Spiritual Brain: Me 'n YouTube: Discussing my "Hot Apple Cider" essay

Here. The clip is short, and talks about an aspect of The Spiritual Brain - spirituality helps your health.
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Hot Apple Cider is a collection of Canadian writers' work.

I'll be at Faith Family Books & Gifts on Friday, November 20, along with many other, more distinguished authors and excellent performers, so if you are in the area, come and have a coffee with me.

The Spiritual Brain shortlisted for three Write! Canada awards

According to today's release from The Word Guild, The Spiritual Brain: A neuroscientist's case for the existence of the soul is shortlisted in Book-Culture, Book-General Readership, and Book-Leadership/ Theoretical, in the Canadian Christian Writing Awards.




I am also individually shortlisted for a piece I wrote for St' Mike's Alumni magazine, "The God they don't believe in is certainly not great."

Awards night is not till June 11, by which time I should have found my summer suit.

The day after the Awards gala, the Write! Canada conference begins in Guelph, and yes, I am teaching again this year - my usual track on why many writers do not deserve to starve and, in any event, how to write for a living without starving.

Note: My other blog, The Mindful Hack, which supports The Spiritual Brain, is a good source of news and views on non-materialist neuroscience.

Michael Behe on The Spiritual Brain

Here is what biochemist Michael Behe, author of Edge of Evolution wrote me today, to say about The Spiritual Brain:

For more than a century materialists have been trying to talk us out of our minds. No such thing, they say. It’s just a brain, just electrified jelly, no more free than billiard balls bouncing around a pool table. Our overwhelming internal senses of self and freedom are pathetic illusions, meaningless byproducts of mechanical processes in a pointless
universe.

In /The Spiritual Brain/ neuroscientist Mario Beauregard and science writer Denyse O’Leary push back hard. First they debunk the most widely touted urban legends of impoverished materialism — the “God gene”, “God spot”, “God helmet”. Then they soberly examine the latest data from neuroscience, ranging from brain scans of prayerful nuns to the powerful placebo effect of sugar pills. If approached without materialist prejudice, they write, the results point insistently to the reality of a spiritual mind that survives physical death.

For my money, the most compelling demonstration of the reality of the psyche is the simple, elegant, entertaining, dryly humorous writing of /The Spiritual Brain/ itself. In it we are privileged to meet a pair of unfettered minds actively at work to shape our world. I strongly recommend this book to anyone with a mind of his own.

- biochemist Mike Behe, author of Edge of Evolution

Oh, I am SO glad that someone appreciates the fun part! I nearly split a gut laughing over the materialist science stories, and perhaps that came through in the writing.

Basically, materialism isn't only wrong, it's nonsense. Don't believe me. Read the book.

Edge of Evolution: The significance of Michael Behe's new book

In response to my review of Behe's new book Edge of Evolution, a most interesting thread of comments followed my notice of said review at Uncommon Descent. Here is my response to the thread:

I hope all commenters and viewers on this thread get and read Behe's "Edge of Evolution."

That's because I think it has focused the debate in a way that most discussions do not.

He is not claiming that Darwinian evolution cannot occur.

He gives examples of situations where it did occur.

The reason we know it did occur is that we know EXACTLY what happened at the biochemical level: Natural selection acted on a random mutation to enable a life form to acquire a new trait.

Behe then asks, given the number of generations that have passed (again, a known/knowable quantity), how much change has this process driven? The answer is, very little.

Both Dawkins (dogs) and Matzke (exaptation) are evading the issue.

Dog breeding is NOT random. Contra Dawkins that matters very much indeed.

The human is inducing changes in the dog that the dog's genome accommodates but does not encourage. Nature has not independently rewarded these changes. Behe, by contrast, is talking about new traits, developed by Darwinian evolution, that are known to confer a benefit in terms of survival of the fittest (resistance, for example).

Similarly, we do not know the complete sequence of biochemical steps by which the panda's "thumb" took shape. Matzke INFERS Darwinian evolution as the cause.

These people are anxious to avoid confronting the difference between the amount of change over time that Darwinian evolution has been observed to cause - when the events can be monitored - and the amount of change over time that they need it to cause.

You will find Edge of Evolution a very interesting read.

Incidentally, if you were planning to buy The Spiritual Brain: A neuroscientist's case for the existence of the soul (by neuroscientist Mario Beauregard and myself), you can save money at Amazon.com by buying it together with Edge of Evolution.

The Spiritual Brain: Here’s the cover!

This is what the cover for The Spiritual Brain looks like. Mario liked it and so did I. Here’s what I said when someone asked me recently what the book is about:

The Spiritual Brain examines the claim that the mind is simply the functions of the brain and rejects it, not because it is uncomfortable, but because it conflicts with key evidence. In fact, materialism is approaching a crisis. Unable to account for such fundamental features of the human being as consciousness and free will, it is reduced to asserting that they are illusions. As one small example, the 1990s generation of antidepressants that was famously hyped as proving that there is no such thing as the soul turned out to perform only somewhat better than the familiar placebo effect. Similarly, claims that spirituality can be reduced to a God gene or lobe in the brain are paltry, and sometimes ridiculous. Having demolished the nonsense, the book introduces the quietly growing discipline of non-materialist neuroscience, which treats the mind as real and demonstrates the ways in which it changes the brain. A non-materialist approach to neuroscience is not merely another new theory: It offers hope for treating difficult disorders such as phobias and obsessive compulsions. Treating the mind as real, we also examine claims for such puzzling and controversial experiences as the psi effect and near death experience. We also let the public in on a little secret you won’t hear from the current spate of anti-God books on the market: Overwhelmingly, the evidence shows that spirituality is good for you. More significantly, Beauregard and Paquette's Carmelite nun studies demonstrate that it is reasonable to believe that mystical contemplatives do indeed contact a power outside themselves.

There’s lots for some people to like and others to be mad about.

My other blog is the Mindful Hack, which keeps tabs on neuroscience and the mind.

If you like this blog, check out my book on the intelligent design controversy, By Design or by Chance?. You can read excerpts as well.

Are you looking for one of the following stories?

NEW!! Evolution in the light of intelligent design - look up intelligent design topics here.

Animations of life inside the cell, indexed, for your convenience.

Anti-God crusade ... no, really! My recent series on the spate of anti-God books, teen blasphemy challenge, et cetera, and the mounting anxiety of materialist atheists that lies behind it.

Catholic Church A summary of the Catholic Church's entry into the controversy, essentially on the side of ID.

Collins, Francis My review of Francis Collins’ book The Language of God

Columnists weigh in on the intelligent design controversy A summary of recent opinion columns on the ID controversy

Darwinism dissent Lists of theoretical and applied scientists who doubt Darwin

Gilder, George A summary of tech guru George Gilder's arguments for ID and against Darwinism

Intelligent design academic publications.

Intelligent design-friendly students should be flunked, according to bio prof Evolutionary biologist’s opinion that all students friendly to intelligent design should be flunked.

Intelligent design controversy My U of Toronto talk on why there is an intelligent design controversy, or my talk on media coverage of the controversy at the University of Minnesota.

Intelligent design controversy timeline An ID Timeline: The ID folk seem always to win when they lose.

Intelligent design and culture My review of sci-fi great Rob Sawyer’s novel, The Calculating God , which addresses the concept of intelligent design.

March of the Penguins A critical look at why March of the Penguins was thought to be an ID film.

Origin of life Why origin of life is such a difficult problem.

Peer review My backgrounder about peer review issues.

Polls relevant to the intelligent design controversy A summary of recent polls of US public opinion on the ID controversy

Stove, David O'Leary's intro to non-Darwinian agnostic philosopher David Stove’s critique of Darwinism.

Blog policy note:Comments are permitted on this blog, but they are moderated. Fully anonymous posts and URLs posted without comment will be accepted if I think they contribute to a discussion. For best results, give your name or some idea who you are and why we should care. To Mr. Anonymous: I'm not psychic, so if you won't tell me who you are, I can't guess and don't care. To Mr. Nude World (URL): If you can't be bothered telling site visitors why they should go on to your fave site next, why should I post your comment? They're all busy people, like you. To Mr. Rudesby International and Mr. Pottymouth: I also have a tendency to delete comments that are merely offensive. Go be offensive to someone who can smack you a good one upside the head. That may provide you with a needed incentive to stop and think about what you are trying to accomplish. To Mr. Righteous but Wrong: I don't publish comments that contain known or probable factual errors. There's already enough widely repeated misinformation out there, and if you don't have the time to do your homework, I don't either. To those who write to announce that at death I will either 1) disintegrate into nothingness or 2) go to Hell by a fast post, please pester someone else. I am a Catholic in communion with the Church and haven't the time for either village atheism or aimless Jesus-hollering.

My next book: Why people are not just clever apes

I am co-authoring a book, to be published by Harper San Francisco, on the neurological EVIDENCE for the spiritual nature of human beings, to be published Fall 2006.

The lead author is neuroscientist Mario Beauregard of the University of Montreal.

http://hendrix.imm.dtu.dk/services/jerne/brede/WOPER_51.html

This project will keep me very busy, and require me to learn a great deal about the human brain (no kidding!).

Many of my posts hereafter will probably relate to neuroscience, but so far as I can see, any reasonable account of the human brain is unlikely to be Darwinian in character, so my posts will remain relevant to blog reader interests.

I will post any official information from the publisher about the forthcoming book, as it becomes available.

This is what I have for now: http://www.rabiner.net/

But you can be sure there will be way more later.

cheers, Denyse

Blog service note: Did you come here looking for any of the following stories?
- the Privileged Planet film shown at the Smithsonian, go here for an extended review. Please do not raise cain about an "anti-evolution" film without seeing it. If your doctor forbids you to see the film, in case you get too excited, at least read my detailed log of the actual subjects of the film. If you were one of the people who raised cain, ask yourself why you should continue to believe the people who so misled you about the film's actual content ...

- the showing of Privileged Planet at the Smithsonian, go here and here to start, and then this one and this one will bring you up to date.

- the California Academy of Sciences agreeing to correct potentially libellous statements about attorney Larry Caldwell, who thinks that students should know about weaknesses as well as strengths of Darwinian evolution theory, click on the posted link.

- Bill Dembski threatening to sue the Thomas More Law Center in the Dover, Pennsylvania ID case, click on the posted link and check the current daily post for updates. (Note: This dispute has apparently been settled. See the story for details. )

Blog policy note: This blog does not intentionally accept fully anonymous Comments, Comments with language unsuited to an intellectual discussion, URLs posted without comment, or defamatory statements. Defamatory statement: A statement that would be actionable if anyone took the author seriously. For example, someone may say “O’Leary is a crummy journalist”; that’s a matter of opinion and I don’t know who would care. But if they say, “O’Leary was convicted of grand theft auto in 1983,” well that’s just plain false, and probably actionable, if the author were taken seriously. Also, due to time constraints, the moderator rarely responds to comments, and usually only about blog service issues.

If you like this blog, check out my book on the intelligent design controversy, By Design or by Chance?. You can read excerpts as well.