The Sean McDowell Show - Can You Prove a Miracle? A Neuroscientist Says "Yes

Episode Date: May 26, 2026

A neuroscientist with a brain tumor. A wife with a strange dream. A demonic encounter. And a healing he can't explain away. Dr. Josh Brown is a professor of psychological and brain sciences at Indiana University and the author of Proving a Miracle. As one of the world's leading researchers studying the empirical effects of prayer, he applies rigorous scientific methods to questions most scientists won't touch and most Christians have been afraid to investigate. In this conversation, Josh is here to share his remarkable personal story and explore what the science actually says about miracles, prayer, and healing. READ: Proving a Miracle: Unlocking the Power of Prayer to Heal by Joshua W. Brown PhD (https://amzn.to/4nvZpFB) CHECK OUT: Miracle - a New Series by Angel (https://www.angel.com/shows/miracle) *Get a MASTERS IN APOLOGETICS or SCIENCE AND RELIGION at BIOLA (https://bit.ly/3LdNqKf) *USE Discount Code [smdcertdisc] for 25% off the BIOLA APOLOGETICS CERTIFICATE program (https://bit.ly/3AzfPFM) *See our fully online UNDERGRAD DEGREE in Bible, Theology, and Apologetics: (https://bit.ly/448STKK) FOLLOW ME ON SOCIAL MEDIA: Twitter: https://x.com/Sean_McDowell TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@sean_mcdowell?lang=en Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmcdowell/ Website: https://seanmcdowell.org Discover more Christian podcasts at lifeaudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at lifeaudio.com/contact-us.

Life is a song. And what if your faith could help you hit the high notes? Grammy nominated and dove award-winning artist Torin Wells invites you into the high note. It's the high note. A podcast about real life, real struggles, and a real God who meets you right where you are. With honesty, insight, and encouragement, Torin tackles the issues you're facing every day and helps you rise above the noise. If you're ready for a fresh perspective on your faith,

tune in to the High Note podcast with Torin Wells. Welcome to the High Note. Available now, wherever you get your podcasts. Life Audio I had no reason to think that there was anything wrong or that my life was going to change absolutely dramatically, you know, in the matter of the day. When I woke up the next morning, I wasn't in my bed. I wasn't even in my house. I was in an ambulance.

I learned later that about four in the morning or so, Candy, who wasn't sleeping well because she was very pregnant, heard me sort of scream. and she was like, what's wrong? She turned on the light, and I was seizing, just unconscious and seizing. Foaming at the mouth, you know, went to the hospital, picked up the radiology results. It said, you know, there's a brain tumor. And the best I can describe it is like if someone taps your kneecap and your knee jerks, it's like you didn't tell your knee to do that. It's just doing it.

Well, now my whole body's doing this. Our guest today, neuroscientist Josh Brown, experienced a dramatic healing from a tumor through prayer over 20 years ago. What happened? What did he find when he began applying his scientific expertise to studying the empirical effects of prayer? And how has his research both surprised him and changed his life? You're about to find out.

Dr. Josh Brown is Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Indiana University, and the author of the new book, Proving a Miracle, which I had a chance to endorse. Welcome to the show. Well, thanks, Sean. Pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me. Yeah, your book is super interesting. I've been covering so much supernatural phenomena on my channel.

And the moment your book came out, I was like, I want to read this and I want to have you on. Now, before we get to the story of your healing from a tumor, can you paint the picture of your life personally and professionally before you got sick? So I was 30 years old, and I had recently finished my PhD. I was starting my second postdoctoral fellowship at Washington University in St. Louis. And I was doing a combination of functional brain imaging and humans and computational neuromodeling. So I was deeply engrossed in trying to figure out how the mechanisms of the brain work and how they work together to produce cognition and basically how to understand how it is that we think, and especially things like higher cognitive function. Like we have goals. We understand. We understand.

if we make a mistake. And I want to understand how you go from like 100 billion neurons to that kind of function. How do they all work together? How does that work? And so at the time, I just finished my first post-doctoral fellowship doing monkey neurophysiology, recording from brain cells of monkeys. And so now I was doing it in humans. And I had at the time just published one paper in Science Magazine, which if you're a scientist,

science and nature, like the two sort of top journals that you want to publish in. And so I had my first paper in science. And so things were looking up, you know, like my career was going well. I was enjoying my work. And my wife, Candy, was nine months pregnant with our first child. So we were excited at starting a new family. And so professionally, things were going well. I mean, personally, things were looking pretty good.

I had no reason to think that there was anything wrong or that my life was going to change absolutely dramatically, you know, in the matter of a day. Yeah, it sounds like things were on the up and up, especially at 30 years old. One does not expect the kind of news that you received. Now, one more thing before the diagnosis or a couple of things. Were you religious? What did you think about miracles happening? And did kind of your science training shape the way you expected them to occur and whether or not we could, like, empirically test them?

Yeah, so I feel like it's kind of an interesting thing to be, like, a practicing scientist professionally and also a Christian. And so I grew up in a church, basically an evangelical kind of church. And so I learned the Bible. I even went to Christian schools, elementary. school, high school. And so in this church setting I grew up in, there was very much this focus on the Bible, the Word of God. But there was not really a framework for miracles apart from what happened in the Bible. In other words, there's no framework for miracles today. And so by the time I got to

college, I had sort of a crisis of faith. And it became a question of, you know, I'd grown up with, you know, these Christian schools and teaching. And here I was reading Nietzsche and, you know, doing the survey of Western civilization, you know, which was all part of the curriculum. And so, you know, it doesn't, doesn't take long where you get exposed to that, you know, like the documentary hypothesis of, you know, the Bible. And so I, I, I went through all of that. And at a certain point, I had this crisis of faith. And I thought, well, you know, here's all these professors.

And they're saying that, you know, all these Christian beliefs are, you know, well, let's say not exactly what I was, you know, I'd learned as a kid. And so what happened is a lot of books on apologetics. And I think probably the single most influential work was your father's book evidence of the hands of verdict. So I spent a lot of time reading that, thinking through it. And I even went and looked up some of the original historians, the Jewish and Roman historians at the time, read their work. And in the end, I considered all that. And I decided that I found the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus compelling.

And everything kind of hangs on that. And so I found that sort of intellectual frame. that made faith a rational conclusion for me. And so I kind of live like that. But at the same time, I was, I was, I remember at a certain point, this is probably my third year of college after I had sort of passed through this time. And I was praying and I said, God, if, you know, if all this is true, there just, there has to be more.

There's no way there cannot be more. It's not possible that you're God, you're this powerful. And there's just, and I don't see it in the day to day. And so I was praying. I was fasting. And I didn't even know what for. And it was the next year, this was now 1994. I just happened to get, you know, I'd done well in school, got good grades.

And I got some pretty nice scholarships and fellowships. And one of those paid for a year abroad. So I had a year abroad, all expenses paid. So I went to the University of Edinburgh. and this was in fall of 94. And as soon as I got there, and maybe I'll step on some toes with this, but the Toronto Revival people,

you know, that had all broken out just a few months earlier. And, yeah, well, I knew nothing of it. So they all went to Edinburgh where I was, and some new friends of mine, since I was an international student, said, oh, hey, we're going to this revival service. Why don't you come along? And I thought, well, that's weird.

We didn't do that kind of thing in the church I grew up. in. And, you know, so I went and I'm like, I don't know what to think about this, but, you know, I'll check it out because, I mean, I've been praying and asking God for, you know, something more. I don't even know what. But so I went to this meeting and I watched with a bit of like a mix of fascination and horror as I saw people get prayed for and fall over and roll around and laugh and cry. And I thought, you know, it was definitely weird. But I thought, well, what if it's God? You know, if it's God, I don't want to miss it. So I thought, well, I'll go a little closer and check it out,

and I'm going to listen to what they're praying. And, you know, the slightest whiff of heresy, I'm out of here. So I went up and I listened, and they prayed things like, you know, bless this person, God, show them your love, fill them with your Holy Spirit. And I thought, well, that doesn't seem too scandalous. So I went up and got prayed for. And, you know, the scripture says, I take it out of context. A thousand may follow your right hand, you know, but it'll not come near you.

And that's exactly what happened. prayed for. I felt nothing. Everybody around me is falling over and, you know, laughing and such. And I thought, well, I'm just, I'm a rational type. So, you know, I'm just not the type to be swayed by that sort of thing. So I left. And a few days later, I was in my dorm room late at night, you know, right, you know, just a few hundred yards down from the Edinburgh Castle is where my dorm room was. And I was praying one night and about to go to bed. And all of a sudden, out of nowhere, the love of God just hit me. And it was this intense, it's like when you have a crush on somebody, but it was so powerful. It was unmistakable, like nothing I'd ever experienced even close.

It was like the presence of God, the love of God was just there. It just overwhelmed me. And to the point that I, you know, you see people falling over and I thought, well, okay, you know, get a hold of yourself. And I found that was great effort. I could try to pull myself together, but it took, it took a huge effort that I just, didn't really feel like exerting. And so I just, I lay on the floor and I cried and I laughed. And I had no language to describe this experience. And all I knew was that up to that point, you know, with all the study of apologetics, I had a rational foundation for faith. But now I found

that there was a power. And I was experiencing God in a direct personal way in a way that I it felt like in some ways the thing that I was asking for without knowing what I was asking for. And so anyway, the Toronto people left within a week. And, you know, there was sort of this aftermath of like, okay, now what? You know, what do I do with this? Like, I don't even know what happened. I don't know how to describe it. All I know is that God loves me and that I had this experience of the presence of God.

And it changed me. Like from that day, it just changed me profoundly. And so I finished the year abroad. And I went back. That was, what, 90, late 1994. And so, you know, I moved to Boston, started graduate school, met candy. We got married. We both got our PhDs and spent a year in Nashville, Tennessee, and then moved to St. Louis.

and now she's pregnant, and here I am. So I think at that point, to come back to your question, I had these experiences. I had a rational foundation for faith. I had this direct spiritual experience of God, which it was years later, I was describing it to someone. They said, oh, yeah, we all had that too. It's called the filling of the Holy Spirit.

And I was like, oh, okay, I guess that's what you call it then. all right. But at that point, so I had these experiences, but I still had no framework for miracles, you know, miracles happening today. I'd never seen one. I don't know that I'd even so much as heard of that sort of thing happening. So that was the personal and spiritual place I was in when, you know, when I suddenly got this diagnosis.

That is so interesting and not where I thought you were going to go with the story. So 94, you're basically graduating high school roughly. That's when I graduated, it's about the same age. So if you're 30, this is like 10, roughly a decade later, get your PhD, get married, settling professionally, believe rationally in God, experientially in God. But you're not experiencing miracles regularly and a part of a faith that expected to see them. that's why I think this seems like it was a little bit of a surprise for you. So take us to that moment when you got that diagnosis and how you and your family responded.

So it was August of 2003 and I went to bed one night, as I always do. And when I woke up the next morning, I wasn't in my bed. I wasn't even in my house. I was in an ambulance. And I learned later that about four in the morning or so, Candy, who wasn't sleeping well, because she was very pregnant, heard me sort of scream. And she was like, what's wrong? She turned on the light. And I was seizing.

I was not asleep, not awake, just unconscious and seizing, foaming at the mouth. my arm had like shot up and so candy called 9-1-1 and the paramedics came and they took me to the ambulance and they gave me an oxygen mask and once i got oxygen that kind of brought me back around but i was still kind of like i didn't remember things because the seizure sort of messes up your immediate short-term memory so um so they took me to the er and did a CT on my head to looking for things like hematomas and, you know, things that are immediately life-threatening. And they said, well, there's nothing immediately life-threatening, you know, tested me for all kinds of drugs. Relieved to know I wasn't taking any drugs. So, and then they, they, so they sent me home. And then

four days later, candy went into labor. So, so we go to the hospital. At this point, the doctors told me I couldn't drive since I had a seizure. So I get a ride from a friend who takes us both to the hospital. And so candies in labor, gives birth to our daughter. And then I go over to the other side of the hospital, the radiology, and have a follow-up MRI done on my head. So we're both basically in the hospital at the same time. And so we go home and the doctors say, okay, now we need to do some follow-up tests. And so they do. And when my daughter was two and a half weeks old, I get the results back. I, you know, went to the hospital. The hospital picked up the radiology results and read them sitting in my car in the parking garage.

And it said, you know, there's a brain tumor. And as a neuroscientist, I'm not a good patient because, you know, I know what that means. And so I was quite upset. And I went home and, you know, told candy, here's what's going on. So we prayed. And so that's how I. I was diagnosed with a brain tumor. Tell me a little about what happened next and why you're confident that there wasn't just

some natural explanation for this, but they... If you're a Christian man struggling with porn, there's a good chance this is something you've never fully talked about. Maybe you've prayed about it. Asked for forgiveness. Promised yourself this would be the last time. And yet, it keeps coming back. Not because you don't love God and not because you don't want to change, but because for

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Nelson Widing online. That's N-E-L-S-O-N-W-H-I-T-I-N-G to search online. Healing was a result of prayer. Well, so this is where, if what I've told you so far doesn't sound weird, this is where it gets a little weirder. So I was, so, you know, over then, I think. was the next night or two. Well, Candy had been, Candy was up praying, and she remembered that about a month before I had the seizure, she had a dream in which she saw this evil-looking face and heard a voice saying, I'm going to kill you. And she felt that God spoke to her and said,

you can choose how you're going to meet this, whether with fear, with faith, and your life depends on it. And none of that made sense at the time. But so it turns out, that this neighborhood we were living in, you know, there are issues. And we, along with some people in our church, had been walking the streets, praying for the neighborhood, praying for people. And there was a group that was trying to set up a presence. This was, I wouldn't consider it a Christian group. They were trying to start some new initiative for their spiritual movement in the neighborhood. And so we were praying, we were rebuking all kinds of spiritual powers and, and basically, you know, what you call spiritual warfare in the sense of we were asking God to

sort of, you know, open things up spiritually and, you know, for the whole neighborhood we were living. And so anyway, we'd run into this group that was sort of, trying to gather to their spiritual cause. And it turns out, so Candy in her dream and heard this thing say, you know, this is my name. I gave this weird proper name. And so she Googled the name later, you know, after I'd had the seizure. And it turns out it was the name of the code book of this group that was trying to set up shop.

Wow. And so anyway, the next morning I was just waking up, and I'm not a morning person. And so I sort of woke up and Candy said, hey, you know, I was letting you sleep. But I didn't tell you this, but I heard this, I had this dream a month ago. And this thing told me its name. And she says, does this name mean anything to you? And I said, well, no, I never, I hadn't really heard that. But as soon as she said it, I felt really agitated.

And I said, you know, let's just pray. And so we start praying. And she said, well, you know, I don't know, but if there's some spirit named this thing, then just leave us alone in Jesus' name. And as soon as those words left her mouth, I would say jump, but it was more like launched out of my bed and landed on the floor and started thrashing around. And I was fully conscious. This wasn't a seizure.

And the best I can describe it is like if someone tapping. your kneecap and your knee jerks. It's like you didn't tell your knee to do that. It's just doing it. Well, now my whole body's doing this. And so Candy says, well, you know, tell it you belong to Jesus. And I said, well, you know, I belong to Jesus. And my throat locked up.

And I couldn't say Jesus. And so then Candy was like, you know, you leave him alone in Jesus name. And my head, it was like this uncontrolled. reflex. It just whipped around at her and screamed, no. And I was like, I didn't, I didn't mean to do that. And so we continued to pray, but, you know, neither of us had any idea what to do. We're like, well, if it's a demon, where do we send it? We don't have any pigs. What do we do? And, you know, because Jesus sent it into pigs. So we're like, well, we've got to have. house cap, but, you know, I don't know, it seems like a bad idea. So, you know, maybe, I don't know,

hang out in the squirrels or something. There's a lot of squirrels outside. So, you know, but that's how cluelessly, like we had no idea, you know, what, and of course, this was, this was new. Like, and I'm here like, wait, I'm a Christian. If anyone's in Christ, old things are passed away, all things are become new. So I don't even know what to do with this. I don't have a theological framework for it. And yet here I am, and Candy and I are both watching this, I'm conscious. And so, you know, is this a demon? Is this like some kind of temporalob epilepsy phenomenon?

Like, what is going on? And so anyway, we were going to this church that was, you know, also evangelical, not particularly charismatic or Pentecostal. but one of the people there was kind of like this closet charismatic type and he was like there's a prayer meeting across town you should go check that out they can probably help you with that so I'm like well you know and at this point you know just to be clear the kind of brain tumor I have is such that there's not much you can do like the chemo radiation surgery it doesn't statistically prolong lifespan and so I I was basically, I went from having a promising career to looking at being dead within a few years, and there's nothing anyone can really do about it. So that was the situation as I understood it. And so I was desperate.

I was already desperate because I didn't want to die. And it seemed like we're reaching the limits of what medicine can do for me. And also now, it seems like there might be this demonic thing going on. And so when this friend of ours said, well, there's a prayer group, and they know how to pray, you know, pray with people for healing. I said, well, it appears I have at least some spiritual problems, so I should probably look for a spiritual solution. And so I went to this meeting, and they, you know, they're kind of casual.

They're like, well, you know, we heard you had a, you know, heard you had a demon. Yeah, we can help you with that. And I'm like, uh, is this, is this going to hurt? Like, should I be worried? Because, you know, I don't know. And they were, so they were, um, gentle and firm. So they said, all right, well, you know, we're going to pray with you.

We're going to lead you in some prayers. And we're going to, you know. And so I spent about three hours. And they would say things like, all right, in Jesus' name, you know, this type of spirit, leave him now. And I would sit there like, I don't feel anything, you know, there's nothing going on. And then they would say, okay, now this other kind of unclean spirit, leave him. And as soon as they said that, I started like shaking and I broke the, my glasses and I vomited even though I didn't feel sick.

And so this is all going. And I'm still fully conscious, right? So, like, it's hard to overstate how utterly weird to the point of absurdity this all seems to me. Like, here I am. I'm a neuroscientist. I study the brain. I have a brain tumor.

And now, apparently, there's some kind of demonic thing that's troubling me. what do you do with that? And so this group spent like three hours praying with me. And at the end of that, I felt this tremendous sense of peace. And I started laughing. And they said, well, what demon is laughing? And I said, well, I think that's just me. I mean, I just feel really peaceful now.

And they said, okay, well, you know, I think we can call it a night. So, and that began really a five. month-long process of me just traveling around first and, you know, across the city, then the U.S. and then other parts of the world, looking for some kind of prayer ministry, some kind of help because I was desperate. And so I got a lot of prayer ministry. I had a lot of remarkable experiences through that. And the whole demonic thing seemed to end finally about five months later. So I was back with this original group that had prayed for me. I was playing guitar.

We were, you know, singing some worship songs. And at a certain point, I set the guitar aside and kind of slumped over. And the guy who was leading the group came over and he said, basically, I've had enough of this. You, spirit, and he named the name Candy had gotten in her dream. Leave him now. And as soon as he said that, I just put the guitar aside, ran to the bathroom and immediately vomited profusely, even though I didn't feel sick at all.

And I came back to the meeting after a few minutes, and I said, oh, sorry about that. I had to run out. And they said, did you smell that? Like, as soon as you ran out, the entire building smelled like a sewer exploded. Like, the entire building. And I was like, I don't think that was me. And they're like, no, it couldn't possibly have been you. This was, but the thing is, the last seizure I had was.

just a few days before that. And after that event, I had no more seizures. And I had no more of these sort of demonic-like things. So it seemed like from that day, that was the end of that. And so I continued to get prayer for healing. But that whole process sort of threw me head first into this whole question of, like, what do we make of deliverance? Like, what do we make of exorcism?

What do we make of this idea? of the demonic doing things today. Because when you look at the stories throughout the gospel, when Jesus healed people, it says, you know, he cast out evil spirits with a word and healed all the sick. And you see this dealing with unclean spirits and physical healing going hand in hand throughout Jesus' ministry. And, of course, I read that, you know,

any number of times when I was younger, and I thought, okay, well, that's sort of interesting. file that away under, you know, who knows. But then, you know, I started, you know, this was my life. And as I began to travel with different groups, you know, who would offer healing prayer, I began to see more of this. And, you know, to the point where it became somewhat common. And as I was experiencing things.

So anyway, that was, you know, this was not at all how I envisioned my life going. I was going to be a good scientist to go to church. Sundays and, you know, be a good Christian and, you know, sort of live my life. This was not at all how I imagine things going. Yeah, I could definitely not see this the trajectory that you were planning to go on. So let's circle back. You made some, you made a statement at the very beginning about how sometimes, I don't remember the wording there's like attention or it's difficult to be a scientist and a person of faith. A lot of people say today we should keep the two separate. I'm curious how you would respond to that kind of objection.

And what do you think science can reveal about faith? What is the role of science as we think about these faith questions? Yeah, yeah, a great set of questions. And really the first, probably third of my book, well, maybe first quarter is sort of frames a lot of what follows in light of those issues. But I think the short version is, historically, there's certainly a lot of, there has been a lot of tension between the faith community and, you know, Christians in particular and science. And this goes back at least to Galileo. And certainly by the time of Darwin,

now Darwin sort of creates this intellectual framework where you can be sort of an intellectually fulfilled atheist, as it were. And that, of course, creates tension. And by the time, by the, you know, 1925, you have the Scopes trial. And up and up through the 1980s, the 1990s, into the early 2000s, you have this ongoing sort of culture war, creation, evolution, intelligent design. And so, you know, I followed all of that. And I think by 1997, you have people like Stephen Jay Gould arguing for this non-overlapping magisteria. So people like Gould talking to undergrads who are wrestling with, you know, how do I be a person? of faith and a person of science.

And Gold basically saw these decades of culture war and said, you know what, just keep them separate. And you can see where that comes from. But I think what's interesting is in the history of it, by the time you get to 2005, you have

the Dover Panda trial, which was sort of like the big showdown over, you know, intelligent design and evolution. And that I mean, that was basically the end of, you know, I would say the intelligent design movement really being in the limelight. And of course, there's still people working on it.

But after that, I think in a way there was kind of a reduction in this friction, in a way that ironically allowed for more of a reproachment between science and Christianity, in particular. And I think faith even more generally. Because also what was going on at that time was the development of cognitive neuroscience methods like functional brain imaging, which made it possible to study things like religious faith from a neuroscience perspective. And so by the early 2000s you have, for example, John Cabot-Zinn, Richie Davidson,

people who are heavily influenced by various Buddhist traditions, in particular. who basically said, well, why should... If you're a Christian man struggling with porn, there's a good chance this is something you've never fully talked about. Maybe you've prayed about it. Asked for forgiveness. Promised yourself this would be the last time. And yet, it keeps coming back.

Not because you don't love God and not because you don't want to change. But because for many men, this isn't just a habit. It's a pattern wired into the subconscious, almost like a loop that keeps repeating. And that's why even sincere, disciplined men can feel stuck. in the same cycle for years. Nelson Whiting is a clinical hypnotherapist who works specifically with Christian men to break that cycle at the root. So the struggle itself begins to lose grip. He's written a bestselling book explaining why this keeps happening and what actually leads

to lasting freedom. Download the digital version for just $7 and get free bonus training at no limits hypnotherapy.com slash book. That's no limits hypnotherapy.com slash book or search Nelson Whiting online. That's N-E-L-S-O-N-W-H-I-T-I-N-G to search online. Shouldn't we study our practices with neuroscience methods? And they proceeded to do so. And so now you have Ritchie Davidson's paper in the early 2000s looking at the effect of Buddhist meditation practices, or I guess more properly mindfulness-based stress reduction on on immune system function and on overall well-being. And from that time, by about 2005, I was, as a neuroscientist, attending the annual neuroscience conference in Washington, D.C.,

there was about 20,000 neuroscientists there. And the keynote speaker at that meeting with probably at least 7,000 neuroscientists in the audience, was none other than the Dalai Lama. Interesting. And I remember thinking, wait, what just happened here? Because the last I checked, there was kind of this animosity between science and faith. And how is it that the neuroscientists have welcomed a major world religious leader as a keynote speaker? Like, what just happened here?

And what happened is the people who were, so like Richie Davidson, people who had formed the Mind Life Institute, basically said, you know, let's use scientific methods to study the effects of these practices. And the Dalai Lama himself supported the effort. And so the framing of the question was our goal here is not to prove that our faith is true by brain science in some cosmological sense. The goal is to understand empirically what are the effects of these practices, on things like well-being. And so what happened then is from about the mid-2000s, you have this growth, this massive growth of people using these newly available

cognitive neuroscience methods and this new reproachment of sort of faith in science in general. Because like there's a sizable percentage of scientists today who are people of faith. And so it's now, I think in the last 20 years, become increasingly acceptable to study the effects of religious and spiritual practices on brain activity, on health, on well-being, but as empirical questions. So in other words, from an empirical perspective, rather than apologetic perspective. And I think what's happened also is that the Christian community, in a lot of ways, is still living in this sort of pre-2000s kind of ethos where it's now,

difficult, you know, there's still the sense of, oh, we better not engage too much in science. You know, we might lose our faith or, you know, we might sort of trespass gold's non-overlapping magisterial boundary or something. But meanwhile, you have people of other, of different faiths who have embraced science and who are doing scientific research. And I think generating real results, you know, these are empirical results that I think, you know, I respect that kind of work. And so which is not to say that every study is, you know, is at the level of rigor that maybe it needs to be, but at least, you know, people are engaging with it. And I think, you know, when I look at the Christian community, it kind of surprised me. And I began to wonder, so why aren't the Christians engaging, right?

I mean, the culture war is sort of receding in ways. And that creates opportunity to study empirical effects. Why aren't we doing that? That is one of the most helpful summaries of how the conversation has shifted that I've heard in a long time. That's one of the things that I loved about the beginning of your book is going back to the 90s and early 2000s. There very much was this antagonistic kind of new atheist kind of religion versus science. And then you see this subtle shift. And now you're talking about this in terms of prayer.

We see it in terms of miracles. I just got a book from the Netherlands called The Self Does Not Die, and it's 128 verified cases of near-death experiences. And I'm leaning into this a lot on my channel. I find it so interesting, but there's so many people that are afraid of this. For legitimate questions, does it lead to universalism? Does it lead towards new age? I understand those questions, but I think we want to be a part of the conversation rather than shy away. from it. And I think it does make sense within a Christian worldview. I think you're right that we can

engage us in a way that's not directly apologetic, but it does have apologetic implications more indirectly than directly. Now, you talked about with the Dalai Lama, the idea where you and I would resonate is this idea that like prayer and our thoughts and meditation can actually change the brain itself. Now, you and I would argue that's a piece of evidence for the reality of the soul that I'm material and I'm immaterial. And actually, that causal relationship, I would argue can go both ways. But if that's true, if like healing can change the brain healing prayer, then how do you know your kind of healing prayer wasn't just this natural interaction between your soul and your body and relieving the stress or whatever? caused your tumor to be in your brain, how would you answer that kind of placebo-type challenge? Yeah, so that's a great question.

And I think the word placebo is often treated as a kind of dirty word. So for biomedical scientists, a placebo effect is this nuisance that you want to try to control for and get rid of. And for the Christians, the suggestion that, well, maybe the miracle that someone claimed to have experienced was somehow. a placebo effect. Maybe it wasn't quite real in some sense. And thus does that devalue their spiritual experience?

And I think the placebo effect and other mind-body effects are ones that, first of all, they're real. They do happen. You can measure them. In fact, if I, let's suppose I, let's suppose I, I, say, okay, I'm going to rub this hand lotion on you. And this hand lotion is going to make it hurt less when I apply a small electrical shock later. And, you know, me doing that would cause you to experience less pain. About roughly 75% of population will experience less pain. If they're, you know, if you rub this, you know, just ordinary hand lotion has no active ingredients whatsoever. You just

rub it on and you tell them this will relieve your pain and they will experience less pain. Okay. And not only that, but if you, you know, if someone has an opioid overdose, the antidote is Narcan, right, which is this drug called naloxone. And if you give someone naloxone, that will reverse the opioid overdose and it can save their life. And it does that by blocking these opioid receptors in the brain. And in that way, it prevents the opioids.

from having their overdose effect and potentially stopping someone from breathing. But the thing is, if I take that same drug Narcan and I administer that to you, and then I rub this cream on you and say this cream is going to relieve your pain, it will lessen the placebo pain relieving effect of that cream. Okay, so in other words,

the placebo effect is biochemically real because you can block it with certain other chemicals. So I think when you have, claims of miracles. I mean, my basic position is that I think there are there are cases within the Christian community where the case for miracles is overstated. In other words, I think, you know, the first thing you have to do is define even what do you even mean by a miracle. What do you mean by a miraculous healing through prayer? And if by that you mean that there's no possible natural explanation, well, I think in a decent number of cases, I think there is, there are,

possible natural explanations. And the Global Medical Research Institute, which I helped co-found and now direct, focuses in part on investigating these claims and trying to understand medically speaking, scientifically speaking, what actually happened, and especially by looking at medical records, what actually happen as someone claims to have experienced a miraculous healing. And I think, So, you know, coming back to what I was saying earlier, my basic position is that I think there are some cases where people claim a miracle, but you can't explain it. And I think, but there are also cases where there are miracles that meet strong criteria, that, in other words, the strongest definition of a miracle, I think those cases meet. And here I refer to example of the Lambertini criteria, which the Catholic Church has developed as sort of a set of criteria for evaluating whether something qualifies as a miracle. And for that, the essence is the person has to have an unambiguous diagnosis of a condition for which there's no hope of a cure.

And yet following the intervention, the person is healed completely, permanently, and instantly. and there's no possibility that some natural process could have accounted for that. Now, that's a strong definition. That's a high standard. Yeah. And there are cases that we've run across that do, you know, after we've consulted with multiple academic specialists, trying to explain it any way we can, there are cases that still resist all attempts at explanation.

And so those, I would say those are miracles. And we've seen a number of those. those documented a number of those, published them in medical journals, where we've had multiple academic medical specialists say, yeah, there's no way you can explain that. That simply can't happen, and yet it did. And it happened right after the person was prayed for in the name of Jesus. So now, I think the challenge for, I think, the Christian community is partly to engage with science and to recognize where there are natural. explanations because if you're going to claim that something's a miracle, that claim has to be

falsifiable in a sense. And so if you claim everything is a miracle, and it turns out that you can explain some of this without too much difficulty by natural means, it reduces the credibility of the situations where you do claim a miracle. And so I think, you know, I dedicated my book to the believers who doubt and the doubters who believe. Because I think ultimately these are empirical questions. In other words, the question is really what does the evidence say? And if the evidence is such that you can't rule out a natural explanation, then I think we need to be honest about that.

But if the evidence is such that there is no explanation that's in any way plausible, then I think we can acknowledge that too. And so, you know, from the apologetics perspective, I think if you're going to make a claim, right, you want to make it based on the strongest evidence and you don't want to make claims that are basically not supported. So now, now at the same time, when someone has a spiritual experience, they experience a healing, I celebrate that. Okay. So if someone, you know, someone's in pain, they had a disease, and now they're a healing. that's, I mean, that's great, right? I want people to be healed. And so I think we can, we can sort of support that while at the same time maintaining a standard of intellectual rigor about what constitutes a miracle, if we're going to claim and start making apologetics and, you know, theological arguments on the

basis of that, we want to stick to the strongest evidence. So, so I think that's, that's basically how I see a lot of that. And I think what I hope is that the Christian community will see the value of engaging with science, engaging with empirical questions, wrestling with them. Because the thing is,

honestly, the Christian community is behind relative to other faith communities. I think the Buddhists, for example, have invested way more in scientific research. They have way more evidence of the effect of, you know, for example, mindfulness meditation practices. on health outcomes.

And Christians just don't have much like that. I mean, my group has a paper coming out, and I think around May, I'm told, that looks at the effect of a brief healing prayer intervention in a medical setting with a randomized controlled trial. And we find significant reductions in pain and anxiety for weeks relative to a control group that listened to instrumental music for the same few minutes.

So there are studies. We're doing studies like this. There is some other research, but there's relatively little. And I think if the Christian community wants to make claims that what we're doing is effective, then we have to have empirical data. And so, you know, I looked around and really didn't see much going on in that space. And I thought, well, if nobody else is going to do it, then, you know, let's do it. So that's what we're doing.

I love it. That is such a good. important call that I want every Christian and especially apologists and scholars to hear. I would love to see more Christians enter in the space of afterlife apologetics, enter the space of miracles, enter the space of prayer, and be bold about this. Because if Christianity is true, we have nothing to be afraid of of where these tests point towards and where the evidence indicates. So I love that call.

Your point about miracles is I appreciate that high standard, and that's a really high standard that Catholics have for attesting miracles. And the key I don't want viewers or listeners to miss is it's not just that somebody is praying, but those healings are instantaneous. And they occur at the moment someone prays in the name of Jesus. This is where we're ruling out naturalistic explanations in this case. Now, there might be a lot of cases where God does miracles and somebody's healed, but it has less evidential value and we just can't show that it's a miracle in the same way. It doesn't mean it's not a miracle. There's just less evidence that it is a miracle.

So that really careful, nuance is important. Let me ask you this. I had a chance to interview your remarkable wife who wrote the book, Testing Prayer, which was, I think, maybe 10 or 12, 15 years ago with Harvard University Press also, such a careful scholar. How does your work compare and contrast with what she did and she is doing? Yeah. So Candy's a first class, top flight scholar, you know, bachelor's, master's, PhD, all from Harvard, and with a focus in American studies, American religious history. Candy is an historian and currently a professor of religious studies.

And, you know, the journey is one that we've shared together now for, I guess, coming up to 30 years before too long. But her training and expertise is more on the humanity side and my training. If you're a Christian man who genuinely wants to quit porn, but keeps falling back into it. This message is for you. Many men think their problem is a lack of discipline. So they try harder, pray more, install blockers, find accountability. And while those things can help, they often don't stop the cycle.

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So in her book, Testing Prayer, that was 2012, I think, from Harvard Press, that book is, well, let me back up. Within epistemology, there are different branches. There are different kinds of epistemologies. And you can roughly delineate a scientific epistemology from an historical epistemology. And what I mean by that is, if I ask you, does a bar of dove soap float in water at room temperature, you can repeat the event. You can create the conditions and you can repeat the event and get the same result. And that's the scientific epistemology, right?

But if I ask you, you know, who was the 16th president of the U.S.? Was it Abraham Lincoln? That's not a repeatable event. And yet you can establish it as true using an historical method, an historical epistemology, which is not the same as a scientific epistemology. You can't repeat the event in which Lincoln becomes president. And so I think for, I mean, what Candy has done in testing prayer is to thoroughly investigate all kinds of aspects of practices of prayer for healing around the world, looking.

at medical records, looking at the effect on individuals, the effect on communities, looking at, and of course, with medical records. So we also collaborated on this study in Mozambique and Brazil, where we tested people's hearing and vision before they got prayed for and after, and we measured dramatic improvements. And so that gets a little bit into the scientific epistemology, but I think a lot of her work focuses on the historical side of things. Whereas for me, because of my background and training is science and neuroscience, I've focused more on sort of the scientific method. So, for example, this paper we have coming out,

now I've also looked at medical records as a way of investigating claims of miraculous healings. That's actually more of an historical epistemology because a miracle is not something you can reproduce. You can't set up the same conditions and get the same miracle necessarily. So I've done a bit of that, but mostly I've looked at the scientific literature, and so my book has a bit over 200 scientific references in it. So it's just chock full of science, basically, you know, and a bit of my personal story as well. So I think that's the basic difference, but, you know, we're very much on the same page in how we approach things, which is that we're both Christians, but we're also trained actually. academics, you know, who are trained to think critically and analyze stuff and not necessarily take things at face value.

And a young, just Christians listening, we need people to follow what Josh and Candy Brown are doing, go get great training in philosophy, great training in science, great training in history, humanities, and then apply that to do research that intersects with a Christian faith, but top-level, careful, quality research that can be peer-reviewed. that's what we need. Now, you talked about a number of cases that kind of meet this high criteria of being a miracle. We just share one with us, and we can link to the study, so you don't necessarily have to give all the details. But one study that you've looked into and you walked away and you're like, this one is documented.

And I think the best explanation is by far a miracle. Yeah. So we've got a bunch of these on our global MRI.org website. but one I would point out is case of a woman who at age 18 gradually lost her eyesight over the course of about three months. And she was blind. She went to a neurologist who examined the back of her eyes and wrote in her medical records that there's dense areas of damage in the back of both eyes. So this is a part of the eye that converts the light into nerve signals. that part was damaged.

Now, that part, when it's damaged, it does not regenerate. And so she was diagnosed with juvenile macular degeneration. And so she then went to school for the blind. She walked with a cane. She read braille. She met her husband and got married, having never seen him. She had a kid, had never seen her daughter. and so about 12 years later, she had gone to,

she and her husband had gone to a healing prayer meeting with a well-known sort of healing minister at the time. This was probably around early 1970s, I want to say, and she wasn't healed. A little while later, they're back at home, they're about to go to bed. They prayed together before bed, and her husband, who's a pastor,

prays a brief prayer like, well, God, we know you can heal her. Would you heal her tonight? You know, and, you know, not really expecting anything. But so she opens her eyes and she can see. Wow. And she looked around and she's, she looked at her husband and she's like, well, the girl said you were pretty handsome, but they weren't lying. That's, you know, the response you'd hope for. And then she sees a picture of her daughter on the dresser, and she's like, that's my daughter. And then she sees her daughter for the first time in her life. And so from that day, her eyesight was fine.

And so then by the time we came across her, this is now decades later, her eyesight had been fine for like 40 plus years. And we said, well, can we look at the back of your eyes? And so we had her go to the doctor, who took pictures of the back of her eyes. And then we had those pictures read by a professor of ophthalmology. And the professor of ophthalmology looked at them and said, I can see where there's a tiny bit of scarring where it looks like they're used to be damaged, but they're not damaged anymore.

And so, and basically that was it. she had by that time she was well advanced in years and had a little bit of age-related macular degeneration, but her vision was still basically fine. And, you know, had been for 47 years at the time we published the article in the medical journal. So, and to be clear, she had been examined by doctors multiple times while she was blind. And they all said that the back of her eyes is wrecked, you know, and that's it. Like there is zero hope that the eyes will ever reject. or, you know, restore themselves. There's no hope whatsoever.

And yet she was healed exactly at that moment while they were praying for healing after, you know, shortly after they visited this healing prayer meeting. And so I think, you know, in terms of the apologetic side of it, I think part of the claim is that the healing sort of fit the criteria for miracle. But the other part is the coincidence. That is that this happened exactly. That's right. At the time that she, they were praying for healing.

So, and there are many others. I mean, we've got a whole TV series now with Angel Studios called Miracle, where we document some of these cases. We sort of dramatically recreate them, and, you know, I narrate some of them. And so we, you know, you can see several of these cases now that we've investigated, sort of brought to life, you know, interviews with the actual people who were healed. And so, I mean, there are more stories I could tell, but these are the kinds of cases that we look for. And I think, you know, that having a case where the medical evidence is unambiguous and clear, it meets the Lambertini criteria, those are the kinds of cases we look at. And I think those demand some kind of explanation. them. And, you know, I, so I think you can, you can wrestle with them. You can, you know, think about them,

but I think ignoring them is, you know, they're basically a sign, right? You know, people talk about signs and wonders. It's a sign that makes you wonder. That's a good way to put it. So, let me make sure, obviously I'm not a medical doctor, but when I think about being regenerative, describing this part of the eye, Like there's a difference between if I cut my leg, it's going to regenerate under normal procedures. Even muscles don't regenerate themselves, but if you work out and eat, you can regenerate them versus like chipping a tooth. There's no built-in mechanism to regenerate or fix a tooth by doing anything apart from outside coming in and then it's still not going to be the same tooth it was. is it more comparable to like muscle being regenerative or a tooth being regenerative the kind of healing that took place in in the eye for this case?

Yeah, it's more like the tooth. I mean, it's not all that different from an amputation, right? I mean, if someone has a hand amputated, it doesn't just grow back, right? Likewise, if the back of the eyes, the macula is severely damaged, it just doesn't grow back. not in humans, not in a number of animals. So that's, it's the kind of situation where, yeah, it just, you know, there are some things like you get muscle damage, you get a cut, it'll heal. You can like get physical therapy, you know, bring it back. But, but yeah, that just never heals on its own.

So unless you're Wolverine or Deadpool, and we all know that's fiction, it's not going to regenerate itself. Okay, so two last questions and we'll wrap up. I'm curious how your research has been received in the scientific community publicly and privately. And of course, you don't have to mention any names, but just the kind of feedback or criticism or support that you get as a whole in this world. Yeah, I think for the most part, it's not something I've talked about much with other scientists, colleagues. And up until, I'd say, a couple years ago, I really just kept a low profile because I thought, you know, I just mostly want to just go to work and, you know, do good science and be a good professor. And, you know, why should I poke a hornet's nest? Like, why?

Yeah. Why should I? I mean, and in a sense, like, you know, I have a job to do at work. I do it. I think I do it well. And I think in the conversations I've had, which have generally been one-on-one with people who know me fairly well, the sense I get is that, well, that's kind of interesting. And I haven't gone around. Like the way we present, the results, I haven't taken a strong apologetic position because I don't feel that that's my role, honestly.

I feel my role was to do science and generate evidence. and make that evidence available for anyone who wants to see it. So from my perspective, if you want to argue that the miracles we've documented point to the existence of God, great. I mean, I think that's a reasonable position. But if you want to argue and say, well, no, I don't think those are real or I don't think, you know, I don't think that means God's real, then you can have that debate. I think debate is healthy.

And so because I've taken a position that what I'm doing is mainly about empirical evidence, I think it sort of removes some of the, I don't know, confrontational sting to the whole thing. So, you know, now what do I personally believe? I mean, I could tell you hours of stories of all the places I've gone around the world where I've seen blind people get their eyesight back, tumors dissolve, deaf people start hearing, demons getting cast out dramatically. I mean, I've seen all... If you're a Christian man who genuinely wants to quit porn,

but keeps falling back into it, this message is for you. Many men think their problem is a lack of discipline. So they try harder, pray more, install blockers, find accountability. And while those things can help, they often don't stop the cycle. Because for many men, this behavior isn't just a habit. It's driven by subconscious emotional patterns in the brink. that keep repeating, almost like a loop. That's why you can sincerely want to change and still find yourself going back.

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And that's my personal perspective. But I think when you're having a discussion with someone, if you can't agree on matters of faith, you can agree on the importance of empirical evidence. And so I think that's where, that's kind of where I come to. And so, you know, I am absolutely a Christian. I absolutely believe the Bible. But I think within Christianity, you know, it's like we were talking about earlier. Like we haven't really engaged with science in a way that I think we could.

And I think it would benefit the Christian community and cause greatly to engage more with science. So that's, you know, I find as long as a conversation goes in that direction, then that's, I think that that's gone pretty well. And otherwise, I haven't, I don't know, we'll see. I mean, like I said, it's only the last few years that I've actually, you know, now I'm written a book that's coming out and, you know, I've got more public. So, yeah, I don't know. Check back with me in a couple years.

I'll let you know. I guess we'll find out. I can imagine some people would be critical saying use your platform to be more explicit and evangelize. And I understand where some people are coming from. But as an academic, looking at the work you're doing, I thought you do a great job of just kind of staying in your lane saying, I'm a neuroscientist. Here's where I'm trained. Here's the questions I can ask. and what science as a tool actually shows,

but not shying away from saying I'm a Christian, and here's how I personally interpret that. So I think it's a great model. I mean, you've created a series Miracle, and by the way, you and your wife sent my family some gear that says Miracle on it. I love the sweatshirt. My youngest son wears it all the time.

So you're using the opportunity also to engage skeptics and to encourage Christians. So I think you're doing great work and wish you the best. with this book. Tell us maybe at the end who you wrote proving a miracle for and what you hope it accomplishes. Well, I think like I said in the dedication, I wrote it for the believers who doubt and the doubters who believe.

And the way I see that is there are Christians who are asking hard questions about what's real, like I was when I was in college, you know, reading Nietzsche and Freud and asking hard questions about faith. And I think for those who are asking, you know, are miracles of healing that happen after prayer in the name of Jesus are real? Do they really happen? The answer is very clearly yes. And so I think that's what the book sort of ends on. And but I also wrote it for the doubters who believe.

That is, there are people who are not necessarily of faith or a Christian faith or really any faith, but who are interested in what. what the empirical evidence has to say. And there's a lot of empirical evidence that I review in the middle part of the book about the ways in which spiritual practices and beliefs are good for our health. And that's just empirically true. And I'm not the only one to have said that. And so I think just from the perspective of someone looking to improve their health, looking to live in greater health and who are opened, you know, who will not consider something that comes from a Christian perspective as categorically suspect, perhaps. I wrote that to provide evidence for people who are interested in looking at that empirical evidence on its face. And so I hope that the book will

find interest among people who have questions about faith, who have questions about health, and just to have general interest in neuroscience and what you can learn from it. Well, it's interesting because you have carefully documented cases, but you tell your story throughout it, and I think really draw the reader in. So Proving a Miracle is an excellent book. Highly Recommend it. Check out this series Miracle with Angel Studios, and you can see some of these miracles really explained and dramatized and illustrated,

and these are the ones that really pass the careful, rigorous test that you're talking. talking about. So watch me with their kids, share them. It's a wonderful series. Dr. Josh Brown, give my love to your wonderful, incredibly thoughtful wife as well. To the two of you, you're quite the dynamic duo. Keep it up, be encouraged, this important work, and we'll definitely have you back on. Okay, great. Thanks so much for having me, Sean. My pleasure. All right, friends, before we click away, make sure you hit subscribe because we've got some other shows on the supernatural coming up on near-death experiences, more on miracles, plus the evidence for Christianity and a host of other topics.

You don't want to miss it. And if you actually want to study apologetics, we would love to have you join us at Talp's School theology in person or in distance. And we have a class on afterlife apologetics where we are studying some of these very things, information below. If you're like, I'm not ready for master's, we actually have a certificate program for some of the top apologists in the world. And we will walk you through that.

There's a huge discount below. All right, Dr. Brown, we'll do this again. Thanks for coming on. Okay, great. Thanks, son. Hey, friends, if you enjoyed this show, please hit that follow button on your podcast app. Most of you tuning in haven't done this yet,

and it makes a huge difference in helping us reach and equip more people and build community. And please consider leaving a podcast review. Every review helps. Thanks for listening to the Sean McDowell Show, brought to you by Talbot School of Theology, at Biola University, where we have on-campus and online programs and apologetic, spiritual information, marriage and family, Bible, and so much more. We would love to...

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