The Immortal Mind: A Neurosurgeon’s Case for the Existence of the Soul

Egnor (neurosurgery, Stony Brook Univ.) and science writer O’Leary (coauthor of 2008’s similarly titled The Spiritual Brain: A Neuroscientist’s Case for the Existence of the Soul) believe that knowledge of the human brain and all that goes with it—cognition, sense, emotions, intelligence—is one of the last true frontiers of medical science. Their book, which makes a religious argument using science, aims to push that frontier further out, arguing that there is an essential self—a soul—that transcends medical documentation. Their case is based largely on Egnor’s 40-plus years of medical practice as a neurosurgeon. With great enthusiasm, he shares his eyewitness accounts of brain injuries that should impair the mind but do not and individuals whose near-death experiences provide evidence of an essential self or mind. He asserts that the neuroscientific community has known about the existence of the soul for decades but refuses to discuss it openly. Egnor and O’Leary go even further and propose that a spiritual ensoulment occurs from the moment a zygote begins to divide in the womb and that gender dysphoria distorts the God-given gender identity assigned at birth.