Nuggets from Cosmos, Creator, and Human Destiny

Our brains make us very intelligent, so we imagine, separating us from all other creatures. But our brains are just matter—and as we will continue to remind readers, matter cannot think. The truth is that something other than the brain makes the difference, something that is not in our genes and that could not possibly be the product of evolution and natural selection. This intangible, nonphysical part of man that is not shared by lower creatures has also been described by religious people as the soul and spirit—but what are we talking about? Mortimer J. Adler, co-founder of the Great Books of the Western World program, served on the Board of Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica from its inception in 1949 and became its chairman in 1974. He also held the position of director of editorial planning for the fifteenth edition of Britannica and was instrumental in completely reorganizing much that was embodied in that edition. He pointed out long ago in his groundbreaking book, The Difference of Man and the Difference It Makes, that there is a nonphysical barrier between man and all other living things, which evolution did no and could not cause and which it cannot cross. Working on the latter book was instrumental in bringing Adler to the acceptance of Christianity.