-Caveat Lector-
"Love is but a song to sing ... fears that we may die..." (from memory,
from the Youngbloods {Jesse Colin Young & cie}); reincarnation,
resurrection, return, re-entry ... immortality, chapter by chapter ...
>From CSICOP/Skeptical Inquirer/Jan 99
http://www.csicop.org/si/9901/reincarnation.html
Home : Skeptical Inquirer : January/February 1999 <Picture: Cover>
A Cogent Consideration of the Case for Karma (and Reincarnation)
By Barry L. Beyerstein
Book ReviewReincarnation: A Critical Examination
By Paul Edwards
Prometheus Books, 1996.
ISBN 1-57392-005-3
313 pp. Hardcover, $31.95
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Few of us enjoy having the frailties of our most comforting beliefs
revealed, and when the assumptions under scrutiny concern "big ticket"
items such as the possibility of an afterlife or the supernatural
underpinnings of our moral precepts, a questioning attitude is almost
guaranteed to make the bearer about as popular as the proverbial skunk at
the garden party. Paul Edwards has risked this fate once again, this time
by critically examining certain doctrines, once confined largely to Hindu
and Buddhist believers, that have recently gained popularity among the
eclectic disciples of New Age spirituality. Interestingly, they have also
attracted more than a few Christian adherents who cheerfully overlook the
fact that the doctrine of reincarnation contradicts other core tenets of
their faith.
Heretofore largely ignored by Western philosophers of any stature, the
traditionally associated (but logically independent) doctrines of
reincarnation and Karma are thoroughly examined in Paul Edwards' enjoyable
and encyclopedic treatise. Edwards proceeds with his usual precision to
expose the hidden assumptions, the empirical flaws, and the often
unpalatable implications of these teachings that, on the surface, can seem
quite appealing. It is always a pleasure to watch an incisive thinker cut
right to the heart of an issue and then proceed to lay out its logical
consequents in clear and concise prose. It is a double treat if that
exposition is accomplished with wit and flair, as is the case here. One all
too rarely gets the bonus of chuckling through a detailed and cogent
analysis by an eminent philosopher. Take for instance this example of the
twinkle in the scholar's eye that appears on page 18: "It seems ludicrous
that something as important as creation of a soul that is going to exist
forever should be tied to such accidents as the failure of a birth-control
appliance."
The belief that some essence of ourselves survives bodily death is perhaps
the most comforting of all spiritual leanings. It has provided reassurance
for human beings probably since our ancestors first evolved brains of
sufficient complexity to anticipate the future and contemplate their own
mortality. The solace provided by any sort of expectation of an afterlife
would probably have been sufficient to assure its undiminished popularity
all by itself, but, as Edwards points out, the version of immortality
preached by most reincarnationists offers yet another enticement. Belief in
reincarnation feeds not only the hope for life beyond the grave, but in
conjunction with its frequent fellow traveler, the "law" of Karma, it also
provides apparent support for another widespread human longing, the desire
to believe that we inhabit a just universe.
The warm glow this solution provides for believers diverts their attention
from the many inherent conceptual and practical difficulties that Edwards
lays bare in this book. For instance, a major difficulty for
reincarnationists is what he calls the "modus operandi" problem. For
magical thinkers, just imagining something can bring it about. But for the
rest of us, there is the inconvenient need for a plausible chain of causal
mechanisms before we can grant the likelihood of any given phenomenon. With
the many advances in scientific understanding since the formulative days of
the reincarnation story, it has become increasingly difficult even to
conceive of a reasonable mechanism whereby a bodily attribute (such as a
birthmark or deformity, which are afforded much attention in
reincarnationist circles) or a mental property such as knowledge, a
personality trait, or an inclination, could be packaged up at the end of
one person's lifetime, held in abeyance in non-physical form between
incarnations (the "interregnum problem") and finally implanted in a fetus
in its mother's womb in preparation for another revolution of the eternal
carousel. It likewise strains credulity to accept the requirement that
detailed tallies of every good and bad deed committed by every person who
ever lived could be kept somewhere and weighed, let alone harnessed to
transgenerational retributive mechanisms as diverse as earthquakes,
bacteria, raging bulls, lightning bolts, or a large, ill-tempered bar
patron named Bob.
The Canadian psychologist Melvin Lerner and his colleagues have studied
various psychological needs that make the idea of transcendental fairness
enforcers such as Karma perennially attractive. Lerner describes a number
of payoffs for believing in what he calls the "just world hypothesis,"
i.e., the soothing notion that, in life, people generally get what they
deserve and deserve what they get. Many of us rebel emotionally at the
realization -- easily prompted by a quick glance at the daily headlines --
that the plums and brickbats of life seem to be somewhat randomly
apportioned, morally speaking. Apparently, it is too threatening for a
large portion of the populace to admit that, no matter how long and hard
one has tried to do the right thing, the driver of that approaching bus
could still be just about to doze off. It is this motivation to salvage
belief in a hidden hand that metes out deserved rewards and punishments on
a cosmic scale that explains the unsavory but widely observed tendency to
derogate apparently innocent victims. For example, "She must have dressed
or behaved provocatively or she wouldn't have been raped, would she?"
With adult victims of misfortune, it is often sufficient merely to distort
our perception of the worthiness of the individual to preserve our belief
in a just world, but what of infants afflicted with excruciating and
disfiguring diseases, or children orphaned and tortured by the perpetrators
of "ethnic cleansing"? How could they possibly have accumulated enough
demerits in their short lives to have deserved such a cruel fate? A ready
answer, if you can accept it, is supplied by those two objects of Edwards'
dissecting scalpel, reincarnation and Karma. Apparently, you can take it --
accumulated moral capital, anyway -- with you, after all. Herein we have
the long-sought excuse for the panorama of gratuitous evil and unearned
windfalls we encounter daily. Those kids deserved it all right, but not for
what they did in this brief but brutal existence. Rather, they are
expiating vicious acts in one or more of an infinite series of previous
lives. And, incidentally, that Wall Street junk bond dealer does deserve
his Rolex, BMW, and yacht after all -- he was obviously a somewhat more
meritorious character in a previous incarnation.
Neat, huh? Well, yes, sort of and even Edwards admits that this account
makes more sense than the traditional Christian explanation that napalmed
babies are, for reasons beyond our feeble ken, an unfortunate by-product of
Adam and Eve's predilection for apples. But wait! As is so often the case,
the large print giveth, but the small print taketh away. The small print,
deftly enlarged by Edwards, reveals that the doctrines of Karma and
reincarnation, so conducive at first glance, carry with them some truly
revolting implications, ones their devotees seem rarely to have noticed.
For instance, it follows from these views that I ought not to give a
donation for African famine relief because those starving wretches must
deserve that fate for having blotted their copybooks last time (or times)
around. Helping the afflicted just thwarts their Karma, you see.
Another stumbling block raised by Edwards is the steadily climbing world
population. If the souls of every one of today's earthlings necessarily
inhabited a body in a previous generation, and -- also according to
doctrine -- no new souls are being created, and there were fewer bodies on
the planet then than now, we would seem to be faced with a serious soul
deficit. A few reincarnationists have attempted to sidestep this impediment
with mind-numbing ad hoc gyrations (upgrading of animal souls, recruiting
souls from other planets or dimensions, soul sharing, etc.), but the
extremes to which these apologists have gone only underscores, as Edwards
notes, how fanciful the whole reincarnationist enterprise really is.
Then we come to perhaps the weightiest, and for me (as a long-time student
of brain function), the most engaging objection to reincarnation raised by
Edwards. A compelling reason to doubt that a packet of personality traits
and abilities could leap from a dying person, into limbo, and thenceforth
to a newly conceived embryo, is the evident linkage of all psychological
attributes to highly specific structures and functions in individual
brains. While modern neuroscience cannot conclusively rule out the
possibility that disembodied consciousness could exist, the staggering
amount of evidence suggesting that thinking, remembering, and feeling
require an intact, functioning brain serves to make the brain-mind link one
of the most well-supported postulates to be found anywhere in science. I
have presented an overview of that evidence and its implications for a
number of occult beliefs, including reincarnation, in a previous issue of
this journal (SI, Winter 1988).
While Edwards does not advocate, as I did on that occasion, the most
extreme version of the materialist position on the "mind-body problem" --
the psychoneural identity hypothesis, which asserts that mental functions
are identical with states of the brain -- he argues that the manifest
dependence of all mental functions on specific brain functions makes the
possibility that personal traits, knowledge, or self-awareness could skip
from one incarnation to the next exceedingly remote. Either way, as I noted
in the above-mentioned article, if this kind of transmigration of traits
and knowledge is possible, my entire chosen field of behavioral
neuroscience is essentially a fool's errand. Fortunately, after reading
this book, the prudent bettor will probably conclude that the chances of
the concept of reincarnation being fatally flawed are substantially greater
than the probability that the fundamental tenet of neuroscience (i.e.,
brain-mind linkage, which, if true, makes reincarnation so improbable) is
in substantial danger.
The evidence, such as it is, is exhaustively examined by Edwards. Much of
it comes from seemingly credible witnesses who claim to have seen the
projected "astral bodies" of others at the time of the latter's death, or
from children who seem remarkably precocious, or who "remember" people,
places or events that they seem unlikely to have known about if they had
not actually experienced them in a previous life. Edwards shows that the
empirical evidence, like the supporting arguments put forth by past-life
explorers such as Elizabeth Kübler-Ross, Stanislav Grof, Raymond Moody, and
Ian Stevenson are far less compelling than the tabloid headlines would have
you believe. As with most anecdotal evidence of this sort, examination
reveals that tales retold by the faithful have a way of becoming tidier and
more convincing as they pass from mouth to mouth.
As Leonard Angel showed in these pages some time ago (SI, Fall 1994),
careful reading of the acknowledged "best cases" for reincarnation, e.g.,
several from the parapsychologist Ian Stevenson, reveals significant
internal inconsistencies in the accounts that throw them into doubt, even
before the evidence itself is examined. Edwards notes similar problems in
the evidential base and has taken the trouble to trace many other "best"
cases back as close to their sources as possible. Along the way, we are
treated to some hilarious examples of gullibility among those seized by the
will to believe. In attacking the famous "Bridey Murphy" case, supposedly
one of the strongest in the reincarnationists' arsenal, Edwards does
skeptics the additional service of pointing out that some of the rebuttals
that skeptics like to tout (myself among them, until I read this chapter)
were themselves the products of journalistic excess and thus not to be
relied upon. Edwards finds much else, however, to discredit the evidence
for Virginia Tighe's prior existence as Bridey Murphy. In the process, he
supplies trenchant critiques of the use of hypnosis and related techniques
to "reveal" memories of past lives. Suffice it to say that, overall, the
empirical case for reincarnation fares no better than the conceptual,
logical, and moral ones.
Skeptics who follow my recommendation and read Reincarnation: A Critical
Examination [by Paul Edwards] will derive much ammunition for arguing not
only with reincarnationists but with "near-death experience" afficianados
and afterlife enthusiasts of other stripes as well. They will be treated to
a good read in the process -- H. L. Mencken's essays spring immediately to
mind in this regard. Reincarnation is a useful adjunct to Edwards' earlier
edited volume, Immortality and to another work that both he and I admire,
Susan Blackmore's Dying to Live. Skeptics familiar with these works will
enter debates well prepared. They should be warned, however, that if the
logic and evidence contained therein were the final determinants of belief,
fuzzy but comforting notions like reincarnation and Karma would never have
gained their substantial cultural toehold in the first place.
About the Author
Barry Beyerstein is in the Brain Behavior Laboratory, Department of
Psychology, Simon Fraser University.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
A<>E<>R
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