Could a little boy be reincarnated pilot?

[defendandprotect]

http://www.reversespins.com/proofofreincarnation.html

There's also an interesting video up at Yahoo today . . . but I didn't know how
to link to it --

for anyone interested.

The parents say this confirms their "Christian" beliefs . . .
and, in fact, all the world's major religions did at one time teach reincarnation --
until it became inconvenient for the elites.

However, while I think reincarnation highly likely, I don't see that it confirms
anything more than a universal spirituality.

And, remember, animals have spirits, as well!

[shadowknows69]

1. Could be, (nt)

But be prepared for the "Woo Police" in 3....2.....1

[MorningGlow]

5. RIDICULOUS! STOOPID! CAN'T BE!!!!! PROVE IT!!!!

Did I cover it all? ;)

[defendandprotect]

6. They've arrived . . .

Amazing that, if they're legitimate in their convictions, they have such

limited awareness and curiosity!

Some say the strongest spirits take on the most difficult lives . . .

[trotsky]

8. I think what's more amazing...

is that those who believe themselves to have such enhanced awareness and curiosity, and to be much more enlightened and in tune with the mysteries of the universe... have to put down those who merely ask questions.

[MorningGlow]

11. If questions were asked politely, with respect, and with an open mind

That would be one thing. Questions are not asked. Instead, blanket denials, mockery, and insults are applied at every turn. Any explanations or even just alternate ideas offered are met with derision and personal attacks. Is it any wonder that those of us who believe in the unconventional are a little (okay a lot) tetchy?

[trotsky]

30. I am so sorry that we unwashed don't meet your enlightened standards of civility.

Despite my initial comment on this thread being NONE of the things you list. I'm just glad to get further confirmation that "enlightened" = "smug asshole."

[MorningGlow]

34. What in the world are you talking about?

You do realize that your reply just made absolutely no sense, right?

First of all, I never called skeptics unwashed; don't put words in my mouth. Second, I wasn't talking about your initial comment (although I do love the heavy sarcasm, zeroing in on the "book to sell" angle).

Basically what it boils down to is that skeptics want to be able to call spiritual people every name in the book, but when we dare to talk back and stand up for what we believe in, we're "smug assholes." Yeah, that makes sense. :eyes:

[trotsky]

40. And I hadn't engaged in "blanket denials, mockery, and insults" but that didn't stop you...

from implying I had. Goose, gander, and all that fun. Enjoy your superiority.

[MorningGlow]

43. Why are you taking this personally?

What part of I wasn't talking about your initial comment don't you understand? Again: I WASN'T TALKING ABOUT YOU; I was referring to the general behavior of skeptics on DU--that rude, mocking, disrespectful behavior from people on DU who automatically assume that the spiritual people on DU are ignorant idiots and are a ready-made punching bag. Does that make more sense?

[trotsky]

46. Oh I dunno, maybe because you specifically replied to me.

I know, nutty. In the future I'll try not to be burdened by things like facts and questions.

[MorningGlow]

49. ROFL!

Okay, dude. Obviously you're the center of the universe or something. If you'll check my first response to you, I was talking about skeptics' behavior IN GENERAL and never even used the word "you". But hey, maybe I hit a nerve or something...if you saw yourself in a generality? :evilgrin:

[TZ]

48. see post 6

We get called narrow minded fools quite a bit...so this goes both ways...I believe thats why Trotsky is offended.

[MorningGlow]

50. Sorry, TZ, but

Trotsky accused ME of accusing HIM (personally) of not being civil. Post 6 was not me, and my initial response was not speaking about him specifically. I don't know how that got twisted so quickly.

[trotsky]

55. Forget it, TZ.

Skeptics are the bad guys, the enlightened NEVER, EVER engage in any poor behavior. They're the downtrodden, the put upon, simply because they see more than the mean old closed-minded skeptics can.

[TZ]

57. Two points...

One, I have never observed MG being rude to skeptics but I did want to point out that the anti-skeptic remarks were some of the first posts here--they practically invited rudeness IMO.

[trotsky]

59. Yup, starting with Post #1.

Go figure.

[trotsky]

62. Oh and as far as being rude to skeptics, does calling them "jackals" count?

Post 45.

[MorningGlow]

63. I call 'em as I see 'em

Not calling all skeptics jackals, but yes, some ARE.

On edit: Trotsky, if you're going to take that personally (even though I did not call you a jackal), I'd say toughen up, fella. I've been called FAR worse.

[trotsky]

65. Well thank goodness you aren't referring to me.

Just nice to have documented proof that it isn't just mean old skeptics who call names.

[trotsky]

2. What a surprise!

They have a book to sell!
:eyes:

[Bluenorthwest]

3. The President has a book to sell

Everybody has a book to sell. Books are good!

[trotsky]

4. Books are good! Red herrings, not so much. n/t

[Bluenorthwest]

9. I'll take a red herring over a straw man any day

They have a book to sell, like all people in the public eye for anything, or wanting to be in the public eye, like the President, soon his wife, and so forth. So the promotion of a book in itself is not nearly enough to discredit the authors, as you pretend it is.
I mean, I've met plenty of people who think Obama ran to sell his books, and their proof is that he sold his books. Same argument you have.

[trotsky]

15. That would be YOUR strawman.

I'm just pointing out the selective nature of some people's willingness to question financial motives.

[Ian David]

7. I believe the little boy actually came from Russell's Teapot. n/t

[MineralMan]

36. I though it was cabbages...

cabbages all the way down...or is that turtles?

I'm so confused now...

[winter999]

10. First you have to believe in Spirits and then believe in Reincarnation.

I, myself, believe neither.

[defendandprotect]

16. So you are saying you are without spirit?

When "Animal Planet" was worthwhile watching, there were some very interesting

programs on different personalities and "spirits" of the animals.

I am certainly not religious -- I am highly anti-organized patriarchal religion.

However, I do think there is something like a universal spirituality.

And because of that we do have altruism, compassion, empathy, human understanding.

As I said "think" . . .

but this case is one of many, many like it pointing to reincarnation.

[winter999]

28. Sorry, as a sceptic I require proof beyond philosophy and stories.

I'll admit there is a possibility of both Spirit (and Reincarnation), but, so is there a possibility of a Heaven and Hell, too. I'm just not going to make life decisions based on evidence so flimsy that it wouldn't even be considered in a courtroom.

Question I would pose is "if" 9,000 people die and 10,000 are born, where does the extra 'spirits' come from? The animal kingdom? If this were so, wouldn't the animals have to perish in order for mankind to survive? Are you also proposing there are only X number of spirits (First Law of spirits is that a spirit can neither be created or destroyed, but transformed from one type to another - "Conservation Law of spirits".) If new spirits can be created, from where, by whom? And down the rabbit-hole you go.

[MineralMan]

37. Ah, how I miss the smell of teen spirit in the morning...

[RaleighNCDUer]

24. I am a very solid atheist and have no patience with religion or gods,

but I am not close-minded about the persistence of consciousness. I submit that it could, theoretically, be a form of energy - and as we know, energy cannot be destroy, only changed.

So while I have absolutely no belief in an afterlife, I consider the possibility of a life-after as an open question.

[winter999]

29. ironically we both has some similar points.

Hey, I'm open and respectful of anyone's belief that differs from mine (and I'm always willing to hear arguments). The one exception I have, that pisses me off, is when someone is "convinced" of something not real by a con-man. I'd throw Fortune-Telling and Astrology into this basket.

[MorningGlow]

31. But that's YOU applying YOUR belief system to someone ELSE'S reality

How is that fair?

[winter999]

35. If I "pull a quarter" out of your ear, is it really magic or just a trick?

And if it is a trick (which can be empirically proven), then is it wrong to willfully make you believe it's really magic? Isn't it even worse if I get you to pay me money b/c of your belief (which is based on falsities from the get-go?) Sorry, don't like people being tricked by con-men.

[MorningGlow]

38. Apples and oranges

Pulling a quarter out of someone's ear is already known by all involved to be a sleight of hand.

And just because some people don't believe in divination doesn't mean it is only propagated by con-men.

[trotsky]

44. How DARE you...

apply YOUR belief system to someone ELSE'S reality? The child thinks the quarter was conjured out of air! That's their reality!

[MorningGlow]

51. Not quite...

Nobody who pulls a quarter out of someone's ear is ever accused of being a "con man". Totally different, no?

[trotsky]

54. Nope, the same.

Reality to the child is the coin appearing from nowhere.

How DARE you try and apply your worldview to that child's reality?

[MorningGlow]

58. What...?

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

[trotsky]

60. Sorry you don't like your own words.

Perhaps you should have qualified them.

But that's YOU applying YOUR belief system to someone ELSE'S reality
How is that fair?

[Silent3]

32. Try to recover the files you lost when your computer crashed...

...from the waste heat blowing out of the back of the computer. All of the energy it required to maintain the state of your file system still exists, but the ordered patterns have broken down. Energy is preserved, order is not preserved (a little thing called the Second Law of Thermodynamics), so hope for immortality based on conservation of energy is not well founded.

Entropy is a bitch.

[winter999]

42. One can see in this forum that the FEAR of ceasing to exist

creates faith-based belief systems. Just finished a SF book where the Universal Spirit (of which all souls are a part of) was proven and detectable via scientific machinery. No more War, Hatred, Religion, etc. No need to have "faith" as the proof was tangible for all to see for themselves. No fear of dying b/c it was scientifically proven what happens. Boy, what a thought.

[RaleighNCDUer]

66. But does entropy apply?

Life runs in counter motion to non-life. While entropy demands that everything is reduced from the complex to the simple, you can see from the development of life on earth that life progresses from the simple to ever-increasing complexity. If the development of intelligence/consciousness is the ultimate (or at least the ultimate that we can be aware of) development of life who is to say that upon expiration of the physical body that the energy/consciousness cannot hold itself in some coherent form until it can find a new host?

[Silent3]

70. Entropy still applies.

The reason why life can achieve growing complexity is simple: Sunshine mostly. That, and trapped heat being slowly released from the interior of the earth.

Entropy can decrease rather than increase in a non-closed system, and the earth's biosphere isn't closed. It has inputs of energy streaming in, and it can disperse waste heat into space. In the big picture entropy still keeps growing (in fact, life speeds up the universal increase of entropy), but we achieve local decreases in entropy.

Maybe, just maybe, that might give you hope of increased longevity on the scale of billions of years, while local conditions temporarily allow favorable conditions, but even to achieve that, it's not merely enough to have an inflow of energy and an ability to disperse waste heat. Energy has to be applied in very specific, directed ways to maintain specific patterns of order. You can impart extra energy into your home by running a vacuum cleaner and picking up your socks, or you could impart extra energy by detonating a bomb -- the latter won't achieve the typically-desired increase of order in your home.

Not only do you now have to imagine that the mind or "spirit" is some special form of "energy" apart from what we see in the neurochemical functioning of the brain (a big supposition in and of itself), but that an additional mechanism exists for maintaining the coherence of patterns in the energy of the mind even while the physical for of the brain swiftly breaks down in entropic fashion, without any apparent mechanism like metabolism for tapping into an external inflow of usable energy.

[struggle4progress]

67. There's no scientific evidence that consciousness is "a form of energy." To hold such an idea

as a scientific hypothesis, one would need to identify consciousness with something observable and measurable. It is my impression that, to date, all claims to do anything like that have been hoaxes

[RaleighNCDUer]

69. True, but to be fair, barely a hundred years ago x-rays and gamma rays

were mere theoretical constructs. We had no capability of measuring them, or even defining them.

We know that there is an electrical componant to all life. How is electricty related to consciousness? Nobody knows - but I think one day we will, if we don't exterminate ourselves before then.

As I said above, I am a solid atheist - that does not mean I am a nihilist. I am convinced that there is no heaven or hell waiting for me after I die. If my consciousness persists after death I will be very pleasantly surprised - I certainly don't expect it. But I'm not going to insist that there is nothing but nothing, either.

[struggle4progress]

72. Speculative philosophy is not science. People have searched from the beginning of the

scientific era for mysterious "extra" scientific laws that govern life or consciousness -- and have found none. The scientific view must be that we do not explore by science hypotheses we cannot test. It seems to me that the proper current scientific attitude towards consciousness must be something like the response of the Zen master who, when asked Where does consciousness go after death?, replied Where does the flame go when the candle is snuffed? This scientific attitude seems to me to be forced by logic, but the logic itself is constrained by a need to avoid impredicative discussions to skirt the paradoxes of self-reference -- and therefore there are intrinsic limits for the possibilities of understanding "consciousness" in a scientific manner

[RaleighNCDUer]

74. Well said. Only, acknowledging limits for the possibilities of understanding

consciousness does not mean that there are not aspects of consciousness which we do not yet understand - a proposition much like 'absence of evidence does not necessarily denote evidence of absence'.

But I will certainly concede that it is something without quantifiable evidence, and is more properly in the realm of philosophy than science. And is, as you said, speculative. As with ghosts, UFOs and bigfoot, I will believe it when I see it (though in the vast strangeness of the universe I cannot deny the potential for any of them).

[rd_kent]

76. How can it be an "open question" if there is nothing to support it?

Just because you are open to the idea of an after-life does not mean that the argument of an after-life is open for debate. In this post, YOU state: "I submit that it could, theoretically, be a form of energy - and as we know, energy cannot be destroy, only changed.
So while I have absolutely no belief in an afterlife, I consider the possibility of a life-after as an open question."
You have now proposed a hypothesis. Do you have any evidence to support your hypothesis? Yes? Then please present it. No? Your hypothesis is bunk and a dead issue.
While I, too, am open to possibilities of things that I am unaware or incapable of understanding right now, unless there is evidence to support such ideas, they are only ideas, not facts open for debate.

[SidDithers]

12. Not bloody likely...nt

Sid

[raccoon]

13. I don't believe in reincarnation, and remember, IF there is such a thing,

the odds of any of us coming back as poor citizens of a Third World country are too high for my liking.

[defendandprotect]

18. Some say that the strongest spirits take on the most difficult lives . .

is that a woman sitting on a desert floor, swatting flies off of her baby?

Or is that the struggle of an evil man like Cheney against his worst instincts?

[Recursion]

26. Depends on which model of reincarnation you believe

If you follow a Hindu/Buddhist model, that's a common misconception. You don't get "punished" in the next life if you do bad here. You come back as the same thing, over and over again, until you manage to outgrow that problem; the "most advanced" souls tend to choose lives of great hardship.

[ZombieHorde]

61. "the "most advanced" souls tend to choose lives of great hardship"

People in power must love poor people's religion.

[Recursion]

68. It's ironic in more ways than one

See Hegel re: the distinction between master and slave

[snooper2]

14. Yep, and he is also the one

Who put the thermite in the WTC and was killed by "the man" after the fact on the 12th.


:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

[NeedleCast]

17. No

[LeftyMom]

19. What a load of hooey.

:eyes:

[MineralMan]

20. Christianity put paid to reincarnation.

It was much more convenient to be forgiven of your bad behavior and move directly on to the final destination. No more karma, no more toeing the line. No more propitiating multiple selfish, angry deities. Jesus took care of all that. It was the perfect solution for the Western world. One stop...no waiting!

Edit to correct spelling.

[MorningGlow]

21. Not to mention control

If the unwashed masses thought they only had one shot at getting to heaven, they'd be more likely to pony up their tithes and let the clergy control their lives. How conveeeeenient, no?

[MineralMan]

22. Well, it's a one-stop shop, you see.

No more offerings to multiple priest in multiple temples. Just donate to one and you're done. Efficiency! Simplicity! Where would the Western World be without it?

[MorningGlow]

23. True, but how boring

Only one life?! What a rip! I wanna play the game lots of different ways! :)

[MineralMan]

25. Hey! As an atheist, I only get one pass at it, too.

The real difference is that there's no pie in the sky for me when I die. Makes life a lot sweeter while you have it. Gotta eat my pie right here on Earth.

[MorningGlow]

27. No arguments about pie here on Earth

This is the playground, after all. And for those of us who do believe in reincarnation, it's the reason we keep coming back--it's fun here. :hi:

[winter999]

33. And how many go-arounds have you had?

[MineralMan]

39. They are without limit, I believe...

Now, if some of them were in other universes, that'd be OK, but to have to come back here again and again...well...no thanks.

[FirstLight]

41. Pluuuhheeeeeaazzee!

Just because you don't believe in something that may or may not be provable to YOU...does not mean you have to be smarmy with those who do and/or would like to discuss a topic without having to defend the very fabric of it all.

I understsnd, it's a control issue...you don't believe that reincarnation is Valid, therefore the whole converstion about TGhe STORY itself is lost on you and you would rather pop up at each chance you can to heckle certain people here who are just having a discussion...

"bad form, ol' chap"

If you would like to start your OWN thread to discuss reincarnation's VALIDITY, be my guest.
If you want to search for old threads on the subject and see what you can find...great.

But I would prefer to read and comment on this particular story and the concepts it brings to discussion, rather than see a bunch of debate over YOUR personal beliefs.

thanks :wave:

[MorningGlow]

45. Oh yeahhhh like I'm gonna go there

It's bad enough to have something I believe openly mocked in a forum where there should instead be an open-minded exchange of ideas; the last thing in the world I'm going to do is share my personal experiences so they can be picked over by jackals.
:rofl:

[Occam Bandage]

47. Sounds more like he's precocious and likes airplanes a lot.

I could read and rattle off all sorts of facts about space travel at 3. I don't think I'm a reincarnated Apollo I astronaut.

[charlie]

52. His daddy took him to a flight museum

with a WWII section, a visit that lasted 3 hours. This was before the "past life" phenomena began. In their telling, his fascination with the planes is evidence of his having lived before. Of course, once they've decided he "knew" before he went, they wouldn't likely consider that it was the museum that sparked his interest and gave him some of the knowledge that amazed them later.

[Occam Bandage]

53. Yeah, it's just ridiculous. nt

[Javaman]

56. I have a very strong reason to believe them. nt

[trotsky]

64. Skeptico Blog has the missing details on this "amazing" story.

http://skeptico.blogs.com/skeptico/2005/07/reincarnation_a.html

1) Little James was taken to a WWII aircraft museum at age 18 months. It wasn't until after that visit that his nightmares began.

2) James was "guided" by Carol Bowman, an individual who had already made up her mind that reincarnation is real, to share his "memories."

3) James insisted he was shot down in his Corsair, but the historical James was actually shot down in an FM2 Wildcat.

4) When he signed his name "James 3", little James had in fact just turned 3 years old. That couldn't be the reason, could it?

But hey, I'm just one of those mean old insulting nasty skeptics asking for a crazy thing like "evidence" and who is more inclined to believe the mundane, ordinary explanation for something rather than desperately wishing that the romantic, magic story is true. Don't mind me.

[skepticscott]

73. Man, you sure know how to kill a thread

with facts and everything. But I'm sure everyone is busy composing their apologies...

[ZombieHorde]

71. How do they know the boy didn't create the pilot?

Why chose one magical explanation over another?

And, remember, animals have spirits, as well!

Who doesn't like an occasional drink?

[Meshuga]

75. Oy vey

I watched the video on good morning Yahoo (ABC News) and I can't believe this made to the headlines. Anyway. it's a nice way for the parents to score some dough with this bullshit book.