Michael Egnor

Larry Moran has a post on Sandwalk excoriating Matt Nisbet for his criticism of P.Z. Myers’ recent desecration of the Eucharist. Myers, a vocal Darwinist and militant atheist, obtained a Eucharistic Host, nailed it, threw it in the garbage, and photographed it, along with a Qur’an and a copy of Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion.
Nisbet, sensitive to the implications of Myers’ performance art, took Myers to task:

Yale neurologist Dr. Steven Novella and I have been involved in a vigorous discussion (example here) of the mind-brain problem in science and philosophy. There are real-world implications of our understanding of the mind, and nowhere are these implications more important than in the medical management of people with severe brain damage. Dr. Novella recently posted a commentary on the Terri Schiavo case. Dr. Novella’s post was prompted by a study just published in the journal Neurology that analyzes the media coverage of the affair and offers suggestions as to how experts and journalists can convey the truth of such complex cases to the public more effectively. These are laudable goals.

The crux of the matter, of course, is this: what are the facts in the Schiavo case, and, more generally, what are the real issues involved in the diagnosis of persistent vegetative state (PVS)?

Joseph Bottum at First Things has an excellent essay on José Ortega y Gasset, the early 20th Century Spanish writer. In Ortega’s masterwork, The Revolt of the Masses, Ortega describes a new sociological phenomenon: the “mass man.” Bottum explains: Ortega’s accomplishment…was to identify a new sociological species: mass man. As The Revolt of the Masses explains, the mass man is not just an ordinary man, and he is not associated with any particular class. He is, rather, a product of European historical development, a kind of human being born for the first time in the nineteenth century…The description Ortega gives is not particularly enjoyable. The mass man lives without any discipline, and–as Ortega remembers from Goethe–“to live as one pleases Read More ›

P.Z. Myers takes me to task for this irony that I recently pointed out : the data he cited to argue that Christian faith and prayer were irrelevant to advances in cancer care actually came from a children’s hospital– St. Jude’s Hospital– that was founded explicitly on Christian faith. In fact, St. Jude’s Hospital was founded explicitly on a prayer. Myers sneers at my observation, and he extols science and mocks the culture of faith from which modern science and medicine arose:

P.Z. Myers recently posted at Pharyngula a plea for more funding for cancer research. His sister-in-law (mother of three kids) died tragically from melanoma several years ago, and Myers asked Pharyngula readers to support cancer research more vigorously. It’s a sentiment with which we all agree.

Yet Myers used this tragedy to denigrate religious faith. Noting his subsequent conversation with a pediatric oncologist in which he learned about the progress that has been made in the treatment of childhood cancer, Myers claimed:

How does she [the oncologist] do that [successfully treat some children’s cancers]? With science. She sent me a whole stack of references on the amazing progress that has been made over the last several decades, thanks to clinical trials and evidence based medicine… If we want to cure … cancers…, don’t look to magic, or wishful thinking, or ancient shamanistic wisdom, or prayer — we’ve had those for millennia [sic], and they do nothing…What we need is more research, more doctors, more clinical trials, and more money.[Emphasis in original]

In the debate between dualists and materialists over the relationship between the mind and the brain, materialists often invoke neuroscience to buttress their assertion that the brain causes the mind entirely, without need for an immaterial mind or soul. Indeed neuroscience has demonstrated many examples of correlation between physical brain processes and mind states. Do examples of correlation between brain states and mind states genuinely provide evidence for the materialist claim that mind states are merely brain states?

The wild claims of neuroscientists, such as the astonishing claim by atheist Yale neurologist Steven Novella that “the materialist hypothesis– that the brain causes consciousness — has made a number of predictions, and every single prediction has been validated,” suggest that some materialists, such as Dr. Novella, don’t even understand the core issues in the mind-brain debate.

David Chalmers, a leading philosopher of the mind and a particularly lucid thinker on the matter of consciousness, published a paper in the Journal of Consciousness Studies in 1995 entitled “Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness.” The seminal paper has given rise to much debate, and I believe that Chalmers clarifies the important issues in the mind-brain debate in a very important way.

Dr. Steven Novella and I have been engaged in a vigorous blog debate (here, here, here, here, here, here, here, , and here,) about the mind/brain problem and about intelligent design. Dr. Novella, who presents himself as a pro-science ‘skeptic’ (he’s president and co-founder of the New England Skeptical Society), is a passionate Darwinist and materialist. He blogs often on Darwinism, materialism, and “denialism” in science.

Monday morning I checked Dr. Novella’s blog. I noticed that several (at least four) of his recent controversial blog posts were missing. The links are here, here, here, and here. I checked more closely– using my own previous links to the posts– and the posts (#165, #189, #260, and #283) were gone, without a trace and without an explanation. The blog posts dealt with his view that intelligent design wasn’t falsifiable and with the debate between materialists and dualists on the mind-brain problem. What was up?

I emailed Dr. Novella, and asked him:

“Denialist” has become the slur du-jour of materialists. Dr. Stephen Novella, ardent acceptist, takes me to task for denying the truth of his personal materialist ideology of mind-brain causation. He believes that the brain causes the mind entirely, without remainder. I believe that the brain causes the mind partly, with remainder. He’s a materialist, I’m a dualist. That makes Dr. Novella angry:

Dr. Egnor must be tired of always being wrong – or at least he would be if he had the insight and intellectual honesty to see how persistently wrong he is. Alas, so far he has not demonstrated such insight. I have been engaged in an ongoing blog debate with Dr. Michael Egnor, who writes for the propaganda blog…Egnor has mangled most of his arguments, has misrepresented my opinions, has cruelly assaulted logic (as you can see he has a proper home at the Discovery Institute) – but now he demonstrates that he is incapable of reading a simple sentence and comprehending its meaning…His arguments are persistently wrong. He has not acknowledged his prior egregious errors – which is evidence for lack of insight and/or intellectual dishonesty. He completely misrepresented what I wrote -so either he did not understand it, or didn’t care. Egnor has mangled his arguments and abused logic. These are NOT personal attacks – these are legitimate criticisms of his behavior.

My “cruel assault on logic” and “incapability of reading a simple sentence” have seduced me into very bad behavior…denialism:

Dr. Steven Novella, the dogmatic materialist neurologist at Yale who has insisted that “…every single prediction [of the strict materialist understanding of the brain] has been validated” by science, has found even more scientific evidence for his personal ideology. Dr. Novella recently noted a report in Nature Neuroscience about fMRI correlates of decision-making in the brain.

In the report, “Unconscious determinants of free decisions in the human brain” authors Chun Siong Soon and colleagues at the Max Planck Institute in Germany show that brain activity in the prefrontal and parietal cortex may precede conscious decision-making by as much as ten seconds before a decision is consciously made. Each subject was asked to push a button with either the right hand or the left hand. Seven to ten seconds before the conscious decision, brain activity appeared that appeared to correlate with unconscious decision making. Sixty percent of the time, the brain activity correlated with the hand used (no correlation would be fifty percent).

The study is an interesting demonstration that brain activity as measured by fMRI (which measures local blood flow and metabolic activity) correlates to some degree with unconscious processing, as well as the well-known but weak correlation between fMRI and conscious thought. Dr. Novella notes:

Much to my surprise, when I opened my email this morning, I found this letter, obviously not intended for me. It was intended for Larry Moran, from one ‘C.D.’ (a pseudonym no doubt). I guess it’s about the latest kerfuffle among Darwinists.

I decided to pass it on.

To: Larry Moran, PhD.
Professor of Biochemistry
University of Toronto
From: The Central Committee
Office of Framing

Dearest Larry,
It’s hard for me to write this, given my affection for you and my admiration for all of your work for our cause. But the Central Committee is not pleased. Brayton and Myers aren’t talking to each other. Mooney keeps shouting ‘framing…framing’ at our meetings, and Nisbet, in particular, is beside himself. It’s fratricide. You really must do something to rectify this.

‘Rectify what?’, you ask.