.....But only if you're HONEST. A lot of people I encounter are not intellectually honest because they don't really believe in evolution for scientific reasons.
If you agree with each step you can't avoid ditching evolution theory. Which technically doesn't make you creationist of course but let's forget that for now.
STEP 1. (let's see if you agree)
Sometimes if not most of the time the only way to show something doesn't exist is to show it's absence where it is not expected to be absent.
Let's say I claim I have six fingers. If we look in the place where you can't avoid the sixth finger showing itself, then if it is in none of those places there is no avoiding that it does not exist.
So if we search my hands for a six fingered hand but don't find one then it doesn't exist. So like I said, if it's absent then that is the proof it was never there as long as it must be there if it exists.
Imagine in a cluster of trees someone said they saw a ten foot tall yeti five minutes ago. Imagine the ground is wet. We go to investigate. We see our own footprints very clearly yet we weight much less than the yeti. If we find no prints yet we ourselves all create prints and the mud was just as wet when they said they saw the yeti then that absence means there was no real yeti.
Agree with the first step highlighted in blue, yet?
No quite yet?
Someone gives you a paper bag and says they have just poohed in it. You look inside and nothing is there and is smells nice, like donuts.
Are we in agreement yet?
(step 1 shouldn't be conflated with an argument-from-ignorance where the evidence isn't necessarily expected. We're talking about sure fire stuff.)
STEP 2. If evolution never existed then the only way we can show that is by finding it's absence like with step 1 by looking at an area where it unavoidably must show itself.
(If you don't agree, then you're saying that the logic you agreed to in step one is wrong in which case you have to provide an example where there was a thing that was claimed to exist that could still exist even if you found a place it had to be but it was not there. The chances are if you have thought of something like that then you are thinking of an argument from ignorance, which is not an example of step 1).
Let me make it really easy, if evolution happened, then if we find proof it didn't happen, how could it still have happened? That would be like saying that even though you find the absence of the sixth finger, that the sixth finger still exists. (a contradiction).
So you are now thinking, "how can you provide an example where evolution had to be there but isn't?"
I will now explain how.
An Icthyosaur was a sea-dwelling reptile. Would you agree that it can't have evolved BEFORE reptiles had evolved from amphibians? Would you agree it can't have evolved during or after the time we find fossils of Icthyosaurs? If so then you agree with me that there has to be a WINDOW OF TIME where it MUST have evolved. That is to say, it is the only possible window of time where it could have evolved if it did. Agree? (see how much you agree with a creationist when you are forced to take each step of reason with him?)
So we have established it MUST have evolved in a certain window of time. There can be no escape from this because evolutionists cannot say that this would be wrong. So we know WHEN it had to evolve.
If we now look at that window of time (as I have already done). Like with the sixth finger, I couldn't find any evolution of an Icthyosaur. But here is the compounding factor; I did find many fossils of animals, but just not the evolution of that particular organism. So it's not as though you can object by saying, "it just wasn't fossilised" because many were. But if your objection did have some validity and so I was to say back to you, "well, fair enough, perhaps that one time the evolution just didn't show for whatever reason.......BUT, if we find the same results in other windows for the evolution of other forms, will that excuse still hold?" The only reasonable answer is that the excuse would not hold, because then you would be arguing that evolution was a sort of magic act like with the yeti and the poop in the bag.
So let's look for the WINDOW of time for when pinnipeds had to have evolved. (seals, walruses, dugongs, manatees, etc).
When I looked at this window of time in the fossil record, I found many animals fossilised but I found no evolution of pinnipeds. Indeed, the first sign of them is the already, "fully evolved" stage, like with the Icthyosaurs.
Let's look at more windows;
Between the Permian and Triassic we should see the transitionals for lizards?. We don't, BUT, we do see other fossils preserved in rocks of that age. Pre-bat transitionals had to have evolved after mammals had evolved from reptiles, so between the Triassic and the Tertiary we expect to see how bats became bats, through transitionals leading to bats, we don't BUT we do see many fossils preserved in the Triassic and Tertiary including bats, full designed for flight.
Now here is the thing, there are many windows that overlap, so it makes the fossil problem even worse in terms of arguing a double standard because look how silly the reasoning looks if you carry on believing evolution; "We believe even though X evolved in this period between the triassic and tertiary, and P also evolved at that same time as well as T and Y, that even though we find no evolution for these things but we do find many animal fossils we will continue to argue they still somehow evolved."
Why?
The only answer you can answer with is this; go and look in a mirror and say; "because I am a liar and DESIRE evolution to be true."
Think about what this represents as logic. Imagine I said that in one room superman was there for real, as well as the real spiderman as well as the real Hulk, all in the same room because it was a room made for superheroes. It's bad enough to not find any of them, it's worse if you only find normal human beings without super powers and the room was clearly not made for superheroes but just normal people.
It's the same with the fossils, how can there be many fossils preserved in one window of time and they all are missing their evolution? There can only be one reasonable deduction; that like with the sixth finger, the yeti and the poop, evolution was never there because it doesn't exist.
