Religion & traditions evidence.
World religions and traditions, scored as systems. This hub collects the relevant claims, strongest and weakest evidence positions, source records, and map/library views for the cluster.
Related research reports
Reincarnation and Children’s Past-Life Memories
A source-linked synthesis of past-life memory cases, birthmark claims, reincarnation interpretations, and skeptical alternatives.
Psi and Anomalous Experience Evidence
A balanced synthesis of telepathy, precognition, remote viewing, presentiment, psychokinesis, and skeptical methodological objections.
Mystical Experience and Altered States
A source-linked synthesis of mystical experience, meditation, psychedelics, DMT entities, out-of-body experiences, lucid dreams, and synchronicity.
Meaning, Fate, and Free Will Evidence
A careful synthesis of free will, determinism, compatibilism, fate, soul contracts, karma, life purpose, suffering, and the claim that everything happens for a reason.
Strongest claims in this topic
Meditation can reveal non-dual awareness
Reports of self-less, choiceless awareness are remarkably consistent across traditions and now well-documented in contemplative neuroscience.
Enlightenment / awakening
Buddhist bodhi, Hindu moksha, Christian unitive states, Sufi fana — a remarkably consistent endpoint described across traditions, with growing neuroscience confirmation. The 'what it actually is' is the open question.
Reincarnation is real
If past-life cases are taken seriously, reincarnation is the most economical narrative — but several other models also fit the data.
God / Theism
The claim that a personal, conscious deity created and continues to engage with the universe — considered here at the generic level rather than within any specific tradition.
Pantheism — the universe is divine
The view that the universe and God are identical — divinity is not separate from nature but is nature itself, in its totality.
Souls reincarnate to learn lessons
A widespread spiritual interpretation. There is no independent way to test whether lessons are being assigned, completed, or graded.
Weakest or most speculative claims
Curses — supernatural harm directed at a person or place
Believed in everywhere, supported by zero controlled evidence. Documented effects (illness, death after being cursed) are well-explained by nocebo, social ostracism, and chronic stress.
Demons — superhuman malevolent intermediary beings
Cross-tradition belief with no direct evidence. Possession, oppression and 'demonic attack' phenomena map cleanly onto sleep paralysis, dissociation, psychosis, and post-traumatic states.
The evil eye — harm transmitted by envious gaze
A cross-cultural belief from Mediterranean to South Asian traditions, with elaborate protective practices. No evidence that the gaze itself does anything; the harm comes from the believing.
Hell — a postmortem realm of the damned
Massively documented in tradition, zero direct evidence, and substantial harm record from belief — eternal-torment doctrines have warped lives for centuries.
Key verified sources
Gives the nondual meditation page a neuroscience anchor while keeping metaphysical interpretations separate from the measured meditation states.
Exactly the sort of review the user-facing example refers to — written by the principal investigator at DOPS.
The most detailed primary case-archive specifically targeting the birthmark/wound correspondence claim.
Important because the reincarnation case literature depends heavily on whether patterns survive outside Stevenson's own fieldwork.
Neural correlates of nondual awareness in meditation
Gives the nondual meditation page a neuroscience anchor while keeping metaphysical interpretations separate from the measured meditation states.
Children's reports of past-life memories: A review
Exactly the sort of review the user-facing example refers to — written by the principal investigator at DOPS.
Reincarnation and Biology: A Contribution to the Etiology of Birthmarks and Birth Defects
The most detailed primary case-archive specifically targeting the birthmark/wound correspondence claim.
Replication studies of cases suggestive of reincarnation by three independent investigators
Important because the reincarnation case literature depends heavily on whether patterns survive outside Stevenson's own fieldwork.
Birthmarks and birth defects corresponding to wounds on deceased persons
A shorter primary paper that makes the birthmark/wound claim directly, useful beside the much larger 1997 monograph.
American children who claim to remember previous lives
Useful because it weakens the objection that all cases are simply products of cultures with explicit reincarnation belief.
Anomalistic Psychology: Exploring Paranormal Belief and Experience
Major reference for the sceptical / cognitive-explanation side of psi-style claims.
Mysticism
Use this as the conceptual anchor for non-dual, unitive, and psychedelic-mystical claims. It supports the seriousness of the experience category without treating the metaphysical interpretation as settled.
Afterlife
Direct background for any claim about whether something of the person survives death, and a useful guardrail against treating survival as a single simple proposition.
Division of Perceptual Studies
The leading academic group publishing on cases of children claiming past-life memories and on Greyson's NDE work.