evolution vs. creationism: evolution wins

I didn't find any evidence. I relied on the many claims that there was abundant evidence existing. I had only skimmed the surface, without doing a thorough investigation of my own. I trusted that my instructors were qualified to teach the subject, after all that's their job. Of course the ultimate responsibility is mine, regardless of how many misleading papers are published, based on a few fragments of bones.

I'll say it again - you seem to want a specific, detailed example that "proves" evolution, and seem particularly obsessed with a sea-to-land transitional. Is that all it would take for you to believe evolution to be a valid theory?I don't believe you've responded to the agreement of the morphology- and DNA- based "Trees of Life". That is a heck of a lot more evidence than the presence or absence of a single transitional fossil...

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In conclusion, despite all National Geographic’s best efforts, the fact that there were no transitional forms between land and sea mammals and that they both emerged with their own particular features has not changed.

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These fossils shared characteristics with land mammals and sea mammals. That, by definition, makes them transitional.

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Robert Carroll accepts this, albeit unwillingly and in evolutionist language: It is not possible to identify a sequence of mesonychids leading directly to whales.[7]

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How does this quote from Carroll refute whale evolution?

The lobes give the fish a reptile like appearance and give the idea that the fish might actually be able to walk on its fins. These morphological features lead many scientists to believe the coelacanth lineage was the direct link to tetrapods, but recent molecular evidence suggests that lung fish might be more closely related to tetrapods.

I italicized a word or two for you there......The fact that your presuppositions blind you to the amazingly well-recorded progression of fossils from landlubber to swimmer that have come out of Pakistan in the last decade doesn't mean it blinds others. Twenty years ago, before Gingerich and Thewissen dug all these pretty transitionals, whale evolution really was pretty opaque. It's clearer now.

Why wouldn't an intelligent designer use the same building materials for similar organisms? It seems to me the complexity of DNA is a very good argument for ID.

Perhaps you don't understand what is meant by the DNA-based Tree of Life. It is not just that most life uses DNA as a template, or that DNA is "complex", it is that the comparison of sequences across species reiterates the relationship established by morphology. Why would an intelligent designer add the same miscellaneous mistakes/repeats/psuedogenes to similar organisms?I'll use the oft-cited example of the GLO gene, which is mutated and thus non-functional in humans, chimps, guinea pigs, and fruit bats. Perhaps you can explain to me why humans and chimps have an identical broken GLO gene, with a mutation different from that in either guinea pigs or fruit bats.In other words, why did the designer use the same broken building material for humans and chimps, but different broken building material for guinea pigs and fruit bats?More importantly, why is this "intelligent" designer using broken building materials to begin with?

Since the material you quoted was indeed evidence your claim that you did not found it is proven false by your own words. We know that you found some very significant evidence - and we know that you also say that you didn't find any. The question is why you would say something that is so obivously untrue.

I suppose I am blind to that if they really exist. What I saw on that site was a mammal that in no way could ever be construed as a whale, even though it was called a whale because of the shape of it's ear bone. If this ear design is best for underwater hearing, why on earth would a land mammal develop it long before it's "descendants" entered the water.
Other than that, I only saw some remains of extinct whales, that actually were whales, and the one other supposedly amphibious mammal, ambulocetus, which other scientists do not agree was amphibious, or an ancestor of the whale.

For broken materials they seem to work pretty well.

I don't really understand what you are referring to as most of the examples I have cited are what I consider inflated claims based on the desire to publish or get tenure rather than a scientific examination of the evidence.

Ah - you work in the academic sphere - what's your area?

To clarify, they do not work at all. Primates are some of the only animals unable to produce their own ascorbic acid. We have all the machinery but 1 cog is missing.

No, I am not in the academic sphere. I am just a layman with a thirst for knowledge. I have some friends in those circles, but not anyone well known.

Oh so it's mindreading then? or you are saying that your friends make things up to get published and then tell you?