quote:
To begin with, lets imagine a hand of five cards dealt from a thoroughly-shuffled deck. The odds of getting any specific combination of five cards are one in 311,875,200 (~0.00000000320641). Long odds, indeed. But every single possible hand combination displays the same likelihood (or unlikelihood, as the case may be!), so to look backward at a dealt hand and proclaim "That hand had only a 1 in 311,875,200 chance of occurring naturally, therefore it must have been intelligently arranged!" is a non-sequitir, because it essentially amounts to "predicting" with a 1:1 possibility that any hand will show this result! This is why retrodiction of the improbability of past events is completely irrelevant to establishing intelligent causality: one is not actually describing a case of a 1-in-311,875,200 shot, but rather a 1-in-1 shot of an event displaying a probability of 1 in 311,875,200.
I for one do not feel that Behe's bycycle example is the best way to establish ID. However, I find it strange to accuse Behe of mixing "apples & oranges", then rebuting him with another set of "apples & oranges". You see, if I tell you that card decks don't have sex, then you'll probably know how Behe feels too. But as long as we defend our own positions, I guess rules can be twisted.
I'm tempted to use some apples & oranges of my own, in response to yours actually. Only to show that these non-organic analogies, either way, can be used in favour of one's arguement and position. Of course, no one bothered to point that out because, 95% of the peple on this forum are on your side.
Here it goes,
instead of shuffling cards, or building bicycles into hot motor rides, let's try something different. I'll ask you to shuffle 10 buckets of paint. Don't even mix them actually, we'll just use them. Take 1 000 000 page painting sheets. On each sheet, I'll ask you to throw some paint on randomly, just do whatever, splat that bad boy all over the sheet. Try it randomly 1 000 000 times. We'll see if we can evolve, by pure probabilities, on the 986 657th try, a perfect work of art resembling a painting of Michael Angelo? Looking like it's designed, looking as though the precision of the paint and the mixture of colours and the pressure of the arm and hand all coordinated to bring us Mona Lisa's smile only...randomly..
I will bet my bottom dollar it will never happen. Not after 1 billion times.
You'll say,
"that's dishonest argumentation, you're mixing apples and oranges!"
And I'll say....
EXACTLY! That's my point, just like you did with the cards and Behe did with Biclecycle.
So on these grounds, I would like to officially dismiss Jacinto's point on this topic as :
Debunked
Now, if we wanna start talking about how Neutral shift affects noe-darwinists' explanations about human evolution, and discuss the 2% DNA separation between Chimps and Humans, but distanced by 350 000 amino acids nonetheless, then let us carry on...
cheers all!