“Consciousness is the means, not the object, of thought. We can’t know what consciousness is because we see and know everything through it.” (The Immortal Mind, page 166)
” . . . NDE research actually shows that by applying the methods of science to the nonphysical aspects of our world, we can describe reality much more accurately than if we limit our science to nothing but physical matter and energy . . .
All the materialist attempts to explain NDEs away that we’ve encountered involve implausible scenarios. Were it not for a strong materialistic ideological bias among some scientists, none of them would be taken seriously in the scientific community . . .
It often appears that the underlying conflict in these matters is not primarily about evidence but more about a momentous clash between worldviews . . .
If this is accurate, then it seems that even strong evidential considerations are less likely to change minds. We must then focus on ensuring that the information is available to those who are willing to consider it.” (The Immortal Mind, pages 118 and 119, quoting Bruce Greyson, authors Michael Egnor and Denyse O’Leary, Gary Habermas, and then the authors again)
Creation Has Issues
The Immortal Mind: A Neurosurgeon’s Case for the Existence of the Soul by Dr. Michael Egnor and Denyse O’Leary (2025, 226 pages), our August Book of the Month, is an important one for theists, Christian evangelicals, and worldview fans along the lines of Dr. Francis Collins’ The Language of God (2007), Dr. Eben Alexander’s Proof of Heaven (2012), and Dr. Stephen Meyer’s Return of the God Hypothesis (2021). I met Collins at a retreat soon after he published The Language of God (where he presented the book) and have reviewed Alexander’s and Meyer’s books via their Praxis Circle interviews. The Discovery Institute, where Meyer directs the Center for Science and Culture, featured The Immortal Mind when published in June.
Dr. Michael Egnor, a Professor of Neurosurgery at the Renaissance School of Medicine at Stony Brook University, has performed over 7,000 brain surgeries. His coauthor, Denyse O’Leary, is a professional science writer focusing on creation, science, and spirituality. Each one of these doctors (Egnor, Collins, Alexander, and Meyer) are brilliant scientists, and each spent significant periods of their young lives as materialist atheists. Importantly, scientific evidence and personal life experience led each man to become a theist—and, in Egnor’s, Collins’, and Meyer’s cases—to become Christians. The threshold issue The Immortal Mind addresses is whether the Supernatural realm exists (as depicted in our worldview scheme below, described here) and whether a mind exists to connect our bodies as Human Beings to that realm.
A Brain Surgeon’s Findings
As presented in the book, the overwhelming evidence is that there is a supernatural realm, including human consciousness, with a mind that connects, influences, and directs our body. In other words, science should make room for dualism that would provide for connecting a supernatural world to the natural.
Of course, this is not neuroscience’s majority view. In passages like the long one above, the book strongly suggests this results from good, old-fashioned worldview bias, as described by Thomas Kuhn in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962).
Praxis Circle’s Ten Worldview Pillars
Nonetheless, the supernatural realm and intelligent design seem highly credible under close examination and have growing scientific acceptance. Lastly, there’s no war between faith and science. They work together to produce the most reasonable conclusions given the evidence.
My own view is that philosophy, common sense, and human experience alone refute atheism and materialism (every conscious thought being subject to philosophy), which might explain why science seems to be catching up to the ancients’ belief in the soul. I respect anyone who disagrees or even might laugh at me here. In fact, we are probably already laughing at each other.
It’s important to highlight before moving on, however, that Egnor and O’Leary do not see the soul as a ghost moving into or out of the human body. The soul is simply consciousness via all that makes us alive as human beings: mind, reason, perception, emotions, free will. The mind does not have a location in the brain, and the brain is definitely not a machine. The mind will use what’s available from the brain, but it can also function seemingly miraculously without it.
But what is a miracle, anyway?
Quite frankly, as far as I know, no one has a clue how the mind works or controls the body. “Miracles” are everywhere around us, as in life itself.
And how many miracles do we need to witness with “consciousness” to confirm that miracles happen everyday, if not every moment? (The answer: just one.) So, on with the extremely important debate over the mind . . .
The Theist Versus Materialist Debate
Meyer would say that materialists have at least five serious problems in science (other than the extent of non-material and non-causal activity that shows up daily across common, scientific observation): the Big Bang, the Goldilocks Universe (perfect conditions for life on earth), how life began, the Cambrian Explosion, and consciousness or the mind/body phenomenon. My interview with Meyer did not focus on the mind/body problem, which is the subject of The Immortal Mind, but Meyer did comment on it in the clip below. (I apologize for interrupting him somewhat with encouragement; we were having a “mind meld.”)
Before moving on, it might be fun to consider clips of two other Praxis Circle Contributors who moved mid-life in opposite worldview directions.
Dr. Bart Ehrman was a Christian who became an atheist and materialist, primarily because the problem of evil convinced him there’s no god. Conversely, Dr. Eben Alexander (mentioned above) was an atheist, materialist, Harvard brain surgeon who eventually became a theistic idealist (all is consciousness). Arguably, Alexander experienced more than an NDE (Near Death Experience)—an ADE (After Death Experience). As a brain surgeon like Egnor, Alexander believes the medical record shows his brain was completely dead for days. In any case, Ehrman went from theism to total materialism, and Alexander went from materialism to total theism. While science and history are involved in both cases, it was personal experience that really transformed each person. As we shall see, the same is true for Egnor.
Summary of the Evidence
So, what is the evidence that The Immortal Mind offers that is so convincing? I offer a bullet point summary below with the caveat that each point cannot receive airtight, “bulletproof” treatment in the space allowed. If interested, you’ll need to turn to the book’s skilled development. I submit that if the door to the supernatural isn’t at least cracked ajar by the end of the book, you’ll be finding yourself stranded on an island of materialist presuppositions of your own design:
- There is an innate duality in all human beings where mind, reason, and free will directs the body that cannot be located in the brain.
- Scientists can divide the brain in half so that each half cannot communicate, but they cannot divide perception, reason, and abstract thought.
- Children born with large, key parts of the brain missing manage to be normal, utilizing high levels of reason.
- Even some humans with totally missing brains show consciousness.
- Conjoined twins sharing the exact same brain can live totally separate inner lives.
- We know little about memory and observe that the mind can break through to communicate when the brain is all but dead.
- The human mind has reasoning and ethics that plants and animals do not have.
- The mind or consciousness can operate outside the brain or beyond death (irrefutable evidence from countless and common dreams, comas, NDEs, and ADEs).
- There appears to be an ultimate reality experienced beyond that’s “more real” than the one we’re all conscious of and living in now.
Relating the Soul to the Bigger Picture
By the end, Egnor and O’Leary do a masterful job building their case for the mind and soul, and they weave it into a broader, comprehensive picture of theism based on Abrahamic monotheism. They place the mind/body phenomenon squarely into a Western apologetic unity that’s been developed over thousands of years by the great Classical, Jewish, Christian, Islamic, and generally modern Western philosophers and theologians. In my opinion, they provide a bulletproof case for the existence of free will. They touch on why panpsychism and other theories proposed as alternative explanations can be more problematic than vanilla, supernatural/natural dualism. Finally, they explain why the existence and future of AI present no problem for the existence of and the continuing need for the human mind. Again, brains are not machines, and humans are not software and hardware.
The Immortal Soul is a terrific book, for which I offer little criticism, other than to say—as Egnor and O’Leary recognize—they could be wrong. To get an overview from Egnor himself, see this interview/podcast. (One serious criticism: the book needs an index.) Yet, being wrong seems unlikely based on my own current knowledge, having reviewed all sides of the mind/body debate over many years.
(I will listen to anyone. A good, complementary book offered by The Discovery Institute published right after The Immortal Mind is Plato’s Revenge: The New Science of the Immaterial Genome by David Klinghoffer. It seems new scientific paradigms rarely spring from only one or two prophets.)
In the end, the secret sauce of The Immortal Mind is the story told in the beginning on pages 7 and 8. And that would be the personal experience Egnor had with God involving his certainly autistic little son. Such a gut-wrenching experience would bring any father to his knees, seeking love, forgiveness, and mercy. When God speaks to us, we should listen.
I had a similar experience at a similar age, but cannot tell Egnor’s “Abraham and Isaac” story. Yet, that story alone might bring you salvation. We all want a born again experience, but as some cited here will attest—be careful what you wish for.
Only faith with reason can take us to this supernatural place: God is gracious, in control, sound of mind, and with us all.
