rationalskepticism.org

stevebee92653 wrote:
What a disappointment your are. Gee, if the "respect" rules were not in place, you would revert to evo-demeaning that is always so thoughtful, scientific, and intelligent?

And that after he tried so hard to be respectful.
Seriously stevebee92653; how can you expect anything close to a hight degree of respectful dialogue, when you respond to people like you do here?! Are you intentionally engaging in Trollish behaviour?

stevebee92653 wrote:I thought you would do better, but your answer is a FAILURE of logic, science, thought, and reasoning.

I disagree. It is you who seem woefully ignorant (in relation to the confidence in your rhetoric) of what the theory of evolution has to say about common ancestry.

stevebee92653 wrote:The real killer for your explanation, and what is most telling is: "it's not worth my while to go to the trouble of drawing a diagrammatic representation just for you to summarily dismiss it." You won't diagram because you can't. I would dismiss it because that diagram isn't possible.

I think anyone else can read for themselves precisely why he chose not to do it just then. And how you just confirmed his suspicions.

Any common ancestry diagram would do to highlight the basics:
Such as this 'little' one here (Grossly over simplified of course - you may notice that our closest relative there is Mus Musculus [The common house mouse - and the true source of the nickname "Mus" of an old friend of mine. ])

Note that every point of divergence there represents a common ancestor (most recent common ancestor to be precise) or those lines that follow from it.

stevebee92653 wrote: You won't think it out because your belief system prevents that thought. So you spout dogma:

You are projecting now. You can't help making such 'religious' accusations. This is why many think your main aim is to provoke not engage in debate.

stevebee92653 wrote:"an example of the reasoning behind the argument for common ancestry as the solution to your false dilemma." (CA kills the "solution"; it doesn't answer anything. It's a curse for you. If ISP were possible, you would have hope. But, no ISP, no hope for your belief.)

See? You just repeat the same old nonsense, without paying any real attention to what is being said. Common ancestry - many many differing cases of common ancestry is the solution to what you claim to be such a problem, one solved I don't know how many decades ago.

stevebee92653 wrote:"the common ancestor of all tetrapods already had a highly developed visual system" (Where did they get it from? And ALL of the other systems they had to have to pass on all organs/systems extant and common to their descendants? The CA species had to have them ALL, or extant species descendants of the CA would be missing "things".)

Where did they get it from? Well as he answered in the very next 'breath': FIsh.
That is the ancestors of tetrapods (without a shadow of a doubt due to a plethora of evidence) were bony fish, and fish have and had quite developed eyes...and kidneys and some of them had lungs...

stevebee92653 wrote:This is such a simple concept. It amazes me the hoops you will jump through to pretend like it's not a problem. You blind yourself to reality.

It's not a problem, at least what you are saying in not a problem except a problem of YOUR understanding of the science.

stevebee92653 wrote:You came on my blog and respectfully requested a conversation, which is why I came back for only discussion with you. Being as that has failed, I won't make the same mistake again. You are welcome to come to my blog to discuss any time. Try the diagram thing for yourself; not for me. I know the result. You won't do it. You can't. You don't want to know the result.

How quick you are to dismiss. I thought halucigenia bent over backwards to accommodate you. Only to blow him off so glibly.

You want REAL information of evolution, of those organs etc.? Then why not make the effort to look them up. Some examples:
Lungs, air breathing.
Jellyfish eye genes suggest a common origin for animal eyes
This on Tetrapods includes this snippet:
"It is now clear that the common ancestor of the bony fishes had a primitive air-breathing lung (later evolved into a swim bladder in most ray-finned fishes). This suggests that it evolved in warm shallow waters, the kind of habitat the lobe finned fishes were living and made use of their simple lung when the oxygen level in the water became too low."

The basics of the evidence clearly shows that photo-sensitivity (the starting point of eyes) started way way back, such that even some unicellular organism have such features (spots.) Over innumerable generations more advanced eyes evolved. Due to divergences of many different lines of evolution, this resulted in many (40 or more) essentially different evolutionary paths to different kinds of eyes - albeit from this same far simpler origin (common ancestor.) Take a look at insect vs, mammalian eyes as a prime example of the differences.
One stumbling block you seem to have is some kind of assumption that one single species suddenly evolved a complex version of an eye, heart or whatever. For starters single species don't evolve all that much, certainly not complex features in most cases (there are rare exceptions.) Such evolutionary change usually takes more than the changes within a single species.
And before you go on about only using one organ.; Well that is only the start of it. I chose eyes because their origins appear very early indeed, before any organs at all (if you can take calling a photosensitive spot on a cell an "eye" of course, the key is to realise that complex structures "become", they grow and develop, not suddenly appear [again with rare exceptions.])
As eyes evolved along their various pathways, other unrelated (or less directly related) mutations and resulting variation and natural selection etc. of course continued to take place. As such other things like 'improvements' in fluid/chemical/hormone... transfer around the evolving organisms - I.e. the formation of more and more advanced circulatory systems. Including the evolution of differing kinds of body fluid pumps (hearts) breathing systems (gills, lungs, tracheal systems [insects]) and so on. All of these features (organs/traits...) evolved somewhat in tandem.
The best way to try to track down the origin of any one feature is to look back and find what organisms have it, and from there surmise that the most recent common ancestor (MRCA) of all those (probably diverse) creatures has that feature as well (at least to the same extent as that shared by all those organisms) and either it was the first to have that feature to that degree, or itself inherited it from it's ancestors. But not so far back as to be shared by those ancestors that lead to that MRCA and other known organisms (current living ones for example) that don't share that feature (eyes, lungs of whatever.) This is one way that that "Tree of life" (simplified i the link above) is formed in the first place. The fascinating thing is that looking at different features (eye, lung, skelatl structures etc.) as well as vastly different types of evidence such as biogeography (where different varieties are), innumerable different genetic traits, the fossils, embryology... ALL give the exact same diagram (of course some filling in parts not found in every other methodology, but also confirming many others as well.)
It isn't that complicated, really it isn't.

Here's a question for you stevebee92653 (because I was just reminded of it by the book I am reading; Jerry Coyne's Why Evolution is True):
Why do you think embryos go through the stages they do? (and yes they do this)
Why do all vertebrates start out with an embryo essentially identical. Braicial arches and so on.
With Fish stopping there and basically only growing in size to be born as Fish.
While the rest of us go through the same distortions of those systems, losing some features and moving the rest around.
With Amphibians stopping there and basically only growing in size to be born as Amphibians.
While the rest of us go through even more distortions of those systems, losing some features and moving the rest around.
With Reptiles stopping there and basically only growing in size to be born as Reptiles.
While finally the rest of us go through even more adjustments in order to finally be born as mammals?

In other words; why do fish, amphibians, reptiles and mammals share the same initial embryonic states,
but only amphibians, reptiles and mammals share the next (second) stage (with fish remaining at the first state to keep those features as adults)
and only reptiles and mammals sharing the next (third) stage,
and only mammals the last (fourth) stage?

Why do mammals share all the reptile's states but never the other way around?! (insert any number of such "paradoxes" as possible.) It makes perfect sense in the light of evolution (Because that is the evolutionary path taken: Fish -> Amphibians -> Reptiles -> Mammals, as confirmed by other independent lines of evidence as well, for example mammals have mammalian on top of reptile brains, not the other way around) but by no other means! Doesn't that just seem bizarre to you UNLESS evolution is in fact true?! I know it does to me!