Michael Egnor | |
|---|---|
| Occupation | Neurosurgeon |
Michael Egnor is an American pediatricneurosurgeon, advocate of the pseudoscientific concept ofintelligent design and blogger at theDiscovery Institute. He is a professor at the Department of Neurological Surgery atStony Brook University, a position held since 1991.[1] He has defendedmind-body dualism.[2][3][4]
Egnor attendedColumbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons.[5][6] He completed his residency atJackson Memorial Hospital. He is Professor of Neurosurgery and Pediatrics atState University of New York at Stony Brook.[6]
In 2005 Egnor operated on a young boy whose head was crushed by his father's SUV. The case was reported inNewsday,Good Morning America andNew York magazine.[7][8] His research onhydrocephalus has been published in theJournal of Neurosurgery and thePediatrics journal.[6]
Egnor rejectedevolutionary theory after readingMichael Denton's bookEvolution: A Theory in Crisis and said "claims of evolutionary biologists go wildly beyond the evidence."[9] In 2007 he joined the Discovery Institute'sEvolution News & Views blog.[10]
BiologistJerry Coyne responded to Egnor's article by saying that Egnor accepted widely discredited claims (claims recanted by Denton himself in a later book) and "Egnor is decades out of date and shows no sign of knowing anything at all about evolutionary biology in the 21st century."[11] Egnor later published a series of comprehensive articles on Discovery Institute responding to Coyne's remarks. Egnor is a signatory to theDiscovery Institute intelligent design campaignA Scientific Dissent From Darwinism andPhysicians and Surgeons who Dissent from Darwinism.
In March 2007, when the Alliance for Science sponsored an essay contest for high school students on the topic "Why I would want my doctor to have studied evolution," Egnor responded by posting an essay on theDiscovery Institute's intelligent design blog claiming that evolution was irrelevant to medicine.[12] Burt Humburg criticized him on the blogPanda's Thumb citing the benefits of evolution to medicine and, contrary to Egnor's claim, that doctors do study evolution.[13]
Egnor appeared inExpelled: No Intelligence Allowed. In the film,Ben Stein describes this as "Darwinists were quick to try and exterminate this new threat," and Egnor says he was shocked by the "viciousness" and "baseness" of the response. The websiteExpelled Exposed, created by theNational Center for Science Education (NCSE), responded by saying that Egnor must never have been on the Internet before.[14]
In September 2021 Egnor debatedMatt Dillahunty.[15]
Egnor has defended Aristotelian dualism.[3][4] He rejects bothCartesian dualism and materialism. He argues that observations during brain surgery, studies of brain seizures, split-brain surgery patients and accounts ofnear-death experiences support the dualism ofAristotle andThomas Aquinas, a type of dualism that is distinct from that ofRené Descartes.[4] Clinical neurologistSteven Novella who has debated Egnor has criticized his arguments for dualism as aGod of the gaps fallacy and has suggested that Egnor "uses his writings to confuse and misdirect, and to undermine the public understanding of science".[2]
Egnor has four children and resides inStony Brook, New York with his wife. Egnor is a Catholic.[16]
