Reincarnation

           “Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence.” Carl Sagan
                   
Reincarnation is the belief system claiming that the souls of long-deceased persons can begin life again but in a new body.  Although reincarnation is part of many religions, including Hindus, Buddhists, and some Celtic pagan sects, it is also popular among mystics and New Age thinkers.
Reincarnation stories abound on the Internet such as a two-year old boy who was a fighter pilot killed in Iwo Jima more than 50 years earlier in a previous life.  Another example, has a man claiming he was a serial killer in a past life (perhaps best kept a secret).

One famous case involved eighteen-year-old Gladys Davis,  a stenographer who worked for Edgar Cayce. In 1923 Cayce performed a “life reading” on her and discovered that she had been the second daughter of Louis XIV in one incarnation, and at age seventeen was seduced by the Duke of York who became King James II of England.  As a result, she became pregnant and gave birth to Edgar Cayce in his fifth incarnation. Cayce said that in an earlier incarnation he was one of Jesus’s disciples! The vast majority of reincarnation cases are based entirely on anecdotal evidence only, and cannot be proved or disproved, but the Davis/ Cayce claim could be easily  resolved with a simple DNA test indicating that either Gladys and Edgar are blood relatives or they are not.  Of course in most claims of reincarnation DNA is not available, but there are other tools available to assess their credibility.

 Karl Popper’s Falsifiability Principle provides a quick test for the probable truth of any claim,  that is, a hypothesis must be falsifiable.  If there is not any way for a hypothesis to be false, it cannot be shown to be true.  I am a very knowledgeable admirer of Charles Darwin and quite familiar with his biography and could easily claim that in another life I was part of the HMS Beagle crew during Darwin’s 1826 voyage around the world.  At some point, I could even begin to believe my own story.  Since there is not any way to indicate that my claim is false, it cannot be scientifically true.

Another useful tool is David Hume’s Test for Miracles.   Keep in mind that a miracle is any event that cannot be reconciled or explained by the four forces of nature (gravity, electromagnetism, weak nuclear force, and the strong nuclear force).  In this context, reincarnation has to be considered a miracle and subject to Hume’s test.  The alternatives to any miracle (reincarnation in this example) would have to be more miraculous than any alternate explanations. There are numerous alternate explanations for my  reincarnation claim.  I could be joking or lying.  I could have an over-active imagination and  sincerely believe that I served on HMS Beagle.  I could also be suffering from some brain impairment resulting from an injury or even drug use.  To pass Hume’s test all these alternatives would have to be more miraculous than my claim of reincarnation.  Since miracles by definition are at best very rare, my claim must be false.  As with all claims, after the facts have been elaborated the conclusions, however plausible they may seem, must be subjected to experimental corroboration.

Shankar Vedantam’s 2010 book, The Hidden Brain provides a natural explanation for reincarnation.  In addition to our conscious mind,  we also have an unconscious mind that he calls the “hidden brain.”  The hidden brain functions automatically and does not rely on conscious reasoning, but serves as a screening device for all the sensory inputs using  rules,  algorithms, and heuristics to govern our response.  In a real sense the hidden brain acts like a gatekeeper freeing our conscious mind to deal with events requiring reason.  The hidden brain operates much faster that our conscious mind.  For example in my neighborhood, there are not any poisonous snakes, but we do have a large number of black racers (a large and harmless snake).  As their name implies they move very fast.  I often see them on my daily walk alongside a wooded area.  As soon as I see one, my hidden brain yells out, “poisonous snake, run for your life” frightening me out of my wits until my slower conscious mind catches up and says, “Slow down dimwit, you know black racers are harmless!

The hidden brain has been “programmed” by evolution over millions of years with the “objective” of increasing our survival chances.  Using the snake example, no one has ever been harmed by thinking that a harmless snake is poisonous (except in a Hitchcock film), but many have died by mistaking a poisonous snake for a harmless one. Thus our hidden brain considers all snakes dangerous, even dead ones.  In short the hidden brain  is pre-loaded with many “apps” that some time in human history were useful for survival.  Another hidden brain algorithm can be called the “Stranger Danger” app and was an extremely valuable survival tool back when we lived in small tribal groups.  Anytime a member of one tribe encountered a member of another tribe, someone would most-likely die.  This proposition can easily be tested by simply walking through an unfamiliar neighborhood late at night and taking note of your first reaction after unexpectedly encountering a stranger.  Fear is the universal reaction along with activation of the “fight or flight” response.  Stranger danger is an excellent explanation for why George Zimmerman shot and killed unarmed Trayvon Martin on February 2012.

Agency, another hidden brain app,  provides an explanation for the reincarnation belief.  It is the default reaction to believe that some agent is responsible for all events where we lack a rational understanding.  Before man understood germs, they believed that disease resulted from some member of the group disrespecting one of their many gods.  As soon as children began to talk, one of their first words is “mama” followed  quickly by “Why.”   Asking why, has a tremendous survival value not to mention being the key to science.  Anthropologists have long thought that agency is the spark that gives birth to the religious impulse buried in the human hidden brain.  Since some belief or hope in the afterlife is an integral part of religion, it is logical to see how reincarnation is a manifestation of the desire for salvation.  I am sure that a study of those who believe in reincarnation would include very few atheists and very few scientists.  I am not saying that people who believe in reincarnation are stupid.  But, I am saying that those trained and disciplined to recognize the power of the hidden brain are more likely to reject supernatural claims and rely on their conscious brain and science as the best way to probe the many mysteries of life.  Agency is so powerful that research psychologist Michael Shermer refers to it as the “believing brain.”

A new born human animal is the most vulnerable for the longest period of time of any of the other members of the animal kingdom.  Their survival demands that they follow all instructions from the adults in their group without thinking.  Don’t pick that up, don’t put that in your mouth, and don’t go near that, are just a few of life or death admonishments that must be quickly obeyed.  In other words, the default position of the hidden brain is belief first, and perhaps question later.  Interesting the male human brain is not fully formed until about the age twenty-five.  Indoctrination takes advantage of this belief imperative to impart the culture of any group to its youth. The Jesuit maxim “Give me a child for his first seven years and I'll give you the man” is stark testimony of the power of the belief impulse resting in everyone’s hidden brain.

The subject of reincarnation is a subset of human consciousness and subconsciousness (the hidden brain).  The most difficult questions is, Can consciousness survive the death of the brain?  If the answer is “No,” how would reincarnation be possible?  Advocates must provide some plausible explanation.  If consciousness constitutes the human spirit and remains after the death of the host body, that would open the door for the spirit to float around until taking up residence in a new body.  There has to be some model that provides an explanation as to how a conscious mind or spirit of a long dead person could take up residence in someone alive at the present time.

Ptolemy in the first century CE constructed a model in an attempt to explain what the majority of his fellow citizens believed about the universe, including the earth, sun, stars, planets, God, heaven, and hell.  It was a beautiful model, albeit a bit clumsy, but was unfortunately untrue in part because he based it on the false heliocentric premise.  In science, even a false model is preferable to no model at all, because others can even use a faulty model as a starting place for testing and looking for predictions that can be reconciled with new evidence and tools.  In this sense the lack of any reincarnation model makes it difficult for serious thinkers such as scientist to take it seriously.