"We can only say there's a fossil in the ground"--for starters
On a side note you also keep assuming that I'm assuming long ages when what I've talked about is independent of the age "date" of the fossils.
But I would start here....
You need to listen to YEC flood geologist Ken Coulson's video talks. Especially, part 2 where he walks you through his research on stromatolite fossils and the types of questions we can answer just from those fossils.
If you are going to talk about the fossils being in the ground, we agree, if you talk about the different shapes meaning they belong to different creatures we agree. As soon as you talk about something other than the fossils as dates, you are no longer talking about fossils but something else. I owe you two videos I said I would watch, I'll comment on them after I listen.
"What exactly am I wrong about?"
Statements like the above. Saying fossils in the ground are all we know (ridiculous) and you are the one who keeps bringing up the age 'date' of fossils (you don’t seem to have any knowledge of how paleontologists determine the age 'date' of fossils, and what you say is also irrelevant to the patterns in the fossil record I've been describing like YEC flood geologist Ken Coulson's part 2 video on stromatolite fossils, which are true regardless of their age 'date' and dont require any old age or young age assumptions)
Like I said, take some geology and paleontology classes, because you don't know what you're talking about.
You're thinking of 'old school' paleontology. You also seem to be thinking of reconstructions for crypto species and/or incomplete (vertebrate) skeletons. I assume you know that is <1% of the fossil record. I assume you know that most of the fossil record consists of marine invertebrates (not vertebrates) that are complete (whole) fossils.
Modern paleontology is a very sophisticated science, and in many ways more advanced than modern forensic science (we collect a lot more data and have substantially more laboratory analyses available to us). You seem to think that all paleontologists do is dig up 'old bones.' Not even close. (And, in fact, for me personally, I often find the 'ground'--i.e., sedimentology--more fascinating than the fossils themselves). You seem to be thinking of the fossils in isolation to the 'ground' in which they're found. But that's not how paleontology works. We don't just look at the fossils. We look at everything. Modern paleontology includes:
-The fossils themselves. Quantitative mineralogical analysis to tell us the precise chemical composition. This can include microscopy and thin sections).
-Taphonomy: analysis of the 'death and burial' context, which includes documenting things like fossil orientation, fossil abrading or lack thereof, whether it's articulated or disarticulated. (Similar to modern forensics, such things give us data about the conditions and environment of death and burial).
-Sedimentology: a huge part of paleontology is analysis of the sedimentological context in which the fossils are found: the lithology, mineralogy, petrology, sedimentary structures.
-Stratigraphy/Biostratigraphy: mapping the vertical and lateral (geographic) extent of a paleospecies. Vertical and lateral facies changes.
***And the YEC straw man accusation of "old age/evolutionary uniformitarian assumptions" is so 200 years ago. Modern geologists don't assume layers are put down at slow, uniform rates. Today we use highly sophisticated techniques to determine stratigraphic completeness and in paleontology control for sampling bias and preservation bias and more. Modern geologists recognize evidence of both slow and rapid catastrophic deposition as well as when there is evidence of no deposition. This isn't done haphazardly or by creative storytelling or guessing, or "old age" assumptions, but all based on the actual observational evidence at physical field localities.
-Paleoecology: analysis of all of the above and associations of fossils with other types of fossils.
-There are actually only a few places (although it's growing) that issue paleontology degrees, per se. Most paleontologists are geologists who don't simply look at fossils but collect data from the entire 'crime scene' so to speak. There is sooooo much data to collect (more than can be collected in a lifetime).
*So again, you seem to be thinking of fossils in isolation ripped out of context, when that's not how it works. Modern paleontology collects data on *everything* and is not myopically focused on digging up 'old bones' but on putting together an understanding of the entire 'crime scene' environment that starts with the mineralogical composition of the rocks themselves, which provides an enormous amount of data just right there when we're barely out of the gate.
. Again, not talking about interpretation or subjective views, but what we physically see: what it looks like to everyone. You like to point out that truth is objective, so let's apply that rule: all the different types of reefs and stromatolites we see in the fossil record either appear together at the bottom of the record or they don't, so which is it? YEC flood geologist Ken Coulson physically observed at least 12 layers of stromatolites stacked on top of each other. So that is either an objective fact or he hallucinated it.
....
So requiring naturalism be "abandoned" is tautological/circular, and is a bit of a 'cheat.' It is a convenient way to insulate oneself from ever having to deal with the evidence (or lack thereof). It's a convenient way to ignore and absolve oneself from having to deal with the "enormous amount of empirical data.... that suggest that it is impossible for *any* non-living chemical system to escape devolution to enter into the Darwinian world of the living." As no "enormous amount of empirical data" will ever be enough. That is fundamentally no different from how no amount of evidence will be enough for YECs, due to their metaphysical commitments. They are both convenient ways to avoid dealing with the scientific evidence.
And plenty of people do that, so you can too, if that's what you want to do.
But surely you can understand if other people don't feel compelled to follow suit. Even though you don't reject it, surely you can appreciate how other people could reject abiogenesis and arrive at the conclusion that something more than nature is needed in light of the "enormous amount of empirical data" that suggest abiogenesis is not possible.
More time today and I did say I'd return to this...
But if you think I was suggesting that "naturalism be "abandoned"", you misunderstood what I meant. I was referring to a naturalistic explanation for the origin of life (OOL), not anything else. Of course if you take the view that giving up hope of ever finding such an explanation for OOL is somehow abandoning naturalism by extension, that's another matter.
The question I ponder is at what point do the very difficult problems surrounding a naturalistic explanation become insuperable? You seem to rule it out (?) in your own thinking and if so, that's your choice but I'll continue to follow what appears to be the thinking of those best qualified to say, in other words the OOL research community.
I'm thinking of that saying 'absence of evidence is not evidence of absence' and failing to make progress and acknowledging the very considerable hurdles to be overcome isn't quite the same as demonstrating that some alternative explanation is the case. There's space, however small, between pressing on with the search, despite the mountain that needs to be climbed, and stating that no naturalistic explanation is possible.
But let's not fall into the trap of thinking that adopting a wait and see approach is in any way equivalent to those who deny established science?