The same arguments based on homology - the transitional fossils are still missing as even Gould would admit. Here's a quick refutation: Transitional Vertebrate Fossils
The same arguments based on homology
They're based on a lot more than that, as you well know. Or at least you would if you bothered to learn the most basic facts about the field before you attempted to wave your hands and deny it exists.
Hint: If you get all your "information" from creationist sites, your education on these topics is not only woefully inadequate, it's severely distorted. Case in point is revealed by your very next statement:
- the transitional fossils are still missing as even Gould would admit.
Ah, yes, the old creationist "quote Gould grossly out of context" misrepresentation. Let's hear what Gould himself had to say about that, shall we?
Kirtley Mather, who died last year at age ninety, was a pillar of both science and Christian religion in America and one of my dearest friends. The difference of a half-century in our ages evaporated before our common interests. The most curious thing we shared was a battle we each fought at the same age. For Kirtley had gone to Tennessee with Clarence Darrow to testify for evolution at the Scopes trial of 1925. When I think that we are enmeshed again in the same struggle for one of the best documented, most compelling and exciting concepts in all of science, I don't know whether to laugh or cry.Note that this was written in 1981. Since then, countless more transitional fossils, both between species and between larger groups, have been found.[...]
Scientists regard debates on fundamental issues of theory as a sign of intellectual health and a source of excitement. Science isand how else can I say it?most fun when it plays with interesting ideas, examines their implications, and recognizes that old information might be explained in surprisingly new ways. Evolutionary theory is now enjoying this uncommon vigor. Yet amidst all this turmoil no biologist has been lead to doubt the fact that evolution occurred; we are debating how it happened. We are all trying to explain the same thing: the tree of evolutionary descent linking all organisms by ties of genealogy. Creationists pervert and caricature this debate by conveniently neglecting the common conviction that underlies it, and by falsely suggesting that evolutionists now doubt the very phenomenon we are struggling to understand.
[...]
The third argument is more direct: transitions are often found in the fossil record. [...] For that matter, what better transitional form could we expect to find than the oldest human, Australopithecus afarensis, with its apelike palate, its human upright stance, and a cranial capacity larger than any apes of the same body size but a full 1,000 cubic centimeters below ours? If God made each of the half-dozen human species discovered in ancient rocks, why did he create in an unbroken temporal sequence of progressively more modern featuresincreasing cranial capacity, reduced face and teeth, larder body size? Did he create to mimic evolution and test our faith thereby?
Faced with these facts of evolution and the philosophical bankruptcy of their own position, creationists rely upon distortion and innuendo to buttress their rhetorical claim. If I sound sharp or bitter, indeed I amfor I have become a major target of these practices.
[...]
A trend, we argued, is more like climbing a flight of stairs (punctuated and stasis) than rolling up an inclined plane. Since we proposed punctuated equilibria to explain trends, it is infuriating to be quoted again and again by creationistswhether through design or stupidity, I do not knowas admitting that the fossil record includes no transitional forms. Transitional forms are generally lacking at the species level, but they are abundant between larger groups. Yet a pamphlet entitled "Harvard Scientists Agree Evolution Is a Hoax" states: "The facts of punctuated equilibrium which Gould and Eldredge are forcing Darwinists to swallow fit the picture that Bryan insisted on, and which God has revealed to us in the Bible."
-- Stephen Jay Gould, "Evolution as Fact and Theory," May 1981
Here's a quick refutation: Transitional Vertebrate Fossils
"Refutation"? I don't think you know what the word means. That's a rationalization at best.
It dishonestly picks one of the oldest transitions, which will necessarily be more spotty than more recent lineages, and whines about it being spotty, while failing to address the many more complete examples in the transitional fossils FAQ. It also dishonestly (or ignorantly) gripes about the looseness of such terms as "sharklike" and pretends that this reflects only a vague similarity in the actual fossils themselves, which it most certainly does not. The FAQ was written for a general audience, and wasn't intended to get bogged down with the minutae of how exactly each structure is unmistakably linked homologically to their predecessors and successors.
That "refutation" is mere handwaving and whistling past the graveyard.
Creationists need to stop lying about the fossil record, it only makes them look foolish and dishonest.