World Magazine's interview with Mario Beauregard and Denyse O'Leary dispels all doubt

Yes, we really ARE non-materialists. And we have good reasons for being non-materialists.

Mind over matter
Interview: A new book on neuroscience challenges the prevailing materialist worldview | Daniel

James Devine

Your mind doesn't get the credit it deserves. Not according to The Spiritual Brain: A Neuroscientist's Case for the Existence of the Soul (HarperOne), a new book aiming to show that the mind—as distinct from the brain—is a real entity with nonphysical qualities. That's opposite the current dogma in the field of neuroscience, where materialism—the philosophy that physical matter is all that exists—has held sway, promoting drug treatments for most psychiatric disorders and fueling atheists who argue spirituality is a delusion created by the brain.

Hey, we go on, uttering worse heresies yet:

WORLD: Your book argues, "When we treat the mind as capable of changing the brain, we can treat conditions that were once considered difficult or impossible to treat." Which conditions?

BEAUREGARD: Anxiety disorders—specific phobias, panic disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder—and mood disorders like major depression. By recognizing that mental processes such as thoughts, feelings, beliefs, and volition can significantly influence the functioning and plasticity of the brain at various levels—molecular, cellular, neural circuitry—nonmaterialist neuroscience could markedly alter the way psychotropic (mind-altering) drugs are prescribed.

O'LEARY: Tom Wolfe wrote an influential essay in 1996 called "Sorry, But Your Soul Just Died," ascribing enormous power to the new antidepressants. Later, a very large amount of the miraculous effect turned out to be the placebo effect. Once people honestly believed that a drug could lift them out of depression, it could have been lithium or blue Smarties mix. Their own minds were apparently doing the heavy lifting, but they didn't even know it. I wonder if Wolfe will write another essay titled "Sorry, But Your Soul Just Prefers the Blue Smarties."

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