It is the essence of science to make the best it can of available evidence, and to improve it's explanations as new evidence arrives.
Nothing wrong with that, it's the way things should be.
Boogieman: "Only for the few examples where we have mostly intact specimens, which is not many."
"Not many"? Again, this listing includes dozens of different sites, some of which produced many ancient bones.
Naturally, scientists keep looking for more and better examples, but it seems to me that reasonable conclusions can be drawn from available evidence.
Boogieman: "Which proves nothing more than that scientists are able, much like kindergartners, to arrange various items according to some property, such as size or general similarity.
This might impress schoolchildren, but it is of no actual scientific value."
The skulls are arranged not according to just "some property", but by estimated age, oldest-to-youngest, beginning with the second skull, after the first modern chimpanzee.
Here is the source.
So, your "hand waving" argument here notwithstanding, the photo provides a reasonable answer for those who demand to see "intermediate forms".
Of course, no serious scientist needs to see such a display, and so in that sense, you are correct.
“Nothing wrong with that, it’s the way things should be.”
Nothing wrong with that unless you make unsubstantiated claims based on the flimsy evidence, and then portray to the public that those claims are scientific conclusions.
“”Not many”? Again, this listing includes dozens of different sites, some of which produced many ancient bones.”
For “not many” out of the various types of hominids do we actually have anything like a nearly complete skelton. I don’t care if you have 300 sets of neanderthal skeletons, that doesn’t help you reconstruct any other hominids.
From your own link:
“As there are thousands of fossils, mostly fragmentary, often consisting of single bones or isolated teeth with complete skulls and skeletons rare”
“The skulls are arranged not according to just “some property”, but by estimated age, oldest-to-youngest, beginning with the second skull, after the first modern chimpanzee.”
Yes, but as the estimated ages are derived from a somewhat subjective standard, it makes it just another arbitrary property upon which to arrange your meaningless visual display.
I could take a bunch of skulls of creatures that evolutionists don’t speculate have common descent, arrange them in the same way, and make it look like there is a progression, but that would not demonstrate any actual progression ever happened.
“So, your “hand waving” argument here notwithstanding, the photo provides a reasonable answer for those who demand to see “intermediate forms”.”
No “hand waving”, just common sense. By evolutionist’s own standards, we know that morphological similarity is not necessarily an indicator of common descent. So, arranging a bunch of skulls that have perceived morphological similarity demonstrates nothing, other than that you can arrange some skulls nicely.