ID the Future Intelligent Design, Evolution, and Science Podcast
Author

Michael Egnor

mystic brain
Illusion of Mind

Into the Mystic with a Neurosurgeon and a Neurotheologian

Today’s ID the Future continues the conversation between neurosurgeon Michael Egnor and neurotheologian Andrew Newberg. In this second and concluding part of their discussion, they further explore what experiments using brain scans reveal about how the brain is affected by meditation and mystical experiences, including near-death experiences. Also, what parts of the brain light up, and what parts go dormant, when someone is “speaking in tongues,” and how does someone who has this experience describe it, and does that description mesh with or clash with what turns up on the brain scans? Tune in to hear Newberg’s answer to this and other issues related to the mind-brain problem and the mystical. This interview is posted here by permission of Mind Matters and the Walter Bradley Center for Natural and Artificial Intelligence.

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The Servant of God Mother Clara Zizic, Monastery of the Community of Franciscan Sisters of the Immaculate in Sibenik, Croatia

The Mind/Brain Problem and the Power of Meditative Prayer

It’s hard to know where the brain ends and the mind begins. How can studying our brains give us insight into our minds? On this ID the Future, neuroscientist Andrew Newberg and neurosurgeon Michael Egnor sit down for a chat about all things brain related including neurotheology, methods of studying the brain, and research on how various forms of religious and non-religious meditation actually change the wiring of the brain, including in particular a study Newberg did on Franciscan nuns and what they refer to as “centering prayer.” This interview is borrowed, with permission, from Mind Matters, a podcast of the Walter Bradley Center for Natural and Artificial Intelligence.

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Live Not By Lies: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Intelligent Design

On this ID the Future, neurosurgeon Michael Egnor discusses his recent article about Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Solzhenitsyn, the great Soviet dissident and recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature, penned the essay “Live Not By Lies” in 1974, just before he was arrested and exiled from Russia. It was his advice, or even strategy, for living under totalitarianism. Solzhenitsyn’s basic advice is simply not to participate with lies, and to refuse to speak what one does not believe. It’s unnervingly relevant counsel to us in America today, where “cancel culture” and other silencing tactics, long foreshadowed in the intelligent design debate, are spreading to the broader culture.

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Epidemiologist gesturing stop hand sign in coronavirus concept

Thomas Aquinas Weighs in on the Coronavirus and Public Policy

On this episode of ID the Future, Andrew McDiarmid speaks with pediatric neurosurgeon and professor Michael Egnor about public policy decisions regarding the coronavirus. In a conversation based on a recent Evolution News article, Egnor says scientists should have “stayed in their lane,” giving policymakers the information that science can provide about a potential pandemic, and left the political calculations alone. He argues that WHO failed in one of its primary jobs, which is providing timely information and recommendations for preventing and slowing the spread of pandemics. They sat on information about Covid-19 for weeks, long after they knew there was a serious problem in China. Egnor also urges policymakers to apply science along with other expert information in a transparent decision-making process. And they must apply sound ethics — for which Egnor offers Thomas Aquinas’s four-fold framework, including the principle of “double effect.”

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Virus protection. Vaccine search. Antibodies and viral infection. Immune defense of the body. Attack on antigens 3D illustration

Covid-19, Random Mutations, and Aristotle’s Matrix of Design

On this episode of ID the Future, Andrew McDiarmid speaks with neurosurgeon Michael Egnor about Egnor’s recent Evolution News article, The Coronavirus Demonstrates How Evolution Presupposes Intelligent Design. Egnor notes that the coronavirus and other viruses are not, strictly speaking, considered living things, even if they depend on living hosts for their continued existence. Egnor also discusses the role of random mutations in viruses and draws upon Aristotle to argue that these and other random events only occur, and have their meaning, against a backdrop of purpose and design — in this case, the designed systems — the bodies — that viruses invade.

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Michael Egnor on Jeffrey Epstein and the Silence of Scientists

On this episode of ID the Future, neurosurgery professor Michael Egnor talks about the code of silence that kept numerous scientists tied to consensus and silent on Jeffrey Epstein when they should have spoken out. Egnor says that even when it was already widely known that he was involved in child prostitution, his funding was still widely sought and received by scientific institutions, and he entertained scientists who willingly accepted his money.

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Michael Egnor on Scientific Consensus and Apocalypse Now

On this episode of ID the Future, host Emily Kurlinski talks with Michael Egnor, professor of neurosurgery at Stony Brook University, about the dire warnings, stretching back at least to Thomas Malthus near the turn of the nineteenth century, that overpopulation would lead to starvation and civilizational ruin. Egnor discusses this and other scientific claims once widely embraced by scientific experts and later shown to be off base. The lesson, Egnor says, is that when someone tells you to believe something simply because it’s “the scientific consensus,” reserve judgment. Consensus, says Egnor, is “a political concept, not a scientific one.” And when much of the scientific community is held captive by a dogmatic adherence to materialism, any claimed consensus is all the more to be taken with a healthy dose of skepticism.

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Michael Egnor on Atheist Jerry Coyne’s Divine Sense Organ

On this episode of ID the Future, Andrew McDiarmid brings listeners a pair of Michael Egnor responses to atheist biologist Jerry Coyne, who recently argued that if God existed, we’d have sense organs to detect Him. We do have that organ, says Egnor. It’s reason, the means by which we can infer the reality of a designing mind behind nature.

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Neurosurgeon Uprising, Pt. 2: Egnor Takes on Mind/Brain Materialism

On this episode of ID the Future we hear a neurosurgeon’s view on materialistic bias afflicting the entire field of neuroscience. It’s a bias, he argues, that leads some scientists to misunderstand the meaning of their experiments. Darwinists “allergic to teleology” ignore clear evidence that purpose is essential to the mind. This talk is bonus material accompanying the action-filled and thought provoking series of short videos on science and materialism at scienceuprising.com.

Neurosurgeon Uprising: Michael Egnor Takes on Mind/Brain Materialism

On this episode of ID the Future we hear a neurosurgeon’s take on materialist philosophical views of the mind. One currently common view, eliminative materialism, says there is nothing to the mind except what goes on in the brain.

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