The UFO files are online and the space aliens are still missing
There’s nothing there. Look, maybe we are alone in the universe. Or maybe not. But real space exploration is the only way we can hope to find out.
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Denyse O'Leary
What Is Consciousness Actually Supposed To Do?
The Royal Society offers sixteen theories of the evolutionary function of consciousness. The trouble is, it's not clear what consciousness even isSome of the theories of animal mind are interesting but no one really has any idea how consciousness originated.
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Bad news for AI in education: Major paper retracted
The good news is that better educators are recognizing that physical literacy skills are important too. We are minds and bodies, not digital programs.
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Orwell: Totalitarianism Starts As an Internal Mental State
While the scene has certainly changed in the last eighty years, the effort to control information is still vigorousOn Saturday, I looked at Matt Johnson’s thoughts on George Orwell’s vital but comparatively unknown 1946 essay, “The Prevention of Literature.” Orwell, famous for Animal Farm (1945) and Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), wanted to “make political writing into an art.” He was well aware that most competitors for public attention simply wanted to make political writing a reliable form of mass brainwashing. He hoped to find a public that sought an alternative. He published “Prevention” (longish, at 5500 words) in Polemic, a short-lived British intellectual magazine (1945–47), which featured work by such notables as Henry Miller, Bertrand Russell, A. J. Ayer, and Dylan Thomas. Intellectual freedom as “violence” Intellectual freedom, as we have always been told, is only ever one generation Read More ›
The Surest Way to Squelch Intellectual Freedom: Make It Impossible
As reading and writing skills plummet, the chatbot may turn out to be a bigger enemy of intellectual freedom than the censorAutomated writing leads to a decline in intellectual skills for the same reasons as automated walking would lead to a decline in motor skills.
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We humans are not digital. We are body and mind conjoined
We struggle with the pencil or pen until our bodies begin to express what our minds are learning and thinking. Or … we don’t — and the results show.
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Does “The Immortal Mind” try to prove the existence of God?
Most of what we had to say, based on neuroscience and similar topics, could fit nicely into a Buddhist universe where the mind is real but there isn’t a God.
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How Much Does the Mind Weigh? How Long Is It?
A recent article at Popular Mechanics provides a chance to reflect on mind vs. matter — and materialismPeople are entitled to their own definitions of materialism, of course. But once we focus on a standard one, we see that it is false to the reality of the human mind.
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Who Expected Richard Dawkins To Blow Up Darwinism?
To the astonishment and dismay of a computer pro who once admired him, Dawkins, who has a materialist view of human consciousness, has convinced himself that a chatbot is consciousIf this is what happens when people think that human consciousness has a purely material evolutionary origin, it is a strong argument for the opposite view.
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Near-Death Experiences: Do Brain Jolts Really Explain Them?
In the wake of evidence for changed lives, attempts to debunk NDEs as “just this or that” are starting to sound less certainMaterialist theories intended to explain away NDEs need only sound plausible and scientific; they need not enlighten. A new one will be along shortly anyway.
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How Do You Cram the Universe Into A Story — and Keep it Focused?
Philosopher Stephen Meyer narrates the film but never gets in the story’s wayAt last, the end of materialism escapes the lecture room; it becomes a story about real people in real time in the midst of a civilizational struggle.
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Toward a True — and Also Scientific — Picture of the Human Mind
Alexander Batthyány offers a personal anecdote about Nobel Prize-winning neuroscientist Sir John Eccles that might help point the wayBatthyány also expressed concern that a non-material/spiritual understanding of topics like terminal lucidity risks being taken over today by New Age nonsense.
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The Thin Spaces of Our Lives Where Strange Things Do Happen
In the discussion with Batthyány, Egnor suggested that people who inexplicably become more lucid near death are drawing closer to the light of God.
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Consciousness… a Computer or a Magnifying Glass?
At ID the Future, Egnor and Batthyány offer some further thoughts on the ongoing mystery: How does the human mind clear at the point of death?Neither shortage of oxygen nor the presence of relatives account for the sudden release from confusion or dementia.
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How Sudden Lucidity at Death Became a Science Topic
Psychologist Alexander Batthyány and neurosurgeon Michael Egnor discuss the implications of clear consciousness despite deadly illnessSerious research on terminal lucidity will immensely damage the sort of materialism that Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker champions.
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Free Will vs. the Totalitarian Temptation
If our thoughts and choices really are wholly determined, what follows?Pundits and politicians alike are tempted by the idea that, if there are no higher powers or greater realities to answer to, they can force people to fulfil their visions with impunity.
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Does Quantum Mechanics Help Us Make Sense of the Soul?
Quantum mechanics seems to be the game-changer that Albert Einstein (1879–1955) feared it would be. It is certain to liven up discussions about the soulShermer told Mind Matters News after the event that he would bump up his credence in the existence of souls from 1% to 2% out of 99%.
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Skeptic Michael Shermer’s (Non)-Vision of the Soul
Responding to Michael Egnor at COSM 2025, he said that the soul is an explanation but not a good explanation for our relationship to our bodiesHe sees words like “mind” and “soul” as just linguistic placeholders until we have a fully material explanation for how we function.
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What if all that hate is just a few angry people with keyboards?
X recently allowed users to find out that many loud voices poisoning public discussion are not who they claim to be.
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Does Neuroscience Show That We Are Mere Biological Machines?
At COSM 2025, neurosurgeon Michael Egnor assembled his strongest evidence for noEgnor thinks that the strongest evidence that the mind is not merely the brain comes from epilepsy and split brain research.
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