Editor’s note: Pre-order The Immortal Mind by Michael Egnor and Denyse O’Leary and get a sneak peek exclusive excerpt from the book as well as the full digital book anthology Minding the Brain.

Neurosurgeon Dr. Michael Egnor asks, “Is the Soul Real?” That’s the title of his recent presentation at the Dallas Conference on Science and Faith, a preview of his forthcoming book, The Immortal Mind. It’s up now on the Discovery Science page on YouTube:

You could address that question by citing Scripture, but Dr. Egnor has the more compelling case to make, in the affirmative, from his own field of neuroscience. About split brain surgeries, for instance, he says that “research on that is something that still gives me chills. I learned about this decades ago and I think it’s among the most fascinating results in cognitive neuroscience.” When the brain is literally split in half to alleviate problems with seizures, something still links the two brain halves, something that could not be physical, which Egnor identifies with the soul. There is much more evidence that a spiritual reality exists that is not limited to the familiar material realm of space and time.

That this evidence gives Dr. Egnor “chills” to this day is something that struck me. The different but parallel findings of biologist Richard Sternberg — pointing to another aspect of immaterial reality, also transcending space and time, namely the immaterial genome — gave me a chill when I first heard of it, and it still does. Dr. Sternberg’s research is described in my new book, Plato’s Revenge. Why do such things send a shiver down one’s spine? I’m not quite sure why, but they do.