[DC Bound]

Not advancing an argument (I will if you want), simply making an observation about Dembski - he's smart and knows his arguments are misleading.

Where are they misleading? It is of interest.

[edsheppa]

You're quoting him a lot; have you really read much of his work? In one essay, don't recall which, Dembski offers a parable about an archer and a barn. You come upon an archer, his arrow directly in the bullseye of a target on the barn wall. He assures you he launched the arrow from 100 yards away. Supposing you have no reason to doubt his word, should you be impressed at his skill? If the target were drawn *after* the arrow had landed, then obviously no.

The moral of the story is that the specification you're testing must be independently derived from the result. It is his parable so clearly he understands it. Yet here he is asking about some probabilities with no independent specification.

He misleads in other ways too. Even if one were to (illegitimately) accept the flagellum as a spec, one can't ask only about the probability of some specific sequence of changes but must rather ask about all the conceivable evolutionary pathways that could give the result. The man is a mathematician, he knows his question is misleading.