Andrew Paquette
Administrator
So if the proponents are going to discuss between life accounts given by kids who claim to remember past lives, though there is no way to verify them usually, perhaps some people in this forum want to explain how it is that after reading Stevenson's work you still think that the Indian, Bengali, Iranian, Turkish, Lebanese, Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist, American, Christian, etc subjects are all trying to defraud Stevenson and his collaborators?
I asked Paul this a while back in reference to a Turkish case and I recall that he complained that there was a remote possibility of a connection between the families involved, which for him was enough to discount the entire case. How is it that on such slender possibilities all of a respected researcher's life's work can be tossed as worthless? Would that same standard be used in other normal contexts? If I live in New York City (as I did for six years) would anything I had to say on the subject of reincarnation be tainted by the fact that Ian Stevenson visited the city occasionally and might have talked to me (he didn't)?
The objections I have read about Stevenson's work, here and elsewhere, either do not match facts as laid out by Stevenson or assume such a high level of fraud, deceit, or collusion (innocent or otherwise) that I find them incredible. How can any self-respecting skeptic believe that a three year old kid is going to start speaking a language that is foreign to all of his relatives and most of his neighbors, save one that the family barely knows, and talk of the life of a disreputable person in an unknown village, as the result of some scheme to defraud? This happens in families that don't believe in reincarnation, like the Muslims in southern Iran (see Mills' work) or are antagonistic to the idea because their Muslim child remembers life as a Christian, to atheists, etc. The actual effect of these things, like when a child in a wealthy family remembers the life of an untouchable, are more often damaging to the child and family than positive. What is the incentive? How is it done? I don't speak Russian, so how could I teach a kid who barely speaks English to speak Russian and tell a coherent story about the life of a person I don't know? Would I secretly learn Russian without any of my friends and neighbors knowing about it, then teach my kid, also without anyone knowing, then research the life of some peasant wastrel that died in Minsk so that I could teach it to a toddler? The idea of such things happening seems ludicrous to me, but that kind of explanation keeps coming up in skeptic circles as if any speculation at all, no matter how wild, as long as it denies dualism, is legit.
Please explain why this is, I am genuinely curious.
AP
I asked Paul this a while back in reference to a Turkish case and I recall that he complained that there was a remote possibility of a connection between the families involved, which for him was enough to discount the entire case. How is it that on such slender possibilities all of a respected researcher's life's work can be tossed as worthless? Would that same standard be used in other normal contexts? If I live in New York City (as I did for six years) would anything I had to say on the subject of reincarnation be tainted by the fact that Ian Stevenson visited the city occasionally and might have talked to me (he didn't)?
The objections I have read about Stevenson's work, here and elsewhere, either do not match facts as laid out by Stevenson or assume such a high level of fraud, deceit, or collusion (innocent or otherwise) that I find them incredible. How can any self-respecting skeptic believe that a three year old kid is going to start speaking a language that is foreign to all of his relatives and most of his neighbors, save one that the family barely knows, and talk of the life of a disreputable person in an unknown village, as the result of some scheme to defraud? This happens in families that don't believe in reincarnation, like the Muslims in southern Iran (see Mills' work) or are antagonistic to the idea because their Muslim child remembers life as a Christian, to atheists, etc. The actual effect of these things, like when a child in a wealthy family remembers the life of an untouchable, are more often damaging to the child and family than positive. What is the incentive? How is it done? I don't speak Russian, so how could I teach a kid who barely speaks English to speak Russian and tell a coherent story about the life of a person I don't know? Would I secretly learn Russian without any of my friends and neighbors knowing about it, then teach my kid, also without anyone knowing, then research the life of some peasant wastrel that died in Minsk so that I could teach it to a toddler? The idea of such things happening seems ludicrous to me, but that kind of explanation keeps coming up in skeptic circles as if any speculation at all, no matter how wild, as long as it denies dualism, is legit.
Please explain why this is, I am genuinely curious.
AP