Michael Egnor and Denyse O’Leary, the authors of The Immortal Mind: (2025), were interviewed by Wesley J. Smith at Humanize, the podcast of the Center for Human Exceptionalism.

From the Introduction:

Whether we have souls and what happens to us after death — obliteration, reincarnation, heaven, hell — is a question about which humans have obsessed for as long as we have records of our existence. Indeed, it may be the ultimate question, for as a suicidal Hamlet laments in Shakespeare’s most immortal soliloquy:

“To die, to sleep; To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub; For in that sleep of death what dreams may come When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, Must give us pause…”

Wesley’s guests on today’s program respond to Hamlet’s dilemma in their new book The Immortal Mind: A Neurosurgeon’s Case for the Existence of the Soul — which argues both that there is abundant scientific data demonstrating the immaterial existence of the human person and that this reality continues after we die. [1:02:11]

Show Notes

• The Walter Bradley Center for Natural & Artificial Intelligence
• The Immortal Mind: A Neurosurgeon’s Case for the Existence of the Soul by Michael Egnor and Denyse O’Leary
• The Spiritual Brain: A Neuroscientist’s Case for the Existence of the Soul by Mario Beauregard and Denyse O’Leary
• “Why the Soul Doesn’t — and Can’t — Weigh Anything” by Denyse O’Leary
• Dr. Michael Egnor Reads From His New Book The Immortal Mind

From “Why the Soul Doesn’t — and Can’t — Weigh Anything”

Traditionally, the human soul has been understood as quite real but immaterial and non-local. It is instantiated in a body, which is material and local. In that respect, some of the characteristics of the soul are like those of an idea.

Ideas are immaterial but, if they make any difference, they become instantiated in material things. The idea of patriotism, for example, is often instantiated in a flag. Thus, a great deal of etiquette and emotion develops around the flag. Anyone who thinks that patriotism is not real because it is “just a concept” has not paid attention to patriots reacting to an instance of flag-burning, let alone war…

Even some things that we think are very material, like our bank accounts, turn out, on examination, to mostly be a series of ideas and assumptions shared by many people.

Today, the study of the soul focuses more on near-death experiences, especially those where the information that the experiencer provides can be confirmed.