Denyse O'Leary

RationalWiki[.] … More rational than a rabid racoon. Denyse O'Leary (not to be confused with Denis Leary) is a Canadian intelligent design apologist who claims to be a journalist. (Her "journalism" career includes pieces for The Toronto Star's Wheels section &mdash; which features stories about cars and related topics — and reviews in The Mystery Review. At least, she wrote for those publications many, many years ago.) Her primary means of publication is a string of self-started internet blogs and a few that other people have started that she parasitizes. O'Leary's primary means of support appears to be begging for PayPal donations in order to "feed the kitty" (don't let the imagery run wild on this one, really, don't). Probably her most notable publishing outlet is at William Dembski's blog Uncommon Descent. Other than that there is little evidence of actual journalism. Denyse claims that all non-blog based media is "legacy media" that no one reads anyway. O'Leary appears to be betting the kitty on the New York Times subscribers tuning out of print media and tuning on to her bottom barrel blog sites.

In addition to playing make-believe journalist, O'Leary has written several apologist books for intelligent design, most notably By Design or by Chance. She has also recently taken up the fallen banner for non-materialist neuroscience, publishing the book The Spiritual Brain, thumping for mind/body duality. In addition to the book, in typical O'Leary fashion, she has started yet another blog dedicated to proving that the ghost in the machine really does live in the pineal gland.

Views
Denyse is a staunch evangelical Catholic, whose religious extremism and denial of reality leaves her at odds with her more civilized hometown of Toronto. In addition to her advocating for intelligent design, she spends a great deal of time bemoaning the treatment of the poor oppressed non-secularists in Canada. In a shocking development, someone in the religious studies department at the University of Toronto saw fit to let Denyse actually teach a course! Luckily it was merely a continuing education course (not offered for credit). One RationalWiki editor's attempt at getting a free "audit" of the course was met with much scorn.

Style
O'Leary's writing style is horribly obtuse and long-winded. It is often very difficult to get through any of her postings that are longer than two or three words. Even more difficult is figuring out what the hell she is talking about half the time. Notably, her blogs all have "comments" shut off — dissent is verboten. Furthermore, if there is one thing you can always count on with Denyse, it's her complete lack of modesty. She will drop the titles of all books she has written a dozen times in a blog post, each with a link back to Amazon. Internet watchers have nicknamed her "Denyse 'buy my book' O'Leary" after this annoying tendency. But then again, she does have that kitty to feed.

RationalWiki
She doesn't like RW, calling RW residents "RationalWikis" and describing RW as "a rubbish dump of detraction". She's not enamored with her article here, either.

Denyse O'Leary's books

 * Faith@Science: Why Science Needs Faith in the Twenty-First Century 2001. In her initial foray into the world of pop apologetics, O'Leary reviews current hot button issues in science (like cloning, stem cell research, etc.) and claims only Christians can offer moral guidance in making choices in science.
 * By Design Or By Chance?: The Growing Controversy On The Origins Of Life In The Universe 2004. O'Leary's attempt to capitalize on the intelligent design movement, she flogs the manufactured controversy using interviews from major proponents like William Dembski and Phillip Johnson.
 * The Spiritual Brain: A Neuroscientist's Case for the Existence of the Soul 2008. In a co-authored book with Mario Beauregard, O'Leary once again attempts to create a controversy that doesn't exist. Shoddy science and cereal box theology mark her attempts at establishing a non-materialist neuroscience.

Denyse O'Leary's blogs

 * Post-Darwinist O'Leary's denial of reality extends all the way up to the title of this blog. Supposedly we exist in a world that no longer believes in Darwinism. This blog is supposedly about the intelligent design rants in her By Design or By Chance book, but like all her blogs there is plenty of cross pollination.
 * Mindfuck Mindfulhack O'Leary created this blog during the publishing push for her spiritual brain book. It's mostly a hodgepodge of popular press stories twisted to fit her world view, but the copious rants against evolutionary psychology keep things a little interesting.
 * The design of life The Design of Life is a Jonathan Wells and William Dembski joint from back in 2007. Dembski started a blog to go with the book, and then turned it over to O'Leary, whose endless need to ejaculate her burdensome prose on every website she finds knows no bounds. (Now defunct)
 * Colliding universes O'Leary is on an anti-multiverse theory kick—apparently the multiverse theory in physics is a substantial threat to her religion. She is threatening to write a book on the topic, but in the meantime she started yet another blog.
 * Uncommon descent William Dembski's brainchild of a blog, which he abandoned and turned over to various sycophants—including Denyse O'Leary.
 * Overwhelming Evidence Another William Dembski brainchild, this one was still-born (in addition to being ironically named). It was to be the next MySpace for intelligent design-savvy teenagers. Its major claim to fame is a flatulence-laced flash animation of judge John E. Jones of Kitzmiller fame. Instead of an army of teens, all Dembski got was O'Leary.