Mr. Dembski, I hope too will read it and interact with some of the criticisms it deals with. For your view to be credible, you will need to defend it against these types of critiques.

Here it is:http://www.answersingenesis.or.....cy-refuted

Is Antibiotic Resistance Evidence For Evolution? – The Fitness Test
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BwWpRSYgOE

Testing the Biological Fitness of Antibiotic Resistant Bacteria – 2008
http://www.answersingenesis.or.....-drugstore

List Of Degraded Molecular Abilities Of Antibiotic Resistant Bacteria:
http://www.trueorigin.org/bacteria01.asp

I understand what you mean. To attempt to determine the odds of the universe and life exactly as they are now, and calling that outcome “specified” would not be accurate. Supposing that these things came about without design, surely numerous other variations would have been possible.

But if we follow that reasoning, it’s just a variation on multiverses. Who knows how many universes there are? It was bound to happen. Or, who knows how many ways life could have evolved? It was only a matter of time.

But in both cases we’re grasping at straws, adding probability without a shred of evidence to somehow make the desired result seem reasonable. That’s what I call “magic.”

Would a youtube video countering what is claimed in the video you link to be sufficient evidence to refute what you present?

No problem – you just failed to see what I had actually been commenting on (Brent’s comment re: Cabal’s, who had, indeed, brought up card dealing).

Now I understand. In this discussion regarding intelligent design and probabilities, you just happened to start musing about decks of cards.

No, as I mentioned, I was commenting on a comment which was, in fact, about decks of cards. You just must not have seen the previouscoment.

If I assumed that it was somehow connected to the context of the immediate discussion, that was my misunderstanding. Please forgive me for interrupting your thread on poker.

Actually, the original comment mentioned bridge.

At least now I know why your comment had little to offer on the odds for or against random evolution: you were talking about a different subject

Yes, that is absolutely correct. That and the notion of characterizing a given outcome as specified for the purposes of presenting the odds of its occurrance as being so low as to be impossible (without the magic hand of the Designer, that is).

However, were I to have commented on “random evolution”, I would have mentioned that calling it “random evolution” is a caricature.

The point is Missing Links ARE MISSING!!!

The Fossil Record – Does It Support Evolution Or Creation? – Dr. Arthur Jones
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVQeeY-Val0

Indeed, like the myriads of failures suspiciously missing from the historical library-graveyard of sedimentary rock layers.

I don’t find it suspicious. You have to be a ‘best seller’ to have any chance at all of getting into this ‘library’. Then if your book is on a ‘shelf’, for us to know about it the shelf has to be within our reach.

But if you have a theory on the fossilization rates of rare species that predicts a different distribution of species than we have seen so far, please enlighten us.

Now I understand. In this discussion regarding intelligent design and probabilities, you just happened to start musing about decks of cards. If I assumed that it was somehow connected to the context of the immediate discussion, that was my misunderstanding. Please forgive me for interrupting your thread on poker.
At least now I know why your comment had little to offer on the odds for or against random evolution: you were talking about a different subject.

any sort of magic hand-waving that says an event can be both astronomically improbable and be the most plausible explanation shouldn’t fool anyone who stops and thinks about it for a half a second.

If you consider Bayes’ Theorem, it’s easy to conceive of situations in which the probability of an event P(E|H) is very low, but the plausibility of the explanation P(H|E) is high. That’s why an event’s improbability, or even “for all practical purposes” impossibility, does not necessarily imply that the explanation is implausible.

Dembski made that point often, and his concept of specified complexity was an attempt to address it without requiring comparisons or pre-specifications.