Michael Egnor debates the nature of mind with Christof Koch and Michael Shermer

A little while ago, we welcomed Dr. Michael Egnor and Denyse O’Leary onto the Knight and Rose Show to discuss their new book “The Immortal Mind: A Neurosurgeon’s Case for the Existence of the Soul”. Desert Rose and I really had fun interviewing them, and their book has gotten rave reviews from our friends. But Dr. Egnor has also been going into hostile forums to defend his views.

Let’s start with the first one. Michael Shermer is a well-known skeptic (I would say atheist) who occasionally interviews people who disagree with him, such as Dr. Stephen C. Meyer.

Well, he moderated a discussion with Dr. Egnor and an opponent, neuroscientist Christof Koch:

This was a cordial debate where Dr. Egnor answered specific cases from the field of neuroscience that challenged his views.

But a more recent debate on the Piers Morgan show featured Dr. Egnor facing off against Dr. Michael Shermer:

In this one, the main topic was near-death experiences and terminal lucidity, both of which were brought up in our episode of the Knight and Rose Show. Those are two good pieces of data that I think refute the materialist view of mind, which holds it to be identical to the brain.

Sadly, on a show like that, they tend to focus on a small number of topics, which is why I recommend our episode that was published on May 31st, 2025.

We covered those topics, and many more:

In our episode, we discussed:

• Dr. Egnor’s experiences as a neurosurgeon, especially cases where there was significant brain loss, but no loss of mental capacities
• different views of mind: materialism (mind is brain), substance dualism (mind as separate substance), Thomistic dualism (mind and brain integrated but separable), and idealism (everything is mind)
• Wilder Penfield’s research on epilepsy patients, which showed the limits of brain stimulation, and also supported free will
• how split-brain surgeries give support for a unified, immaterial mind
• Benjamin Libet’s free will experiments that showed the existence of “free won’t”, giving more support to an immaterial mind
• cases of conjoined twins that share brain structures but have different personalities
• near-death experiences, especially the Pam Reynolds case, which strongly supports the idea of an immaterial mind that survives while the brain is inactive
• how computers cannot develop consciousness or free will by adding computational power
• how the human mind does not have an evolutionary pathway of gradual development
• cases of terminal lucidity, where a patient who had previously shown diminished mental processing due to brain damage suddenly regains their clarity

So, if you haven’t been following this new argument against naturalism, it might be a good idea to either listen to our episode, or if you are a fan of one of the skeptics, then listen to one of the debates. The book “The Immortal Mind” has many, many more details than our podcast episode.

I am always happy to add to my list of arguments for theism, and against naturalism.

So far, I have:

• • origin of the universe
  • cosmic fine-tuning
  • information in the origin of life
  • irreducible complexity and molecular machines
  • biological big bangs in the fossil record
  • habitability – discoverability correlation
  • first-person consciousness and free will
  • moral realism and objective moral values

Does anyone know any others that I can add to this list? No philosophical arguments! Except the moral argument! Philosophy is just too squishy for engineers. I like hard evidence when I’m making a positive case! Run up the score!