Reincarnation and Christianity
Andrew EC posed the following question in the “Godidit” thread:
If 500 Hindus claim to have witnessed a reincarnation, would you believe?
Is there any non-first-hand (i.e., testimonial) evidence that would convince you of supernatural/divine/miraculous/magic activity other than the religion you accept?
This is an interesting question because long-time readers of the blog (at least those with good memories) will know that I have referred positively to the work of (Canadian!) Ian Stevenson who spent several decades at the University of Virginia collecting and studying veridical reincarnation reports. I first was introduced to Stevenson’s work through Tom Shroder’s book Old Souls: The Scientific Evidence for Past Lives (Simon and Schuster, 2001).
The standard form of these reports is something like this: a child, perhaps four or five years old, begins insisting that he was killed in a farming accident in a neighboring state. He then provides a number of items of evidence. All the evidence is later corroborated. (Obviously Stevenson focuses on cases where there is no connection between the two families and no natural way the child could have gleaned the information.) The scenario is reminiscent of the disturbing 2004 Nicole Kidman film “Birth”. And as in that film, many of these cases occur in North America.
A naturalist should be loathe to consider evidence for reincarnation for obvious reasons. But what should a Christian do? Well the first thing they shouldn’t do is what many naturalists do: ignore all the evidence for reincarnation. On the contrary, they should first of all take it seriously as general evidence for supernaturalism of some kind.
But what else? That leads us to the really interesting question: could Christianity ever come to accept the evidence for reincaration? Well if we think of Christianity as analogous to a scientific theory — but one working at the level of metaphysics or worldview — then we should consider what the core, non-negotiables at the core of the theory are. Of course theism is at the core as well as the incarnation and atoning work of Christ and the Trinity. And a few other things too.
But is the denial of reincarnation also at the center of the most central, important claims of Christianity? That is a question that doesn’t have a simple answer. To ask “what would Christianity look like after the confirmation of reincarnation?” is sort of like asking “what would Christianity look like after aliens landed on the White House lawn?” We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.
In the mean time I’m happy to consider the evidence and put it in the category of the as-yet-to-be-explained alongside other great mysteries like how “The Hangover 2″ managed to gross $86 million at the box office this weekend. Now that’s a plot line that really should not have been brought back to life.
Tags: Christianity, Ian Stevenson, naturalism, Old Souls, reincarnation, Tom Shroder
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[...] folk belief and official theology can differ strikingly. BTW, here's one evangelical theologian's fair-minded and positive assessment of Stevenson's reincarnation research. [...]
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[...] here's one evangelical theologian's fair-minded and positive assessment of Stevenson's reincarnation research. A good article. In fact, sifting his site, this fellow [...]
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AcesLucky says:
Monday, May 30, 2011 at 5:14am
From James Harvey Robinson’s book, The Mind in the Making; he writes: “We like to continue to believe what we have been accustomed to accept as true, and the resentment aroused when doubt is cast upon any of our assumptions leads us to seek every manner of excuse for clinging to it. The result is that most of our so-called reasoning consists in finding arguments for going on believing as we already do.”
This fits exactly with your statement: “..they should first of all take it seriously as general evidence for supernaturalism of some kind.”
Interesting how our minds work, huh?
But could evidence of this nature be anything other than anecdotal?
And if 500 Hindus claim to have witnessed a reincarnation, would you believe?
davidstarlingm says:
Monday, May 30, 2011 at 5:55am
I am eminently curious how you propose one witnesses a reincarnation.
I mean, witnessing a resurrection is pretty straightforward. “I saw him dead, I saw him alive, in that order.” You can even add a “saw him die” to the beginning for added conviction. But how do you propose to get any fellow (let alone 500) to “witness” a reincarnation?
Symptom777 says:
Monday, May 30, 2011 at 10:34am
“I mean, witnessing a resurrection is pretty straightforward.”
I think witnessing the result of a purported resurrection is pretty straight forward; but actually witnessing the event? Jesus was (…) resurrected behind closed doors, no witnesses to that.
But this is the difference between quantitative and qualitative.
David Parker says:
Monday, May 30, 2011 at 12:56pm
Qualitative what?
A sentence like, “500 people saw Jesus resurrected from the dead” is misleading because resurrected isn’t a verb there; it’s providing further description (any grammar nerds out there: adjective clause maybe? I dunno).
“500 people saw Jesus being resurrected from the dead” would be the appropriate way to say they witnessed the event itself (in my humble opinion). Same thing with reincarnation.
David Parker says:
Monday, May 30, 2011 at 12:57pm
(and btw I don’t think anyone is saying they witnessed the event itself)
davidstarlingm says:
Monday, May 30, 2011 at 3:03pm
In this sentence, “resurrected from the dead” is a past participial verb phrase acting as an adjectival postmodifier for the noun “Jesus”. However, from a rhetorical-grammatical standpoint, it bears further consideration; it could also be taken as a gerund phrase (“being resurrected….”) with the gerund omitted.
In the latter case, it would mean that all these people saw the event of resurrection. In the former case, it simply means they saw Jesus in a resurrected state.
Naturally, the former case is what we are going with. No one witnessed the event. But that’s the nice thing about resurrections (and this is clearly reflected in the gerund/participial ambiguity): you don’t need to witness the event to conclude that it happened. You just have to see the fellow dead and then see the fellow alive, in that order.
David Parker says:
Monday, May 30, 2011 at 3:07pm
Nice. So what then of your objection to witnessing a reincarnated person?
David Parker says:
Monday, May 30, 2011 at 3:12pm
Doyou think every person in the group of 500 saw Jesus die, dying, dead, etc?
Why not just take it to mean they held two beliefs: 1) Jesus died 2) Jesus appeared before them in a physical body.
It seems to me that 1) could have been held for a variety of reasons. Maybe Billy believes it because his cousin was at the crucifixion and told him about it. Maybe Jane believes it because he was personally acquainted with Martha.
David Parker says:
Monday, May 30, 2011 at 3:25pm
(All I’m getting at here is your original “how can we witness a reincarnation?” objection doesn’t look promising.) It looks to me like whatever definition we take of witnessing a resurrected Jesus can be applied to witnessing a reincarnated Hindu.
davidstarlingm says:
Monday, May 30, 2011 at 3:28pm
The problem is in our definition of how someone “witnesses” reincarnation.
If someone tells you, “I saw Joe dead, and then I saw Joe alive,” you have two options: they are mistaken, or Joe resurrected. That’s it. There is no way for someone to actually see a person alive who was dead unless that person actually came back to life.
In the case of reincarnation, there is no corresponding simplicity. The best evidence any witness can give for reincarnation would be that they saw someone alive who looked a lot like someone who died. Even assuming (like we did for the resurrection witness) that they are mistaken, we still have no solid evidence of anything paranormal. It’s uncanny, yes, but uncanny resemblances crop up from time to time.
I don’t know how one could provide witness of a reincarnation as easily as one could provide witness of a resurrection.
And so we’re back at the swoon theory.
I think the question of whether Jesus died is far more easily answered than the question of whether he came back to life.
randal says:
Monday, May 30, 2011 at 3:36pm
I can’t believe the debate that has erupted on “how to witness a reincarnation!” The answer is simple, but also not that interesting.
Here’s how.
A sperm wiggles its way into an egg under a microscope. In real time you watch the egg become fertilized and begin its divisive journey (get it? cell division?!) to becoming an embryo – fetus – baby. Then about four or five years old the child that you witnessed the creation of provides overwhelmingly powerful testimony that he is in fact the reincarnation of another individual. It is information he could not have made up — too specific — and you know he didn’t get it from another source. At that point you could reasonably believed that when that sperm fertilized the egg you were in fact witnessing a reincarnation.
Of course, you’d only recognize that it was in fact a reincarnation after the fact. It is like if I go to a Barry Manilow concert and immediately after he is abducted by aliens. Only after the abduction would I then realize that I witnessed his last concert. I wouldn’t have known it at the time I was watching him belt out “Mandy”. (“Mandy” is a song, just so you know.)
The more interesting question is not how one could witness a reincarnation, but rather what kind of evidence would provide reasonable grounds for a person to believe that a reincarnation had in fact occurred.
By the same token, nobody obsesses over whether there was a witness to the resurrection of Jesus. The texts in question cite none. The real interesting question is what kind of evidence would provide reasonable grounds for a person to believe that a resurrection had in fact occurred.
David Parker says:
Monday, May 30, 2011 at 4:31pm
DMS,
Sorry to be blunt, but your eminent curiosity is leading us into silliness.
Resurrection and reincarnation are different. In the first case, we have two simple empirical facts (he looked dead, he looks alive). This is not the case for reincarnation. So what?
Your original comment asked how one proposes that a person witness a reincarnation. Clearly the answer is involves a similar list of beliefs the witness would hold. It seems irrelevant that any of the beliefs which constitute “witnessing a reincarnation” are not empirically verifiable in the same way the beliefs which constitute “witnessing a resurrection” are. So what?
The 500 probably didn’t personally see Jesus expire. But they held the belief that he was dead. Heck, maybe some of them didn’t even hold that belief until someone shouted, “hey there’s Jesus…the guy who the Romans killed recently!!! WTF?!?!”
Admittedly, I still have no idea what your original comment is aiming at. There seems to be no solid ground to land on here. Maybe I’m missing something.
davidstarlingm says:
Monday, May 30, 2011 at 6:44pm
My point is that the number or sincerity of witnesses of a reincarnation do very little to inspire confidence that a reincarnation actually happened. In the case of a supposed resurrection, all we have to go off of is the testimony of the witnesses; the authenticity of the event depends on their accuracy and sincerity.
With a supposed reincarnation, it really doesn’t matter how many witnesses you have; the question is whether their account evidences an actual reincarnation or just coincidence. The authenticity of the event has very little to do with the sincerity or accuracy of the witnesses.
chris says:
Monday, May 30, 2011 at 8:20pm
If 500 hindus claimed to witness a resurrection…..
We all filter evidence through our worldview. And as a Christian, I have no doubt that there are some who claim to have lived before in a prior. And I am sure that they can give evidence of it.
I am also sure that there are psychics or mediums that can relay information to people that appears to be from a dead relative because there is no way the medium would have known it.
All this fits quite well into the Christian worldview. If what the bible teaches overall is true, that God created everything, a creation rebelled and is trying to influence all of the other creation to also rebel, I would expect that created being to have come up with many many cleaver ideas on how to mislead people, especially if that creation has lived and watched humans for thousands of years. The bible says that we are not to attempt to communicate with people who are dead, or those that claim to communicate with them. If there really is a ” Satan” and other rebel creations that serve Satan, who have been living thousands of years, then of course they can communicate with mediums or children and tell them about people who lived in the past and tell them personal things about them. Surely a person can hear things from a demonic being, things that that being or group of beings witnessed over the course of watching another person for a lifetime, and if they can tell some personal information about the deceased person it is of course going to intrigue the living person and likely cause them to continue to disobey the rules God laid out about communicating with the dead.
It all makes sense to me.
davidstarlingm says:
Tuesday, May 31, 2011 at 1:34pm
I tend to lean toward the position that men are quite foolish and are capable of inventing all manner of foolishness on their own, without necessarily needing any demonic prompting.
You do, however, raise a good point: if the evidence for paranormal involvement in a reincarnation case was overwhelmingly strong, we would still need to make the determination of whether reincarnation or supernatural agency provided a better explanation.
The Atheist Missionary says:
Monday, May 30, 2011 at 9:55am
David, your question reminded me of this freaky stuff: http://www.atheistmissionary.com/2009/05/freaky-stuff.html
davidstarlingm says:
Monday, May 30, 2011 at 4:02pm
Crazy articles. Canada, right? Why do we even let them be a country?
Barney Stinson aside….
The human mind is horribly bad at three things: calculating roots, generating random numbers, and estimating odds. Unlikely things happen quite often when you have nearly 7,000,000,000 people on the planet.
Confirmation bias is a terribly strong thing, too.
That’s why I have a pretty high standard for the type of miracle I want to see before I consider that it could actually be legit. If it’s not going to be double-blind and repeatable, then it better be spectacular. Bring my grandpa who has been dead for 3 years back to life. That would do it for me.
Beetle says:
Monday, May 30, 2011 at 6:01pm
Why are your standards for reports of two thousand year old miracles so much lower than that?
davidstarlingm says:
Tuesday, May 31, 2011 at 1:35pm
Eh, bring anyone back to life who is definitely certifiably dead.
My grandpa was just a good example.
beetle says:
Tuesday, May 31, 2011 at 2:50pm
So if a miraculous claim is incredible enough, and stories about the claim include witnesses and the like, then you would be inclinded to believe it?
davidstarlingm says:
Tuesday, May 31, 2011 at 10:50pm
I don’t know what you mean by “incredible enough”. But I am willing to consider the possibility of any paranormal claim being true. It just needs to have good evidence.
One example of what I would accept as “good evidence” is eyewitness testimony of events that would be prohibitively difficult to fake. If 500 people tell me that they saw David Blaine saw a woman in half on stage, I’m not going to run down to the police station and swear out a warrant to arrest him for murder. On the other hand, if fifty people tell me that they saw Stephen Hawking get out of his wheelchair, lift a school bus, and carry it three city blocks out of the range of a bomb threat, in person, then I would definitely consider the possibility that something out of the ordinary was going on.
Beetle says:
Thursday, June 2, 2011 at 12:18am
Interesting since faking death is fairly standard theater fair, and you don’t have 500 witnesses talking about it, only a story where one guy says there were 500 witnesses. It is like for this one thing you accept third or fourth hand accounts, but all other miracles are held to a higher standard.
davidstarlingm says:
Thursday, June 2, 2011 at 2:15am
I am sure that many criminals condemned to crucifixion wished faking their deaths was as easy as “theater fare”.
Beetle says:
Friday, June 3, 2011 at 10:57am
I imagine that few other condemned criminals had loyal disciples that might aid with a ruse.
Beetle says:
Monday, May 30, 2011 at 10:12am
> A naturalist should be loathe to consider evidence for reincarnation for obvious reasons.
A naturalist should skeptically consider evidence for reincarnation for obvious reasons.
There, fixed that for you.
As a young Christian adult, I spent a fair amount of time reading about reincarnation and ghosts and ESP and the like. Most of these I felt where perfectly compatible with my beliefs about God and soul. Even as much as I wanted to believe them, I found the literature unpersuasive. I made the conscious decision that any credibility I felt for that material would be better directed towards theology. I think that was when I started reading C.S. Lewis. That strategy kind of worked as I self-identified as Christian for a good twenty years after that. Looking back, I can see that was my start as a skeptic. Eventually, I had to ask myself why I scorned tarot and astrology but not organized religion…
I think it is easier for introspective persons to keep believing in Bible miracles if they internalize as much fringe science as possible.
davidstarlingm says:
Monday, May 30, 2011 at 3:08pm
A very interesting testimony to be sure.
Perhaps that’s one reason why we turned out differently. I was raised with homeopathy, touch healing, and exposure to a host of other “fringe science” ideas. I’ve always been open-minded, but I am also fiercely skeptical; I spent inordinate amounts of time debunking every fringe science idea that I’m exposed to. Maybe that is why I find it so easy to accept the evidence for the historicity of Christianity: if it wasn’t well-evidenced, I would have rejected it long ago along with everything else.
Beetle says:
Monday, May 30, 2011 at 3:15pm
Being yourself convinced by the evidence, and being a physicist and knowing how the scientific mind works, you are in a rather unique position. Just lay it all for the skeptics who pride themselves on their rationality. You could save thousands if not millions! No pressure.
davidstarlingm says:
Monday, May 30, 2011 at 3:31pm
Skeptics are easy to convince. I know, because I am one.
I don’t, however, know what it’s like to believe something on faith without considering both sides. Maybe that’s why I have trouble convincing dogmatists.
Beetle says:
Monday, May 30, 2011 at 6:03pm
For someone who claims to be a skeptic, you seem to have a rather fundy stereotypic view of atheists!
davidstarlingm says:
Tuesday, May 31, 2011 at 1:36pm
Not at all. Most atheists I know take a very healthy view toward skepticism and evidence. We don’t always agree on all the details, but we don’t have any trouble discussing our differences frankly.
I’m not talking about atheists, though. I’m talking about dogmatists who just happen to also be atheists.
beetle says:
Tuesday, May 31, 2011 at 2:32pm
I don’t think any of the non-theistic commenters give you reason to believe they are dogmatic — so it seem curious to me that you keep asserting that.
davidstarlingm says:
Tuesday, May 31, 2011 at 2:39pm
Your “sun rising in the west” business was what sounded particularly troubling.
beetle says:
Tuesday, May 31, 2011 at 2:54pm
It is just an example of something that would blow my mind. Having the resurrection scientifically proven would blow my mind. Yes, I would believe that the sun was coming up in the West. Yes, I would believe scientific evidence of the ressurrection.
David P says:
Tuesday, May 31, 2011 at 3:34pm
“Dogmatist” can be used as an antonym for skeptic. I believe Keith Lehrer used this term extensively to refer to those who maintain that we can have certain knowledge of some propositions.
AcesLucky says:
Tuesday, May 31, 2011 at 7:51pm
@ davidstarlingm
You wrote: “I am eminently curious how you propose one witnesses a reincarnation.”
Exactly! Any evidence would have to be anecdotal. Same for a Resurrection.
Never mind 2000 year old witnesses, where is Jesus now? Did Jesus rise from the dead back into the physical form as the resurrection claims? Rise to where? He’s not here. Heaven? Where is heaven? (Heaven was to be in the firmament, but that was before we had flight. So where is heaven now?) In another dimension, perhaps, now that the firmament has been disproved? Is heaven on another (spiritual) plane? But the resurrection was physical, was it not?
See what I mean? We know of no heaven except in story books and the imaginations of men. So where is the evidence of a resurrection? It is all anecdotal at best.
Like you, I am eminently curious how you propose one witness a resurrection from hell into heaven, or even just back to life on earth if he’s not here!
And if rising to heaven is not necessary to a resurrection, then where is the chap?
Resurrection, reincarnation, heaven, hell, winged angels, winged horses.
Witnesses? Or a want to believe?