What I genuinely don't understand is why I am being accused of not admitting the possibility of reincarnation.
I have engaged in an attempt to determine the relative likelihood of reincarnation or coincidence. How could you do that without admitting the possibility that coincidence isn't enough?
As with seekers zebra, asking what the probability is that this is a hoof print from a zebra or a horse implies the idea that both are possible.
If you are in the middle of a riding stable in kent, then the answer is maybe millions to one that it is horse not zebra.
If you are near an African watering hole the answer is maybe millions to one that it is a zebra not a horse.
So by analogy, our hoof print is a toddler telling a story about something that did not happen to them, that they haven't read or seen, but that turns out to be true.
There are (at least) two possible causes.
- coincidence. If enough toddlers tell enough stories some of them are bound to match up with truth just by chance. No matter how detailed the 'hit' is, names, dates, places etc. if you have billions of chances you will eventually get it exactly right BY CHANCE.
- reincarnation. If people are actually reincarnated then at least some of them may remember previous lives and be able to speak about them.
My argument is that BOTH of these options can explain the 'hoof print'.
So that leaves us with relative probability of each being correct.
Number 1. must be happening. Toddlers are known to confuse dreams and reality, to miss-remember things and even to become strangely fixated that things are called different names to what they are (mine is calling me Nanny instead of mummy for no particular reason). We also know the physiological processes of brain development that lead to these 'mistakes'. So the combination of the scientifically known and understood aspects of toddler behaviour with the shear number of toddlers and the size of the planet mean that it is a statistical inevitability that some toddler somewhere will even now be telling a story that sounds spookily like your childhood.
So coincidence is SUFFICIENT to explain the hoof print by itself. This doesn't rule out that reincarnation is happening, it just means that the toddler phenomenon cannot prove the existence of reincarnation, because an alternative explanation is not only possible but in fact likely.
The existence of horses in a stable in Kent where a hoof print is found does not disprove the existence of zebra. But it does mean that the hoof print cannot be used as evidence for the existence of zebra. Because the hoof print not only may belong to a horse, but is likely to belong to a horse.
So my view on this is that there is no direct evidence to demonstrate reincarnation that cannot be ascribed to a more likely already known process (coincidence).
There is also a huge amount of circumstantial evidence arguing against reincarnation, like the massive rarity of anyone reporting past lives, the unknown processes of soul creation, transition, and destruction. Similarly there is no evidence that human consciousness is anything but the product of the physical brain or any known mechanism for consciousness to continue after cell death.
So having been open to the possibility and looked at all the available data, I come to the conclusion that it is extraordinarily unlikely that reincarnation occurs.