Dean Radin, PhD and Julie Beischel, PhD lecture on Survival of Consciousness

Bill Guggenheim: Hello from Heaver: 12 types of after-death communications

The Scole Experiment: Scientists try to find evidence for the afterlife

For five years a group of mediums and scientists witnessed more phenomena than in any other experiment in the history of the paranormal, including: recorded conversations with the dead, written messages on sealed film, video of spirit faces and even spirit forms materializing.

Stephen Braude on the evidence for the afterlife or survival of consciousness

More on reincarnation and spiritualism and experimental testing

In the previous post, I proposed an experiment that could settle the question about reincarnation. However, I think my argument needs some qualifications.

I was assuming a purely scientific approach to the question, not a religious or philosophical one. In this sense, I assumed that the best scientific evidence for reincarnation comes from the empirical studies with children who remember past lives.

Based upon these assumptions, my argument was that, as with any scientific hypothesis, you test it by their consequences. In the case of reincarnation, the reincarnation hypothesis predicts that the same soul was transfered from a dead body to another body. Hence, providing evidence that the soul of "reincarnated cases" is not reincarnated at all (but only apparently so), is evidence that the hypothesis of reincarnation is false in those cases.

In other words, if reincarnation is true, then the same soul of the dead person is now IN the body of the child who remembers past lives. Therefore, his soul is NOT in the afterlife anymore (the implication is that if the soul is found there, then reincarnation regarding that soul cannot get off the ground).

In other words, if reliable mediums could discover that, in these cases, the spirit or soul of the dead person is STILL in the afterlife (and hence NOT in another body in earth), then it refutes the hypothesis of reincarnation on thoses cases.

I think the logic of this argument is correct and impeccable.

Now, it could be argued that at most the experiment shows that in cases of children with past lives experiences the hypothesis of reincarnation doesn't apply, but it doesn't refute the hypothesis of reincarnation in general.

However, the above objection implies actually a major scientific concession against the reincarnation hypothesis, because:

1-The best scientific evidence of reincarnation is the evidence of children with past life memories or birthmarks suggesting a past life wound or cause. Therefore, if the best evidence for reincarnation is actually not evidence for it, then a fortiori the weak evidence for it won't do the job either.

2-Reports and communications from some mediums supportive of reincarnation conflict with reports from mediums who don't support it, or even are hostile to it. And from conflicting reports alone you cannot draw any solid conclusions about the existence or not of reincarnation. In this case, the most reasonable conclusion based on such a conflicting reports is agnosticism.

However, agnosticism about reincarnation based upon spiritualism plus positive evidence that the so-called "best reincarnation cases" are not reincarnation cases at all, push the balance strongly in favor of the non-existence of reincarnation.

3-Reports from people who have had hypnotic regression and have discoveried memories of past lives is a kind of evidence weaker than cases of children who remember past lives, because in general it is purely subjetive and not confirmed by objective evidence (e.g. autopsies, etc.). But even if these reports could be confirmed by objective evidence, point 1 could apply to it too (and experiments as the one proposed by me could be used to test the reincarnation hypothesis in those cases of hypnotic regression too).

This is why I thnk the experiment that I proposed, if produces the result discussed here, would provide excellent evidence against the existence of reincarnation.

Obviously, reincarnation would still be a logical possibility, but empirical science is not interested in purely logical possibilities (which only exist in a skeptic's imagination, who tries to resist a conclusion that he doesn't like through the use of pure speculations and unproven assumptions); science is interested in logical possibilities actually supported by empirical evidence.

As has argued philosopher of science and survivalist Neal Grossman "So there is a big difference between a hypothesis that is merely logically possible (that is, a hypothesis that is not self-contradictory) and a hypothesis that is really possible (that is, a hypothesis for which there are empirical reasons to believe might be true). Of course, any real possibility must also be a logical possibility, but the converse is not true. The fact that a given hypothesis is logically possible, that is, is not self-contradictory, is not a reason to believe that it is a real possibility, that is, that it might be true. Science is concerned with real possibilities only, not with mere logical possibilities"

Grossman's point is a basic principle in the philosophy of science. Science doesn't need to refute all the possible alternative explanations for a given set of data (in fact, the number of such an alternatives is potentially infinite). Science is interested only in the hypotheses which, given our background knowledge, the current evidence available and a few of heuristic principles, are really possible (i.e. likely to be true).

This is why the defender of reincarnation can't appeal to speculations about "group souls" and other purely logical possibilities to which we have not evidence at all (or just extremely weak evidence). Only if he can provide evidence of the existence of "group souls" PLUS evidence that it could account for reincarnation cases, then it would be a living possibility which has to be considered and evaluated.

In conclusion, my experiment is just a modest proposal for evaluating reincarnation empirically. I'm sure my experiment needs to be qualified and perfected in the details, in oder to make it useful in an actual experiment design with mediums and cases suggestive of reincarnation.

Solving the tension between spiritualism and reincarnation: An experimental proposal

The comments of some of my readers about my post on the tension existing between spirtualism and reincarnation, has motivated me to think about a possible way to solve this debate on empirical grounds.

I'd suggest the following: To try a series of controlled experiments in which reliable mediums try to communicate with the spirits of the dead who, apparently, are reincarnated in children with past life memories.

Let's to expand this proposal:

1-We need contemporary "reliable" mediums like John Edward, Suzane Northrup or David Thompson (I mention these just because they're widely known and for illustrative purposes alone. You can think in other currently practizing mediums).

2-The mediums need to have access to the best current documented cases of children with past life memories (specially of cases in which the death of the person whose soul is supposedly reincarnated now is recent and well documented).

3-And several, properly double blind controlled experiments with the mediums need to be carried out (for reasons of experimental design, obviously the mediums cannot know in advanced that the identity of the dead person whom they are trying to contact seem to correspond with the past memories which the children are remembering now).

Possible results and conclusions:

1)If the reincarnation hypothesis is true, then we'd expect that the mediums CANNOT contact in the afterlife with the same person who died (and is believed to be reincarnated now). The reason is that such a person is not in the afterlife anymore. This would provide strong evidence that chidlren who remember such memories are actually reincarnated.

2)On the contrary, if mediums DO contact with the same person who died (and is now supposedly reincarnated), then the reincarnation hypotesis is false. In fact, I'd consider this evidence as a knock-down argument against reincarnation.

If this second result is the case, whatever strong evidence is gathered in cases of children who remember past lives cannot be considered as evidence for reincarnation anymore, and has to be explained in terms of, for example, paranormal access to fragments of memories of a dead person (or by any other hypothesis not related with reincarnation).

Possible objections of a defender of reincarnation:

Confronted with the scenario 2, the defender of reincarnation will have to attack mediumship itself. He'll have to argue that mediumship in general, or the mediums of the experiments in particular, weren't reliable, and hence their communications cannot be believed.

Unless he can provide good evidence for this conclusion, I think the defender of reincarnation would be trapped against a corner. This would reveal that his commitment to reincarnation is not rational but pure wishful thinking.

Another defense by the defender of reincarnation would be appealing to the hypothesis of "group souls" mentioned by Michael Tynn in my interview with him, and defended by some spiritual teachers like Silver Birch according to which "there are what you call ‘group souls,’ a single unity with facets which have spiritual relationships that incarnate at different times, at different places, for the purpose of equipping the larger soul for its work."

Obviously, this is a purely speculative possibility, and the defender of reincarnation which takes this idyosincratic view has the burden of proof that such a "group souls" exist and that this provide the explanation for reincarnation cases.

In any case, the experiment with mediums mentioned above could include specific questions about the existence of such a "group souls" and whether they can explain the cases suggestive of reincarnation. The communications received will have to be considered in order to evaluate the plausibility of the "new position" of the defender of reincarnation.

I think this kind of experiments, if carried out competently and replicated, would provide an almost definitive answer regarding reincarnation.

Spiritualism and reincarnation: Bad bed fellows?

Studying the afterlife literature, specially the evidence from spiritualism, one gets the impression that there is a kind of tension between the portrait of an afterlife given by spiritualism and reincarnation. More specifically, the tension is between the spiritualistic information according to which reincarnation doesn't occur and the evidence for reincarnation.

For example, in my interview with one of the world's leading experts in the scientific evidence for an afterlife, Michael Roll, when I asked him about reincarnation, he answered: "Never come across reincarnation in my studies. Never heard a medium say, "Sorry, you can't make contact with him/her as they have gone back to Earth." See the book The Case Against Reincarnation by James Webster on my website. The aim is to let people all over the world know that we all survive the death of our physical bodies and that we are responsible and liable for what we do on Earth. We must not go off on any tangents, keep out of the psychic jungle at all costs."

Michael suggested James Webster's book against reincarnation, a whom I interviewed too. James' view is strong "No amount of research will prove reincarnation as the theory is false to begin with"

One afterlife spirit who communicated through John Sloan (who was in my opinion, a true medium), the famous direct voice medium who was researched by Arthur Findlay, when asked about if we reincarnate, replied "Now it is a question that I find difficult in answering. I have known no one who has. I passed over many years ago, and I have round about me those who lived thousands of years ago on Earth. That's all I can say because my knowledge does not permit me to say more." (On the edge of the etheric, p. 61)

Note that we have here 3 pieces of evidence, coming from different spiritualistic sources (including an afterlife sources) which suggests that reincarnation doesn't happen:

1-A world leading expert in afterlife studies, Michael Roll, who has never found evidence for reincarnation in his studies.

2-An spirit in the afterlife who claims not knowing anybody who has reincarnated (but without denying explicitly the possibility of reincarnation)

3-Another spiritualist researcher, James Webster, who claims the hypothesis of reincarnation is false.

This seems to support the thesis that reincarnation doesn't exist, or at least that solid evidence for it is weak or non-existent.

Evidence for reincarnation

However, it is hard to dismiss the evidence for reincarnation gathered by researchers like Ian Stevenson, Jim Tucker, Titus Rivas and others.

But this evidence doesn't come from spiritualism (or from afterlife sources), but mainly from empirical cases of children who have had putative past-life experiences, which in principle leave open the possibility that past-life experiences are gotten through paranormal means not related to reincarnation as such (a hypothesis defended by some researchers).

In any case, the point is that the evidence from spiritualism seems to be more or less in tension with the evidence from reincarnation.

I mentioned spiritualistic researchers who are skeptical of reincarnation. However, not all of them are. For example, Michael Tynn, when I asked about reincarnation, replied "I have come to the conclusion that reincarnation exists, but it doesn’t play out the way most people who believe in it think it does. I believe that the non-local aspects of time put it beyond human comprehension. I accept Silver Birch’s communication about reincarnation that “… there are what you call ‘group souls,’ a single unity with facets which have spiritual relationships that incarnate at different times, at different places, for the purpose of equipping the larger soul for its work.” I don’t really understand that, but I accept that there are celestial matters that are beyond human understanding and language."

Note that Tynn accepts reincarnation, but in a very qualified way (the inclusion of "group souls" which is a single unity with many facets), a position that many survivalists will reject or find unpersuasive.

Guy Lyon Playfair, another afterlife research, is skeptical of reincarnation. When I asked him about the matter, he replied "The word reincarnation implies the permanent return of a whole personality, and I don't think the evidence generally supports that, although there are cases where it does seem possible, when there are birthmarks and behaviour patterns as well as memories. I'm thinking of people like Jenny Cockell, Om Sety and most recently James Leininger in which identifiable people do seem to have returned to earth, but such cases are very rare. On the whole, though, I think that what people call reincarnation is more like temporary transfer of fragments of memory, etc."

Neal Grossman, on the other hand, strongly supports the idea of reincarnation "All mediumship communications of which I am aware and that discuss the concept of reincarnation, are strongly supportive of that concept. (e.g. The Seth Material). The evidence collected by Stevenson, Tucker, and others, is impeccable and conclusive. Some mediums can even get information about past lives. (I don’t know the type of mediums you have experienced, but I am aware that a few are Christian based, and they interpret everything in such a way as to be consistent with their prior religious beliefs)."

However, the mediums that I had in mind when I asked the question to professor Grossman have nothing to do with Christianity. In fact, they're mediums like John Sloan and others mediums investigated by atheists like Michael Roll, who precisely support a skeptical position regarding reincarnation. For example, in his recent interview in Skeptiko, medium August Goforth comments "I have a huge library of books written by mediums and spiritualists that go back almost a couple hundred years. I noticed not a single one mentioned reincarnation."

On the other hand, if we have to question the source of the information on the grounds of religious beliefs, we could argue against the source of the evidence for reincarnation in the way that James Webster has argued: "Also many of the children Stevenson researched were from Eastern countries who practiced religions and belief systems (e.g. Hinduism and Buddhism) soaked with reincarnation, past lives and karma."

We could say the same of mediums who have read or are sympathetic to belief systems and religions which support the idea of reincarnation, and hence such a beliefs colours the putative afterlife communications from mediums which support reincarnation.

So, the bias cuts both ways.

But this is besides the point. My point is that we find here the tension that I mentioned before. On one side we found long time afterlife researchers who have found no evidence at all from the spiritualistic communications regarding reincarnation. On the other hand, we find scholars like professor Grossman who consider that the evidence for it is "conclusive" and that some mediums get informations about past lives.

Or researchers are reading different spiritualistic literature, or they're leaving their own biases to strongly influence their conclusions.

My own opinion is that the evidence for reincarnation from people like Stevenson is good but not conclusive. More research and theoretical analysis need to be done.

However, I don't have clear how the evidence from spiritualism, overall, tend to support or refute the idea of reincarnation. I suspect that, overall, spiritualism tends to support a skeptical position regarding reincarnation, even thought some spiritualistic communications support the idea too.

Rene Jorgensen on the evidence of Life After Death

Visit Rene Jorgensen's website.

Peter Fenwick: Talk on Near Death Experiences

Alan Crossley on the physical mediumship of Helen Duncan and Alec Harris.

Alan Crossley talks about his experiences of materialisation seances with Helen Duncan and Alec Harris.

Spiritualist Medium Gordon Smith: Documentary on the mediumship afterlife communications

Evidence of the Afterlife: The Science of Near-Death Experiences by Jeffrey Long and Paul Perry

I'm currently reading the book "The science of near-death experiences" by oncologist Jeffrey Long and Paul Perry.

I think this book is an important contribution to the NDEs literature.

In the website of Time magazine, you can read an interesting interview with Dr.Long.

Some excerpts of the interview with Dr.Long:

How do you respond to skeptics who say there must be some biological or physiological basis for that kind of experience, which you say in the book is medically inexplicable?

There have been over 20 alternative, skeptical "explanations" for near-death experience. The reason is very clear: no one or several skeptical explanations make sense, even to the skeptics themselves. Or [else ]there wouldn't be so many.

You say this research has affected you a lot on a personal level. How?

I'm a physician who fights cancer. In spite of our best efforts, not everybody is going to be cured. My absolute understanding that there is an afterlife for all of us — and a wonderful afterlife — helps me face cancer, this terribly frightening and threatening disease, with more courage than I've ever faced it with before. I can be a better physician for my patients.

Read more here.

Visit Dr.Long's website.

Victor Zammit interviews spiritual medium Christine Morgan

Links of interest:

-Christine Morgan's website.

Victor Zammit: Skeptics Demolished

In this video, retired lawyer and afterlife researcher Victor Zammit argues that closedminded skeptics (pseudo-skeptics) have not investigated and refuse to investigate the objective and repeatable evidence for the afterlife and psychic phenomena. He explains that 'closed minded-skepticsm' is a hindrace to progress. Yes, be skeptical by all means, but be an 'open minded skeptic' where you can perceive evidence with proper empirical equanimity. Victor makes six objections to extreme skepticism - he show specifically where these hard lined skeptics are wrong and refers to the website of Winston Wu http://www.debunkingskeptics.com.

My opinion is that certainly most pseudo-skeptics have not investigated the evidence (they think it's a waste of time investigating something that they know, in advance, that doesn't exist); but even if they investigate it, they won't be impressed by it, because they only accept evidence consistent with their anti-survival prejudices.

Contrary evidence is always rejected, relativized, altered, misread, misrepresented, subject to double standards, etc. to make it worthless, invalid or insufficient.

Marcello Truzzi, who was a co-founder and original member of CSICOP, soon realized the ideological, agenda-driven and biased mentality typical of professional pseudo-skeptics: "Originally I was invited to be a co-chairman of CSICOP by Paul Kurtz. I helped to write the bylaws and edited their journal. I found myself attacked by the Committee members and board, who considered me to be too soft on the paranormalists. My position was not to treat protoscientists as adversaries, but to look to the best of them and ask them for their best scientific evidence. I found that the Committee was much more interested in attacking the most publicly visible claimants such as the "National Enquirer". The major interest of the Committee was not inquiry but to serve as an advocacy body, a public relations group for scientific orthodoxy. The Committee has made many mistakes. My main objection to the Committee, and the reason I chose to leave it, was that it was taking the public position that it represented the scientific community, serving as gatekeepers on maverick claims, whereas I felt they were simply unqualified to act as judge and jury when they were simply lawyers" (Emphasis in blue added)

This essential irrationality and dishonesty which are well-known in true pseudo-skeptics is grounded on ideological reasons (belief in atheistic materialism, metaphysical naturalism and secular humanism) and in emotional reasons (hatred and resentment against the idea of God, religion, spirituality, and ultimate trascendence), making impossible that their reason functions properly.

So trying to convince a pseudo-skeptic with afterlife evidence (that is, evidence that destroys and demolishes the pseudo-skeptic's personal materialistic ideology or faith) is sterile. In advance, and regardless of the quality of your arguments or evidence, they'll consider your evidence false and fraudulent, and therefore, irrelevant. And specially, they'll interpret the evidence with the glasses of materialism (which is precisely the position destroyed by the evidence)

It's key to understand that, for several reasons (mentioned above and discussed in this blog), most pseudo-skeptics are not rational and, as consequence, are not sensible to rational argumentation (they're consistently unable to understand even the most simple, basic, elemental arguments for psi or afterlife).

Don't waste your time with ideologues and dogmatists. Rather, try to use your valuable time in searching the truth, consider both sides of the controversy, critically examine all the arguments, and draw the most rational conclusion, interpretation and explanation that accounts for all the relevant evidence.

And have fun while doing it.

Links of interest:

-Skeptic Richard Wiseman concedes that remote view is proven.

-Skeptic Michael Persinger gets evidence suggesting telepathy.

-My post on atheism, pseudo-skepticism and the Cosmic Authority Problem

Man Actually Returns From the Dead After 3 Days

This is a true story of a Russian doctor who was hit and killed by a car, but returns from the dead after 3 days in the morgue. The coroner prepares the body for autopsy when he wakes up. Be SURE to watch Part 2 (second video), that's when it gets interesting.

Victor Zammit: Why Richard Dawkins is Wrong about the Afterlife

Lawyer and Afterlife Investigator Victor Zammit gives 8 reasons why Prof. Richard Dawkins' Darwinian argument that there is no afterlife cannot be taken seriously.

See my interview with Victor Zammit here.

Visit Victor Zammit's website here.

On Richard Dawkins' pseudoskepticism, visit this post.

Dinesh D'Souza and Life After Death: The Evidence

Author of several influential books on public policy, Dinesh D'Souza discussed his efforts researching the evidence for life-after-death. He drew from theories and trends in such fields as physics, biology, neuroscience, religion, psychology, and philosophy. While many of the scientists whose work he studied might be non-believers in an afterlife, he argued that he's put together "the big picture" which demonstrates the likely possibility of the survival of consciousness beyond death.

Anthony Peake - Is There Life After Death?

Spiritualist Medium Tom Smith on the afterlife

The Handbook of Near-Death Experiences: Thirty Years of Investigation

I'm halfway through The Handbook of Near-Death Experiences: Thirty Years of Investigation and I consider it an excellent and comprehensive academic overview of the entire field of NDEs Studies.

The book has been published by the International Association for Near-Death Studies.

This book is scholarly and should be read, analyzed and discussed by scholars and researchers of many fields (like philosophy and, specially, neuroscience). It will be an standard reference about NDEs in the years to come.

I'll try to make a review of it in a few weeks or months, if time is available.

But don't wait for my review, buy and read the handbook by yourself.