I’ve been predicting for a while now that the champions of human exceptionalism will give up on bashing poor old Chuck Darwin and migrate to neuroscience and “Consciousness Studies,” where the pickings are richer, and there are real mysteries defying our present understanding.

So it is proving. The current (Dec. 3—NOT, I am very glad to see, “Dec. 03″) issue of National Review has a fine broadside by physicist Stephen Barr against deniers of the immaterial soul: “The Soul and Its Enemies.”

Like other material I’ve commented on in this general zone, Prof. Barr’s piece just left me reflecting on how little of a clue we have about the nature of our experiences, and how correspondingly audacious it is to assert anything positive at all. (Though for a different take on the relevance of Gödel’s Theorem, I commend Doug Hofstadter’s I Am a Strange Loop to Prof. Barr’s attention.)

My prediction is coming true, though: For folk who want to rail against materialism, beating up on Darwin will soon be old hat—flogging a dead eohippus, so to speak. Neuroscience is where the action is, for human-exceptionalism affirmers and deniers both.