Neurosurgeon Michael Egnor, author with Denyse O’Leary of The Immortal Mind: (Worthy, June 3, 2025), was interviewed at The Stream recently by John Zmirak: Here’s an excerpt from the second of three parts:

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JZ: You show in the book that there are important pieces of evidence that undermine materialism, based in brain science. Could you please summarize the most important discoveries that invalidate materialism, in your view?

ME: Wilder Penfield was a pioneering neurosurgeon and leading neuroscientist who worked in the mid-20th century. He began his 40-year career with the question: “Does the brain explain the mind completely?” Early in his career he answered, “Yes, it does.” By the end of his career, he answered “No, it doesn’t.” He started out as a materialist and ended as a dualist who saw compelling evidence for the soul. This is my story too.

The first thing Penfield noticed is that in all of the medical research on seizures, there has never been a report of a seizure that caused abstract thought. This is still true today. Seizures are random activations of the brain. Sometimes they cause unconsciousness, but when people remain conscious, they only have one or more of four symptoms: muscle movements, perceptions, memories or emotions. People never have abstract thought as a seizure — there are no arithmetic seizures or philosophy seizures or morality seizures.

Penfield asked: “Why are there no mind seizures?” By mind, Penfield meant abstract thought seizures, reason seizures, math seizures, etc. It’s a great question. After all, much of our time is spent thinking of abstract things (like the topics in this article), but seizures never evoke thoughts like these. Penfield concluded that the most parsimonious explanation for this scientific fact is that abstract thought doesn’t come from the brain.

Abstract thoughts — reason, concepts, morality — are spiritual thoughts, not material thoughts. Penfield explored this evidence in awake brain surgery, in which he stimulated and mapped the brains of 1,100 patients over 40 years. Never once did he evoke abstract thought in at least hundreds of thousands separate brain stimulations. He concluded, as I have, that abstract thought doesn’t come from the brain. It comes from our spirit.

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Here’s an excerpt from the first part: Why the mind matters: No free will = no guilt — thus no innocence. Michael Egnor spells out the true consequences of materialism: We come to be seen as animals to be managed by government. Materialism, Egnor says, is rarely defended explicitly; rather, objections are brushed off and prominent objectors may be Canceled.

Here’s an excerpt from Part 3: Michael Egnor at The Stream: How materialists refute themselves. In Part 3, he also talks about how fellow health care personnel and patients have responded to The Immortal Mind, which makes a case for the immortal soul. Egnor: People I work with in the operating room and clinics and even patients tell me that they read our book and really liked it. They are glad we are speaking up.

Here are the whole of Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.