Bill,

Dismissing such a wide range of experiences as "mere vignettes" ignores the statistically significant volume of data.

Testability? Here's a test from those who practice traumatic incident reduction as a therapeutic approach. Conditions resolve when such "past life" experiences are addressed, and persist unresolved when they are ignored.

This of course does not mean that past lives are "real" -- just that they play a role in the psychosomatic vectors of unwanted physical and emotional syndromes.

And if you want to trade aphorisms, I recall Sherlock Holmes saying something about the improbable being necessary when all other explanations are ruled out; something like that, anyway.

Anyway, I think we are both coming from positions of opinion, really. I can't put a lot of words down here that will change yours. It is the nature of conviction to define our experiences in keeping with its mandates.

A