PROBABILITY, GOD, EVOLUTION, AND MY LOGIC PROFESSOR

As is often the case, my logic class took a turn for the worse this evening, as my professor used the existence of God and the validity of evolution as examples when discussing probability.

Using Bayes's Theorem, the class watched as the probability of God existing rose from 20% to 72% after considering the evidence of "cosmic harmony"; effectively the traditional argument from design.

This is all fine. The theorem's effectiveness is determined by what probability is initially supplied; e.g. in this case, we said the odds were 4 to 1 against the existence of God. We could have just as easily said 5000 to 1 against, or 2 to 1 in favor, it doesn't matter. The point is, this line of discussion inevitably leads to my professor getting started on Darwinism v. ID Theory.

I mind my own business for some time as other students ask their usual "I've never read anything about this" sort of questions, until eventually my prof. makes the claim that the gaps in the fossil record suggest intelligent design.

Being the genius philosopher I am, I ask him simply, "And where do you get that from?" I mean of course that the inclusion of the intelligent creator hypothesis seems to me to just come out of nowhere; i.e. how does one get from "gap in the fossil record" to "Darwinian evolution is improbable" to "intelligent creator"? The way I see it, what he just said is: "there are gaps in the fossil record, therefore ID theory is correct," which is friggin' ridiculous - especially for one who holds a PhD in philosophy. In other words, it's a very simple and honest question.

What does he hit me with? He says, "where do we get any of our theories?" and sites as an example that the world was created five minutes ago, with our memories in tact.

This was, of course, precisely my point: the intelligent design hypothesis is a conjecture exactly like the one he just gave.

But this is lost on him, and that's the only answer to my question I get.

Moments later, he brings up that the chances of intelligent life existing without the aid of an intelligent designer are small. (Granting the odds of intelligent life emerging by chance is like 10 to the 40th power or something ridiculous.)

I say: "Can't you say that about everything? I mean, the 'odds' of any single event are just as poor if we include enough factors into the equation. For example, what are the 'odds' that each member of this class would be here, at this moment, at this school, with this weather, combined with the fact the Tigers lost yesterday, now combined with all the things that had to happen to get us all into this classroom at this moment: all of our parents had to meet, their parents had to meet, etc. etc. etc. ... had even one of these things not happened, this class as it currently is ceases to exist. The odds of our being here are, like ... 10 to the 40th power!

I found this a clear and concise example of what my issue with his position was. This is lost on him as well, and he proceeds to talk down to me for the next few minutes about how improbable intelligent life is (which, by the way, is a red herring: I never disputed whether life was improbable or not).

I don't exactly have a "point," nor do I have much of an idea of what direction I intend this thread to go. All comments welcome (pro and con); I just needed to get this off my chest.

Cheers.

[Edit: Removed some redundant material.]