Video Title: Is the Soul Real? A Neurosurgeon Makes the Case. 59:21
Premiered May 6, 2025 Sean McDowell Show
Description:
Many scientists and doctors believe that there is no such thing as the soul. Dr. Michael Egnor is a neurosurgeon presents the case that the brain alone does not explain the mind. Using modern neuroscience and his vast surgical experience, he believes there is a spiritual soul that transcends the brain, using fascinating case studies to prove his claim. Today, he’s here to discuss his new book comes out June 3rd.
But first – Additional information:
Same topic, same Doctor, this one shows actual images of the brain of the patients discussed:
Play from 1:48 to 4:03 for the pictures
Intro: Iron Man 3 Inside Killian’s brain
Video Notes:
https://theimmortalmind.org/
Dr. Michael Egnor’s book The Immortal Mind, A Neurosurgeon’s case for the existence of the Soul.
None of my text books said that you could take out half of a persons brain and that they would remain normal.
Wilder Penfield:
Epileptic surgeries, pioneered awake brain surgery, did 1100 awake brain surgeries.
Responsible for mapping the brain.
Mapped by stimulating the surface of the brain with an electrical probe.
Did about 1 million simulations.
Stimulated only 4 things.
- Make them move.
- Make them have a perception, flash of light, here something.
- Make them have an emotion, fear, joy, laughter.
- Could stimulate memories.
He could not stimulate abstract thought, mathematics, history, logic, music.
Penfield, concluded that maybe I can’t stimulate abstract thought because it doesn’t come from the brain.
Penfield looked back at the record of seizures.
No one ever had a seizure where they did calculus.
The seizure experiences were the same as the awake brain surgery experiences.
The Mystery of the Mind: A Critical Study of Consciousness and the Human Brain (Princeton Legacy Library) Paperback – March 25, 2025
Wikipedia:
“Wilder Graves Penfield OM CC CMG FRS[1] (January 26, 1891 – April 5, 1976) was an American-Canadian neurosurgeon.[3] He expanded brain surgery’s methods and techniques, including mapping the functions of various regions of the brain such as the cortical homunculus. His scientific contributions on neural stimulation expand across a variety of topics including hallucinations, illusions, dissociation and déjà vu. Penfield devoted much of his thinking to mental processes, including contemplation of whether there was any scientific basis for the existence of the human soul.”
Penfield found that free will is not a function of the brain.
Patients could always tell the difference between them deciding to move their arm, and Penfield stimulating it.
Wikipedia: Phrenology is a pseudoscience that involves the measurement of bumps on the skull to predict mental traits
Looked for honesty, and integrity, social deviance, but phrenology couldn’t find it.
Modern Neuroscience is kind of like high tech phrenology, aka frontal lobes are the center for abstract thought.
MRI’s seeing spots light up, are weak science.
Neuroscientists don’t understand the relationship between the soul and the brain, and they don’t understand how the brain is wired.
Certain parts of the brain are hardwired.
If you damage one square millimeter of that part of the brain, you can predict with great accuracy what’s going to happen.
Half of the brain are association areas, where they can be removed and thinking remains normal.
Abstract thought is related to these association areas.
What about the cases where a persons brain is damaged and their personality changes, doesn’t this prove that we are reducible to the brain and that there is no soul?
Examples, drink a glass of wine, shows emotional change.
Phineas Gage had a spike through brain, and his personality changed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phineas_Gage
Since there is an emotional part of the brain, that doesn’t mean that there isn’t a soul.
Definition of a soul:
Aquinas = everything about you that makes you different from a dead body.
The thing that makes you alive.
Plants and animals have souls.
Humans have souls.
Our souls are different because they are rational souls = abstract thought, which is a Spiritual Soul.
Our soul is a spirit.
Spiritual Souls, can reason, act freely, are immortal.
You can kill a soul but not a spirit.
Evidence for the soul:
28 minutes in:
Split Brain Experiment:
Cutting your brain in half, does not affect the normalcy of a person.
Some of the perceptual abilities are split, can say the name of an object on one side, but only identify it on the other.
How could a person do comparisons from objects in different brain hemispheres?
What is it that is doing the comparison? Spiritual Soul?
33:30
Is it a soul of the gaps argument?
Materialists do make this argument in debates.
Carl Sagan – absence of evidence, is not evidence of absence.
Not true.
It is evidence, not necessarily proof.
“The best scientific evidence is that the spiritual soul exists”
36:18
Terminal Lucidity:
Terminal patients have these moments of complete lucidity often before death, even in the midst of problems like Alzheimer’s.
From a materialistic standpoint this is hard to put together, and to predict, from a damaged brain.
It points to the idea that there is an aspect of us, beyond the brain.
38:48
Vegetative States:
Brain destroyed and shrunken down to half of normal size.
Asked to think about things, via MRI imaging.
Normal volunteers had the same patterns of imaging.
To prove that it’s not just sound, garbled messages were sent, and the brain did not light up, for both normal people and the one in a vegetative state.
You can communicate with people in the deepest level of coma.
Nurses know not to assume that they can’t be heard, and not to say upsetting things.
43:50
Free Will:
Free will isn’t debatable, there is no intelligent debate about it.
Everyone believes in it, and they live their lives as if they do.
Determinism in Physics has been proven false.
If you don’t have free will then your brain is just a chemistry set.
Neuroscience supports free will.
Penfield found that he could not stimulate the will.
The brain signals can be vetoed. Aka “free won’t”.
People know the difference between internal causation, stimulating the brain, and external causation. People always know the difference between my choice, and brain stimulation.
Free will and reason are not physical things.
The origin of consciousness, information in DNA, and free will, are not physical things.
54:22
Overwhelming scientific evidence for the soul:
Penfield did over a million stimulations of the brain, with no abstract thought.
Split brain surgery.
Deepest level of Coma, can do mathematics.
These powers are unlinked from the physical brain.
All of the examples given above, provide evidence for the spiritual soul.
BOA Questions:
- Are the definitions for Soul, Spirit and Spiritual Soul in line with your definitions?
- Which of the cases for a Spiritual Soul did you find to be the most and least compelling?
- How would you rate the apologetic and evangelistic strength of this argument?
- Did the information inform, impact or change your views on this subject?
- What is your personal belief about your Soul?
- Are you confident in the eternal destiny of you Soul?