Past Lives

[Paul the Human]

I have asked her to present evidence to support her presumption that past lives exist, but she ignored me.

[Shinylight]

Shineylight can you prove your positive assertion?

There really is no evidence to support it, therefore I must assume it is false.

[fr0d0]

Doesn't Gilligan threaten you with the wrath of God for holding such superstitious nonsense beliefs?

[Violet]

Like have a phobia of water because they drowned in a past life, or a phobia of black boots and barbed wire because they were in a concentration camp.

Before I respond... it should be noted that I've only very limited data available. If you don't find them satisfactory, I recommend you take said child to a psychologist for as full an explanation as one is likely to ever get.

A phobia of water more likely comes from an early negative experience with water (of which there are many types of phobia to water... such as fears of large bodies of water, running water, drinking water, deep water, murky water, etc) as a child, perhaps so early that the child no longer remembers why (and yet a dissonance exists for the child where they suppose there must have been a reason for their fear of water), and so in attempt to understand why, they unknowingly invented a story which provides a 'good reason' as to why they have a phobia of water, especially if they see it as an irrational (but uncontrollable) fear.

Regarding a fear of black boots and barbed wire... the former is most likely an associated fear (as in they associate those boots (perhaps unknowingly) with a person who they've had intense negative experiences with). A parallel for this type of fear can be drawn in the conditioning of Pavlov's dog (who began to associate a bell's ringing with a positive experience (being fed)).

The barbed wire could be looked at under a number of different circumstances... is it a fear of barbed wire fences, sharp or pointed objects (ie: does it extend to things such as knives?), an associated fear, what indeed could that be? It's a highly unusual fear, and isn't something for which I know of any definite parallels (though they surely exist).


Moving on... i find it intriguing that you associate a fear of water with drowning (or nearly drowning)... and black boots and barbed wire with concentration camps (esp. when those would perhaps be the least of the fears one might acquire from such a place).

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Shineylight can you prove your positive assertion?

Although the assertion is unprovable... is there any reason to suppose that they do exist?

[Autumnlicious]

I was a skeptic in my past life.

[leo-rcc]

I'm a real Skeptic, I don't believe anything to be true without evidence. I'm a real Taurus that way.

[downbeatplumb]

Has your child ever talked about a past life or exhibited phobias that may be related to a traumatic death ?

A child may talk about such, but that doesn't make any word of it necessarily true.

Could you further define? It's rather difficult to pinpoint just what you mean by "exhibited phobias that may be related to a traumatic death" :S

Like have a phobia of water because they drowned in a past life, or a phobia of black boots and barbed wire because they were in a concentration camp.

You should talk to my wife. She's a medium in the local spiritualist church and so is deep into this crap.

She could spout much better nonsence than you on this.

[Rhizomorph13]

If you walk up to adults and ask them about the time they saw Bugs Bunny at Disneyland many of them can relate a detailed story about what happened and who was with them. The problem is that Bugs Bunny has NEVER been featured at that park so the "memory" they describe is a false one generated by the leading question.

http://mydisneymania.blogspot.com/2007/0...yland.html

Even impossible memories can be fabricated from suggestions, researchers reported at the AAAS annual meeting last week. And such memories can create physiological responses that are indistinguishable from those elicited by remembering real trauma.

So Loftus implanted a clearly impossible memory: a person in a Bugs Bunny outfit shaking hands and hugging children at Disneyland. "Bugs is a Warner Brothers character. He wouldn't be allowed on Disney premises," Loftus says. Her team recruited volunteers who had been to Disneyland earlier in their lives. They were shown an advertisement for Disneyland with pictures of Bugs and text describing a trip to Disneyland that included meeting the wascally wabbit. Weeks later, 36% of the volunteers who had seen the ads vividly recalled that they had seen Bugs Bunny in real life: They shook his hand or even hugged him, they reported.

Children are more impressionable so any parent that has a child that talks about past lives is guilty of implanting the idea through the use of leading questions.

Rhizo

[downbeatplumb]

False memories are quite common.

http://www.skepdic.com/falsememory.html

[Tiberius]

When I was a child I believed in God. I have since come to the conclusion that most children can't distinguish fantasy from reality, and most adults aren't that much better (they get rid of Santa Claus, fairies, goblins, etc but keep Jesus for some reason).

If my child told me they'd had dreams of past lives, I'd tell them it was only a dream, and teach them how dreams differ from observable reality. If it continued, I'd take them to a doctor like any responsible caring parent should. We shouldn't encourage these delusions.