Reincarnation should be considered more likely than not on a rational basis

Thanks again Johnlubba.In his last round, my opponent rhetorically asks: "simply because the soul is not considered to be a material element, does that mean the soul does not exist?". I'm glad my opponent brought this up, because I think it can be utilized to illuminate the broader point of clash in the round, which is what kind of evidence do we need to conclude that something is more rational than not? In my last round, I explained not only what kind of evidence we need, but exactly the methodology we need to go about (which explains why phenomena like gravity and love can't , and why the afterlife fails to cross this hurdle. My argument was not one that the afterlife cannot exist, but rather that we just don't have anywhere near enough evidence to determine if it's more rational than not. Look to this when voting in the round. John's case John argues that sometimes children claim to have memories of other lives. First and foremost, even if I accept these claims as entirely true and these cases as entirely legitimate (I don't), this is not proof of a persons soul going into that of another. The very idea that our fundamental essence can interject itself into a new life with no memories of the previous existence the vast majority of the time raises all kinds of questions about what is meant by the concept of a "self". Recall also that my opponent never really gave a powerful argument for why the soul exists; saying that because our body grows and old cells are replaced means we have a soul is false. While old cells die off and new ones grow, this is not ourselves changing with only our soul to hold us to this world, but just a natural cascading biological process. As old cells die new ones are built, and all the while there trillions of cells existing concurrently. This is no proof of a soul, nor are any of the other increasingly vague assertions he cites from Eastern philosophers. This goes back to my case for skepticism, there's nothing wrong with holding a belief in a soul (I certainly do) but to conflate that belief with fact is a mistake, and to build a case upon what is more likely than not to be true without some powerful argument for the soul is flawed. Anyway, even if we accept these examples as perfectly legitimate, they provide proof of reincarnation only insofar as that's what we are looking for. It's also entirely possible for these memory imprints to be other things. Perhaps consciousness itself is a universal force like gravity and these memories are from rare instances where parts of the force that used to be part of another particular person (not their soul) are used in another person in concentrations unusually high--this would explain the rarity of these occurrences. Or perhaps they are the work of some supernatural being for whatever reason, or some other unexplainable phenomena. And if just a few memories (not their entire memory, or any personal traits) are reborn, how is this the persons essence, their soul, being reborn? The fact of the matter is, like my case explained we simply do not know. If we are all reincarnated, why are these occurrences so rare? And if we are not all reincarnated and only a few are (which is why there are so few cases) than that surely is not more likely than not.But the problem with the arguments I've just made is that I've presumed these cases are legitimate when they simply aren't. My opponent doesn't cite any actual examples of someone holding "memories" of a past life, he just cites researchers who claim to have the data themselves. The philosopher in my opponents video argues that reincarnation is likely if and only if "these kinds of cases" are acceptable as data. The problem is, if they are my opponent hasn't cited them and there are plenty of reasons to believe that they are not. As a typical example, most of these cases are almost certainly fraudulent, the result of extensive confirmation bias, leading questions, and hype. Not surprisingly, most of the research on reincarnation comes from Ian Stevenson, who grew up in a household holding quasi-religious/spiritual beliefs[1] prompting his research. Philosopher of religion Leonard Angel explains on Dr. Stevenson: "“I think he was trying to figure things out, but he just didn’t follow elementary proper standards." This is not to say that Stevenson's analysis is necessarily entirely wrong, but rather that it needs to be taken with a grain of salt. Again, presume skepticism.A child claiming something random cannot be taken as proof of reincarnation. A well told story of my childhood is when I randomly starting claiming to everyone I was a "spy from Germany from the war". I was too young to know what Germany was, or what "the war" was, but does this mean that in a past life I was a German intelligence officer? Absolutely not. It is nothing more than a random outburst from a child who probably heard the term somewhere. If my opponent claims that his examples of reincarnation are unlike this and more substantial than he would've needed to prove so by citing some of them. What we have now is a few people claiming that they've seen these amazing cases of children being reincarnated with memories of their past lives, but in this debate we have no such proof. What do these children claim to have seen? Do they have memories of specific family members, of vacations, jobs, sex, wars, and other things? Or do they merely claim to have lived in Kansas and get prompted to answer leading questions about "their" past lives? Children are very impressionable and it should come as no surprise that all of these cases come from children who will claim anything and believe anything. As to my opponents arguments, a heart surgeon arguing that he believes in a soul but it "cannot be documented very well" is an example of a belief, not something that we hold as true under a rational basis. My opponent provides a good argument for why we can't be certain of where the mind is--this supports my contention two. If we can't even figure something as simple as that out, how can we claim to know the secrets of death? Major religious groups believing something does not make it true on a rational basis--my opponent has misinterpreted the scriptures, but even so this is irrelevant because believing something does not make it true. The resolution is negated by lack of evidence to meet the burden of proof even ignoring my arguments.My caseMost of my arguments are virtually untouched. The problem of claiming what is more likely than not to be true despite having no means to test any hypothesis we do have remains as prevalent as before. I explained why skepticism should be presumed and why affirming the resolution is going to be a very difficult task in light of how to determine something as true on a rational basis, and my opponent makes no response. From here you vote negative. I encourage all readers to go back to my round two and re-read my arguments to see that most still stand. My opponent has provided some evidence for his hypothesis (I believe I've mitigated it greatly, but even ignoring that), but as I have shown there is evidence supporting other ideas of the afterlife available just as easily. We should not rush to identify phenomena as automatically proving anything when we have no widespread observations of these phenomena or means to test them. There have been dozens of purported sitings of the Virgin Mary[2], but does this prove Christianty? Surely not. My case stands. We cannot make any rational claims about the afterlife other than "we do not know", and hence the resolution is negated. Sources:1. http://www.nytimes.com...2. https://en.wikipedia.org...;