I think we should clearly separate between science and materialism view.
Materalism is just that materials exist. And it cannot even conceive of any mechanism for rebirth to happen, not in the full way that our Buddhist text requires, eg. rebirth to Brahma, formless realms, etc.
Science is a method of investigation of reality, which heavily rely on observation, measurement, objective verification etc.
Also when I say evidences, I prefer to make it closer to court of law evidences, rather than scientific evidences as it is clear that the scientific community has not approved of rebirth yet in general, despite so many of the cases are published in peer reviewed journals.
Science on the philosophy of relying on evidences to judge competing hypothesis is compatible with kalama sutta.
Now kalama sutta is appropriate to be used here as the rebirth evidences is mainly of the function to guide people directly into Buddhism or to guide secular Buddhists into Buddhism. It is to those people whose faith in the texts are not as strong.
So kalama sutta basically says, don’t rely on text/tradition/teacher, or logic/one’s own view etc alone but when one knows for oneself that the qualities leads to good etc then adopt it. Basically empirical findings, in Buddhism, we say the results of practice, in science it is experimental results.
Science’s texts are the papers produced, text books, the logic includes the maths, the derivation of formulas, basically most of theorectical physics.
Buddhism’s results from the dhamma practise in as far as psychological benefits go, is approved by even secular Buddhists. So to appeal to that alone to justify secular Buddhists to believe in the whole of the dhamma is not enough. It is skillful means to use what they believe most in: the weight of evidences. If they are able to get the cloud of materalism out from science.
Thus, there is a place for rebirth evidences, it is for secular Buddhists. And given that most schools in the world do not teach the kids that rebirth is a fact, eventually when they come to Buddhism, they will compare and contrast their faith in science which has given us technology vs their faith in Buddhist texts. For those who knows the possibility of secular Buddhism that would be their most attractive option.
It is a lost for the true dhamma for us Buddhists not to use rebirth evidences as a means to convince these new Buddhists to come to the right view.
I have reservations of doing this for the following reasons:
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If the science is subject to change. eg. cosmology is a very changable science currently, we might choose the wrong model of steady state theory instead of big bang theory, if we emphasized on beginningless as most important to Buddhism rather than expansion of cosmos. This doesn’t seems to apply for basic things like earth is round, which is now just facts, or water is H2O and it’s isotopes. No new science would disprove that H2O when we gather enough of them have the property we associate with water. Rebirth evidences I believe is akin to the later. No new evidences can erase the past cases that there already are kids who can recall a memory of a dead person by no normal means.
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The connection is not directly matching. Eg. using blackholes to compare it to irreversibility of Nibbāna. When Hawking radiation is discovered, this would be an embarrassing match up. Rebirth evidences is a direct match to rebirth.
Also, there’s tons of search on secular Mindfulness, meditation etc. I don’t think it’s skillful to throw them all out. Physics and Buddhism is more speculative in nature.
I thought he is one of the super strong militant atheists?
In DN 1, on explaining how prophets comes about, there are people who can recall just one past lives and have wrong views about MahaBrahma as the one God. So I don’t think past life recall is that hard a supernormal power to get and it’s need not be always associated with right view.
Thanks for prompting. I just spend the last 2 vassa reading the Jataka and dhammapada stories.
Here it is: Ja 538 The Birth Story about (the Wise) Mūgapakkha (Mahānipāta)
as be pondered, “From whence have I come into this palace?” by his recollection of his former births, he remembered that he had come from the world of the gods and that after that he had suffered in hell, and that then he had been a king in that very city. While he pondered to himself, “I was a king for twenty years and then I suffered eighty thousand years in the Ussada hell, and now again I am born in this house of robbers, and my father, when four robbers were brought before him, uttered such a cruel speech as must lead to hell; if I become a king I shall be born again in hell and suffer great pain there,” he became greatly alarmed, his golden body became pale and faded like a lotus crushed by the hand, and he lay thinking how he could escape from that house of robbers.
Our Bodhisatta was able to recall past life as a baby (one month old), hence he was determined to not become a king to commit bad kamma.