No transitional fossils, you say??

It isn't what I have seen in movies that give me pause, it's people declaring they know this means that millions or billions of years ago. You may as well be a witch doctor throwing bones on an animal's skin and making predictions about what you see in the bones millions of years in the future.

Yeah, sure, *that's* how paleontology works.  It's like vodoo and witch doctors.  Modern paleontology's actually more sophisticated than that.  We ask a question and then shake a magic eight ball to get the answer.  Smh.

You know, most people know the limits of their knowledge and have the good sense not to pretend otherwise and like they know something about a specialized field when they know nothing.

Millions and billions of years ago knowledge either in the past or future, yeah right.

Hold on, let me go consult my magic eight ball

Hey @Elorch and @Varelse1, get a load of this.  We've seen people say a lot of crazy things, but this takes the cake.  Maybe you've seen crazier but this is the top of my list now.  The claim (starting with post #27) is that with the exception of saying "this is a fossil," everything in paleontology is "pure conjecture" and (in post #41) "You may as well be a witch doctor throwing bones on an animal's skin and making predictions about what you see in the bones millions of years in the future."

It does make my job easier, though.  Next journal submission all I have to write is "it's a fossil, that's all I can say."

(Erroneous statements and mistakes in understanding I get, but for someone with no knowledge or experience in a specialized field to continue to insist that the field is not what an expert in the field says it is---yeah, I don't get that; that's just baffling). 

Btw, here's some recent photos of me doing field work

Excellent movie, but still millions or billions of years in either direction is out of the realm actually knowing the truth on any topic without a doubt. You may believe, but you cannot know!

Well you've really turned me around on this.  Your 0 years of expertise on the subject is so convincing.  Just as convincing as when you pretend to know biology.  The truly amazing thing in all this is the certainty with which you make these ignorant pronouncements on subjects you have no knowledge or understanding of.  I love how you move the goal posts too.  You've gone from it's all "pure conjecture" to "knowing the truth on any topic without a doubt."  Well if that's the standard, then we can't know anything at all, including your so-called arguments for design.  You can't demonstrate anything you say "without a doubt" so it's all bull.

(1) What do "ikr" and "smh" mean?

(2) TruthMuse, do you think we can learn anything about living animals' relationships from examining their skeletons--about how closely tigers are related to lions, for instance?

"I know right" and "shake my head"

I have to tell you, you never experienced a million or billion of years in time. None of us has, but your faith in that you claim to know is quite something.

I've stated that we can learn about them with what we see, but to project back millions or billions of years isn't exactly something you can do with the certainty that some claim to have. Do you believe we can know without a doubt what occurred billions of years ago, or millions of years ago, or is that a matter of faith? Faith and knowing are not the same thing.

We know beyond a reasonable doubt.  The weight of evidence is overwhelming, and you've given no reason to think otherwise.  I'm not sure what you think your repeated denials are accomplishing.  If you want to convince us that the scientific consensus is wrong, then you need to provide proof that the methods and reasoning are flawed.  You simply haven't done that.

Evolution deniers' guide to rocket science.

1. Don't believe any of those claims about physics and stuff
2. Some stuff burns. 
3. If you squirt burning stuff one way, you go the other way (this may be in doubt, as it looks suspiciously like some sciency stuff by Newton, who was an occultist).
4. Beyond that, it's a matter of trial and error.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-51602655

I'm telling you your methods cannot be falsified, and as such it isn't something I'd bet my soul on for the accuracy of the truth claims that come from it, since it cannot be proven wrong.

Do you know how the universe looked at its beginning? Do you know what caused the universe to become? Do you know what gravity is? Do you know what life is? What do you know beyond a reasonable doubt anything without understanding the origin of all things?

Wrong again.  Can be falsified, and you don't even know what the methods are nor have experience working with them.  You as an uninformed non-scientist are trying to tell me that what I say about my own field of expertise is wrong.  I'm sorry I just can't take you seriously.  You know nothing about my field or the research methods we employ.

I didn't experience World War II, either, but I'm pretty sure it happened, and I'm pretty sure there's a whole lot of good evidence for its having happened.

A person need not have watched the Super Bowl even once in his life to be able to get accurate information about all fifty-some Super Bowls.

(1) Not knowing without a doubt isn't at all the same as knowing to a reasonable degree of certainty, which in turn isn't at all the same as being able to reasonably assess events' probabilities as fairly high. 

(2) My understanding is that there are various kinds of evidence for evolution's having happened, whether you think fossils are reliable indicators or not, and that those various kinds of evidence converge on the conclusion that to a fair degree of probability, at least, and more likely to a reasonable degree of certainty, evolution happened--whether you think scientists' understanding of *how* it happened is correct or not. 

(3) My understanding--tbwp10 can tell us better--is that various kinds of evidence also converge on telling us that in its broad outlines, at least, and in some of its details, scientists have a fair idea of how it happened, too.

(4) I don't think you fully understand how much information can be gleaned from fossils, which, after all, might just look like some rocks to someone not conversant with the techniques of paleontology. Perhaps tbwp10 will give us a peek into some of the methods used by paleontologists to gain knowledge about the distant past from fossils--understanding, of course, that that's not our only source of information about the evolution of various organisms now alive or alive in the past. 

Okay so God did it, it happened. I'm sure that doesn't work for you, and you telling me you know what happened millions or billions of years ago doesn't work for me. You can believe whatever you trust is true, if you think your interpretation of the evidence shows you billions of years, then your faith is in your interpretation of the evidence as you see it. The thing is those that disagree with your assessment also share the same evidence there is but one reality we live in and we all have to deal with what is before us.