A little while ago, we welcomed Dr. Michael Egnor and Denyse O’Leary onto the Knight and Rose Show to discuss their new book “The Immortal Mind: A Neurosurgeon’s Case for the Existence of the Soul”. Desert Rose and I really had fun interviewing them, and their book has gotten rave reviews from our friends. But Dr. Egnor has also been going into hostile forums to defend his views.

Let’s start with the first one. Michael Shermer is a well-known skeptic (I would say atheist) who occasionally interviews people who disagree with him, such as Dr. Stephen C. Meyer.

Well, he moderated a discussion with Dr. Egnor and an opponent, neuroscientist Christof Koch:

This was a cordial debate where Dr. Egnor answered specific cases from the field of neuroscience that challenged his views.

But a more recent debate on the Piers Morgan show featured Dr. Egnor facing off against Dr. Michael Shermer:

In this one, the main topic was near-death experiences and terminal lucidity, both of which were brought up in our episode of the Knight and Rose Show. Those are two good pieces of data that I think refute the materialist view of mind, which holds it to be identical to the brain.

Sadly, on a show like that, they tend to focus on a small number of topics, which is why I recommend our episode that was published on May 31st, 2025.

We covered those topics, and many more:

In our episode, we discussed:

• Dr. Egnor’s experiences as a neurosurgeon, especially cases where there was significant brain loss, but no loss of mental capacities
• different views of mind: materialism (mind is brain), substance dualism (mind as separate substance), Thomistic dualism (mind and brain integrated but separable), and idealism (everything is mind)
• Wilder Penfield’s research on epilepsy patients, which showed the limits of brain stimulation, and also supported free will
• how split-brain surgeries give support for a unified, immaterial mind
• Benjamin Libet’s free will experiments that showed the existence of “free won’t”, giving more support to an immaterial mind
• cases of conjoined twins that share brain structures but have different personalities
• near-death experiences, especially the Pam Reynolds case, which strongly supports the idea of an immaterial mind that survives while the brain is inactive
• how computers cannot develop consciousness or free will by adding computational power
• how the human mind does not have an evolutionary pathway of gradual development
• cases of terminal lucidity, where a patient who had previously shown diminished mental processing due to brain damage suddenly regains their clarity

So, if you haven’t been following this new argument against naturalism, it might be a good idea to either listen to our episode, or if you are a fan of one of the skeptics, then listen to one of the debates. The book “The Immortal Mind” has many, many more details than our podcast episode.

I am always happy to add to my list of arguments for theism, and against naturalism.

So far, I have:

• • origin of the universe
  • cosmic fine-tuning
  • information in the origin of life
  • irreducible complexity and molecular machines
  • biological big bangs in the fossil record
  • habitability – discoverability correlation
  • first-person consciousness and free will
  • moral realism and objective moral values

Does anyone know any others that I can add to this list? No philosophical arguments! Except the moral argument! Philosophy is just too squishy for engineers. I like hard evidence when I’m making a positive case! Run up the score!

One of the teachings about courts that we find in the Bible is that the courts are not supposed to be biased. The passage in question is Leviticus 19:15. Unfortunately, our current society doesn’t really respect fairness in the courts, at least for men. Previously, I blogged a study that showed that sentences for men are 63% longer than for women. But there’s more unfairness, so let’s look at it.

First, let’s review the Bible verse – Leviticus 19:15:

You shall do no injustice in court. You shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great, but in righteousness shall you judge your neighbor.

Now consider this article from the Scottish newspaper The Herald:

A leading lawyer has warned that men accused of rape or serious sexual assault may not receive a fair trial because of long established rules over what evidence is admissible in court.

[…]”We have reached the stage where the victim has lied about things and the court has not allowed the defence to put that before the jury.

“How can it be said that someone has had a fair trial when it’s been proved that the complainer lied about something important in the course of the inquiry and that was not allowed to be introduced as evidence?” he told The Herald.

“There are serious concerns that people are not getting a fair trial when they are not being given the opportunity to provide evidence which might support their innocence”.

[…]”Every day you were hearing examples of people saying they thought a piece of evidence was relevant but the judge has ruled that it would not be allowed.

“Defendants would be going around with messages, photographs, things they thought would prove them to be innocent and the judges would not allow them to tell the jury about those pieces of exculpatory evidence.”

In one of the examples in the article, there was CCTV video showing that the woman had led the man into the sex, but that evidence could not be used in court as part of the man’s defense.

Now, what lessons do men take away from cases of bias against men like this one? Well, men learn about three things.

First, men learn that society doesn’t care whether men are innocent of guilty of charges made by women – they just want men punished. “Believe all women”. And remember, false accusations can be made against men who have not even met the alleged victim. Second, men learn to keep well clear of the courts, because they’ve learned that the courts treat men much more harshly than women, as the sentencing study shows. And thirdly, Christian men have learned not to expect any sort of help from Christian counselors, Christian pastors, and even from pro-marriage / pro-child advocates. I have personally seen a married couple that runs a “pro-family” ministry urging a woman to divorce her husband because he did not make enough money to pay for her frivolous spending. And yes, the couple had young children who became fatherless as a result.

Whenever I tell social conservatives about the effect that this bias against men is having on men’s willingness to engage with women (romantically, professionally, etc.), they go silent. Let me give you an example of this.

I was having a discussion with a woman who writes about marriage and family. I told her “did you know that women initiate 70% of divorces, and almost all of those are not for reasons that the Bible would condone”. Her reply was “that’s because women have emotional needs, so the divorce is justified”. I agree that women have emotional needs, and that husbands have a responsibility to care for their wives’ needs. That’s why I tell people that women are responsible for vetting men for this ability prior to marrying. But the woman I was talking to did not think that women should have to test men, because women are entitled to these behaviors regardless of her own choice of man. I also brought up the higher rate of divorce for lesbian women, and asked her which man was responsible for this. She just went silent.

So, this is the problem. The conviction that a woman is entitled to a man’s protection and provision regardless of any risk to the man is so widespread that no evidence can cause them to question it. Marriage is not going to be seen as attractive to men if the response to their evidence-based concerns is silence.