You said: If I could see some record, that is to say human writing, that comunicated a point in time when we were confused as to whether a biological entity was ape or human, then I might be inclined to consider the claims of evolutionary theory more seriously. As it is, the claims always come from bones and fossils.
Written records from half a million years ago?! You know, as well as I do, that there are none from 10,000 years ago.
The fact remains, there are fossils which are hard to classify as human or non-human.
Surely, you've seen this?
BTW, why is the hypothetical designer restricted to designs that look as though evolution has occured? Such as the ERV pattern I referred to above? Or analogous patterns involving cows, whales and hippos.
Maybe it's possible to put together an ad-hoc case for there being identical details in the genomes of people and the other great apes. (I've seen the hypothetical designer compared to a programmer re-using code.)
But cows and hippos and whales?!
That is a philosophical question. My take on it is that the designer chose certain building blocks and laws with which to work. The result is a universe that could be interpreted as evolving over a long period of time (if one operates with a certain set of assumptions). That is to say it only gives the appearance of evolving. I tend to consider the written records and observations of man to be more reliable in explaining what the universe has contained throughout its history. There is simply no record denoting a gradual progression of life from amoeba to man. Not in any case over 10,000 years. If it's alright with you, I'd like to see creationism presented as a viable alternative to evolutionism.
Scientific empiricism should apply to the dynamic processes we have on hand. These amply demonstrate the potential for new species to come about. They also demonstrate limitations. If one wishes to extrapolate history from a static record, then, as the construct goes back in time, the evidence, interpretations, and explanation are on more shaky ground, especially if one is operating with an atheistic definition of science.
If they use the programming analogy, then they are still saying we are decended from apes, since the designer would then have created us as a subclass of type Ape. Class Human would extend Class Ape. If the designer is cutting and pasting code instead of employing object reusaility via inheritance (or composition, but then we would be a mix of "kinds", and I don't think the creationists would approve), then he's not a good programmer -- although probably a cut above the idiots my company has offshored some of its development projects to.