Dear Martin,

<<no one chooses their parents>>

I can understand that it is quite difficult to stand the sexual attraction and not be drawn to the first copulating couple in sight without first examining their personal qualities: it does indeed require significant discipline, but don't give up - it's possible!

Shrugging off responsibility gets you into a victim mentality where you tend to blame everyone around you for your misfortune except yourself, especially your parents!

Dear McReal,

<<Perhaps we could move back to science, how it is verified, and how such methodology is applied in population-medicine and the benefits that vaccination engenders .....>>

Benefits are relative to where one wants to go - one cannot refer to "benefits" without having goals in mind.

You're off topic and talking absolute nonsense, Yuyutsu - there is no science to what you're on about, and until you provide proof, you're wrong. Children do not choose their parents, they aren't even conscious before they are conceived. They simply don't exist before they are conceived. And reincarnation is a load of tripe. Where do all the new people come from to cause population growth? Don't answer that question please, you're nonsense flies in the face of dozens of natural processes that you clearly don't comprehend. I suggest you do a little more study on biology and ecosystems, and how the cycle of life operates. You can't prove any of your claims scientifically, you probably can't prove them with anything but anecdote, and you haven't proven anything except that you can talk a lot of crap.

But the idea that people consciously choose their parents prior to contraception is so absurd. If you made a choice, why wouldn't you would remember making it? Don't tell me the impurity of the body restricts access to spiritual form, and hence spiritual memory, because if the spirit is present enough to be affected by how we treat our physical body, then that implies body-spirit interaction. If, as a spirit, we can consciously choose our parents prior to conception, then we can damn well consciously instruct our bodies as spirits too. There is no reason why having a physical form than one of an alternate plane of existence (if it exists) would change our conscious cognitive processes.

I don't have any more patience to debate your cognitive dissonance, either, Yuyutsu, although I'm sure you'll post again. Please stay on topic if you do, but if you are incapable of that, know that an absence of further posts from me in response indicate my continued disbelief in your delusions and my refusal to play your trolling game.

Dear Martin,

As you asked me not to answer your first question, I will not answer it.

Your second question was: "If you made a choice, why wouldn't you would remember making it?"

- Isn't it obvious that in order to remember things one needs a brain?

As to keeping to the topic or otherwise, I understand that the subject of this article is whether or not it is possible to prove that vaccinations are safe.

The article does not ask whether it can be proven that vaccination is MEDICALLY safe (in fact, the word "medical" does not even appear therein). The article does not ask specifically whether for example it can be proven that vaccination does not cause autism (or headaches, heart-problems, multiple-sclerosis, etc.), it simply asks whether it can be proven that vaccinations are safe.

Given such a broad question, all aspects of safety must be taken into account, not only the medical aspects. That includes spiritual safety. Indeed, when considering whether or not to vaccinate, all aspects should be taken into account, including the spiritual aspect.

Yuyutsu,

You say:

"Isn't it obvious that in order to remember things one needs a brain?"

Well spotted!

Has it occurred to you that in order to "make a choice" (as in, "now which parents should I have?") one also needs a brain?

Yuyutsu, there is no such thing as spiritual safety. If there was, it could be measured. There would be metrics. What instead you are serving up is a lot of metaphysical claptrap with no evidence base to support it.

The peculiar notion that one could choose one's parents for example is pure nonsense. You and everyone else arrived here because of a somewhat accidental mixing of chromosomes - half contributed by your mother and half by your father. There is no sure way of knowing in advance, which of those little sperm are going to get to the egg first. Or whether the egg will properly implant. Or whether the embryo will grow to term.

Fancy choosing your parents, only to have your mother come down with Rubella because she had failed to be vaccinated. It would be a real downer.

The point of this article is that if you cannot prove your claims, then they are invalid. It applies to proving or disproving vaccine safety - if you can't prove that there is a risk to spiritual health, than it doesn't apply. Seeing as how you cannot prove a metaphysical spirit at all, than the reverse is also invalid; proving that there isn't a risk to spiritual health becomes a moot point. So you see, if a court orders you to get medical treatment for your children, the "I'm protecting their spirit" defence won't hold up unless you can prove that they have one that needs protecting, and what exactly it is you're protecting them from, particularly in the face of the evidence that without medical treatment, they will suffer very real physical harm, evidence that if proven will result in such a court decision, whether you like it or not and completely regardless of beliefs.

That is what you, and anti-vaccine activists, and other pseudosciency types fail to realise - this article is not about whether or not you can prove that vaccines are safe, it's about where lies the burden of proof. If you were to face such a scenario as outlined in my above example, the burden of proof would be on you to prove your spiritual claims, and the plaintiff to prove that your children need the medical treatment. The judge can only accept on non-bias grounds the evidence that is the most doubt-free. Beliefs that cannot be proven beyond reasonable doubt will be discarded as evidence.