Science validates a style of dying and rebirth that honors some religious beliefs

Reincarnation now validated by some science

Many people believe that after they die they will go to heaven or hell depending on their beliefs, essential goodness and behavior.  Some people, however, believe people may go on to another life where they will have different and unique experiences.  It is not just the traditions of ceremony and belief about life, but also beliefs about death that divide religions, even though those who don't believe in reincarnation once did not long before their founding.

Reincarnation means to live again a different life in a different form, according to those who believe that the soul becomes alive again to learn new ways and behaviors.  For some religions one continues to be reincarnated until one reaches a level of perfection to move on to paradise.

While reincarnation is considered to be a topic primarily for religion, scientists have examined the beliefs and possible phenomenon as well.  Many of the research studies have examined life stories of people who claim they lived a life before the contemporary one and are able to recall some of the details about their previous lives.

National Public Radio offered a program that looked at reincarnation as viewed by science during an interview with Jim Tucker, a psychiatrist at the University of Virginia who has studied hundreds of cases of people who claim they have lived previous lives.  He would hear those stories, then perform research to determine the veracity of them.  Tucker observes he has been doing that since the 1990's.

Tucker relates the story of a boy from Louisiana who at age 2 recalled being shot down while serving as a pilot.  He told his father the name of the boat and gave the name of someone who had been on the boat where his airplane had been before taking off on the mission where he was killed.  The story came about when the child became terrified after getting a toy plane as a gift and began experiencing nightmares.  Research of the facts found the names of the pilot and the man on the boat corresponded with the names given by the child at the age of 2.

From stories like this, Tucker maintains, "Well, I've certainly become more persuaded that there is more than just the physical reality. I do think it's quite likely that if we do survive, that there's not just one experience that everyone has; that the afterlife may be as varied as life in this world.  And many people agree with Tucker that the afterlife is different for people, that some may live on in another form while others may go to paradise or hell, as a place of reward or punishment.

Dr. Ian Stevenson's life work has been on validating reincarnation.  His mission, he says in studying reincarnation, has been to establish scientific proof that life goes on in a different body after death.  As a medical doctor he was interested in paranormal research and was the former head of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Virginia.

Omni Magazine interviewed Stevenson in 1988, and it was this interview where Stevenson spelled out the results of his many years of study and research on the topic of reincarnation.

Stevenson's research methods are similar to many of those who have studied the stories of people who recall events from previous lives.  He first examines the stories, obtaining the details about the person's present life and the time the story was first recalled.  He included in his research stories and recollections given by children.  Then he would research the recalled facts, from decades if not centuries, in the era in which the story's events had taken place.  Then he would match the facts of both.  He was considered to be "fiercely objective" by his colleagues and those who reviewed his research.

What Stevenson learned has been documented in books published by the University of Virginia.  He included such details as birthmarks and scars that the person had in one life that were described in the details of an earlier life.  Stevenson found many adult recollections were questionable, but that cases involving children seemed to be more enlightening and to produce some scientifically objective evidence of reincarnation.

Much of Stevenson's work in India is covered in his research and writings, but he has this to say to people who believe children may be making up stories they hear about a deceased person and are not really remembering a former life.  He said, "Obviously children are too young to have absorbed a great deal of information, especially about deceased people in some distant town. In the better cases, they couldn't have known about them. In many of our cases in northwest North America and Burma, people in the same family or village are involved. So there's a likelihood that some adult or older child has talked about a deceased person and the child has absorbed the information, as our questioning makes clear. This is not, however, an issue in most cases I cite in India, many of which involve long distances, twenty-five to fifty kilometers or more, with no contact between the villages. Often the child has quite precise details."

Stevenson's work is considered to be among the most reliable sources about reincarnation from the scientific community.  Do most people believe in reincarnation?  Around the world anywhere between 12% to 44% of people, depending on the country, believe in life after death is possible in a different form.  That includes 20% who are Americans.

For Buddhists, reincarnation is a basic belief of their faith.  But what about Christians?

Modern Christian churches don't believe people will reincarnate in different bodies after death.  Instead there is a perspective of reward and punishment, of hell and damnation, of closeness or distance from God that are the varieties of belief.  There are also those, like the Jehovah's Witnesses, who believe the dead will literally rise from their graves on the day of Judgment to join Christ in a paradise on earth.  Most Christians accept that when a person dies the soul lives on in some form.  The same is true of Muslim and Jewish beliefs.

While some religious scholars maintain that early Christians believed in reincarnation, a thinktank maintains that it was only a heretical, gnostic sect that had this belief, with an emphasis on the fact that these were not mainstream Christians with beliefs ordinarily held by the early Christians.

Reincarnation remains a topic of interest in conversations among people, some of whom laughingly speak of "having been here before" while regaling others with stories of themselves here and there.  But science says adults seldom remember the recollections of past lives they may have had as children, and that the best validation comes from stories from the very young.  Nevertheless, it is a topic that offers some hope for the future and an afterlife that some believe might be better than the one they have right now, as science validates a style of dying and rebirth that honors that belief.