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OK, an experiment. Sit down and write down in a list EVERYTHING you did in the past 24 hours. Everything.

Of course you won't remember everything and there will be gaps - ie. "missing links" between some of your activities.

Does this mean that you really didn't do ANY of those activities yesterday? I think you would say "no - of course I did them - I just can't remember what I did in between"

And this is with things you did in the past 24 hours!!!

Does this make all of the things you DID remember and put on the list "wrong"?? Did yesterday not exist for you because of "gaps in the record"??

Now, try the same activity for a week ago - a year ago.

Massive amounts of gaps, -eh?? But, the things you DO remember actually did happen.

Now, imagine applying the same logic to bones that only RARELY fossilize and are even more rarely found.

Of COURSE there are going to be gaps. And, little by little, finds are made that start to creat a better picture. Like your memory of one year ago, some gaps will never be filled - others will be filled in great detail showing minute chanages over time..

"Gaps" don't invalidate what happened in the past.

"OK, an experiment. Sit down and write down in a list EVERYTHING you did in the past 24 hours. Everything."

Your analogy falls apart from the very beginning because of one huge error.

You have, in essence, a "chain of custody" for everything that you did in the last 24 hours because all of those events belong to your memory. There is no question of whether or not you actually did some of those things you can remember or whether someone else actually did them.

There is no similar chain of custody for the bones in the fossil record. Sure, we have have bones here and bones there, some have strongly similar characteristics along with non-similar characteristics, but this means nothing outside of knowing exactly who the bones belonged to and how they came to be where they are today.

The forensic evidence is interesting, and at times compelling, but science and forensics are two different fields. Science is based on repeatable, duplicatable, verifiable experimentation, not a strong inference based on certain assumptions and a preponderance of evidence beyond a reasonable doubt. Science is not equal to the sum of scientific consensus.

With the popular assumptions of potential inherited characteristics the whole question of origins moves from the realm of science to the realm of forensics. No one actually knows what a transitional form would look like because no one has actually produced a control for a transitional form in a lab. That leaves it all open to speculation at that point, and is why the "missing link" keeps changing. If it was really the missing link then it wouldn't get updated periodically.

"Gaps" don't invalidate what happened in the past.

You mean in the realm of science. Gaps are necessary in science in order to fit additional puzzle pieces into. You would think that science has explained everything so well in regards to eveolution. All one need do is go to a museum and see how man has progressed thru the lie of evolution. So why the need for "gaps"? It is because evolution doesn't have all the answers and it never will because a lie cannot be proven true.