Encyclopedia of American Loons: #305: Denyse O’Leary
A.k.a. Denyse “buy my book” O’Leary
Ok - I’ll admit that this is a violation of our policy. Denyse O’Leary is Canadian through and through. But she needs to be covered, and we’ll justify including her by pointing out that the main outlet for her delusional rants is Bill Dembski’s blog ‘Uncommon Descent’ (no link!). In fact, O’Leary, who is a staunch evangelical Catholic, runs several blogs where she proposes intelligent design creationism, metaphysical dualism and non-material neuro-science (she has absolutely no idea, though), and attacks the multiverse theory in physics because it is perceived as a real threat to her religion (she doesn’t even begin to comprehend it, however). She rarely allows comments on her blogs.
As for the non-materialist neuroscience, one of her blogs is actually devoted to trying to show that the ghost in the machine really abides in the pineal gland.
Among her contributions to the creationism/evolution manufactroversy - she was even invited to teach a course on Intelligent Design at the University of Toronto (religious studies department, not for credit) - is her critique of evolution in light of the “Travis incident” (see if you can make sense of it). Apparently the assumption is that the closer a being is to humans in the “tree of life”, the more acceptable is it to keep that being as a pet. A rather illuminating assumption. She was also skeptical of the veracity of Lucy because Lucy didn’t fit her preconceptions. She has also argued (by quote-mining) that Stephen Jay Gould rejected evolution because there are things in his writings O’Leary thinks don’t support evolution (because Gould understood evolution and O’Leary doesn’t). In fact almost everything disproves evolution in O’Leary’s mind, even everything that supports it (besides, evolutionary theory is racism). She’s honed the skill of quote-mining and misreading articles to perfection, and - to repeat - she has absolutely no clue about how science works.