Could a Little Boy Be Proof of Reincarnation?

ABC News ^ | April 20, 04 | ABC News

[Paradox]

Once you allow belief in anything paranormal, then you can come up with countless ways that this is happening. Perhaps the kid can channel back through time. Maybe its the spirit of the pilot speaking to the kid. Maybe the child can tap into a universal memory bank (Language of the Dead), maybe aliens are beaming this info into his head, maybe God is doing something here, Satan, Smurfs..... it can go anywhere.

[BriarBey]

Alas! A person who understands why the belief in reincarnation is possible. I didn't say reincarnation I said the belief in it.

"It is appointed a man once to die...then the judgement."

[servantoftheservant]

If anything as the kid gets older his recollections should be MORE VIVID!

Why? If reincarnation is the transmigration of the soul or ego, a particle of individual consciousness, from one body to another, then the recollections would fade as the ego of the new body becomes more established.

[Lord_Baltar]

Paradox, the same could be said toward the belief in God, Satan, or yes, even the Smurfs...

Doesn't it all kind of fall under the category of "the paranormal"?

[PAR35]

History of the NATOMA BAY can be found here:

http://www.hazegray.org/danfs/carriers/cve62.txt

[Hajman]

Once you allow belief in anything paranormal, then you can come up with countless ways that this is happening.

One can also come up with a fair number of ways that this is happening without paranormal activity. The parents are lying. The press is lying. Coincidence. Subconscious knowledge (maybe seen on tv, in a book, ect). Something that triggers the subconscious to start to store information about a specific event, 'memories' accumilating slowly until the mental development of the child starts to shove those 'memories' into the back of his/her mind, fading them out. Believing in a lack of supernatural, btw, takes as much faith as the belief in such.

-The Hajman-

[lowbridge]

Put him behind he controls of an F4U and let's see what happens...

What'll happen is that the Jap that shot him down, will be reincarnated into a 4 year old Japanese kid who will shoot hm down again.

[Paradox]

Doesn't it all kind of fall under the category of "the paranormal"?

Indeed, I agree. Thats why people who argue over such subjects are just p*ssing into the wind, as far as I am concerned.

[Paradox]

One can also come up with a fair number of ways that this is happening without paranormal activity.

Good point. The guy mentioned in my tag line would agree for sure.

[tbpiper]

Put him behind he controls of an F4U and let's see what happens...

He'd get a chance to try that reincarnation thing again real quick, particularly if he forgets the rudder trim.

[LadyDoc]

reincarnation? Fine. No skepticism shown. How wonderful.

Psychic powers? Fine. No skepticism shown.How wonderful.

Burning man festival? Fine. No skepticism shown. How wonderful.

President Bush prays for God's guidance with Tony Blair?
NYAH NYAH NYAH NYAH stupid superstitious right wing fundamentalist wackos.

[bcoffey]

NYAH NYAH NYAH NYAH stupid superstitious right wing fundamentalist wackos.

You nailed it, LadyDoc!

[Dave S]

I guess one would just have to take it as a matter of faith, just like immaculate conception, and rising from the dead after being crucified

Good one!!

[Lord_Baltar]

Actually, if you study the concept of Karma, your suggestion is opposed to that.

More likely either one of them has a debt to the other, that has either been paid (shooting down/being shot down), or will be paid through some lesson either must go through in this life.

It's all a very interesting topic of study when you can do it without the wild eyed Zealots of either side of the debate getting in the way...

[zip]

ping

[Blood of Tyrants]

We already have proof of reincarnation. Seabiscuit dies and a couple of years later John Kerry is born. Coincidence?

[Dave S]

But more than 500 eyewitnesses seeing Christ in the flesh AFTER the Resurrection is rather unique.

So says one dead man, Paul. Who knows, perhaps he was deluded or a liar. After all he did persecute the Christians for some time. It's doubtful he would have eyewitnessed Christ with the 500 because he was killing them at the time. Who knows what he saw on the road to Damascas. Sounded more like a spiritual experience than seeing the Physical Christ as resurrected Man standing before him.

[lentulusgracchus]

I've studied hundreds of accounts such as this and never heard of one where a devout Christian was troubled with such a thing which is not to say that it doesn't happen.

If the child had been raised as a "devout Christian", then he would of course self-censor such impressions or memories as being not his own, since, of course, under Christian doctrine such things are impossible.

Being a "devout Christian" implies that lots of possibilities are energetically closed off or filtered.

One of the points made in the story is that the parents hadn't tried to indoctrinate this boy in any belief system (scientific materialism, atheism, skepticism, rationalism, Communism, Biblical fundamentalism) that might encourage the boy to disbelieve, filter, suppress, or refrain from giving voice to any of these impressions he had. He likewise hadn't been exposed to any beliefs or literature that would encourage him to conceive of metempsychosis. No visits to Hindu temples, no light reading from the Upanishads, no Joan Grant "far memory" novels, no "Tales from the Crypt".

By the way, not all Western thought would be so inimical to these parents' persuasion of their son's metempsychosis. The Transcendentalists believed that people do have an existence before procreation, and that children arrive in the world, in Wordsworth's formula, "trailing clouds of glory". In their opinion (I wouldn't go so far as to call it a tenet of faith), the souls of children came into the world having lived in the presence of the Logos before birth, and subject to the limitations, corruptions, and dogmatism of this world only afterward, so that childhood was a period of defilement of souls born pure and uncorrupted. I don't recall the Transcendentalists embracing metempsychosis, though.

[Hajman]

Good point. The guy mentioned in my tag line would agree for sure.

I believe you missed my point. Just because multiple explinations of this even can be explained via paranormal activity doesn't mean one should reject paranormal activity out of hand. Though Occam's razor states that the simplist explination is the most likely to be true, it doesn't state that the simplist explination is true. Sometimes there are just too many coincidences. (In this particular case though, I think the non-paranormal explinations take care of those problems. This story doesn't have any additional elements to convince me of another possibility beyond the natural.)

-The Hajman-

[Cvengr]

Not reincarnation, but familiar spirits.