This info is from a presentation at the 2025 Dallas Conference on Science & Faith by Dr Michael Egnore and the presentation may be viewed here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41bIJ7hYbLs
Verses added by Herb Guenther for believersweb.org
After performing over 7,000 brain operations, neurosurgeon Dr. Michael Egnor has reached a conclusion that might surprise you: the human soul exists as something distinct from the brain. His journey from materialist atheist to believer in the spiritual nature of consciousness offers a fascinating glimpse into one of humanity’s oldest questions through the lens of modern neuroscience.
Then they journeyed from Bethel; and when there was still some distance to go to Ephrath, Rachel began to give birth and she suffered severe labor. 17 When she was in severe labor the midwife said to her, “Do not fear, for now you have another son.” 18 It came about as her soul was departing (for she died), that she named him Ben-oni; but his father called him Benjamin. 19 So Rachel died and was buried on the way to Ephrath (that is, Bethlehem). Genesis 35:16-19 NASB
When Missing Brains Don’t Matter
Dr. Egnor’s transformation began with patients who defied everything he thought he knew about the brain-mind relationship. Consider the young woman missing two-thirds of her brain who made the honor roll in high school, or Joshua, the boy whose ethics committee recommended withholding food at birth due to his severe brain malformation, who went on to graduate high school and play sports. Then there’s Maggie, missing most of her cerebellum yet earning a master’s degree in English literature and becoming a published musician.
Perhaps most remarkable is Nicholas, a boy with cerebral palsy who has only his brain stem—no cerebral hemispheres at all. Despite his physical limitations, he’s fully conscious, emotionally responsive, and displays a complete personality. He laughs, cries, and interacts with the world around him, challenging our fundamental assumptions about what parts of the brain are “necessary” for consciousness.
These cases raise a profound question: if these individuals can function normally or near-normally with massive brain deficits, is the brain truly the complete organ of the mind?
The Mystery of Missing Seizures
Dr. Egnor draws on the groundbreaking work of Wilder Penfield, the renowned Montreal neurosurgeon who pioneered awake brain surgery for epilepsy in the mid-20th century. Penfield made a curious observation that continues to puzzle neuroscientists: there are no intellectual seizures.
When patients have seizures while remaining conscious, they experience one of four things: uncontrollable movements, physical sensations like tingling, powerful emotions, or vivid memories. But no one has ever had a “calculus seizure” where they can’t stop doing long division, or a philosophical seizure where they’re overwhelmed by abstract reasoning.
During his surgical procedures, Penfield could stimulate different areas of the brain and reliably produce movements, sensations, emotions, and memories. But despite extensive mapping, he could never locate centers for abstract thought, reasoning, or contemplation of God. The absence of these “higher” functions from both seizure patterns and brain stimulation led Penfield to a startling conclusion: these aspects of the mind don’t originate in the brain.
The Split-Brain Paradox
Some of the most compelling evidence comes from patients who’ve undergone corpus callosotomy—surgery that essentially cuts the brain in half to control severe seizures. Nobel Prize winner Roger Sperry studied these split-brain patients extensively, discovering that each hemisphere has specialized functions. But he also noticed something odd: people with their brains cut in half seemed remarkably normal in daily life.
Later research by Justine Sergent revealed something even more puzzling. She showed split-brain patients pairs of arrows, with each hemisphere seeing only one arrow. When asked if the arrows pointed in the same direction, patients always answered correctly—despite the fact that no single part of their brain had seen both arrows.
Even more dramatically, researcher Yair Pinto told stories to these patients, presenting the first half to one hemisphere and the second half to the other. For example, the left hemisphere might see a baseball while the right hemisphere sees a broken window. When asked what happened, patients would consistently respond, “The baseball broke the window”—yet no part of their brain had processed both images.
This suggests something remarkable: there appears to be an aspect of consciousness that can integrate information across the physical divide of the severed brain, pointing to a unifying element of mind that transcends brain anatomy.
The Neuroscience of Free Will
14 ‘But if you do not obey Me and do not carry out all these commandments, 15 if, instead, you reject My statutes, and if your soul abhors My ordinances so as not to carry out all My commandments, and so break My covenant, 16 I, in turn, will do this to you: I will appoint over you a sudden terror, consumption and fever that will waste away the eyes and cause the soul to pine away; Leviticus 26:14-16 NASB
The question of free will has profound implications for how we understand human nature and moral responsibility. Dr. Egnor cites Penfield’s studies where patients could always distinguish between movements caused by brain stimulation and those they initiated themselves, suggesting free will operates independently of detectable brain activity.
Benjamin Libet’s famous experiments seemed to challenge free will by showing that brain activity spikes about half a second before people report deciding to act. However, Libet discovered that people could “veto” their decisions—and this veto showed no corresponding brain spike. This led him to conclude that while our brains may generate impulses and temptations, we retain the free choice to accept or reject them.
As Dr. Egnor puts it, “This is the traditional religious way of understanding human motivation—that we’re hit with temptations from our brain, but we have the free choice to do it or not.”
Consciousness in the Deepest Coma
20 But when he had considered this, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife; for the Child who has been conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit. 21 She will bear a Son; and you shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins.” 22 Now all this took place to fulfill what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet: 23 “BEHOLD, THE VIRGIN SHALL BE WITH CHILD AND SHALL BEAR A SON, AND THEY SHALL CALL HIS NAME IMMANUEL,” which translated means, “GOD WITH US.” 24 And Joseph awoke from his sleep and did as the angel of the Lord commanded him, and took Mary as his wife, Matthew 1:20-24 NASB
Perhaps the most moving evidence comes from Adrian Owen’s work with patients in persistent vegetative state—the deepest level of coma, just above brain death. Using functional MRI, Owen asked these patients to think about specific activities like walking across a room or playing tennis. Remarkably, about 40% showed brain activation patterns identical to healthy volunteers.
More incredibly, these severely brain-damaged patients could understand and respond to questions. Some could perform mathematics—counting until they reached a specified number, at which point their brains would “light up.” Others could communicate details about their family history. When Owen scrambled his instructions into nonsensical word orders, the brain activity disappeared, proving the patients truly understood the meaningful communications.
These findings suggest that consciousness can persist and function even when the brain is catastrophically damaged, pointing to aspects of mind that transcend physical brain structure.
Near-Death Experiences and Divine Light
Dr. Egnor addresses near-death experiences as perhaps the most direct evidence of consciousness existing independently of brain function. While acknowledging that some may be hallucinations, he notes that approximately 20% are “veridical”—meaning they contain verifiable information the person couldn’t have known through normal means.
The case of Pam Reynolds is particularly compelling. During surgery for a brain aneurysm, her heart was stopped, her body cooled to 50 degrees Fahrenheit, and all blood was drained from her brain. Yet she later accurately described conversations, instruments, and music from the operating room, claiming to have observed the surgery from above her body.
One of the most intriguing aspects of near-death experiences is their consistency: people universally report seeing deceased loved ones at the end of the tunnel—never living people, and remarkably, sometimes people they didn’t know had died.
Drawing on Thomas Aquinas’s nearly thousand-year-old insight, Dr. Egnor offers a poetic explanation for how spiritual beings might “see” without physical eyes. He compares earthly life to being inside a dimly lit church with stained glass windows at night. When the candles go out (death), the rising sun (divine light) illuminates incredible beauty visible from outside—a different kind of light entirely.
The Nature of the Soul
Based on this scientific evidence, Dr. Egnor concludes that the human soul is real and exists as a hybrid entity. Part of it depends on the brain—movement, sensation, memory, and emotion clearly originate from neural activity. But another part—our capacity for abstract reasoning, free will, and spiritual awareness—transcends physical matter.
This view suggests that humans occupy a unique position in creation, with “one foot in matter” (our physical bodies and basic functions) and “one foot in spirit” (our intellectual and moral capacities). Unlike animals, whose souls are entirely material, humans possess spiritual souls capable of abstract thought, moral reasoning, and relationship with the divine.
The Question of Immortality
The world is passing away, and also its lusts; but the one who does the will of God lives forever. 1 John 2:17 NASB
If the soul is partly spiritual, can it survive bodily death? Dr. Egnor argues that while material things can disintegrate—a chair becomes wood chips, a tree becomes soil—spiritual realities cannot. Just as the concept of the number eight cannot “die” (you won’t hear that “the number eight passed away yesterday”), spiritual aspects of human consciousness cannot disintegrate.
This natural immortality, he suggests, is built into human nature itself. Our spiritual souls have “no off switch”—while our bodies will eventually fail, the spiritual component of our being cannot cease to exist.
Implications for How We Live
These insights from neuroscience have profound implications for how we understand ourselves and our place in the universe. If consciousness truly transcends brain matter, then human beings possess an inherent dignity that goes beyond our physical existence. Our choices matter not just for their immediate consequences, but because they flow from a free will that operates beyond mere chemical reactions.
Moreover, if aspects of consciousness survive bodily death, then our relationships, moral choices, and spiritual development take on eternal significance. We are not merely complex biological machines, but beings with one foot in the material world and another in the realm of spirit.
Dr. Egnor’s journey from materialist to believer demonstrates that science and spirituality need not be adversaries. Instead, careful observation of the brain’s capabilities—and limitations—can point us toward truths about human nature that our ancestors intuited long before we had MRI machines and could perform awake brain surgery.
The question of the soul’s existence may be ancient, but as neuroscience advances, the evidence increasingly suggests that there is indeed something about human consciousness that transcends the purely physical—something that makes us not just clever animals, but beings touched by the eternal.