By Ted Christopher
The author writes that his article is intended to make some overdue points, the most basic of which is that the scientific understanding of life is easy to question in significant ways. The scientific understanding’s DNA-basis, in particular, has hit an impasse. The associated mystery appears to be consistent with a common premodern understanding of life involving underlying souls and a reincarnation dynamic.
Support for this transcendental dynamic is significant in and of itself, and it also reinvigorates the potential of religious and spiritual perspectives or teachings, including those connected with self inquiry and meditation.
Final suggested points are to watch overdoing the modern infatuation with science (and the intellect), and to stay modest about one’s expectations with regards to meditation. It is OK to plod along in steady fashion!
Scientific materialism is the largely unquestioned basis for modern science’s understanding of life. It also holds enormous sway beyond science and thus has increasingly marginalized religious perspectives. Yet it is easy to find behavioral phenomena from the accepted literature that seriously challenge materialism. A number of these phenomena are very suggestive of reincarnation.
The larger test for science’s paradigm, though, as well as for any potential general import from reincarnation, is the DNA (or genetics)-based model of heredity. If that conception-beget, DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid)-carried model can be confirmed at the individual level then in a very substantial way we would be confirmed as material-only creatures. In particular, can behavioral genetics and personal genomics confirm their DNA-based presumptions? During the last decade enormous efforts have been made to find the DNA origins for a number of health and behavioral tendencies. These efforts have been an “absolutely beyond belief” failure and it is here that the scientific vision faces its biggest challenge.
The common pre-modern reincarnation understanding, on the other hand, fits well on a number of specific conundrums and offers a broad coherence across this unfolding missing heritability mystery. For people trying to make sense of a religious perspective or simply questioning materialism, you should be looking at the missing heritability problem.
Ted Christopher lives in Rochester, New York. He is trained in Computer and Information Science and Mathematics (University of Massachusetts at Amherst). Later in conjunction with research work in biomedical ultrasound he obtained a Masters and a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering (University of Rochester). His outside interests and concerns expanded over the years from sustainability issues to include the modern understanding of life. Over the last twelve years he has investigated basic problems, always bearing in mind explanations offered by the premodern transcendental understanding. As a result of these efforts he has produced some writings, including a book, A Hole in Science.
