You’re ignoring mine for starters. In fact, you explicitly said as much.
Of course, if you want to ignore me then that’s your prerogative, but do bear in mind that I’m not just talking to you; I’m talking to everyone else following this thread as well. It’s entirely up to them to assess what to make of both my responses and yours. But I don’t think that claiming that you’re not ignoring anyone after having explicitly said that you’re ignoring someone is going to go down well.
I think you need to make sure that you understand what the expression “hand waving” actually means before you start throwing it around in response to anything and everything that you don’t like, Jon.
Hand waving does not mean weak, nonexistent, subjective or ambiguous evidence. Hand waving most certainly does not mean evidence that you want to think of as weak, nonexistent, subjective or ambiguous when it can be shown quantitatively and empirically that it isn’t weak, nonexistent, subjective or ambiguous. No, hand waving means something very specific: not doing your homework properly.
It means such things as:
- Claiming to have evidence but not actually providing it.
- Not citing your sources.
- Not making sure that the sources you cite actually say what you claim that they say.
- Claiming that something makes assumptions without saying what those assumptions are.
- Not making sure that it really does make the assumptions that you are claiming that it makes.
- Not doing the maths when addressing quantitative subjects.
- Not taking any measurements when addressing quantitative subjects.
- Using poorly defined, ambiguous, or incorrect terminology.
- Tu quoque arguments (“both sides have the same problem”).
- Only providing a high-level overview without addressing the specifics and details.
- Saying that you “refute” someone’s response to you without providing any evidence to contradict them.
- Claiming that something is untestable after having had it explained to you exactly how it can be tested.
It’s as simple as this, Jon. If you’re going to challenge a scientific theory, you need to say something of substance, provide evidence to back up your assertions, and expect your claims and evidence to be evaluated according to the rules and principles that govern how science is done. Because if you’re just flipping off critique that you don’t like as “hand-waving” and “just so stories” without substantiating your objections, that in itself is hand-waving.
In fact, you need to make sure that you understand what it takes to challenge a scientific theory such as evolution. If you want to provide evidence against the theory, you must make sure that the evidence contradicts the core fundamentals of the theory, and not just one or two side details. You don’t demolish a house altogether by rearranging the furniture or even by replacing the windows. You also need to make sure that it contradicts the core fundamentals of what the theory actually says in reality, and not just what you would like to think that it says. You don’t demolish a house altogether by rearranging the furniture in a holodeck simulation on board the Starship Enterprise.
This is why your appeal to the supposed lack of transitional fossils falls short. The number of different species known from the fossil record is less than 5% of the total number of species known to be alive today. This being the case, it is simply not realistic to expect to see every transitional form in the fossil record, and the fact that we do not presents no threat to the theory of evolution whatsoever. The important thing to note is that the transitional fossils that we do discover turn up exactly where the theory of evolution predicts that we should find them. Tiktaalik roseae is the most famous example.
It is also why your appeal to the fact that some species do not appear to have evolved over long periods of time falls short. The theory of evolution tells us that species only change in response to selection pressure, and if a species is ideally suited to its environment and selection pressures are at a minimum then the fact that it only changes slowly if at all over time doesn’t tell us anything at all.