Cross-Examined

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Ladies and gentlemen.

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But we have people that have come back five, six,
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Eighteenth year we're doing it.

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I also want to mention Brave Books has a lot
of great books for your young you're young Christian. In fact,
the one we're talking about today with doctor Egnoor, that
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they have on the sanctity of life called Little Lives Matter.

Speaker 1 (00:49):
So go to Brave Books, go to Brave Books.

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US and get a book a month from them.

Speaker 1 (00:56):
It's going to help your young person.

Speaker 2 (00:58):
Helps my grandkids who are now anywhere from well, but
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and a half right now.

Speaker 1 (01:05):
He loves these little books. So check all that out.

Speaker 2 (01:08):
Let me go back to my guest, doctor Michael Ignore
the new book The Immortal Mind, a neurosurgent's case for
the existence of the soul.

Speaker 1 (01:15):
Before at the end of the last.

Speaker 2 (01:16):
Segment, Mike, we were talking a little bit about science
and how science doesn't say anything scientists do and all
data needs to be interpreted, and you.

Speaker 1 (01:25):
Wanted to make a comment about that. Go ahead, sir, Yes.

Speaker 3 (01:28):
The Roger Scrutin, who's a philosopher, I think he passed
away recently, but it was a wonderful philosopher, made a
comment about neuroscience and I paraphrase, but that I think
gets to the heart of the lot of the interpreter
problems we face in neuroscience. And Scrutin said that neuroscience
is a vast trove of answers with no memory of

(01:50):
the questions. That is that we have to be very
careful about what we're looking for and the way we
view our science from a philosophical perspective, or we just
consistently get the wrong interpretations of what we find. And
Werner Heisenberg, who's a famous physicist who was instrumental in

(02:12):
the development and quantum mechanics back about one hundred years ago.
I had a deep insight when he said that what
we observe is not nature herself, but nature exposed to
our method of questioning. So that when neuroscience is studied
as if the brain is as if the mind is
just a material product of the brain, well then it

(02:35):
kind of looks like the mind is a material product
of the brain. But that's an artifact of the way
scientists study it. If scientists open their minds to the
existence of the soul, the science is much better science
and the answers become much more clear.

Speaker 2 (02:53):
I just find it fascinating that some neuroscientists assume materialism,
but when they do that, in order to discover that
materialism is true, they'd have to assume it's faults because
any data they get from their expirit from their experiments
they assume, they would have to have the freedom to
follow the evidence where it led. But they don't have

(03:16):
that freedom if materialism is true. That's why I asked
you earlier. Don't they see that you can't prove materialism
if you're a moist robot, if you're just a pctive machine.

Speaker 3 (03:28):
Precisely, materialism is a self refuting claim. And if what
materialists are telling people basically is that they believe that
they're meat robots. And I couldn't care less what a
meat robot thought about anything. So yeah, it's just it's
it's it's a crazy thing. It's a crazy thing.

Speaker 2 (03:48):
Now, in the book The Immortal Mind, in addition to
the experiments we've talked about earlier that Wilder Penfield did
and also splitting of the brain, you also talk about
co joined twins in this book. How does that show
that materialism is not true and that we have a

(04:09):
soul or mind.

Speaker 3 (04:10):
It's fascinating and again it shows how beautifully the tomistic
understanding of the soul applies to modern neuroscience. Conjoined twins
are quite rare. And even more rare are twins that
are joined at the head, and there are several in
the world, and they share parts of their brains, and

(04:32):
probably the most famous of which are Christa and Tatiana Hogan,
who are young ladies who were born with basically attached
at the head and they share a connection between their brains,
and they've been studied in some depth, and for example,
they can see through each other's eyes, they can feel

(04:54):
each other's skin. If her mother touches one child's leg.
The other child also knows that the leg is being touched,
and they can they share some memories. But interestingly enough,
they're completely different people. That is, they have different personalities,
they have different opinions about things. Clearly, I think what

(05:15):
we're seeing there is that there are two different souls,
two different distinct human beings who do share some mental abilities,
but they don't share all mental abilities, and they're still
completely distinct. It's a fascinating thing. So can join twins.
I think tell us quite a bit about how the

(05:36):
mind works.

Speaker 2 (05:37):
Now. You did a very succinct presentation at the Discovery
Institute's Science Conference in February down in Dallas. I spoke
there a couple of years ago. You were just there
in twenty twenty five. It's the Dallas Conference on Science
and Faith, and you put a slide up.

Speaker 1 (05:55):
I have it on my screen right now.

Speaker 2 (05:57):
We're going to put this presentation in the show notes, friends,
because this was just it was action packed and to
the point. And I want you to comment on this
slide if you can. Doctor ignore you said this. The
brain is the organ of movement, perception, memory, and emotion.
There is no organ of intellect and will please comment

(06:19):
on that.

Speaker 3 (06:20):
Yes, and it's as you mentioned, it's it's a really
nice synopsis. First one, it's a nice synopsis of tomistic
psychology of Saint Thomas's understanding of the soul, and neuroscience
really demonstrates it. The brain is an organ just like
any other organ. That is, the heart has a job
at pumps blood. The kidneys have a job they make here,

(06:42):
and every organ does its thing. The brain's an organ.
It's a piece of meat and it has it really
has five things. One thing it does is it regulates homeostasis,
meaning it keeps our blood pressure normal, keeps our heart
beat normal, stuff stuff like that. It allows us to move,
It allows us to to have sensations, It allows us

(07:03):
to have memories, and it allows us to have emotions.
But the neuroscience makes it very clear. I think that intellect,
the capacity for reasoning, for abstract thought and free will
don't come from the brain. They don't come from any meat.
They're they're they're not from an organ. They're there there

(07:24):
there their powers of our soul. But that those powers
of our soul are immaterial, and because they're immaterial, they're spiritual.
We have spiritual souls, and because they're immaterial, also they
can't die. That is that you things that that that
are not matter can't disintegrate at the time of death.
So that points to the immortality of our souls, which

(07:47):
I think is also demonstrated by neuroscience.

Speaker 2 (07:50):
So how then, if the brain is not the organ
of the intellect, how is it then that people that
have brain injuries have problems maybe expressing themselves or thinking,
if in fact they do.

Speaker 1 (08:06):
How does that work?

Speaker 3 (08:07):
It has to do with the difference between necessity and sufficiency.
When you see a correlation between things, for example, the
brain and the exercise of say the brain and the
exercise of vision, you can ask, first of all, is
the brain necessary for the normal exercise of vision? And
the answer is yes. If your brain isn't working right,

(08:28):
you can have visual problems. Is it sufficient for vision?
And the answer is also yes, meaning that if you've
got a good brain you can see with the intellect
and will. Is the brain necessary for the normal exercise
of intellect and will?

Speaker 1 (08:41):
Yes?

Speaker 2 (08:42):
Right?

Speaker 3 (08:42):
I mean, if you drink too much alcohol, your will
isn't going to be the same as when you're sober.
And if you get hit on the head with the bat.
Your intellect isn't going to be the same as as
when you're sober. But is the brain sufficient for the
intellect and will? And there's a ton of neuroscientific evidence
that it's not efficient for it. That is, in a sense,
the brain enables us to exercise our intellect and will normally,

(09:07):
but the infected will don't come from the brain.

Speaker 2 (09:10):
I think you may have found that in the part
of the book where you talked about people who are
in a deep coma vegetative state.

Speaker 1 (09:18):
Can you describe that, doctor.

Speaker 3 (09:20):
Yeah, it's fascinating work, just this landmark work. It was
originally done by Adrian Owen. It was a neuroscientist at Cambridge, England,
back about twenty years ago. There's a particular kind of
a severe brain damage called persistent vegetative state that is
actually deeper than coma, meaning it was believed by the

(09:43):
medical profession that it was a state where a person
had had such enormous brain brain damage that there was
no mind at all. This person was just a body,
just a shell, and it's just one step above brain death.
And what Owen did is he took a patient that's
been done on many patients since then. He put her
in an MRI machine and did something called functional MRI imaging,

(10:05):
which can let you know what's happening inside the brain
as a person thinks and does things. And he asked
your questions like imagine you're playing tennis, Imagine you walk
across the room. And he found that areas of her
very badly damaged brain lit up in certain patterns. So
he put normal people in the machine and did the
same thing, and the same areas lit up, so as

(10:27):
if she was understanding what he was saying. And then
what he did is he scrambled the words so that
the same noises were coming in to her ears, but
they didn't make any sense and nothing let up. So
what he showed was that she was understanding what he
was saying, even in even in the deepest level of coma.

(10:47):
And other people have studied this and they found that
you can for some people in persistent vegetative state, you
can you can you can converse with them, you can
you can talk about their family, you can talk about
they can tell things about what's happened in their life.
There are people who can do a little bit of
mathematics in precisive vegetative state using this imaging technique. So

(11:12):
what it shows us is that there's a disconnect between
the brain in these patients, the brain is massively damaged,
nearly destroyed, and the capacity to have abstract thought, the
capacity to use reason to form concepts, And that disconnection
shows up again and again in neuroscience, and it shows
up in the work with persistent vegetative state as well.

Speaker 2 (11:36):
So while their lack of a brain may affect their movement, perception, memory,
and emotion precisely, their intellect and will is not as
affected as much.

Speaker 3 (11:48):
It seems that way. Yes, yes, And which has always
been a question that I've had about persistent vegetative state.
When your brain is massively damaged, you can't communicate, you
can't talk, you can't move, how do we know what's
going on inside the mind. Because the only way that
a person knows what's going on inside another person's mind anyway,
is just behavior, and brain damage damages behavior. And what

(12:10):
Owen showed is that the mind in many cases kind
of keeps going even when behavior is damaged.

Speaker 2 (12:17):
And right after this break, doctor Munar is gonna tell
us how they know what a person in a persistent
vegetative state is thinking there's.

Speaker 1 (12:29):
A technique to it, and we'll.

Speaker 2 (12:30):
Talk about it, and then we'll talk about near death experiences.
What do they have to do with the existence of
the mind and the soul.

Speaker 1 (12:38):
We're back right after the break. Don't go anywhere.

Speaker 4 (12:43):
Could you answer this question, why doesn't God let everyone
into heaven? Or do all religions get you to heaven? Well,
Frank Turret can, and now you can watch him tackle
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(13:05):
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Speaker 2 (13:18):
How does science show that you not only have a brain,
but a mind, that you actually have a soul, that
your brain isn't a computer. Well, my guest today has
shown that, I think quite definitively. The new book is
called The Immortal Mind, a Neurosurgent's Case for the Existence

(13:40):
of the Soul.

Speaker 1 (13:41):
Doctor Michael Ignore is my guest. Mike.

Speaker 2 (13:44):
Just before the break, we were talking about people in
a vegetative state, and you point it out that you
can only know what somebody's thinking by them telling you.
How does somebody in a vegetative state tell you what
they're thinking.

Speaker 3 (13:57):
It's a great question. There's a technique called functional MRI imaging,
and that's where you go into an MRI machine and
as you're thinking and doing things, the blood flow in
your brain in various regions shifts and changes, and that
change in blood flow seems to correspond to what you're thinking,

(14:18):
and so it can be used as a research tool.
It's actually also used occasionally in clinical neurosurgery to help
map the brain if a person needs brain surgery and
we need to have a better understanding of the brain,
the brain anatomy. So people in the deepest levels of
coma persistent vegetative state can be studied using functional MRI imaging.

(14:42):
And what can be shown is that despite the fact
that their brains are massively damaged, the patterns that light
up on the imaging can show that people are capable
of very sophisticated levels of thought even in the presence
of massive brain damage. Very often, not always, but very often.

Speaker 2 (15:00):
Yeah, So I remember you saying in the presentation, you
might say what's six times nine or six plus nine
and once you get if someone is counting up to fifteen,
when you hit fifteen, their brain lights up right, so
they are communicating.

Speaker 1 (15:15):
They know what you've said.

Speaker 2 (15:17):
So, ladies and gentlemen, it seemed to me, mikey, do
you agree that if you're visiting someone who's in a
coma or in a vegetative state, you ought to talk
to them?

Speaker 3 (15:26):
Oh? Yeah, I tell families all the time that that's
very important, and nurses who work in intensive care units
all know this that when you're in a room with
somebody who's in a coma, you have to be careful
of what you say. You shouldn't say things that are
distressing or make the person frightened, because it can change

(15:46):
their vital size, their heart rate goes up. People respond, So.

Speaker 2 (15:51):
Mike, is it fair to say, given the research you've done,
that somebody who say has dementia has a problem maybe
with memory, which as you've discovered, is part of the brain,
yet their mind may still be functioning properly.

Speaker 1 (16:09):
Is that a fair statement or not?

Speaker 3 (16:11):
Yeah? I think there's certainly evidence that would point to that,
particularly with the phenomenon called paradoxical lucidity, which is actually
fairly common in which people in the late stages of
Alzheimer's will have periods of time thirty or forty minutes
where they will just wake up and they can be
actually very much like their role self. They're quite lucid,

(16:33):
quite with it, and then slip back down again. And
this is very very well documented. A colleague of mine
at Stoneybrook named Stephen Post actually has written a book
about it. And so there's the lights are on, I
think more than we're aware of in patients who have
severe dementia, which is a good reason of course to

(16:56):
always deal with people who have severe dementia in compassionate,
humane ways, because they understand a lot very often.

Speaker 2 (17:06):
But sometimes the erratic behavior is more a result than
of physical damage to their brain rather than their mind.
Is that a fair statement.

Speaker 3 (17:16):
Yes, yes, yes, And this unlinking of certain aspects of
the mind from aspects of the brain shows up again
and again in neuroscience. Obviously, having a severe brain problem
can affect the way you express yourself, but there's a
lot of evidence that in many cases there's a much

(17:36):
much better functioning mind behind the way the brain works.

Speaker 2 (17:41):
Tell us a little bit about near death experiences, because
you have a section in the book about that. Again,
the book is the Immortal Mind. How does this show
that the brain and the mind are not the same.

Speaker 3 (17:51):
Well, near death experiences, first of all, are fairly common.
About at least nine million Americans have had some kind
of near death or out of bodyvarience. That's pretty well established.
In about twenty percent of those experiences involve accurate perceptions
that take place during a time when the brain is
not functioning. Probably the most famous near death experience was

(18:15):
of a woman named Pam Reynolds, who was a lady
who had an aneurysm at the base of her brain
and required a very radical kind of brain operation to
fix the aneurysm, called a standstill procedure, was done in
Phoenix by Robert Spechler, was a eurosearchon He was specialized
in this back in nineteen ninety one. And what Specer

(18:37):
had to do was he had to cool her body
down of the operating room under general anesthesia to about
sixty degrees fahrenheit to protect her brain, then to put
her on a heart lung machine, then to stop her
heart and stop the blood flowing to her brain. Then
to tilt the operating table up so the blood drained
out of her brain and then fix the aneurism. The

(18:59):
aneurysm was in a blood vessel and he had to
repair the blood vessel, open it and fix it without
blood flowing through it. And he had about thirty minutes
before she would have permanent brain damage. And he did
the surgery. It worked very well. She was tested meticulously.
They tested her brain waves and she was clearly completely

(19:19):
brain dead. I mean, there wasn't even any blood inside
her brain. Her heart wasn't wasn't beating. And after the surgery,
she told doctor Spechler that she watched the whole operation.
She said that as soon as her heart stopped beating
that she felt a pop and she felt herself coming
out of her body. She rose up to the ceiling

(19:41):
of the operating room over Specula's shoulder watched him operate.
She described to him in detail about his surgical instruments.
She described his conversations word for word that he had.
She described what the other doctors said and did during
the operation. She knew intimate details of the surgery. Then
she said she went down a tunnel at the other

(20:02):
end of the tunnel, she saw deceased relatives. They told
her she had to go back and raise her kids.
She had three kids. She couldn't stay on the other side.
She went back down the tunnel, and she said that
going back into her body was like diving into a
pool of ice water, which is true because her body
temperature was sixty degrees. So she's a very well documented
case of near death experiences. And people who have near

(20:26):
death experiences have these remarkable things happened to them. And
when I've discussed this with skeptics, and there are many
materialists out there who are skeptical of the reality of
these experiences, I point out that there are four aspects
of near death experiences that a skeptic has to explain.

(20:46):
One is that people who have these experiences have crystal
clear thoughts, very detailed, high level thoughts that are not
characteristic of somebody who has a dying brain. Second of all,
that they have outer body experiences very often that occur
when their brain is not working, that is, when their

(21:08):
heart is stopped, their brain is not functioning, but they
can see what's going on, they see details around them.
They actually say that their perceptions are more accurate, are
more comprehensive than when they were in their body. Also,
something that really fascinates me is that when people go
down the tunnel and they meet people at the other

(21:28):
end of the tunnel, as far as I know, in
every recorded instance, the people they meet are dead. That is,
you don't meet living people at the other end of
the tunnel. It's not like wishful thinking, like you would
like to see your wife and you see her at
the other end to comfort you, but she's still alive.
And there have been a number of reports of people
who see people at the other end of the tunnel

(21:49):
who are dead that they didn't know were dead, People
who had someone who passed away, they didn't know they
passed away, but they met them at the tunnel. And
near death experiences are transformative people. Really, it transforms people's lives.
So for skeptics, I challenge them with these four characteristics
of near deathic experiences, because I think at least in

(22:12):
a certain subset of people, these experiences are very real
and they indicate that the soul is not the same
thing as the body.

Speaker 2 (22:20):
This is fascinating material, and your book goes into it
in a lot of detail. Again, Friends, the book by
doctor Michael Egnor and Denis o. Leary is The Immortal Mind.
It just came out earlier this month, and it is
such a great read. There are so many insights in
here that will help you. Mike, can you kind of
summarize it for us and give us the personal impact

(22:44):
of this on our viewers and listeners.

Speaker 3 (22:47):
Yeah. I think it's very important to understand that we
have immortal souls, that there's an aspect to us that
is spiritual, and the human soul is a spirit and
the human spirit is a soul. That we're really spiritual
creatures that are who are embodied, and that means, it

(23:12):
means a lot. It's it's it's not just a scientific
or philosophical observation. It's a very practical thing. It means,
for example, that everything we do has reverberations in eternity,
that we are we are eternal creatures, and people we
deal with are eternal creatures, and everything we do matters.

(23:33):
Things don't go away when when we die, that we
we we we continue living, and it's important to live
this life the way we are intended to live this life.
And I think the way we're intended is the way
God intends us to live this life, and it also
tells us a lot about the sanctity of the sanctity

(23:55):
of human life. That life begins at fertilization of the
sperm and the egg, and that even a tiny embryo
has a soul, and it's it's the same soul that
we have when we grow up. It just has different
possibilities and different actualities. But it's every bit as much
of a soul as a soul we have. And it

(24:15):
means that we have to respect the lives of children
in the womb, respect the lives of handicap people, respect
the lives of people at the end of life, and
that life is sacred because we're dealing with spiritual souls.
It tells us that we have to respect people of
different races and different ethnicities because there's no there's no

(24:35):
such thing as a as a white soul, or a
black soul or Hispanic soul. We're all we're all human beings.
And it tells us that I think that we we
we should get right with God. We should come to
know our Lord and know and know our Creator, because
we're going to spend eternity with him.

Speaker 2 (24:53):
Fascinating Mike thank you so much for being on the
program and for this book, The Immortal Mind.

Speaker 1 (24:59):
Thank you for that's doctor Michael Ignore.

Speaker 2 (25:02):
You can also see his writings at the Discovery Institute.
There's a section there called Mind Matters News.

Speaker 1 (25:10):
Check it out.

Speaker 2 (25:10):
He's got a couple of podcasts and blogs right there.

Speaker 1 (25:13):
Get the book as well, The Immortal Mind.

Speaker 2 (25:15):
A neurosurgeon's case for the existence of the soul. Give
it to somebody who's scientifically oriented. They're gonna be very intrigued.
Thank you, doctor Ignore. All right to you guys here
next time, God blessed.

Speaker 4 (25:31):
Would you like to go even deeper in your faith?
After today's show, check out the online courses at cross
examine dot org. Talk by Frank Turk and leading Christian
thinkers study I Don't have enough faith to be an atheist,
exploring relations or investigate the Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth.
Courses are flexible, self paced, and you can watch a
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(25:53):
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