Why doesn’t mainstream science accept the evidence for past-life memories?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

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Thank you Now the example of One white crow Disproving the theory that all crows are black This also comes from a scientist It’s also part of science And still why is it that The evidence for reincarnation And the concept of reincarnation Are not accepted Are not even entertained in mainstream science Answer It’s because of A particular way In which Science has developed Most of modern science Operates on the Principle called Methodological naturalism Naturalism Is the idea that The natural world That we see around us And by natural It’s often physical It’s material or more physical That’s what Is That’s all that there is That’s the idea of naturalism So there is metaphysical naturalism which says Philosophically there is nothing beyond the natural world But methodological Naturalism means As a Methodology Science will look only for natural Explanations for natural phenomena So Newton when he saw the fruit Falling He himself believed in God But When he wanted to know what caused the fruit to fall He didn’t say God caused the fruit to fall That is true God has set up all the systems And God is The explanation But at that point he wanted to understand The material mechanism that made the Fruit fall And that’s how he came up with the idea of gravity So now Science In general When it adopts Methodological naturalism Then it looks for material Explanations for material phenomena And Scientists argue that Bringing in non-material Explanations Is a scientific Progress stopper They say the example Which they gave us say in the past There was a black plague And people Believed at that time that the plague was Caused by some evil spirits Haunting people Now If There is an evil spirit haunting people If we accept that explanation Science can’t do anything about it But what do you do? You can’t examine a Spirit under a microscope You can’t create an antidote for it But by By refusing to consider such Explanations and by focusing on trying to find A biological explanation Scientists Found the germs That caused The plague and then they Developed a counter for it So their theory The approach of methodological Naturalism is That even if a material explanation is Difficult to find Still we should find a material explanation And that is what will lead to the progress of science Once we start Allowing Non-material explanations Then that will lead to The That will lead to We come up with explanations Over which we have no control And that Leads to The blockage of science progress So this is often The argument that is used to stop And To not entertain Non-material explanations And Some scientists say that Now of course this argument is not necessarily True Because Even scientists Say in fields such as Archeology When they are looking at Say They find some Spherical object That has some grooves on it They look at whether some natural phenomena Could have caused those grooves But those grooves are very fine Particularly shaped And they say This could not have come by a natural cause And probably that means it is an Intelligent cause So the opposite of natural Doesn’t have to be a supernatural cause Intelligent cause means It is a human being who has made this Spherical object So there are Fields of science Where This rigid insistence On natural causes is not Adhered to all the time Now Even in criminology If a person has Died because of a knife wound Then the way The knife has gone in we may observe When we decide whether it was accidentally The person just fell on the knife Or somebody inserted it So There are cases where Science also does look for Non-natural explanations And that is what leads to The advancement of knowledge So in that sense it is not a rigid principle Secondly Some scientists say that The idea that there is something non-material This is an extraordinary claim And Extraordinary claims require extraordinary Evidences And therefore they say that The evidence for reincarnation is not enough It is not strong enough They say One of the Features of the scientific method is Controlled experiment When we In a particular environment When we control The parameters Say if I say an acid and base come together And they make a salt Then I can put the two in a controlled environment And not have any other chemicals And see what happens So the problem with Phenomenal reincarnation Is that you cannot put it in a controlled environment It is more of Of course Jan Stevenson did try to create some Controlled environments For example He tries to ensure that When the child goes back and meets The previous family He tries to ensure that It stops the meeting It shouldn’t happen Before Before the past life researcher comes and interviews Both of them So then There are some cases where The whole meeting has been also audio recorded That Stevenson Before video recording became so common Now researchers are using video recording also So then Who said what exactly So what Did the people say before the meeting took place What did the people say What actually happened during the meeting What happened afterwards All that can be controlled So in that sense Controlled experiment can also be done But not exactly in the sense that We cannot control all the parameters involved in reincarnation But again That is not a very serious objection Because in all sciences Which involve Which involve events from the past Controlled experiments can’t be done So for example How the universe originated Whatever theories Scientists have Cannot do Cannot do controlled experiments To replicate those theories To replicate those scenarios So So a different method Is required And science itself is open to that other method So it’s Rather than induction where you do a hundred experiments And then because you get the same Consistent results so you conclude it So in historical sciences Induction cannot be done So they use an alternative method Called IDE Inference to best explanation And if you use that This is the evidence What is the best explanation for this So if you use that Reincarnation does Come off as As the most reasonable explanation Over there Still the problem is that Also That There are a good number of Researches done But much more research needs to be done And a little more rigorous Scrutiny And Over a period of time The acceptability will increase So at least we can say that As compared to 30 or 50 years ago In the western world And today Reincarnation has definitely become much more At least Idea worth considering It has not become Mainstream but it is definitely Something which is being Considered So gradually that will increase as more research is done More evidence comes forward And Currently the centres of knowledge Are the western world America And there have been Not that many cases of Past life memories Found among American children But Ian Stevenson’s Successor He is focused on Cases among Americans only And he has become quite Influential In his own way So I think it is gradually happening Reincarnation becoming more and more acceptable