"If I descended from an ape, how come apes are still here?"

My answer is "if I'm descended from my grandfather, how can I have cousins?"

The point of the answer is partly to indicate how silly the question is and partly to draw the questioner out. You can't answer the misconceptions underlying the question until you know what they are. And then you can explain that the evolutionary tree is very like a patrilineal (or matrilineal) family tree, with branches constantly splitting off.

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That's the first sign you think it's a good argument.

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So a good argument is one that the ignorant keep using, despite the fact that it is easily seen to be nonsense.A pretty clear admission that you don't care about the truth.

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That's the second sign you still think it's a good argument.

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Because it is repeated by a lot of ignorant people who can't see how stupid it is... That's not what I would call a good argument (it's what I would call a very bad one, but then I'm an honest person interested in the truth - not someone who wants to fool the ignorant).

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That's you saying the evolutionists explanations are mind games they play with us.

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No, it's him saying that he wants to lead the reader through an imaginative exercise. As anybody who reads the quote in context can easily see.Well thanks for admitting that creationism is all about deceiving the ignorant. I think that you're the first creationist here to admit that.

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I don't think it's a good argument. Are you reading comprehension illiterate?

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True, but you argued that Tangle thought that it was a good argument.I think that it is safe to infer that that assessment is based on your idea of what constitutes a good argument.

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Im saying I believe HE secretly believes it's a good argument and won't admit he's a creationst. Why is this so hard?

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So you say that he believes that it is a good argument because it fools the ignorant. That's not hard at all.

No need to be so rude, just because you don't get my point.Tangle said that the argument was easily seen through by the informed, but was still popular.You claimed that this was a sign that he thought that it was a good argument.I simply took your statement at face value.

If you want a complete record, I don't think that fossils are the way to go, for two reasons.Firstly, we don't have any thing like a complete record of every species that ever lived. A large majority have left no fossils. Hard-shelled marine species are best, but I somehow don't see that as being very useful in convincing a creationist.Secondly, species transitions often take place in small isolated populations over a geologically short period (likely around 1,000 years). And that is unlikely to show up in the fossil record at all.So I think that you are better off showing that the argument is fundamentally mistaken.

There will always be more ignorant people. No answer will stop that.And you need TWO branches, at least for your story to work. I think that that;s going to be tough, specially when you're dealing with people primed to reject the existence of transitional fossils, who will be looking hard for gaps.

Even if we find twice as many species as we currently know, we'll still be missing a good many. Don't forget that not only is fossilisation rare (very rare indeed in some environments, which is why we probably won't ever find much of chimpanzee ancestry), erosion may well have already destroyed the only remains of some species, especially the more ancient ones.

I presume that these are intended as examples of stupid things a creationist might say ?

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If we descended from a common ancestor...how come we don't know who they were?

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Obviously the fact that none of us can trace their ancestry that far back is the reason.

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While your all trying to answer that...i'll give a little history lesson to the lurkers everyone is always talking about.

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Once upon a time there was no common ancestor. We evolved from apes. Then, a big bright light went off in one or more, scientists head..."wait a second, this isn't going to work!"

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Sooooooo, the common ancestor was born...

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Pure fiction of course, and you'd have to be hopelesssly ignorant to believe it.

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Are you saying that within the TOE common ancestory has always been taught?

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Common descent is a major part of the theory of evolution, and has been ever since Darwin. (Although the idea that humans ARE apes goes back at least as far as Linnaeus)

The "they're very old people" is an old (and rather silly) creationist "explanation" for Neanderthals. Who are rather closer to modern humans (probably a subspecies) than most of those listed...(How they dealt with Neanderthal children I don't know, Were we supposed to think that they were hundreds of years old ?)

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Your suggestion that YECs are presuppositionalists interests me however. I suspect they are. And that they are not alone. Are you saying that scientists in the disciplines of physics, chemistry, geology and cosmology have found some epistemic foundation which involves no presuppositions?

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The term "Presuppositionalist" does not refer to someone who merely has presuppositions, instead as suggested in the post that you reply to it refers to a distinct position on apologetics. The core of that position is that the existence of God cannot be adequately supported with evidence, but must be presupposed (by everyone - they have a horrendous mess of argument - and I do mean a mess).While Presuppositionalists are very likely to cling to YEC belief, there is also a strong pseudoscientific strain within creationism that must be considered a branch if evidential apologetics, which Presuppositionalists reject.