Newsgroups: talk.religion.newage,alt.alien.visitors,sci.skeptic
Subject: Re: Past Life regression - the proof (was GSI Day)
From: lippard@skyblu.ccit.arizona.edu (James J. Lippard)
Date: 20 Nov 1992 08:01 MST  
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In article <1992Nov20.013330.16774@unislc.uucp>, erc@unislc.uucp (Ed Carp) writes...
>James J. Lippard (lippard@skyblu.ccit.arizona.edu) wrote:
> 
>: Regression subjects do not *know* that their recollections are not
>: produced due to vivid imagination, confabulation, or cryptomnesia.
>: Further, many subjects who believe that this is the case have had their
>: recollections investigated and the sources have been found to be novels,
>: stories told to them as children, and so forth (e.g., Bridey Murphy).
> 
>Bridey Murphy was *not* out of a novel or a story told to them when
>they were a child.  That hypothesis was pure speculation.

"Bridey Murphy" was allegedly the name in a past life of one Virginia
Tighe, a Pueblo, Colorado housewife hypnotized by Pueblo businessman
Morey Bernstein, who wrote the book _The Search for Bridey Murphy_.
The story was also told by William J. Barker in the Denver _Post_
in a three-part serial titled "The Strange Search for Bridey Murphy."
   Tighe claimed that as Bridey Murphy, she lived in Cork, Ireland.
Reporters sent there by the Chicago Daily News and the Denver Post
were unable to verify the existence of Bridey Murphy.  On the other
hand, the Chicago American sent reporters to Virginia's old home town,
Chicago.  They found Mrs. Anthony Corkell, who had known Virginia
as a teenager.  Mrs. Corkell's (note the similarity to "Cork") maiden
name?  Bridie Murphy.
   Further investigation showed that many events Virginia described
in the life of Bridey Murphy were events from her *own* life.  At the
age of 6 or 7 she was whipped for scratching fresh paint off her metal
bed, which was a recollection of "Bridey Murphy."  Her sister once
suffered a bad fall down a staircase, which is what "Bridey Murphy" said
caused her own death.  Her uncle used to dance jigs for pennies in the
Chicago streets.  In high school, Virginia did some Irish monologs
in drama class with an accomplished brogue.  And many more parallels.

See chapter 26 of Martin Gardner's _Fads and Fallacies in the Name of
Science_ for more.

>:    Mike Stackpole of the Phoenix Skeptics was on a radio show with a
>: woman who did a hypnotic regression on the air of another woman, who
>: recalled a past life in China under some specific name I forget.
>: Mike pointed out that what the woman had just described was an episode
>: of the TV show "Kung Fu," at which point the hypnotic subject realized
>: that she had indeed seen that episode.
> 
>So?  What does that prove?  That reincarnation and past lives research
>is just so much bullshit?  I think not.

No.  It demonstrates that cryptomnesia is something that does occur
in hypnotic regression and needs to be taken into consideration.

> 
>:    In order for the evidence to support a past life, you must be able to
>: show (a) that the recollections are independently supported by other
>: evidence (e.g., records showing that the person recalled did exist and
>: did do the things that were recalled) and (b) the person doing the recalling
>: did not have access to that information.  It is better to check (a) before
>: (b) because the latter is harder to verify and the former usually fails.
> 
>What is "usually"?  Dick Sutphen has done quite a bit of evidence-gathering
>along these lines, and has verified quite a bit of what he has been told by
>people he has regressed.

What is "quite a bit"?  By "usually," I mean that I am aware of no really
good cases for reincarnation.
   For some reason, Dick Sutphen, when invited to appear on KFYI radio
in Phoenix to discuss reincarnation, backed out when he learned that a
skeptic (me) would also been on the show.  The program was cancelled.

>:    It should be further noted that (a) and (b), if both verified, do not
>: necessarily mean that the person in question had a past life, because
>: there are other logically possible explanations (e.g., obtaining the
>: information by psychic means).  (This has recently been discussed by
>: Ian Stevenson and Stephen Braude in the _Journal of Scientific Exploration_.
>: It's not clear that there is any evidence which can discriminate between
>: psi and survival of death.)
> 
>Mixed up in that is the postulate that there *is* no such thing as time.  If
>this is true, then "past lives" communication and psi are one and the same.

I don't think you can make sense out of the postulate that "there is no such
thing as time."  Some events happen at some times, some at other times, no
matter what particular metaphysical view of time you happen to hold.
I do think that theories of personal identity are affected by theories of
time, but I don't see how any theory of time gives the result that there
is no difference between having lived a past life or just psychically
picking up information about a past life.  Care to elaborate on this?

By the way, if all times exist, then one should be able to do a "future life
progression" as easily as a "past life regression," and thereby make
accurate predictions about the future.  But the only "future life progression"
I am aware of always goes way into the distant future, so far that there
is no danger of any predictions being proved wrong in the lifetimes of the
promoters of these claims.

I recommend Paul Edwards' four-part series on "The Case Against Reincarnation"
in _Free Inquiry_ magazine, in which he addresses Stevenson's cases in the
fourth part.  (Fall 1986, Winter 86/87, Spring 87, Summer 87)  Edwards
also now has a book out on the subject.

Jim Lippard              Lippard@CCIT.ARIZONA.EDU
Dept. of Philosophy      Lippard@ARIZVMS.BITNET
University of Arizona
Tucson, AZ 85721
Newsgroups: talk.religion.newage,alt.alien.visitors