If I have ever been "extraordinarily caustic" with anyone who wasn't themselves already being either obnoxious or spreading major falsehoods, point it out and I'll be glad to apologize.
Don't you think so many links dumped on someone will be widely viewed as a diversionary tactic
No, I think it will help people realize which side of this debate actually has the facts on its side, and a hell of a lot of them. The anti-evolutionists are fond of dishonestly trying to paint a picture of evolutionary biology being nothing but an empty shell, just a desired belief wrapped in suppositions. They frequently make baldfaced lies about how there are "no" transitional fossils, "no evidence" for evolution, blah blah blah. In response to that, it's entirely appropriate to give a small taste of the utterly vast amount of evidence and research that actually underlies evolutionary biology, in order to demonstrate just how enormous of a "Big Lie" the anti-evolution propaganda actually is.
(i.e. do you think anyone actually reads so many links?)
Yes, many people do -- the people who actually want to learn. Unfortunately, this almost never includes the anti-evolutionists, who not only have failed to bother to learn the first thing about this topic before they spout off endlessly about it, but who also actively *avoid* learning anything that might challenge their comfortable fictions and bring them to rethink anything.
I'll tell you what, I will look over these transitional fossil links of yours,
I'm very happy to hear that. I don't post them just to exercise my fingers, I *do* provide them in order to provide enlightenment for anyone who cares to look further into this issue.
but you must know it will take me some time,
Of course.
and if I find them fraudulent, will you be anywhere around for me to talk with, or will you just dump even longer lists of links on me once I'm done with this task?
I'll be around.
Finally, I will say that if you really want to win this debate, you should be able to concisely list your points.
I wish that were the case, but anything short enough to earn the label "concise" begins to approach just declaring that something is so. There are more than enough "is so, is not" discussions on this forum. Sooner or later someone has to actually make a case and show support for their position, and that simply can't be done in a few short sentences. Furthermore, science usually deals with somewhat complex topics, and can't be adequately covered in half a paragraph, and ultimately science comes down to not proclamations or declarations, but about the *evidence*, and for any well-established field of science there is a *very* large amount of that.
Now as I promised, I will go and start hunting down all these links of yours, but heavens knows this will take me all day.
I understand.
I hope that wasn't your plan all along, or I will feel as if I'd been had by your "invitation"!!
No, it wasn't. My "plan" was to demonstrate that the frequent claims (by anti-evolutionists) of evolutionary biology having "no evidence" or "lacking support", etc. are a "Big Lie" of enormous proportions, and to show that on the contrary, there really are mind-boggling vast volumes of support for evolutionary biology. I've been studying this field for over three decades, and still I've only scratched the surface of the depth of the evidence. Any time I get curious about a particular corner of the field (the other day, the topic of mosquito evolution came up, for example), I can spend days digging deep on that one narrow focus, and still never come close to hitting bottom. It's like exploring a library the size of Nebraska.
This is part of the reason I have little patience for the folks (and there seem to be endless waves of them) who cavalierly blow off the entire field as "nonsense" while declaring that it's just an empty shell with no support whatsoever, or who think that despite having no real knowledge of the field they can demolish all of a century of research in evolutionary biology with some "refutation" they thought up on their lunch break.