The Immortal Soul: A Neurosurgeon’s Perspective

There’s something in the mind that’s not in the brain

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The Discovery Institute takes a lot of flak. As a platform that promotes Intelligent Design, its work is often labeled as pseudoscience, a term that tends to be deployed against anything that departs from prevailing norms. I have tended to view what it does more as philosophy—a logical inference based on scientific data. That said, it seems to me that they are a group of serious and principled thinkers who should be getting a lot less flak and a little more slack.

Dr. Michael Egnor is a case in point. He’s a seasoned neurosurgeon at Stony Brook who has performed over 7,000 brain operations and has decades of experience. In a new video, he offers a compelling neuroscientific exploration of the soul and its immortality and challenges the standard materialist notion that the mind is solely a product of the brain. Drawing on patient cases, historical research, and reflections on consciousness, he argues that the human soul exists as a distinct, non-material entity that is endowed with intellect and free will, and is naturally immortal.

Like many scientists, Dr. Egnor began his journey as a materialist and atheist. Enthralled by neuroanatomy in medical school, he assumed that the brain held the key to human consciousness and identity. But his encounters with a series of remarkable patients changed his perspective.

A third of a brain but full consciousness

He describes a young woman who was born missing two-thirds of her brain, but is nevertheless thriving as an honor student, and Joshua, a boy with a similar condition, who is now a competitive high school athlete despite a hospital ethics committee’s initial recommendation to withhold feeding at his birth. Another patient, Maggie, a brilliant musician with a master’s degree, lacks most of her cerebellum, while Nicholas, who only has a brainstem, displays full emotional consciousness despite severe physical limitations.

These and other cases prompted Dr. Egnor to ask, “Is the brain completely the organ of the mind? Clearly in some ways it is, but in other ways it may not be.”

There’s a lot of neuroscience that supports Dr. Egnor’s view. Wilder Penfield was a pioneer in epilepsy surgery who performed brain operations on patients who were awake. He noted that while seizures could trigger movements, sensations, emotions, or memories, “nobody ever has a calculus seizure.” Penfield found no location in the brain for abstract thought or reasoning, and concluded that “that aspect of the mind isn’t from the brain.”

Similarly, Roger Sperry’s Nobel Prize-winning split-brain research showed that patients with disconnected hemispheres (who have had a corpus callosotomy) still integrate information normally, like comparing arrows seen separately by each hemisphere. This led researcher Justine Sergent to conclude, “There’s something in the mind that’s not in the brain.” Dutch cognitive neuroscientist Yair Pinto’s studies further demonstrated that patients synthesize stories across hemispheres, suggesting a non-physical consciousness unifying fragmented brain input.

Is free will in the brain?

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Could free will be thought of as another dimension beyond the brain? Penfield’s experiments famously showed that patients could distinguish self-initiated actions from those induced by brain stimulation, with no errors across thousands of trials, leading him to assert, “free will is not a brain function.” Benjamin Libet’s research found that brain activity precedes simple decisions, like flipping a switch, but vetoing that decision produced no corresponding brain spike. As such, he concluded that “You can’t blame your brain.” Dr. Egnor connects this discovery to spiritual notions of human agency.

Near-death experiences (NDEs) further bolster Dr. Egnor’s argument. He cites Pam Reynolds, a 1991 aneurysm patient who, while clinically dead, described watching her surgery, accurately recalling instruments and music. These types of NDEs, which are found in about 20% of cases, are very useful as their details can be verified post hoc. Citing a well-known aspect of NDEs, Dr. Egnor notes, “Nobody in the medical literature who’s had a near-death experience has ever seen a living person at the other end of the tunnel,” only deceased loved ones, enhancing their credibility.

Neuroscientist Adrian Owen’s incredible research on patients in persistent vegetative states demonstrated that 40% could respond to questions, even performing mental math, despite near-total brain damage. “You can communicate with people in the deepest level of coma,” Owen found, challenging materialist assumptions.

A hybrid soul

Dr. Egnor defines the soul as a kind of hybrid: The material part governs movement, sensation, emotion, and memory, and the spiritual part encompasses intellect and free will. Unlike computation, which lacks “aboutness,” he sees the mind as inherently intentional. “The mind is not a kind of computation,” he argues, “it’s the opposite.” Animals possess a sort of material soul, enabling perception and memory, but humans alone have a spiritual soul capable of abstract thought and moral choice. “We are the only living creatures whose souls are spirits,” he asserts, distinguishing humans in their capacity to contemplate God or calculus.

Dr. Egnor argues that material entities—like a chair reduced to dust or a body that disintegrates—die through disintegration, but the soul, as a spirit, cannot. He likens it to the number eight: its written form may burn, but its concept endures. “Your spiritual soul has no off switch,” he proposes, echoing Thomas Aquinas, who suggested NDE visions occur through divine light, not physical eyes. This natural immortality aligns neuroscience with theology, portraying the soul as timeless and indivisible.

Yes, this line of reasoning certainly smacks of theology (which many suggest is the thinly veiled goal of the Discovery Institute), but at the same time, he’s simply making use of readily available scientific facts to make his case. Does that make it stealth theology or just science? I’d say his work bridges science, philosophy, and faith, affirming the soul as a testament to humanity’s divine design, unbound by the brain’s mortal constraints. What do you think?