Denyse O'Leary

In the land that gave us Shakespeare and Isaac Newton, all is well in the schools.

Encouraging signs are stuff like: A girl is suspended for wearing a crucifix but Sikh religious gear is permitted; national public observances are ignored to avoid conflict with the timetable routine; vile anti-Hindu propaganda and unprovoked beatings at some schools. Parents, of course, respond to all this by such moves as expressing outrage over a school ban on tight pants.

Of course, spectacular academic results have accompanied these developments: Scores lower than Estonia (Sorry, Estonia, Tere tulemast! You in fact do much more with much less.)

But into this atmosphere of calm and orderly application to the great disciplines of learning, followed by the thrill of achievement, suddenly, shudder!! [cue frite muzak “Insidious creationism”] enters the … creationist!: Read More ›

The next time some learned person slowly and patiently begins to explain to you that “there is no conflict between faith and science, when both are properly understood … “, ask him point blank:

“Professor, by “science” I take it you mean Darwinism. Is that right? Few actual sciences are controversial for most Christians.

Now, you are asking Christians to change their basic understanding of human nature to conform to the latest from Darwinism/”evolutionary psychology”.

So is there any thesis in Darwinism that it would be right for a Christian to reject, on the basis of received wisdom from the millennia? Any thesis at all?”

Ask but don’t expect a coherent answer, never mind an honest or believable one.

After all, what can he say? Read More ›

Mazur, author of Altenberg 16, interviews him here.

On the whole, he emerges as a dense, wealthy ignoramus outside his own field and cultural interests. He has a one track mind, backs down when confronted with evidence, then just picks himself up and gets back on the same track again, as if he hadn’t heard. Here’s a snippet or two: Read More ›

The contest was judged here April 16, 2011. Here, a commenter asked O’Leary,As you’ve obviously got your finger on the pulse of the lay of the land and people trust and know you sufficiently well to confide in you such thoughts I wonder if you’d care to proffer a guess as to the time-line for the fall of Darwinism, based on the relative frequency of such encounters with Darwin-doubters?? Commenter JemimaRacktouey is too kind; most people who talk to me just want to bend a pliable ear, and in my trade one learns to just listen. But she has a really good idea there, so I thought, let’s throw it open: What do you see as the timeline for Darwinism Read More ›

… how they came to doubt Darwinism. As if doubting Darwinism were yet illegal … Well, I tell them, stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage. If doubt is a problem for you now, you are your own prison. And just think what you saved the Darwinian State by not doubting openly.

Andrew Sibley writes*, While there is little doubt about the desire of theistic evolutionists to maintain their commitment to theism, it is pertinent to ask what follows logically from the scientific acceptance of some forms of theistic evolution, especially those that claim that it must be understood within methodological naturalism where all evidence of God’s handiwork is excluded from science by definition.  What follows logically is a silent God and a loud Darwin. *Andrew Sibley, “The Nature and Character of God”, p. 98 , in Should Christians Embrace Evolution?: Biblical and scientific responses, Norman C. Nevin, ed. (Inter-Varsity Press: Nottingham, 2005). Foreword by Wayne Grudem,

When David Brooks’ Man: The Social Animal appeared, it was reviled by people as far apart otherwise as O’Leary and P.Z. Myers, for its Gadarene (and utterly tone deaf) slide into the fever swamps of evolutionary psychology.

These fetid bogs are usually inhabited by the Evolutionary Agony Aunt, the Darwinian brand marketer and the advocates of neurolaw (“your neurons fail, you’re in jail”). However, a review in thinkmag The Catholic Thing (“a forum for intelligent Catholic commentary”) not only heaps praise on the failed materialist novel but grabs it for Roman Catholicism.

Reviewer George J. Marlin offers Thomas Aquinas (complete with halo) to provide support for the descent, and offers

Although Brooks surveys the latest research on the human mind, he doesn’t teach Catholics anything all that new. What he does is confirm a lot of what generations of undergraduates were once taught about the human person at Catholic universities in their Thomistic philosophical psychology and ethics courses (it would be interesting to know how much this is still the case).

[ … ]

Brooks basically agrees that we have an intuitive moral sense and effectively explains how people can be taught to control irascible passions. It’s good that a columnist for The Times has surveyed recent scientific studies and reached that conclusion. But it’s best to recognize that his solid work, which some see as opening previously unexplored territory, is really a clearing of the way for a return to some of the oldest traditional truths.

Here’s a curious fact about Christian Darwinists: Read More ›

In “Chimp, Bonobo Study Sheds Light on the Social Brain”, ScienceDaily reports (Apr. 5, 2011) It’s been a puzzle why our two closest living primate relatives, chimpanzees and bonobos, have widely different social traits, despite belonging to the same genus. Now, a comparative analysis of their brains shows neuroanatomical differences that may be responsible for these behaviors, from the aggression more typical of chimpanzees to the social tolerance of bonobos.”What’s remarkable is that the data appears to match what we know about the human brain and behavior,” says Emory anthropologist James Rilling, who led the analysis. “The neural circuitry that mediates anxiety, empathy and the inhibition of aggression in humans is better developed in bonobos than in chimpanzees.” [ … Read More ›

A guy was involved with a push poll in a publically funded medium in Canada (currently heading to the polls), by which just about everyone comes out a “Liberal”: Here’s the first experiment. It only takes a minute. Go through the survey and answer every question with “no opinion” as your answer. Of course, skip the part where it asks you to choose parties or leaders (that would be taking an opinion). Surprise! The CBC push-poll says you’re a Liberal. Even though you gave absolutely no legitimate reason to be pegged as a Liberal. Like I say; Loewen and friends rigged the system. Now try a completely different approach. Go through the survey again and simply alternate clicking “strongly agree” Read More ›

Just recently, I saw a video clip where an obviously self-important Christian history professor was explaining that “evolution” is the fundamental assumption of all biology. I remember thinking, yes, but sciences can and do make progress even when their fundamental assumptions about how things happen are wrong. In fact, that’s quite common, because evidence is what usually leads to progress. And theory only sometimes. The current Darwin toxin in biology’s system makes it very difficult, in my experience, to have any reasonable discussion of evolution as a fact. It’s all about how Darwin was right. On any find, immediately the Darwinist blunders forward and – dismissing where the evidence in any given case – insists “It’s Darwin”. Or, when that Read More ›

Of course not. Consider what the biologists at war with language are trying to do: Replace “to accomplish metabolic process X, enzyme Y evolved a specificity for Z” with “ ‘in accomplishing X, Y concomitantly evolved a specificity for Z”. It won’t work because it is not fluent, not even fluid, just stodgy and inconvenient. Historically, such newspeak strategies seldom work because they call attention to the very thing they seek to extinguish: In this case, awareness of design For example, what happens when our local “human picket sign” insists that we all acknowledge global warming? Sure, I acknowledged it. In fact, as I pointed out to her, “A huge dump of global warming fell last night, and now someone Read More ›

“Our understanding of the way the brain works could help us create a better legal system, says Baylor College of Medicine’sneuroscientist David Eagleman,” in “The human brain: turning our minds to the law” (Telegraph 05 Apr 2011): The problem, he says,

is that the law rests on two assumptions that are charitable, but demonstrably false. The first is that people are “practical reasoners”, which is the law’s way of saying that they are capable of acting in alignment with their best interests, and capable of rational foresight about their actions. The second is that all brains are created equal. Everyone who is of legal age and above an IQ of 70 is assumed, in the eyes of the law, to have the same capacity for decision-making, understanding, impulse control and reasoning. But these ideas simply don’t match up with the facts of neuroscience.

Isn’t equality in the eyes of the law somewhat like “We hold these truths to be self-evident … ”? where the equality claimed by the American founders was not based on assumptions about nature at all but on assumption’s about nature’s Author?

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This article, based on Eagleman’s book Incognito, follows the usual pattern of tracts favouring materialist law reform: Asserting, with no evidence, that traditional beliefs about justice are merely a “desire for revenge.”

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If the argument is that Crazy Jake is not as generously endowed with intellect as Richard Feynman, who doubts it? But – on the traditional assumption that Feynman’s intellect is a gift to him, and not proof of ultimate Darwinian superiority – they are indeed equal in the eyes of the law, though one is considerably better endowed in that way than the other. Rich and poor appear in the same court.

We also learn, Read More ›

Here, well-known physicist author Paul Davies acknowledges that we have no idea how life began. However, the TalkOrigins forces of certainty are ever at work, stomping on reasonable doubt. Of course, rubes doubt the TalkOrigins “donut hole” explanations. But that just proves they are rubes. Rubes never realize that the hole is the very best part of the donut, full of nutritional value. They keep wanting the stuff on the outside of the hole, for no good reason.

Well, the problem in Washington, DC schools was roughly this drama in three acts:

Standardized test scores improved dramatically. In 2006, only 10% of Noyes’ students scored “proficient” or “advanced” in math on the standardized tests required by the federal No Child Left Behind law. Two years later, 58% achieved that level. The school showed similar gains in reading.[ … ]

Twice in three years, she rewarded Noyes’ staff for boosting scores: In 2008 and again in 2010, each teacher won an $8,000 bonus, and the principal won $10,000.

[ … ]

On the 2009 reading test, for example, seventh-graders in one Noyes classroom averaged 12.7 wrong-to-right erasures per student on answer sheets; the average for seventh-graders in all D.C. schools on that test was less than 1. The odds are better for winning the Powerball grand prize than having that many erasures by chance, according to statisticians consulted by USA TODAY.

– from Jack Gillum and Marisol Bello, “When standardized test scores soared in D.C., were the gains real?” (USA Today , March 28, 2011)

Like most human beings, I am implicitly a non-materialist, so I would think, the important question is, who made the extra erasures and when? Read More ›

Here’s Dennis Prager: A radio talk show host for 29 years, I long ago began asking callers who made foolish comments what graduate school they attended. It takes higher education to learn to believe that America and Israel are villains, that men and women have essentially the same natures, that human nature is good, that ever-larger governments create wealth, etc. Okay that woke you up, didn’t it? His basic point, I think, is that we must be educated into some follies; most of us are just not smart enough to arrive at them by ourselves. My basic theory: The world has always been a mess, but it is a more stable mess when the follies are the usual features of Read More ›