He had a lot of trouble finding a journal to get published in, too, in the first place.

What is necessary to achieve believability is clear - a thorough peer review of the data, and a repeat of thr data gathering with their concerns addresses.

As for where memories come from - they are chemical-electrical impulses in your brain constantly traveling around in your brain, possibly being at rest when they are in a purely chemical state.

My completely invented assertion is that brains work like radio sets, allowing memories to be transmitted and received between different brains. Most of these brains reject these outside signals, but some accept them and integrate them as their own memories.

I'm not trying to tell you that I believe that this is the explaination that is responsible for what is going on, and like FrG said it could be the saints delivering these memories to you.

The tl;dr summary is there is nothing to link the proof (the data) to the cause (reincarnation, souls, external consciousness)

Quote: FrGamble

For Dalex who does not believe in the soul or the spiritual (I think) he comes up with his own explanation.

I do not presently believe in a soul - I think when you are dead, you are dead. I'm willing to change my mind.

I don't believe in my alternate explanation, either, I was just presenting an idea as an alternative that I think is as valid as the original idea.

I am ok with having things unexplained, as long as it doesn't mean that we stop asking questions.

We have seen many times before when people in general or science is convinced that they have the right answer, only to be proven wrong at some later time. We need to have a very high bar for what is accepted as fact, and is no longer questioned or tested.

edited

As far as being peer reviewed, the work was
rejected by some mainstream publications
because so much of it took place outside
of the USA. But it certainly hasn't been ignored:

"In 1975, The Journal of the American Medical Association, wrote: “In regard to reincarnation he (Stephenson) has painstakingly and unemotionally collected a detailed series of cases from India, cases in which the evidence is difficult to explain on any other grounds. … He has placed on record a large amount of data that cannot be ignored.”

The Lancet, the most respected peer reviewed
medical publication in the world, refused several of
Stephenson's papers, until they finally published
one in 1999 on the 'Past Lives of Twins'. When
published in the The Lancet, you really have
arrived and are to be taken seriously as a
dedicated scientist.