If you look over in the right column of the blog, you’ll see that I am reading “The Comprehensive Guide to Science and Faith”. It’s a collection of short essays intended for laymen to explain all aspects of the design debate. I’m actually listening to the audio book version, and just looking in the book for diagrams. I wanted to talk about a few resources that are similar to what I’m seeing in the book.

First, there’s this excellent post from Evolution News, where Dr. Casey Luskin (who recently appeared on the Apologetics 315 podcast) lists out all the areas where intelligent design is fruitful for studying living systems.

Here is his list:

• Protein science
• Physics and cosmology
• Information theory
• Pharmacology
• Evolutionary computation
• Anatomy and physiology
• Bioinformatics
• Molecular machines
• Cell biology
• Systematics
• Paleontology
• Genetics

These are all good, but I’m going to focus on some of them that are interesting to me coming from a software engineering background.

Information theory: ID leads scientists to understand intelligence as a cause of biological complexity, capable of being scientifically studied, and to understand the types of information it generates.

I looked into this one when naturalists were trying to argue that specified complexity was just the same as Shannon information. Shannon information is just concerned with the complexity, or information carrying capacity, of strings. But specified complexity is a step further, where certain strings have meaning or purpose, because they conform to a pattern. A random set of characters the same length as this blog post is complex (like Shannon information), but it’s not specified. What makes my letter sequences specified is that it conforms to the English language, and conveys meaning.

Here’s another:

Evolutionary computation: ID produces theoretical research into the information-generative powers of Darwinian searches, leading to the discovery that the search abilities of Darwinian processes are limited, which has practical implications for the viability of using genetic algorithms to solve problems.

When I was in grad school, there were courses on using “genetic algorithms” to solve problems. But thanks to the work of ID proponents like William Dembski, we now know that these algorithms only work if constraints are put on the search algorithm up front. As such, they don’t support undirected evolution at all.

Bioinformatics: ID has helped scientists develop proper measures of biological information, leading to concepts like complex and specified information or functional sequence complexity. This allows us to better quantify complexity and understand what features are, or are not, within the reach of Darwinian evolution.

Before ID came along, people weren’t really interested in calculating the probability of sequencing amino acids into a protein by chance. They just wanted to assume that it happened, because what else could have happened? Sometimes, you make better decisions when you listen to both sides of a debate. Now we have two sides to the debate on origins, and it helps both sides to defend their views.

Molecular machines: ID encourages scientists to reverse-engineer molecular machines — like the bacterial flagellum — to understand their function like machines, and to understand how the machine-like properties of life allow biological systems to function.

I’ve blogged before about how human inventors are regularly reverse-engineering natural designs in order to come up with designs for man-made machines.

Genetics: ID has inspired scientists to investigate the computer-like properties of DNA and the genome in the hopes of better understanding genetics and the origin of biological systems.15 ID has also inspired scientists to seek function for noncoding junk-DNA, allowing us to understand development and cellular biology.

By now, everybody has heard about the predictions by Darwinists about the “uselessness” of junk DNA. That all went out the window with the data from the ENCODE project, that found that the so-called junk DNA was almost all useful. Another Darwinian prediction falsified by the progress of science.

A 40-minute lecture

I saw a nice lecture from the recent Science & Faith conference that was held in Dallas this year. The speaker was Dr. Brian Miller:

Dr. Miller is Research Coordinator at Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture. He holds a Ph.D. in Physics from Duke University.

More about him and the articles he has written can be found here: https://www.discovery.org/p/miller/

The video talks about all the areas where evidence for design is changing the way that scientists look at living systems.

The talk was very cutting edge, with a lot of new stuff I had not seen before. It’s worth the time to watch it. There were also a couple of prior lectures from the conference. One from Eric Hedin, where he talked about being “canceled” by Darwinists for teaching both sides of origins issues at Ball State University. Another from Stephen C. Meyer talks about the Judeo-Christian origins of modern science. I’ve only watched the Miller lecture so far, but that’s what Saturdays are for! Watching lectures and debates.

I’ve just about had it with Facebook’s “fact checkers”. In most cases, these are just card carrying Democrats with worthless degrees in grievance studies. They have limited real world experience. Their only credentials are promoting the Democrat party by censoring news and opinions that make the Democrats look bad. Even peer-reviewed medical journals are censored!

Here’s the story from The Federalist:

The editors of a peer-reviewed medical journal penned a scathing letter demanding that Facebook reevaluate its bogus third-party “fact-checking” processes after the journal was censored for publishing information about COVID-19 vaccine trials.

BMJ editors Fiona Godlee and Kamran Abbasi addressed the letter to Facebook creator and CEO Mark Zuckerberg with the intention of raising “serious concerns” about Facebook’s third-party “fact-checking” system.

According to the editors, one of the well-researched articles BMJ published on “a host of poor clinical trial research practices occurring at Ventavia,” one of the companies facilitating trials for Pfizer’s version of the COVID-19 vaccine, was suppressed by Facebook and censored with labels that directed readers to a “fact check” by the obscure website Lead Stories, which routinely issues fake fact-checks.

“Those trying to post the article were informed by Facebook that people who repeatedly share ‘false information’ might have their posts moved lower in Facebook’s News Feed. Group administrators where the article was shared received messages from Facebook informing them that such posts were ‘partly false,’” Godlee and Abbasi wrote.

The editors said that this “fact check,” which Facebook used to justify threats against users who shared the BMJ article, however, was “inaccurate, incompetent and irresponsible.”

[…]Godlee and Abbasi concluded their letter by demanding that Facebook, if it continues its censorship campaign against so-called “misinformation,” choose wiser and more competent organizations for fact-checking such as Cochrane, which reviews medical evidence on a regular basis.

This isn’t the only time that Facebook “fact checkers” have twisted the truth to protect the Democrat party. The most recent example was with the Rittenhouse trial.

Consider this article the New York Post:

Consider how Facebook, in particular, treated the circumstances surrounding Kyle Rittenhouse, the teen acquitted last week of all charges in the self-defense killings of two men and the shooting of another during last summer’s riots in Kenosha, Wis. Immediately after the incident occurred, and despite video evidence which made a self-defense charge instantly plausible, Facebook declared it a “mass murder” and under that justification blocked searches for Rittenhouse’s name and any content in “praise or support” for him on the site — including links to contribute to his legal defense and videos purporting to show Rittenhouse providing aid to protesters.

In other words, Facebook determined that the only speech allowed on its platform was to declare Rittenhouse’s guilt, not his innocence. Perhaps prompted by Facebook’s actions or merely in spite of them, PayPal cut off affiliation with fundraising efforts for Rittenhouse, and so did GoFundMe.

What were the facts in the Rittenhouse case? The jury heard all the facts, and they acquitted Rittenhouse. No “mass murder” there, just self-defense.

Previously, I wrote articles about Facebook’s bias against the Republican party.

• Facebook has a long record of censoring speech critical of Democrats
• Facebook fact-checker caught plagiarizing 54 articles
• Facebook “non-partisan” fact-checker revealed to be a far-left Trump-hating Democrat
• Facebook “fact-checker” Politifact forced to retract “false” rating against Candace Owens
• When Facebook fact-checkers conflict with peer-reviewed studies, who is right?
• Potential violation of election law: Facebook and Twitter censor Biden scandal
• Facebook and Google removing content that harms Democrat party
• Facebook censors interview with abortion survivor to help Democrats win 2020 election
• Facebook uses pro-abortion “fact checkers” to label pro-life pages “fake news”
• Facebook bans Christian apologist David Wood for posting the death threats he received
• Facebook censors criticism of Democrat Party, especially before “important elections”
• Spotify joins Google, Youtube, Facebook and Twitter in censoring Prager University
• Facebook bans Franklin Graham for “hate speech”, Google YouTube shadow-bans pro-life videos
• Facebook, Amazon, Google and Twitter ally with leftist group linked to domestic terrorism
• Facebook enlists left-wing Politifact and Snopes to censor criticism of Democrats

I have been reading the Wall Street Journal a lot lately, trying to see when it might be a good time to buy back into the stock market. Normally, I look for a 30% drop before buying, and we are near that now. It’s below when Biden took office. He totally squandered Trump’s bull market. How? By handing out stimulus checks, and attacking the American oil and gas industry. And he’s not done.

Here’s the first article from the Wall Street Journal.

The Biden administration canceled plans to auction drilling rights in three regions off the U.S. coastline later this year, adding more friction to an uneasy relationship with the oil industry during a period of high gasoline prices.

The decision to cancel lease sales for two regions in the Gulf of Mexico and one off the coast of Alaska leaves oil-and-gas companies facing a blackout period of unknown length for access to new drilling spots in valuable offshore acreage.

A five-year schedule for offshore lease sales expires at the end of next month, and the Interior Department has yet to propose a new one. Canceling the pending sales with no new schedule yet proposed could mean the industry now faces years between successful federal offshore auctions.

“The lack of new lease sales will lower future supplies, which will keep energy prices high and drive inflation for years to come,” Marty Durbin, president of the energy arm of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said in a statement. “While some in the Administration have called for more domestic production, this action sends exactly the wrong signal to producers and markets.”

Biden has been in an all-out war against domestic energy production since the day he took office, canceling the Keystone XL pipeline and imposing a moratorium on new permits and leases for new drilling.  He’s fine with Russia getting a new pipeline, and he’d like to buy gas from communist Venezuela. But he doesn’t want Americans developing cleaner sources of energy at home. He’s doing everything he can to stop Americans from driving their cars and using heat and air conditioning, all in the name of global warming hysteria, which permeates his Chicken Little administration. This isn’t an accident. Raising prices on energy was done by design.

What can we expect from the party of global warming alarmism?

The Wall Street Journal explains:

From California to Texas to Indiana, electric-grid operators are warning that power-generating capacity is struggling to keep up with demand, a gap that could lead to rolling blackouts during heat waves or other peak periods as soon as this year.

[…]The risk of electricity shortages is rising throughout the U.S. as traditional power plants are being retired more quickly than they can be replaced by renewable energy and battery storage. Power grids are feeling the strain as the U.S. makes a historic transition from conventional power plants fueled by coal and natural gas to cleaner forms of energy such as wind and solar power, and aging nuclear plants are slated for retirement in many parts of the country.

Wind and solar power are not only more expensive than gas and nuclear, but they are also more inconsistent.

Here’s snow covering solar panels:

And ice freezing wind farms:

The problem with rising energy prices is that it is a drag on the economy – a separate source of inflation. Everything that is produced for sale to consumers is affected by higher energy costs. Especially things that have to be transported. It would be nice to see inflation addressed by raising interest rates. But because the Biden administration waited too long, that now carries the risk of recession. The next best option would be to lower the cost of energy by return to Trump’s “energy independence” policies. But Biden is totally opposed to that. Even if he changed course now, it would be months until energy prices were lowered.

It all seems as thought the Biden administration is making some sort of play to nationalize the energy industry, like Venezuela did. They’ll say “oh look, the private sector has failed. Now government needs to step in and rescue everyone”. That’s the way it usually plays out in communist countries. Nationalizing energy has caused massive shortages everywhere it’s been tried. Why think our communists are any different than the communists in other countries? They want power, and they don’t care if you have to lose your freedom and prosperity in order for them to get it.