Apparently, Souls Can Be Split: The Moment Sophistry Evolves into a Bizarre Theory

Years ago, I watched a paranormal researcher and a scientist debate reincarnation on television.

The paranormal researcher argued, “Some children have memories of past lives. This is evidence of reincarnation.” The scientist countered that those memories might be mistakes or products of suggestion.

Up to that point, it was a fairly ordinary debate.

Then the scientist asked an interesting question.

“The world’s population keeps growing. If reincarnation means that souls are being reused, where do the additional souls come from?”

It was a fair point. If the total number of souls is fixed, how can population growth be explained?

The paranormal researcher thought for a moment and replied:

“Souls can be split.”

I could not help laughing.

I had no idea souls came with such a convenient feature.

And if they can be split, what is the relationship between the original soul and the new one? Do they each inherit half of the memories from a previous life? Or are the memories copied?

The questions are endless.

But every one of them can be answered by adding yet another rule to the story.

That is precisely the problem.

The World Grows More Complicated to Protect an Assumption

A similar pattern can be found in the geocentric model of the universe.

If you assume that the universe revolves around Earth, you need the sun and planets to follow complicated paths to explain their movements.

Of course, it is possible to describe the motion of celestial bodies using a coordinate system with Earth as its origin.

But if you want to explain the motion of the solar system according to the laws of physics, it is far more natural to place the sun—the object with by far the greatest mass—at the center.

Yet if the assumption that “Earth does not move” must be defended at all costs, the surrounding celestial bodies have to perform increasingly complicated movements.

Instead of using a theory to explain reality, people keep extending the theory to protect the original assumption.

That structure fascinates me.

Apparently, a Flat Earth Is No Problem Either

Even today, there are people known as flat-earthers who believe that Earth is flat.

If Earth is flat, what lies at its edge?

According to some of them, Antarctica is surrounded by an enormous wall of ice that prevents humans from leaving.

Then why has no one been able to verify the existence of this wall?

Because governments around the world are supposedly working together to conceal it.

It is a magnificent theory.

If a photograph shows that Earth is round, simply call it a government fabrication. If scientists object, say they are participating in the conspiracy.

Every time contradictory evidence appears, expand the conspiracy, and the theory can never lose.

The price, however, is an extraordinary scenario in which governments, scientists, and astronauts across the world maintain the same secret for generations.

Splitting souls seems modest by comparison.

People Would Rather Add New Rules Than Admit They Were Wrong

It is easy to laugh at stories like these, but similar things happen in everyday life.

In work meetings, some people suddenly introduce conditions that no one has ever heard before when someone points out a contradiction in their argument.

“No, that is a special case.”

“There are actually other circumstances involved.”

“That is what I meant from the beginning.”

One new detail after another appears, none of which was included in the original explanation.

Politicians seem especially fond of this style of argument.

Of course, when new facts emerge, revising an explanation is entirely reasonable.

The problem arises when someone adds new reasoning not to explain new facts, but to make it appear that they were never wrong.

At that point, the discussion is no longer an effort to discover the truth. It becomes a defensive battle to protect the original claim.

And every time one defensive line is breached, an even stranger rule appears.

For years, I remembered the paranormal researcher from that television program as nothing more than an amusing story.

But when I think about it, he was not doing anything particularly unusual.

All of us are tempted to invent a convenient explanation rather than admit that we were wrong.

Ordinary people, however, merely add another excuse. To solve the population problem, the paranormal researcher split a soul in two.