Denyse O'Leary

Here’s what I think of the whole mess (and I am not an American and do not live anywhere near Waco or Baylor and have nothing but trouble to expect from either side in this matter.):

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Here are the new entries to the Encyclopedia: Evolution in the light of intelligent design

Acritarchs – oldest known protists (Tyler)

The picture emerging of the Late Archaean is one that includes prokaryotes and eukaryotes, photosynthesis, an oxygenated atmosphere and lots of biological activity. This is a big contrast from the picture even 10 years ago. The significance for our thinking about origins is that the eons of time demanded by Darwinian processes are not available.

Archaea – horizontal gene transfer – review of The Archaea’s Tale (Tyler)

He presents evidence that Darwinian evolution does not go back to the beginning of life. When we compare genomes of ancient lineages of living creatures, we find evidence of numerous transfers of genetic information from one lineage to another. In early times, horizontal gene transfer, the sharing of genes between unrelated species, was prevalent. It becomes more prevalent the further back you go in time. – Freeman Dyson 

(also new Mindful Hack entries linked below) Read More ›

I don’t know what I would do without my regular fix of fellow Toronto journalist David Warren, who – having made clear that he thinks Darwinism a crock – is constantly hearing from anxious Darwin fans, who don’t know what they’ll do if it isn’t true.

If life cannot be produced accidentally by jiggling chemicals in a test tube, … apparently life makes no sense to them – or something like that anyway.

Warren continues to offer boilerplate responses (one must live, after all). Indeed, he appears to know some of the same Darwoids as I hear from, to judge from their inimitable prose style:

“Atrociously bad, pig-ignorant garbage.” … “Mixture of gall & negligence.” … “Sheer brazen quality of this ignorance is a wonder to behold.”

This is what’s said ABOUT the likes of me, third-personally, by the more articulate correspondents advising my editors to sack me. The letters to me personally are, however, much ruder. As usual, among the charges, I am a “faggot,” or at least a “closet fag.”

[ … ]

Many, many, of my apoplectic correspondents refer me to websites on “The God Delusion,” & other standard sources for atheist proselytizing. Several correspondents refer to a website where Michael Behe’s “claims” are “refuted” in a similar manner to the above (i.e. with a lot of more-or-less clinical abusive language).

And apparently, many of these ill-tempered illiterates have taken to Read More ›

Larry Summers, who is definitely not an intelligent design proponent, is nonetheless paying the penalty of standing for what is obviously true in current academic life, columnist John Leo reveals:

So former Harvard president Lawrence Summers is once again paying for his sins, this time having a dinner speech canceled by the board of regents of the University of California. The regents caved because feminists circulated a petition announcing that Summers “has come to symbolize gender and racial prejudice in academia.”

Summers lost his post as Harvard chair for doubting that girls were just as good as boys at math.

Mmmm but, as Leo notes, general stuff that everybody knows is heresy nowadays.

Vanderbilt’s Camilla Benbow, a commanding researcher in the field for years, reports sex differences in mathematical precocity before kindergarten, differences among mathematical reasoning ability among intellectually gifted boys and girls as early as the second grade and pronounced sexual differences among intellectually talented 12- to 14-year-olds. Yet Summers, in capitulating to feminist anger, announced that “the human potential to excel in science” has nothing to do with gender. That isn’t true. At the very top of the profession, where the geniuses reside, there will be more males than females — absent political pressure and arguments about “underrepresentation,” that is.

Wondering about the title of this post? See When Marxism ruled instead of Darwinism Same demand to ignore evidence, different victims. For Darwinism’s rule, go to Baylor (the Enron of biology). (links to other stories follow)

I remember reading years ago violently conflicting opinions on Richard Dawkins’s famous/infamous/faked silence when a filmmaker asked him about the origin of genetic information.

Eventually the tape made its way to Barry Williams, the editor of an Australian journal called The Skeptic, who consulted with Dawkins and then published a blistering article with the title “Creationist Deception Exposed.” Williams at first seemed to be accusing the filmmakers of altering the tape by substituting a question Dawkins was never asked, but that accusation was never made explicitly and in any case was dropped after the creationists produced the raw tapes. (Phillip Johnson, The Wedge of Truth, pg. 40 (InterVarsity Press, 1999).)

Anyway, here’s a video and here’s his response. You da judge.

Also Read More ›

Apparently, in the most recent edition of First Things, Fr. Richard Neuhaus defends Mike Behe, author of Edge of Evolution. It’s not on line yet, but Fr. Neuhaus says, among other things,

You usually know that somebody is losing the argument when he loses his cool and resorts to bluster, abuse, caricature, and the invocation of authorities who agree with him.

He is referring, of course, to Richard Dawkins’s attempt to trash Behe’s book in The New York Times. He notes the curious fact that the Times should never have given the book to Dawkins to review anyway, without giving Behe the right of reply (which it would never dare to do):

It is hard to know what purpose is served by the Book Review in having Dawkins review Behe, except, possibly, to ostracize anyone who presumes to raise questions about prevailing Darwinist orthodoxies and, perhaps, to pander to the smug prejudices of the presumed readership of the Times. That does not instill confidence in the Darwinist materialism that they are so desperately defending.

This is all particularly interesting because Neuhaus is not especially one of the ID think tank Discovery Institute fans. Read More ›

Baylor’s move to shut down Prof. Robert Marks’s exposure of Darwinism as the Enron of biology is a harder line than the institution took seven years ago. Curiously, the 2000 report on the Polanyi Center (long closed) had actually proclaimed, ” … the committee wishes to make it clear that it considers research on the logical structure of mathematical arguments for intelligent design to have a legitimate claim to a place in current discussions of the relations of religion and the sciences.” Presumably, Baylor honchos don’t think that any more. Is that because Bob Marks can actually do it now? Bill Dembski tells me that the shutdown committee had never suggested that he couldn’t put such papers on his own Read More ›

Because so many people have asked me what The Spiritual Brain: A neuroscientist’s case for the existence of the soul addresses, I thought I would post the Introduction. It doesn’t deal with everything the book addresses, but it gives you some idea. In this book, we intend to show you that your mind does exist, that it is not merely your brain. Your thoughts and feelings cannot be dismissed or explained away by firing synapses and physical phenomena alone. In a solely material world, “will power” or “mind over matter” are illusions, there is no such thing as purpose or meaning, there is no room for God. Yet many people have experience of these things. We intend to argue that Read More ›

 by Denyse O’Leary  The latest Baylor explanation of why Prof. Robert Marks’ evolutionary informatics website was taken down is that he wasn’t doing “approved research.” There is no precedent for this notion of “approved research” at Baylor — which is most likely why the Baylor administration did not cite it earlier. They have just thought the idea up and are taking it out for a spin. This is the latest in a variety of explanations. The original one turned on anonymous complaints. Another cited proprietary “Baylor branding.” Till now, none cited a doctrine of “approval.” Actually, if the Baylor administration were being honest, only one good explanation would be necessary. The story wouldn’t keep changing. The “approved research” slogan may Read More ›

Now and then someone has written to me to claim that it’s just not true that mid-twentieth century physicists disliked the Big Bang because of the religious implications of the idea of a beginning to the universe. A contact, however, quotes Simon Singh’s Big Bang: The Origin of the Universe:

The British physicist William Bonner, for example, suggested that the Big Bang theory was part of a conspiracy aimed at shoring up Christianity: ‘The underlying motive is, of course, to bring in God as creator. It seems like the opportunity Christian theology has been waiting for ever since science began to depose religion from the minds of rational men in the seventeenth century’

Fred Hoyle was equally scathing when it came to the Big Bang’s association with religion, condemning it as a model built on Judeo-Christian foundations. His views were shared by his Steady State collaborator, Thomas Gold. When Gold heard that Pius XII had backed the Big Bang, his response was short and to the point: ‘Well, the Pope also endorsed the stationary Earth.’
Scientists had been wary of the Vatican’

However, this wariness sometimes bordered on paranoia, as noted by the English Nobel Laureate George Thomson: ‘Probably every physicist would believe in a creation if the Bible had not unfortunately said something about it many years ago and made it seem old-fashioned.’ (pp. 361-62

So Singh has apparently noticed some of the same kind of stuff as I have.

Also, new at The Mindful Hack, Read More ›

What does Bob Marks want? He wants the right to run computer simulations at Baylor that might (possibly) reduce confidence in Darwinian evolution.

That is, the simulations might show that Darwinian evolution is not nearly as probable as professional Darwinists claim.

Actually, the Wistar meetings showed that way back in the 1960s, but Darwinism is just too good a creation story for materialism to pass up. So otherwise respectable scientists have been lying for Darwin ever since, and snuffing out the careers of anyone who breaks rank.

Contrary to popular belief, you need NOT be a creationist or an ID guy. All you have to do is stop believing in magic – Darwinian magic – and ask for evidence.

That’s a Big Sin because the evidence does not support Darwinism.

Well, that explains the role of the Darwinist, who can hardly help suppressing evidence, but what about Baylor, the alleged Christian university? Elsewhere, I have pointed out that institutions like Baylor essentially protect Christians from a world that favours materialism. The justification for their existence would be revolutionized if word got out that materialism is largely disconfirmed over a broad area. As I said there,

In a trice, the harsh reality from which the institution protects its dumb sheeplike students is – a harsh UNreality. The students are not meat puppets who foolishly imagine that they have immortal souls and must therefore be humoured by their silly little campus groups. They are people who actually do have immortal souls who are being trained by the institution to accept a culture that lies to them that they are meat puppets. And the institution essentially brokers the lies in the interests of the materialist culture – and to its own prestige.
Now do you see the threat posed by an intellectually rigorous inquiry into intelligent design?

Last night, my mom and I were watching a video of one of my favourite movies – The Great Escape. Suddenly, some of the dialogue seemed startlingly relevant to the struggle of scientists like Marks.

Listen, as the German Colonel Von Luger explains to the Allied prisoners of war: Read More ›

Oxford historian Alister McGrath, author of Twilight of Atheism and formerly an atheist himself, reflects on his debates with Richard Dawkins, who seems to have retired from his science career to bash religion. Simpleminded? I am disappointed. I would have expected an Oxford professor to use a much more careful, scholarly approach, always trying to see an opponent at his best, and not using simplistic generalizations. I can entirely understand why Michael Ruse and many other atheists are embarrassed by The God Delusion. What concerns me most, however, is what this book shows us about today’s atheism. I think this book is being read primarily by atheists who want to bolster their faith, when all around them God is being Read More ›

Here’s a podcast interview where I reveal key secrets of the evil conspiracies I am part of, while discussing The Spiritual Brain . I also Wedge “the Edge“, and explain why I don’t drink coffee while reading materialist interpretations of spirituality – because choking with laughter while drinking coffee is, like, a bitter experience. I take mine without sugar. Also: Should tenure disappear?, The Scientist asks ID friendly TV pastor dead at 76. Why you will more likely succeed if you are easy to indoctrinate How things change in science Research stuff, resources, or fun that somebody threw over the transom

“Never shrinking from controversy, and sometimes deliberately provoking it, this book serves as a lively introduction to a field where neuroscience, philosophy, and secular/spiritual cultural wars are unavoidably intermingled.” — Publishers Weekly

The belief that the mind does not exist apart from the brain dominated the twentieth century. But can we really dismiss our thoughts and feelings, or furthermore, our religious and spiritual experiences, as simply outcomes of the firing synapses of our brain? In THE SPIRITUAL BRAIN, authors Dr. Mario Beauregard and Denyse O’Leary present the groundbreaking evidence that the mind cannot be simply reduced to physiological reactions in the brain. Read More ›

On Thursday (12.07.06) I learned it was definite that Baylor University was revoking a postdoctoral fellowship that I held in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Last month (11.06) I was appointed as Senior Research Scientist in that department to work on a project in information theory with Prof. Robert Marks. That project was funded through a grant that he procured specifically for me to work with him. Here are the facts: Read More ›