Objections
(This is an excerpt from a University Of Metaphysical Sciences course at www.umsonline.org, please feel free to visit the school website)
Objections to the idea of reincarnation are numerous. Most serious students of either science or religion are usually willing to at least examine the belief with a somewhat open mind, as any honest seeker of truth and knowledge would. Those who seek truth know that there is nothing to fear from non-truth. If anything, it should help one to examine one’s own beliefs and either deepen or change them.
Following are a small representation of the general types or argument against reincarnationism. Certainly there are others, and certainly the entire form of argument is not given proper due here. Rather, what is presented is merely to familiarize the reader with the generalization. More specific information can be obtained through a thorough reading of reference material.
C.J. Ducasse, former Chairman of the Department of Philosophy at Brown University, and past President of the American Philosophical Association, wrote the book Nature, Mind And Death (1951). Ducasse attacks the argument that the hypothesis of karmic dependence is logically distinct from and additional to any dependence upon a rebirth into a physical body, but that the associative connection is virtually always conjoined. This illustrates, to him, not just a flawed premise and association, but a distinctly limited sense of the soul and spirit and a patently flawed understanding of Karmic Law itself.
What is really operating here, he claims, is the sense of survival in disguise. He disregards any anecdotal “evidence” of past lives, and instead promotes the idea that we are shaped by our physical and emotional environment, and that the whole sum of conscious and unconscious decisions and choices can be explained in this lifetime without having to resort to other, past lives for some sort of epiphany into behavior. Rather, if “Tom” is an impatient sort, he will inevitably keep encountering situations calling for a greater degree of patience as a natural consequence of his vice of impatience.
Ducasse wrote, “Their minds are so identified with their body in its relations and surroundings that they are unable to dissociate themselves from it. That the Self is changeless may seem difficult for the Western mind to grasp, thinking that without change there is no progress; but it may be perceived by the fact of our identity remaining ever the same in a child’s body and through all the changes of body that have occurred since childhood.”
Ducasse is making a philosophical point of argument here based on a very strict form of reasoning. However, it bears consideration for the questions it raises. If, as most theories hold, we are entirely “Self” conscious when between incarnations, then we are not truly changing at all during these re-births. We are merely becoming more conscious of our Self during this physical existence. If we are unchanging Self, then wherein the need for these reincarnations? The theory of reincarnation, he argues, is based upon the “self” struggle to survive, creating a belief that allows its own limited sense to feel secure in an ongoing existence, and denying the logic of the unchanging Self’s eternal existence.
Dr. Martin Orne, a professor of Psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania Medical School, and a senior attending psychiatrist at the hospital there, as well as editor of The Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis was considered the “Experts’ expert” on hypnotic past-life regression. He said: “I always felt like I’m the Grinch who says there is no Christmas, no Santa Claus. The people who promote these things want very badly to believe. People think that if something comes out under hypnosis it is more likely to be true, when in fact the opposite is the case. Hypnosis can create pseudomemories. Reincarnation memories are no different than the cases of people who under hypnosis relate being captured by UFO space aliens and examined aboard the mother ship. These are what I call ‘honest liars.’ Therapists ask their patient to go back to the cause of a problem. This is something many people find very difficult, and if they can’t find a good cause in this lifetime, they’ll go back to a previous one—fantasy, of course.”
Tom Shroder likens the “proof” of reincarnation as similar to those who find “proof” of other life on other planets through such things as the face on Mars. Early photographs of Mars betrayed shadows that created a striking resemblance to the physiology of a human face. Convinced that this was some huge artifact or message from an intelligent life force, the believers clamored for more information and accused the government of a cover up. NASA’s claims that they interpreted the rather grainy pictures as evidence of only some geological formation prompted further cries of cover up, conspiracy and “thickheadedly-biased” against anything that upset the status quo concepts of the universe.
Of course, later high definition photographs, as well as the Mars mission itself, proved that there was no “face” on Mars, no structure, only a natural geologic formation. To the avid believers, however, this was only further proof of high-level government conspiracy and an indication of the lengths to which government goes to deny what the believers “know” to be true.
Dr. Brian Weiss, chief of psychiatry for Mount Sinai Hospital in Miami Beach, wrote a book called Many Lives, Many Masters (1996), about a young woman who regressed under hypnosis to reveal a barrage of former lives and experiences. Over many months, Catherine, the subject, revealed a slew of previous lives that ranged the centuries: Johan of the Netherlands who had his throat slit in 1473; Abby, a nineteenth century servant in Virginia; Christian, a Welsh sailor; Eric a German aviator; a boy in the Ukraine of 1758 and others. In between lives she claimed to become a host for disembodied spirits who revealed the mysteries of eternity.
During all this, claimed Weiss, the young woman became “well,” that is, free of many of the phobias and fears that she was being treated for. While many of the lives and deaths remembered were specifically attributable to events paralleling the traumas and disturbances Catherine was experiencing, they also contained no more information than a fan of historical fiction could conjure. She did not speak in an archaic or even foreign language; she did not write Sanskrit or hieroglyphs. What little information that might have been corroborated was not followed up on.
Catherine’s accounts, when looked at carefully, raise some startling questions. For instance, when remembering the life of an Egyptian, she said the date was “1863 B.C”—before Christ. This is both a term that no Egyptian would know (“before Christ”) and a dating system that came into being thousands of years after her supposed life. In another “lifetime” experienced under retrogression, Catherine could not give a date because she “couldn’t see a newspaper.” And in another point, she recounted a life as a Ukranian boy during the same period she claimed to be a Spanish prostitute.
The “Flake” Factor: Any movement or belief systems suffer from the disproportionate attention placed upon those who claim knowledge of or participation in a certain discipline. A quick perusal of the internet through an Internet Search Engine, for “reincarnation and reincarnation research” or some such phrasings can yield some outrageous stuff. Like the “Fountain of Youth Reincarnation Systems” mentioned by Tom Shroder in his book Scientific Evidence (1999). The Fountain of Youth Reincarnation Systems sounds like something out of Douglas Adams novel, offering to sell a “kit” that will “guide your soul safely from the ‘other side’ back to the world as we know it to exist. Without it, your soul might otherwise wander aimlessly, finally seeking refuge in heaven or hell.” All this for only $399.00.
Obviously the goal here is for one party to make money off another’s ignorance. The hokum mentioned above has no place in any legitimate reincarnationist doctrine. Unfortunately, such things as this can create or reinforce prejudices and displace legitimate and informed arguments in the public’s mind.
The Fraud Factors: Similar to the Flake Factor, the Fraud Factor has as its motive in either intentional or unintentional deception. The fraud factor is more potent, however, because it has the effect of severely discrediting a public’s sense of trust. While they may laugh off the “Flakes,” embarrassment and outrage at being duped by a well thought out deception builds a much stronger wall against receptivity. The story of Bridey Murphy is a case in point. During the 1950’s, a woman from Chicago named Virginia Tighe was regressed under hypnosis to recall the details of a life as an Irish peasant woman named Bridey Murphy. The book’s publisher had avowed to publish the first part (the findings) and perform research verification to comprise the second part of the book. However, word leaked out and the sensational response resulted in almost two-hundred thousand pre-orders for the book. The publisher, of course, opted to rush to print despite their promise to the author. Though the book was a sensational best seller, the lack of evidence and verification left the matter open to attack and ridicule. One of the primary points of attack came from Tighe’s own pastor, who—in an effort to discount the dangerous notion of reincarnation—was not above manufacturing a few “facts” of his own. The result was that the orthodox clergy and the psychologists of the world (for the most part) breathed a collective sigh of relief. They were glad that reincarnation ideas appeared ridiculous as presented in the book.
The case of Bridey Murphy comes to play again as a philosophy professor named Paul Edwards, of the New School for Social Research in New York wrote a book of objections to reincarnation, entitled Reincarnation: A Critical Examination (1996). Edwards notes that Tighe had expressed doubts later in life that her “memories” were authentic, which prompts him to write: “Virginia sounds like a basically sensible down-to-earth middle American, quite different from most of the insane or semi-insane persons who are attracted to the occult.” Not without a few biases of his own. Edwards also dismisses the possibility of reincarnation on the grounds that it is “ridiculous.” This kind of a priori reasoning is dangerously subversive to any real critical examination.
Edwards does note, however, that much of the “scientific” research being conducted through case studies were largely connected through the funding and training of Dr. Stevenson at the University of Virginia.