Thoughts in a Haystack

Richard Marshall is at it again, giving his "arguments for Intelligent Design in the Fort Scott (Kansas) Tribune. It's hard to believe, but these are even more inane than the last ones:

Uh, most (if not all) vertebrates have a skull and rib cage. In fact, the morphological similarities between vertebrates was pretty much what stated people, long before Darwin, thinking that there might have been some sort of evolution. There is nothing unique about humans in this regard.

Well, yeah. It's pretty much obvious that, in order to get the advantage of having a nervous system, it has to reach all the parts of your body, in that it both controls all the various parts (if it didn't, your arms, legs, naughty bits, etc. would just flop around) and transmits "information" (i.e. "signals") about the environment back to the central processor so you know better than to flop your arms, legs, naughty bits, etc. onto hot stoves and the like. It's kind of like being amazed that the electrical system in you car reaches the engine, headlights, tail lights, radio, etc.

Yes, the human brain and eye and circulatory system are complex but not orders of magnitude more complex than other animals. Chimps, bonobos, dolphins and whales have brains closely matching ours in complexity. Cephalopod eyes are "better" than ours in some ways. And giraffe circulatory systems are more complex than ours.

This time Marshall has nothing really to do but repeat the "Gee whiz! That's complicated, it must of been designed!" argument from personal incredulity ... though he does throw in both the watch and his previous Cadillac analogy.

The only question is whether his lack of imagination is what makes him believe in creationism or whether it what makes him think these are cogent arguments.
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