No transitional fossils, you say??

@MindWalk  TruthMuse won't even acknowledge that bacterial DNA in plant cells comes from bacteria.  Nor does TM even accept the most basic, indisputable observational fact of the fossil record that regardless of whether the earth is billions or thousands of years old and even if evolution is wrong and never happened, the fossil record still shows that all the different types of life on earth have not existed at the same time, but at different times.  The dinosaurs, for example.  TM's belief that all life existed at the same time is not a different "interpretation" or "assessment" of the "same evidence," but a rejection of the prima facie evidence entirely that we see before our eyes every time we hike up the Grand Canyon.  I am more than willing to share details about research methods in paleontology, but there's no point if we can't even get past basic facts like these.  When someone is so willful in their refusal to acknowledge prima facie evidence and basic observational facts like bacterial DNA in plant cells, and the fact that we encounter different types of life as we physically go up through the layers of the fossil record, then I don't see how a productive conversation can be had.  Perhaps you will have more luck.  If so, then I'd be more than happy to delve into details.

I thought maybe something about microscopic examination, for instance, might help make paleontologists' work seem a little less like just looking at old rocks. For instance, I know that modern birds have hollow bones (or, at least, lots of hollow bones). Is it possible to distinguish between hollow-bone-fossils and non-hollow-bone-fossils in the fossil record?

Many of our recent past events have documentation and witnesses.

https://youtu.be/1RPoymt3Jx4

And yet you still refuse to acknowledge observations in the here-and-now such as the fact that we encounter different types of life as we physically go up through the layers of the fossil record

And, that tells me we have different types of life in the ground that turned to rock. That much I know and acknowledge! Now were they ancestors to some modern life through evolution, you can say so, but anything more than there are different creatures in the ground turned to rock is adding to the data. We add to the data each time we assign an age, classifying this creature as an ancestor to that one; this is what this creature ate and looked like. Those types of hypotheses are quite different than measuring a voltage across a circuit.

Well not really because paleontology is more sophisticated than that.  But laying that aside, if for sake of argument you're right, then we're back to a series of separate creation-extinction events by an intelligent designer.

No. I don't believe there were separate creation events, one of the very things I base creation on says that God rested after the six-day of creation. There wasn't any suggestion He picked up again after the seventh day was over.

From Genesis 2

Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation.

Hence the problem and disparity when it comes to the fossil record.

Breaking news:

Primates Appeared Almost Immediately After Dinosaurs Went Extinct, New Research Suggests (gizmodo.com)

A formation famous for producing T. rex fossils has now yielded the oldest evidence of primates in the fossil record, in what is being hailed a significant discovery.

Jawbones and an assortment of teeth found in the Hell’s Creek formation of northeastern Montana are the oldest primate fossils ever discovered, according to new research published in Royal Society Open Science.

Dating back to around 65.9 million years ago, these animals lived a mere 105,000 to 139,000 years after the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event, in which an asteroid wiped out most plant and animal species on Earth. The new paper was co-led by Gregory Wilson Mantilla from the University of Washington and Stephen Chester of Brooklyn College and the City University of New York.

“This is an important study because it documents the earliest primates ever discovered, pushing back the date of the oldest primates to the earliest Paleocene, in addition to establishing greater diversity as well,” Eric Sargis, a professor of anthropology at Yale University who’s not affiliated with the new study, said in an email.

Personally, I think all truths are like that, it's either right or not. If scripture spells it out as it occurred, then all of our thoughts about dating will be shown wrong and with it the conclusions drawn with fossils. It pretty much holds true with Theism and Atheism as well, if there is no God then all Theists will have as our foundation something untrue, it is a delusion that we base our worldviews upon. The same is equally true with Atheism, if God is true, then their foundational truths on which they base their worldviews are untrue and how they define the universe and everything in it is delusional.

There's only a conflict if Genesis 1 was meant to be a modern day scientific account

I'd say it was meant to be an account, beyond that...

Do you think Genesis should be interpreted plainly (or literally, but that pertains more to literary context), or some other way?

I think we should always interpret in the way it was meant to be understood.  This is why it's so important to understand the social-historical context of the time and the intended meaning to the original audience.  Too often the 'plain meaning' of Scripture to modern readers is the entirely wrong meaning, because we bring our own cultural baggage to the table and erroneously read our own modern understanding back into the text where it doesn't belong (the error of *anachronism*).  Take for example regi-mental's 'illegitimate' 'bastard' child reading of Duet. 23.2 which in addition to his erroneous equation of 'assembly of Yahweh' with 'Kingdom of God', he also assumes a modern understanding of 'illegitimate/misbegotten' as born out of wedlock when the context is children dedicated to false gods by their conception in Ancient Near East fertility prostitute cults:

https://www.chess.com/clubs/forum/view/evil-pain-suffering?page=7#comment-59974060

Or take some people's emphatic belief in the 'clear teaching' of Scripture that 'clearly' forbids Christmas trees in Jeremiah 10:1-5:

"Thus says the LORD: Do not learn the way of the Gentiles; do not be dismayed at the signs of heaven, for the Gentiles are dismayed at them. For the customs of the peoples are futile; for one cuts a tree from the forest, the work of the hands of the workman, with the ax. They decorate it with silver and gold; they fasten it with nails and hammers so that it will not topple."

And on the surface it *does* seem like Scripture forbids Christmas trees.  Yet all we need do is employ a simple test by asking the following question: Would people in Bible times living in Jeremiah's day have understood the 'clear teaching' of this scripture to be a prohibition of Christmas trees?  Absolutely not.  How could they?  Christmas trees hadn't been invented yet, nor had Christ even been born.  They wouldn't even know what Christmas was.  

The error of anachronism--of erroneously reading back into the text ideas from a different time period that are foreign to it--is probably the biggest, most common error people make when reading the Bible.

***As the famous saying goes, we must always remember 'the Bible was written for us, but not to us', so in order to understand how it applies to us today we must first understand the intended meaning to the original audience.  This is one of the most basic (and important) principles of hermeneutics when it comes to sound biblical interpretation.  

I think it is clearly written to convey what was done, and how! What would be the point of some literary context to an ancient people who were experiencing God act in huge ways as He did when He told them they were going to be in Egypt for a few hundred years then brought out?

With respect, modern man is the one altering context's meaning by suggesting it is not portraying what happened the way it was written. The people who were reading this when it was written seen the plagues destroy Eygpt, they saw the red sea parted, what use would a story without actual meaning and context be to those guys? Either God created the heavens and the earth and all that is in them, or He didn't.

Any reading that would be meaningless to the original audience is erroneous.  That is one of the first things pastors learn in biblical hermeneutics.  'Water vapor canopy' theories when the waters are separated on Day 2?  Plate tectonics being described on Day 3?  Such outlandish YEC ideas are wrong, plain and simple.  That is not what anyone in Bible times would have come away with after reading Genesis.

There are things I have read in the Bible I didn't understand until years later, why would anyone at all think they had to grasp all meaning at the time of the reading? I think you are pushing something here to dismiss plain text that only modern man would attempt to do not the readers of the text the year it was written.

Non-literal approaches to Genesis have been around for a long, long time. In the 3rd Century A.D., a Christian scholar, Origen, argued against a literal-historical approach to Genesis. It’s not a modern concept by any means.