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Okay, you identified a mammal that lived a long time ago. That does not demonstrate, provide evidence of, or prove it is the first mammal, the parent of all mammals as you stated. I will give you that it is consistent with the theory. In fact, it is required by that theory. But it does not demonstrate that it was the first mammal, or indicate how that "firstness" was determined. Therefore it is not proof and does not validate your original theory. It is not proof. It is at best a corollary. That is my issue.

If you didn't mean your "of course you're not" comment in a condescending fashion, I apologize for my reaction. But since you said that "one of us is exhibiting arrested development here," I assume you mean me, and I assume you intended your comments to be as I had first assumed. I don't deserve that for simply asking a question of the data and its interpretation. Yet that seems to be the general tone of these threads. I don't understand why that is necessary.

All I am asking is to meet the standard of proof that you require of others. I'm not saying you are wrong. I am saying that if you are going to require proof from others, you need to require proof of your own point of view on this item, and you haven't.

If you didn't mean your "of course you're not" comment in a condescending fashion, I apologize for my reaction.

No insult was intended; but my tone was not gracious--as the tone of your first post (#48 "if you want to play scientist, play right") was also just a tad aggressive. But I sincerely apologise to you for any offence unwittingly rendered.

Is it worth amicably rolling back the point here? My original post (#16) was a response to buffyt's post #6, wherein she asked "If there were any such thing as evolution why wouldn't monkeys have evolved, too." This, of course, is a very old chestnut on these threads; it arises from a misunderstanding (such as perpetrated by articles such as the head of this current thread) of what the theory of evolution actually states. ToE does not state "man descended from monkeys," no scientist so claims. But one of the claims, from abundant evidence, is that all organisms living today are descended from earlier forms, and as one traces back each modern species' lineages they converge--there are common ancestors. Moreover, ToE predicts that fossils of a given age, 'X', cannot exceed a certain complexity, 'Y'; the usual example of this is, one cannot find a rabbit in pre-Cambrian sediments. To date, no fossil has been found which contradicts this theory; this is simply confirmation of geology's Law of Faunal Succession.

So, I was doing nothing more in my post #16 than correcting a misrepresentation of the ToE (the "why didn't monkeys evolve" stuff). ToE has an abundance of evidence to this effect. Your challenge (post #48) was if I regarded this as a "a statement of fact or theory?" The short answer is, evidence (the data) are facts, the theory the interpretion of those facts. To date, only the theory of evolution intelligibly interprets those facts; most of what is offered up as challenges to ToE are quibbles/denials of the published data.