[pacificwhim]

Yafi, I'm not going to attack you like some people are doing. To me that's counter to the ethics of any forum. I will say that your position that you will not read any book that you have decided a priori is not worth reading is counter to scientific thinking. No one knows what they will find in a book before they read it, just as they don't know what they will find in an experiment.

However, I have read Irreducible Mind. Cover to cover. It was a slog. This is not a "popular" book. It's 800 pages of dense, scholarly prose that is basically catalog of every theory and every experimental and well-documented anecdotal (usually reports from doctors and researchers on live patients or subjects) bit of evidence for the theory that the brain is not the sole source of the mind: medical evidence, physics, psi research, memory research, psychology, and on and on. It's not layperson speculation. I'm a journalist, not a scientist, but I'm well versed in scientific writing and I had to read some sections two or three times to fully grasp the implications of what the authors were saying, esp. in the areas related to deep psychological theory.

I would suggest that you read this book if for no other reason than to familiarize yourself with the latest science in this area. I think you'll agree that by any standard, it's a rigorous, honest piece of work. Yes, the authors have an agenda, but so does any scientist. They are hardly evangelists and are honest about the fact that their work proves nothing. Any true scientist knows that proof really doesn't exist.