Calilasseia wrote:This canard was first erected by dunsapy over at RDF. He tried to assert that because scientists have to exercise some intellectual effort in order to understand natural phenomena, this means that those natural phenomena are somehow under "intelligent control". Presumably as a corollary of this, he would read the satirical piece in The Onion about "Intelligent Falling", and regard it as a valid critique of the scientific understanding of gravity.

Calilasseia wrote:I think we've been too busy laughing at his posts to award one.

Calilasseia wrote:

ElDiablo wrote:I went to his site and the got the impression - "there has to be design"

Let me guess ... THIS sort of design, perchance?

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMhdksPFhCM[/youtube]

Kytescall wrote:
Holy shit, ornithopters! Awesome if they work, unspeakably ridiculous if they don't.

steevebee on his blog wrote: Of course the geographic separations and the distance separating species, the cause of speciation, makes the spread of newly formed organs and bio-systems ever more impossible from species to species. Species separated by long distances or large geologic entities should have evolved entirely different organs and bio-systems. But that just is not the case. Mammals in the southern hemisphere of the earth have the same organ inventory and design as mammals in the northern hemisphere. A liver evolved independently in the southern hemisphere would have to be matched by a liver evolved identically in the northern hemisphere, not a rational possibility. So, why are they the same?

GenesForLife wrote:I wonder if someone could bring up the plate tectonic models at the times these fossils have been dated back to.

GenesForLife wrote:I wonder if someone could bring up the plate tectonic models at the times these fossils have been dated back to.

GenesForLife wrote:I wonder if someone could bring up the plate tectonic models at the times these fossils have been dated back to.

halucigenia wrote: Even if they weren't strong fliers they could have been blown there or rafted across.

halucigenia wrote:"The argument from geographical separation"

steevebee on his blog wrote: Of course the geographic separations and the distance separating species, the cause of speciation, makes the spread of newly formed organs and bio-systems ever more impossible from species to species. Species separated by long distances or large geologic entities should have evolved entirely different organs and bio-systems. But that just is not the case. Mammals in the southern hemisphere of the earth have the same organ inventory and design as mammals in the northern hemisphere. A liver evolved independently in the southern hemisphere would have to be matched by a liver evolved identically in the northern hemisphere, not a rational possibility. So, why are they the same?

Also see Stevebee's video "The Evolution of Birds and Flight: It's impossible Part 1"
Where he argues that Unenlagia was found in Southern Argentina, which isn't very near China or Germany, where Sinosauropteryx and Archaeopteryx, respectively, were found.
What kind of an argument is that? - it's "The argument from geographical separation".

You are correct that one method of speciation (sympatric speciation) results from geographical isolation, however you are wrong to assert that this “makes the spread of newly formed organs and bio-systems ever more impossible from species to species” as this is not even postulated as how organs and biosystems require to be spread. What happens is that when speciation occurs the new species that form inherit the same organs and biosystems from the original population that split. For example mammals in the northern and southern hemisphere have the same organ inventory as did their common ancestor before those particular species split and migrated/found themselves in different areas of the world because of geographical separations. Livers in mammals did not have to evolve independently in the southern and northern hemispheres as livers had already evolved before the common ancestor of all mammals. It is simply nonsense to suggest that for livers to have evolved at all livers would have had to evolved separately in different species of mammal.

You are wrong because it is not a requirement for the theory of evolution to propose that organs and biosystems would have to be spread from species to species in the way that you propose, they are simply inherited form ancestor to descendent, no matter where the descendants turn up geographically.

To show your case that this had to be so you would have to give an example of two distinct species of organism that share the same organs or biosystem that could not possibly have a common ancestor with each other that also shared these common organs or biosystems. You have been asked to come up with an example of this before and have failed to do so, so until you can do so your assertion is simply unfounded and wrong. Also on top of that for this particular assertion you would have to show that this common ancestors descendants could not have migrated somehow to where they are now, or have been in the past in the case of fossilised examples.