Denyse O’Leary

Denyse O’Leary is a freelance journalist based in Victoria, Canada. Specializing in faith and science issues, she is co-author, with neuroscientist Mario Beauregard, of The Spiritual Brain: A Neuroscientist's Case for the Existence of the Soul; and with neurosurgeon Michael Egnor of the forthcoming The Immortal Mind: A Neurosurgeon’s Case for the Existence of the Soul (Worthy, 2025). She received her degree in honors English language and literature.

Archives

Trudeau Resigns: Canada’s Media Control Bills Are Stymied For Now

_{Is the Woke war on reality beginning to stall? In Canada, it is a war not only on math, science, and biology, but also history}_{Denyse O'Leary
January 10, 2025}

Bill C-413, which might criminalize honest scrutiny of extraordinary claims re residential schools, is part of a larger war on the primacy of fact over feelings

What Do Animals Feel? And What About Babies?

_{Denyse O'Leary
January 10, 2025}

With human babies, those who propose laws against cruelty suddenly enter a Cold Zone, at least compared to their feelings for crustaceans.

Facebook Fact-checkers, Facing Doom, Call Urgent Meeting

_{One possible interpretation is that Zuckerberg was as afraid of these freelance censors as anyone else and saw a chance to neutralize the threat}_{Denyse O'Leary
January 8, 2025}

Seth Dillon notes that the goal of fact-checking isn't to eliminate misinformation but dissent, to make it impossible to challenge preferred narratives.

Mark Zuckerberg: Facebook To Lighten Up on Censorship

_{He wants to move away from moderation and more towards a Community Notes approach}_{Denyse O'Leary
January 7, 2025}

While some think he is merely placating Trump, we may well ask why he should WANT to impose government censorship on the social medium he had built up himself.

In the Battle for Biology, Woke Folks Come for Coyne

_{Denyse O'Leary
January 7, 2025}

Woke is, at bottom, a war on reality. It is a war on math. And a war on science. That includes a war on biology, of course.

Edge of Sentience Summarizes Research on Animals’, AIs’ Feelings

_{And animal rights laws as well. But there is a dark side to Jonathan Birch’s approach too…}_{Denyse O'Leary
January 3, 2025}

Philosophy prof Jonathan Birch, principal investigator of the Animal Sentience Project at the London School of Economics, has written a book on whether and how animals feel things: The Edge of Sentience (Oxford University Press 2024). Version 1.0.0 It’s not as arcane a topic as it might at first appear. It shows up in new legislation and think tanks. At Amazon, we learn, for example, “In 2021, he led a review for the UK government that shaped the Animal Welfare (Sentience) Act 2022. In 2022-23, he was part of a working group that investigated the question of sentience in AI.” And as Birch told Marc Bekoff at Psychology Today, I’m probably best-known for my work on invertebrate sentience, which is one part of the book. My team’s work has led to some …

Wokeness Poisons Atheism Too: The Tale of Jerry Coyne

_{When evolutionary biologist Coyne questioned Woke “gender” claims, the Freedom From Religion Foundation removed his article, citing the “distress” he caused}_{Denyse O'Leary
January 2, 2025}

A Woke atheist group that values feelings over facts can certainly continue to bash religion. It just can’t pretend to any intellectual integrity while doing so

Evolution Journal Editors Resign After AI Takes Over

_{Publisher Elsevier seems to have created a lot of extra work for the editors by introducing AI-generated errors into the publishing process}_{Denyse O'Leary
December 30, 2024}

Was a journal that tries to explain the origin of the unique human mind without any reference to the Mind that created the universe bound to end up here?

Michael Shermer: Wokeness Poisons Science and I Am No Longer Woke

_{A number of well-known one-way skeptics and atheists are beginning to feel the consequences of prescribed insufferable virtue}_{Denyse O'Leary
December 26, 2024}

Maybe we need to believe that there is a Mind behind the universe in order to provide guardrails against deeply crazy stuff claiming to be science.

No. 7 Story of 2024: Study of Water Fleas Found No Evidence of Evolution

_{Denyse O'Leary
December 26, 2024}

After many generations, water fleas showed no evidence of changing genetically to adapt to their environment, as the theory would predict.

Physicists Want to Put Cosmic Design to the Test

_{Denyse O'Leary
December 22, 2024}

Their thesis is based on cosmic inflation theory and on the behavior of dark matter.

Physicists propose to test the finetuning of the universe

_{Their thesis is based on cosmic inflation theory and on the behavior of dark matter, whose nature remains unknown.}_{Denyse O'Leary
December 21, 2024}

It is not more “metaphysical” to say that the universe shows apparent evidence of design than to say it does not. The bias in insisting otherwise is evident.

Why Scientism is A Dead End for Science As Well As Philosophy

_{Canadian journalist Patrick Keeney’s thoughts on the topic — just as the Notre Dame fire smoldered out — are well worth revisiting}_{Denyse O'Leary
December 15, 2024}

An absolute monopoly for science on truth conceals a fatal flaw. If scientific inquiry becomes corrupt or useless, we can find help from no other quarter.

Can Chimpanzees Help Us Understand How Human Language Started?

_{If the capacity for a human mind was present before humans and chimps diverged (if they did), why did no chimpanzee develop one?}_{Denyse O'Leary
December 14, 2024}

Oxford researchers studied chimpanzee tool use for evidence that chimpanzees really do think a lot like humans. If that were true, it would deepen the mystery.

Brain Imaging Shows Intelligence Uses the Whole Brain

_{Denyse O'Leary
December 14, 2024}

A focus on specific regions like the prefrontal cortex can mislead. When we are thinking, we use brain-wide connections between many parts of the brain at once.

Brain Imaging Study Shows That Intelligence Uses the Whole Brain

_{A focus on specific regions like the prefrontal cortex can mislead. When we are thinking, we use brain-wide connections between many parts of the brain at once}_{Denyse O'Leary
December 13, 2024}

It’s not that the textbooks are wrong; they are just not telling the whole story.

Deism and the Afterlife: Cosmologist Paul Davies Outlines His Views

_{Denyse O'Leary
December 10, 2024}

Paul Davies argues that we’re not at the center of the attention of a God who is specifically concerned with us.

Can There Be Evidence for Free Will?

_{Denyse O'Leary
December 10, 2024}

John Horgan thinks that “proofs” of free will seem as dubious as denials but there is actually considerable neuroscience evidence.

Science Writer Wonders If There Can Be Evidence for Free Will

_{Horgan thinks that “proofs” of free will seem as dubious as denials but there is actually considerable neuroscience evidence}_{Denyse O'Leary
December 9, 2024}

As we’ve noted earlier, neuroscience has never disproven free will, much as some neuroscientists may have wanted it to.

Cosmologist Paul Davies: Does the soul have an afterlife?

_{Davies argues that we’re not at the center of the attention of a God who is specifically concerned with us and his existence has no implications for the soul}_{Denyse O'Leary
December 8, 2024}

The doctrine of most religious traditions that the soul is not destroyed with the body is not presented as a comfort so much as a plain fact, with consequences.