What Would Be Sufficient Evidence for Reincarnation?

There are probably several causes for people’s interest in reincarnation, but at least two relate to the meaning of life.

First, there seems to be a lot of injustice in this world. Many good people suffer while many evil people flourish. Existence will be better, less absurd and more meaningful, if after we die good people are rewarded and the evil people punished.

Second, the thought that in death we will completely perish and disappear makes many people feel that their lives are inconsequential or meaningless. They want to persist.

Accounts of reincarnation, resurrection, and of heaven and hell may answer these concerns. But there are interesting philosophical debates on whether there are rational grounds to believe that these accounts are true.

In this blog post, I focus only on reincarnation. (I hope to discuss resurrection and heaven and hell in some future posts.) Further, when discussing reincarnation, I limit myself here to only the question of what could be considered as sufficient empirical evidence that reincarnation indeed occurs.

Derek Parfit’s Japanese Woman Example

Various philosophers have specified what they would see as sufficient evidence that reincarnation indeed takes place. Among them, philosopher Derek Parfit gave the following example: Suppose that a contemporary Japanese woman claims to have memories of her life as a Celtic warrior and hunter in the Bronze Age. Among other claims, she says that when she was a Celtic warrior, she buried a bracelet (whose precise shape and decoration she describes) at a certain place near, say, some special rock formation. Archeologists identify that rock formation, dig up the place, and indeed find there a bracelet that suits the description perfectly. Their instruments show that the place remained undisturbed for two thousand years. Similar claims of this Japanese lady are verified in the same way.

Note that Parfit does not claim that such an event ever happened or would happen. He just gives an example of the type of empirical evidence for reincarnation he is looking for. This type of evidence is much more demanding than that we’d have if, for example, someone just reminisces how, when he was three years old, everyone wondered how he knew what type of tobacco his grandfather, who died 20 years earlier, liked to smoke. The 3-year-old knew the tobacco brand his grandfather liked although no one remembered ever telling him anything about it. Parfit, then, is only describing an example of what—were it to happen—would seem to him as some serious evidence that a case of reincarnation occurred. He does not suggest that we have found such evidence yet.

Even the Japanese Woman Example Is Insufficient

Following the work of Steven Hales, I would like to suggest that even a case such as that described in the Japanese woman example is insufficient as evidence for reincarnation. (What I say here is very heavily influenced by Hales and repeats much of what he says, but I part ways with him on some small issues.)

What a case such as the Japanese woman example would show is that science as it is today is insufficient; we cannot explain such events by using contemporary scientific knowledge. But that does not mean, argues Hales, that we have to accept the reincarnation explanation for what happened. There are also other possible explanations for events such as those described in the Japanese woman example. For instance, Hales suggests, it could be that the whole event is orchestrated by a powerful, very technologically advanced extraterrestrial that enjoys meddling with human lives by implanting in some people’s minds quasi-memories.

Hales thinks that the extraterrestrial explanation for the events described in the Japanese woman example is improbable and implausible. But he does not see why it is more improbable or implausible than the reincarnation explanation. (In fact, Hales thinks that the extraterrestrial explanation is better than the reincarnation explanation, but I will not enter into this issue here.)

Events such as those described in the Japanese woman example are sufficient to show that there are some things we cannot explain by contemporary scientific knowledge. Perhaps we will never succeed in explaining them scientifically. But all that is insufficient to prove that reincarnation (rather than something else) took place. Thus, the reincarnation supposition remains unproven.

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I should add that even if all alternative explanations for cases such as that described in the Japanese woman example were somehow barred out, and it would be for some reason clear that the Japanese lady is indeed a reincarnation of the Celtic warrior, this would still be insufficient for satisfying the concerns about the meaning of life mentioned above.

The case of the Japanese woman and similar cases would only show that some people, such as that Japanese lady, are incarnated, not that all people are. Such cases will also not show that people are rewarded or punished in next life cycles since the example says nothing about the good or bad deeds of the Celtic hunter and how they were rewarded or punished.

Thus, I too do not think that cases such as that of the Japanese lady are helpful for preserving meaning in life. We should resort to other ways of finding and maintaining life’s meaning in the face of injustice and death.