Following Darwinian logic, we end up in some unexpected places. Of course, to get there we must accept the premise that the human mind might be capable of existing independently of the neuronal activity on which it usually depends.

As the Buddhist scholar Robert Thurman has noted, those unflinching realists who scoff at the notion of an afterlife may be the ones indulging in wishful thinking.

How would creationists react if someone were to suggest that the survival of the soul after death, far from being ruled out by the theory of natural selection, might actually be predicted as a consequence of that theory?

The 12th and 13th centuries witnessed a flourishing of natural philosophy in Christian Europe. This Medieval natural philosophy included the biological basis of the human mind.

Belief in eternal life is hard for me. My mind has been largely taken over by science and has trouble getting itself around ideas so far outside the normal course of events. But I still believe...