Mod+ 270. ASU PROF. LAWRENCE KRAUSS CALLS FOR DALAI LAMA TO STEP DOWN OVER REINCARNATION CLAIM

How can reincarnation be true when there are more people alive today than have ever lived before?

I remember this paper from the Journal of Scientific Exploration (2000) by David Bishai (John Hopkins) which seems to answer this.

Can population growth rule out reincarnation? A model of circular migration.

http://www.scientificexploration.org/journal/jse_14_3_bishai.pdf

This seems to be the key point (page 419 of the paper)... to sustain the claim that human population growth offers proof that the reincarnation hypothesis is false requires the skeptic to assume that some sort of physical laws governing the afterlife require that the mean duration of stay in the afterlife has been constant throughout human history.

So variable durations of stay in the afterlife solves it? (plus a bit more)

This paper is also praised by Prof. Stephen Braude in his book Immortal Remains if you Google the terms Bishai reincarnation

(with more commentaries)


















 
3. How can reincarnation be true when there are more people alive today than have ever lived before?

Just a thought on this Q.
It's a big universe and planet Earth is not the whole show.
It is extraordinary just "how big" the universe is. That it has these laws of physics. That there is even our conscious understanding and awareness of it.

I forgot what philosopher said this, but whenever he took walks with his good scientific friends, the first thing he would say was he couldn't even come to believe in his own existence. So impossible and improbable did it seem.

My Best,
Bertha
 
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1. From a scientific standpoint, is reincarnation nonsense? How would we explore such a question scientifically?

The definition of nonsense is something logically impossible, that is, something self-contradictory, as a married unmarried. So the notion of reincarnation is not nonsense, because there is not self-contradiction in which the self of someone, with its memories, personality, motivations, etc., is instantiated in another body after death of her / his body, because there is no necessary identity between self and body.

On how to scientifically explore the notion of reincarnation, there are works of Ian Stevenson and Jim Tucker: the self of another is inaccessible by direct ways, but we can access it through behaviors and verbal reports.

2. How can life have any meaning if we live in a meaningless universe?

Having goals, like wanting to start a family, wanting to be happy with the loved ones, etc. The question of whether there is an objective meaning is independent of whether our life has meaning.

3. How can reincarnation be true when there are more people alive today than have ever lived before? (Alex doesn't know).

It is posible that appear new souls who lack previous lives, or there is a vast realm of souls waiting to incarnate. But the point is that the fact that there are other possibilities overrides the supposed impossibility of reincarnation.

Now not all be in the merely possible, we're starting to sound out the empirically probable by the works of the commented researchers.
 
Overall a disappointing interview (no fault of Alex). Lawrence seemed quite taciturn and I could sense irritation in his voice throughout, which emerges very clearly in his irate outbursts about the Dalai Lama and reincarnation. I don’t want to defend the Dalai Lama; I think there are all kinds of issues with the myth of Tibet and its lamas, as well as with the rulership of the Dalai Lamas; so I will leave that aside.

The one thing I would like to address is Lawrence’s comments about extraordinary claims requiring extraordinary proof.

First of all let me say I understand what Lawrence means and I agree with him in principle. The body of scientific knowledge we have accumulated is by far the most successful body of knowledge humanity has ever acquired, and its utility and results have transformed the human world. Science works.

As a body of knowledge Science is a construction and new claims which arise that challenge core principles or ‘laws’ of established Science must naturally be subject to rigorous testing, or extraordinary investigation, if sufficient scientists feel it is warranted. In other words a claim is not automatically worthy of investigation by the scientific community simply because it is made.

Our scientific knowledge rests on a network of theoretical principles or laws, and naturally the core principles are highly resistant to change and carry a high burden of proof. As we move outwards towards the periphery of the network the burden of proof declines. Claims which arise relative to peripheral matters may be admitted tentatively with less rigour. All of that is simply good sense.

However as I listened to Lawrence it was obvious to me that he violates this principle of good sense repeatedly. Lawrence makes a series of claims which are extraordinary claims to positive knowledge for which he has absolutely no proof, not to mention extraordinary proof.

For instance, the claim that the universe is meaningless. Exactly how does he know this, and what proof has he shown?

Let’s be honest Lawrence, you don’t know it; you believe it. It is an assertion of belief, not knowledge. There is no scientific principle or law which states or requires that the universe is meaningless.

The claim that reincarnation is nonsense is likewise an assertion of belief, not knowledge.

Lawrence is a proponent of 20th century nihilistic scientism, which is a belief system, not scientific knowledge. My hope is that this nihilistic belief system will be gradually undermined in the 21st century and populist nihilists like Lawrence will no longer be the dominant force in popular culture or science.

I applaud Alex for the work he is doing to counter nihilistic scientism and promote a more open and balanced scientific discourse.
 
Extraordinary claims do not require extraordinary evidence. Sagan - a second rate astronomer is categorically wrong here. This has never been some kind of de facto law of science. Any claim in science - simply needs to be backed up by science. Just because something is extraordinary doesn't mean it is less amenable to plain and simple scientific examination and methodology or scientific proof. Any phenomena that is empirically observed and critically examined, can fall under the auspices of science.

Skeptical bigotry however, such as Sagan's - should not be a category of science.

My Best,
Bertha
 
Extraordinary claims do not require extraordinary evidence. Sagan - a second rate astronomer is categorically wrong here. This has never been some kind of de facto law of science. Any claim in science - simply needs to be backed up by science. Just because something is extraordinary doesn't mean it is less amenable to plain and simple scientific examination and methodology or scientific proof. Any phenomena that is empirically observed and critically examined, can fall under the auspices of science.

Skeptical bigotry however, such as Sagan's - should not be a category of science.

My Best,
Bertha

Reality and science is never quite as black & white as we might like Bertha.
 
Speaking of the unlikelihood of a teapot orbiting Jupiter I am reminded of a quote from Terence McKenna, “We are asked by science to believe that the entire universe sprang from nothingness, and at a single point and for no discernible reason. This notion is the limit case for credulity. In other words, if you can believe this, you can believe anything.”

As to the statement that I don't study UFOs or reincarnation because it is unlikely and he knows it to be false one can only say "Wow. Really? Is that how science works?"
 
2. How can life have any meaning if we live in a meaningless universe?

Professional "skeptic" Ray Hyman said, "As a whole, parapsychologists are nice, honest people, while the critics are cynical, nasty people."

I've never heard of an anyone saying that materialism, or "scientific ethics" or humanism, transformed their life. But many people who convert to religion do say that it transformed their life for the better. So it seems to me that all the talk about rational ethics is just talk. But when you come to believe God, that is something completely different. It is not theoretical it is something practical that changes your life for the better.

Many people (examples below) find that while believing in materialism and atheism life is bleak, lacks love, and is ultimately selfish. When they come to believe in God life is about love and caring for others not about yourself and that makes people happier. Logically an atheist could believe in unselfishness and love, but it seems that for practical reasons there is something about belief in God that makes it work where mere philosophy doesn't do it.

This is not just a psychological phenomenon. It is evidence that God exists. John Lennox pointed out that it would be strange if beings on a planet without water became thirsty, similarly it would be strange if there was no God for people to be drawn to God.


I never heard of atheism helping anyone to turn their life around the way religion has done for many people.

Neither of professional musician Dan Conway's parents were religious and he was an atheist until he felt his life was going in the wrong direction...

The relevant part of the video starts at 9:38


"In some way's I guess things were going well. As you said I got to perform on Australia's Got Talent. ... I'm no stranger to the music business so ... I had a record deal when I was 16 with Sony and another one sometime later I think with EMI. So I was no stranger to all that. But, I was actually really unhappy. And I was only growing more unhappy. And I wasn't living well. The more time went on the more I was hurting myself and others. It wasn't pretty. I came to a place where I just want to think ... maybe there's something to this God thing and maybe I missed it. So I thought, I want to know. I want to know I don't really want to be into what feels good or what suits me I actaully want to know what's the truth."
This was an from an atheist from birth, born to atheist parents being skeptical about atheism: "I don't really want to be into what feels good or what suits me. I actually want to know what's the truth".

"And so I committed I'm going to figure it out. I'm going to commit to following the evidence wherever it leads. I became a regular debate viewer on line and read books on God and his existence. When I got real radical I'd listen to a sermon or two. All as an atheist. But the most crucial part of that was really when I examined my own heart and did that the very last. But when I saw what was in there and when I considered who Jesus might be that led me to believe in God. Everything changed at that point. I guess I had a really a change of being. Somewhere deep I don't even know where. And that changed my thinking my desires, my outlook, so I guess it was natural that my music changed with it."
"I was actually really unhappy. And I was only growing more unhappy. And I wasn't living well. The more time went on the more I was hurting myself and others. It wasn't pretty."
...
When he came to "...believe in God. Everything changed at that point. I guess I had a really a change of being. Somewhere deep I don't even know where. And that changed my thinking my desires, my outlook"

I've heard and read a lot of stories like this and it is one of the reasons I have a generally favorable opinion of religion. This type of evidence shows that there is something good in religion and rather than rejecting all religion because some of it is bad, we should try to understand what is good in it and figure out how to use that in a practical way to improve people's well being.


"Organized religion: Is it all bad?"

It seems to have helped Lee Strobel.

Strobel is a journalist and his research into the authenticity of the Gospels transformed his life. He started out as an atheist skeptic but when he used his credentials as a reporter to get access to the worlds leading historians, the results of his research made a believer out of him.


"... [believing] began a transformational process for me where over time my philosophy and my attitudes, relationships, parenting, world-view, all of that began to change over time for good. Really for good."

"When Lee became a Christian his whole life started to change to the extent that our five year old daughter who also saw those changes went to her Sunday school teacher and told her that she wanted Jesus to do in her life what He had done in her Daddy's life."​
"... [believing] began a transformational process for me where over time my philosophy and my attitudes, relationships, parenting, world-view, all of that began to change over time for good. Really for good."

"When Lee became a Christian his whole life started to change to the extent that our five year old daughter who also saw those changes went to her Sunday school teacher and told her that she wanted Jesus to do in her life what He had done in her Daddy's life."
 
Logically an atheist could believe in unselfishness and love, but it seems that for practical reasons there is something about belief in God that makes it work where mere philosophy doesn't do it.

I think the difference is like the difference between book learning and experience. You can't really internalize spiritual love without feeling that the universe is ultimately benevolent and that you are loved. The atheists can say what they like about meaning but unless they've had the experience they don't know what they are missing. Giving up a bad religion and becoming an atheist is not equivalent to finding a good religion and giving up atheism. And religion doesn't necessarily guarantee this experience. Some people go through the motions of religion out of habit but it doesn't mean much to them in daily life. It's a sad fact that bad religion drives many people to atheism. But some people do have an experience, either by learning about religion or from a personal experience like an NDE, where they recognize that God exists, loves us even though we may be flawed, and God is for us not against us, and they live with that understanding every day and that seems to be central to this type of transformation. If we are made in God's image or if the stuff of our soul is the stuff of God, then if you don't love God you don't love yourself. Recognizing that God loves us releases something inside us, it helps to rid one of feelings of fear, self-hate, anger, and guilt. It's like having a great weight lifted off your shoulders, it is liberating. The truth sets you free, free to be happy and loving. You don't get that from ethical humanism. This is why organized religion, done right, can be beneficial - besides teaching about God, being able to go to the right kind of church once a week, being surrounded by like minded people, helps a person to maintain this understanding in the face of the many messages we are bombarded with many times a day encouraging us to be selfish. I know many people get this from some Christian churches, I know from my own experience you can also get this from some Spiritualist churches.
 
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Speaking of the unlikelihood of a teapot orbiting Jupiter I am reminded of a quote from Terence McKenna, “We are asked by science to believe that the entire universe sprang from nothingness, and at a single point and for no discernible reason. This notion is the limit case for credulity. In other words, if you can believe this, you can believe anything.”

I keep hearing that scientists have claimed the Universe sprang from nothing, as a prelude to an attack on scientists. I've never heard one say that it did. Scientists are working constantly to examine the earliest point in the Universe they can. Perhaps eventually they will find ways to discern the framework on which our Universe is built, the nature of the reality before the Universe, but we have only the tools available to us today, one of which is mathematics. Their theories beyond the edge of their current provable knowledge may well be theoretical, but they are the best extrapolations available given what can be proven. No scientist should claim to know the Universe sprang from nothing. But to expand that to say the Universe was created, or came into being for a 'reason' that should have any bearing on us, is just unprovable nonsense and wishful thinking, and still doesn't answer any questions concerning the Universe's origins. I don't know whether you believe in deity or have some other idea as to what the origin or reason of the Universe might be, but I can assure you; you may not like what scientists have discovered, but whatever you've imagined, or whatever some past faith has imagined, that you've chosen to believe in doesn't trump actually scientific enquiry.

Science doesn't have all the answers, and I hope it never will, and some of the things it thinks it knows will turn out to be false. I say this a lot, so I may as well say it here. Believe what you want. But just not liking the things science says because it feels wrong, or pointing out the questions science has yet to answer, adds zero weight to the things you choose to believe just because they feel right to you.

whitehouseufo said:
As to the statement that I don't study UFOs or reincarnation because it is unlikely and he knows it to be false one can only say "Wow. Really? Is that how science works?"

It absolutely shouldn't be, no! But it often is. It was an appalling admission from a person claiming to speak from a position of rationality.
 
http://www.npr.org/2012/01/13/145175263/lawrence-krauss-on-a-universe-from-nothing


KRAUSS: Well, the title of the book, "A Universe from Nothing: Why There is Something Rather than Nothing" deals with this question. It's been around for as long as people have really started to ask questions about the universe and is really at the heart of a lot of the world's religions. Why is there something rather than nothing?

If we live in a universe full of stuff, how did it get here? And many people think that very question implies the need for a creator. But what's truly been amazing, and what the book's about is the revolutionary developments in both cosmology and particle physics over the past 30 or 40 years that have not only changed completely the way we think about the universe but made it clear that there's a plausible case for understanding precisely how a universe full of stuff, like the universe we live in, could result literally from nothing by natural processes.​
 
Krauss equates "nothing" with the universal quantum wave field. It's a rabbit out-of-the hat disingenous trick of definitions used by him and guys like Hawkings. Sure, I can say a can of spinach comes from nothing if I surreptitiously redefine what nothing is. It's all a bit of absurd hand waving I'm afraid.

My Best,
Bertha
 
These are theories that the Universe arose from the quantum vacuum, and that the net energy in the Universe, taking gravity as negative energy, also amounts to zero. Fluctuations in the quantum vacuum are well attested experimentally. It essentially means that the Universe arose from the seething energy soup that is the closest to nothing that can exist. Personally, I think it's short sighted, but it is at least perfectly consistent with observations and mathematics.

Krauss equates "nothing" with the universal quantum wave field. It's a rabbit out-of-the hat disingenous trick of definitions used by him and guys like Hawkings. Sure, I can say a can of spinach comes from nothing if I surreptitiously redefine what nothing is. It's all a bit of absurd hand waving I'm afraid

It's neither a rabbit-out-of-a-hat nor a trick of definitions. And it's certainly not disingenuous. I'd be interested to know what ulterior motive you think physicists have that they need to lie about their best theories. Science is broken, I'll admit that. But scientists are not your enemy, and they're not trying to trick you. And I'll say this again; whatever you believe, it doesn't trump the best theories science has developed just because they feel improbable to you, or you just don't like them. Gods and 'meanings' and whatever you feel don't somehow answer the questions of Universe's origins better than science.
 
It essentially means that the Universe arose from the seething energy soup that is the closest to nothing that can exist. Personally, I think it's short sighted, but it is at least perfectly consistent with observations and mathematics.
Yes - but a seething energy soup is not "nothing". It may be close to nothing but it is not NOTHING.
It's neither a rabbit-out-of-a-hat nor a trick of definitions. And it's certainly not disingenuous.

Sure it is. Krauss is incredibly misleading in his book title. He borrows ideas from quantum physics that were hard won by scientists like Werner Heisenberg or Niels Bohr, and makes the disingenuous argument that the quantum vacuum is nothing, which it is not. He doesn't explain in his book where the quantum vacuum came from nor where the many laws of physics came from. Note that Heisenberg was quite spiritual along with many of the original quantum physicists - which is in striking contrast to Krauss' radical nihilistic atheism.

My Best,
Bertha
 
Yes - but a seething energy soup is not "nothing". It may be close to nothing but it is not NOTHING.


Agreed! That was the point I was trying to make. That the Universe didn't arise from nothing, and physicists don't claim it did, even if they use the word. I've never liked the word 'nothing' when applied to the quantum vacuum. The whole point of the phrase 'zero point energy' is to emphasize that it isn't actually nothing, but the lowest energy level possible.


Bertha Huse said:
Sure it is. Krauss is incredibly misleading in his book title. He borrows ideas from quantum physics that were hard won by scientists like Werner Heisenberg or Niels Bohr, and makes the disingenuous argument that the quantum vacuum is nothing, which it is not. He doesn't explain in his book where the quantum vacuum came from nor where the many laws of physics came from. Note that Heisenberg was quite spiritual along with many of the original quantum physicists - which is in striking contrast to Krauss' radical nihilistic atheism.

Putting aside the irrelevance of Heisenberg's spirituality, I think the use of the word 'nothing' is a public relations decision, a popular science way of saying, 'How cool is this, the Universe came from nothing!!!'. I don't think a misleading but cool book title really devalues the contents of the book or its author's arguments. I certainly don't think it's as disingenuous as, say, attacking the argument that the Universe arose from nothing, when you know that the word 'nothing' actually means a system teaming with particles that is consistent with theory and observation.

What's 'nihilistic' about atheism? Or is it just certain brands of atheism that are nihilistic?
 
Putting aside the irrelevance of Heisenberg's spirituality, I think the use of the word 'nothing' is a public relations decision, a popular science way of saying, 'How cool is this, the Universe came from nothing!!!'. I don't think a misleading but cool book title really devalues the contents of the book or its author's arguments. I certainly don't think it's as disingenuous as, say, attacking the argument that the Universe arose from nothing, when you know that the word 'nothing' actually means a system teaming with particles that is consistent with theory and observation.

What's 'nihilistic' about atheism? Or is it just certain brands of atheism that are nihilistic?
It is totally misleading. As it avoids the obvious question of what is the source of the quantum vacuum? And in addition, most of the general public has very little understanding of quantum physics - so will take Krauss' misuse of the word "nothing" at face value.

Nihilism: a doctrine that denies any objective ground of truth and especially of moral truths

Fits today's neo-atheists such as Krauss like a tight glove.

My Best,
Bertha
 
It is totally misleading. As it avoids the obvious question of what is the source of the quantum vacuum? And in addition, most of the general public has very little understanding of quantum physics - so will take Krauss' misuse of the word "nothing" at face value.

Well, I'm no longer going to debate the motives for choosing a book title of a man I can't ask. I wouldn't necessarily believe his answer anyway.:)

Bertha Huse said:
Nihilism: a doctrine that denies any objective ground of truth and especially of moral truths

Fits today's neo-atheists such as Krauss like a tight glove.

My Best,
Bertha

It's funny, I've come from an online environment where new atheists are (rightly, I think) constantly being accused of sticking too rigidly to conventional scientific wisdom, only begrudgingly, sometimes sneeringly acknowledging a level of cartesian doubt or agnosticism, and here I find them labelled nihilistic.

In the sense of nihilism as in 'atheists have no reason to accept morality since they perceive no 'meaning' (there's that stupid word again) to the Universe', I've only heard it from those attacking athiests. Humanism was pretty much created precisely because new atheist and secular types wanted to stress the importance of a moral code centred on the well-being of people and, ultimately, living things.

And if it's nihilism as in the 'the Universe has no meaning, therefore nothing has meaning, so why bother' sense, again, new atheists aren't saying that. They're saying' the Universe has no meaning', and the 'therefore why bother' bit is being inferred in order to attack them with it. And nobody has invented a god or origin of the Universe that imparts any more 'meaning' or demands any more morality than the laws of physics.
 
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