Reincarnation

It’d better be true!
So many religions believe in reincarnation or an afterlife. For several reasons, some of them believe they found proof, others preach it for popularity. As a religious institution, it makes sense to tell your followers that death isn’t the end and good things await them in the next life. It makes people feel more comfortable with all the bad things that happen in their lives, better luck next time, right? Science doesn’t agree yet, although they are desperately looking for irrefutable proof of life after death.

I miss my old mom, mom.
Several cases exist of children claiming to remember their old lives, and insist on visiting the people they knew in it. Some more convincing than others.

Sam Taylor was a boy who claimed to have been his own grandfather in his past life. When he was 1.5 years old he would tell his father that he changed his diapers at that age. He also recalled a lot of details about his grandfather’s life, of which his parents felt he couldn’t have known those. Such as his grandfather sister being murdered. Or that his grandmother used to make milkshakes for him everyday at the end of his previous life.- This can be disputed by saying that he overheard conversations of his parents about those topics, but why would a kid lie about having a previous life, or even be able to grasp the concept?
Ryan had nightmares as a kid, until one day he told his mother that he used to be someone else. He would always talk about wanting to go home to Hollywood. Also knowing famous people, dancing on Broadway, and working for an agency. Then there's the fact that he recalled that the name of the street he used to live on had the word “rock” in it. After some research it turned out that Ryan had been Marty Martyn in his previous life. A movie extra who had indeed danced on Broadway, and later started an agency for beginning actors. Marty had also lived at 825 North Roxbury Drive in Beverly Hills. - This one leaves me kind of speechless. The only counter-argument I can think of is that the mother made him learn about this man’s life and really convinced Ryan that the story was true. But then again, why such an unknown actor who nobody knew of? Very intriguing story.
If we assume the parents didn’t set their children up for this and the stories are true, then it’s proven to be a fact. Unfortunately we can not be 100% sure of the validity of their claims. So the search goes on.

Souls or energy?
Looking at this topic in a religious manner, we could claim to have an eternal soul that can never die and will always come back. Although this is certainly assuring of our continued existence, to me it’s also slightly frightening. What happens after all energy is the universe is spent? After entropy so to speak. If all energy in the universe is equally divided over all of space, then what happens to our souls? Do we just spend the rest of eternity floating around in nothingness? Because, that is a guarantee of ending up in Hell eventually, is it not?

The scientific approach says that our energy cannot be destroyed. Once you die, you are buried or cremated, but your energy flows over into other beings. If you’re buried, your energy goes to the worms that eat you. Your energy goes into the air and becomes part of the Earth’s atmosphere, when you're cremated. The scary part here is that ‘you’ might be a chemical reaction in your brain and nerves. That would mean that ‘you’ just cease to exist upon death, and that just your energy gets reused. In that case death would mean the absolute end of you, and that goes against what those children claim to remember.

So, can we conclude that we must have souls? Let’s hope the universe reincarnates as well then.

You’re you today, but me tomorrow.
Neil Degrasse Tyson did an interview with Katy Perry recently. In it he told her about the possibility of our soul not being bound to one single body. What if your memories and knowledge are bound to your body, but your soul travels from one to the other. When you go to sleep, your soul leaves your body and gets to enter any other body it wishes. As soon as it enters the body it gains all knowledge and memories from that body and temporarily forget the ones it had from the last body. That means you could be you today, and be someone else tomorrow. And you wouldn’t even know it. Not really relevant, I just thought it was interesting to consider.

Birthmarks, baby!
What do birthmarks have to do with reincarnation? A lot apparently. In similar cases like the ones above, several kids have described how they died. After tracking down the person they claimed to have been. In several of these cases, the story would check out. The kid’s former self would have indeed died how they described. To make matters even weirder, the kid would have birthmarks on places where he or she said wounds would have been.

Do you have any birthmarks? Coincidentally on a place where a bullet or an arrow could immobilize or even kill you?

Proof of reincarnation.
For the first time in human history, we now have pictures, retina scans, and fingerprints of every person that owns a cellphone. At least we’re very close. We might start to notice weird occurrences in the future where Facebook starts recognising people as deceased people. Maybe Samsung will come out with findings of identical fingerprints from two different people who lived 70 years apart. But even if that did happen, it would be written off as pure coincidence.

In conclusion
I don’t think we’ll ever be able to prove that reincarnation is real, or that the afterlife exists. Every possible proof can always be discarded with a simple argument. Near death experiences could just be the brain hallucinating due to a lack of oxygen. Children talking about past lives could be the parents looking for attention and forcing the kids to put on an act. Ghosts are always the wind or bad electric circuits. There is always an explanation to rationalize what others believe is supernatural or paranormal.

But there are so many accounts of the same types of experiences, so many people who say they saw what happens after death. They can’t all be made up, can they?

https://aliens-and-conspiracies.com/2018/08/25/reincarnation/