Power question 3: the fossil record

I have come to Mark Riddle's third "power question" for evolutionists (for the first two see here and here). The third question is the fossil record. Unfortunately, this one is not stated as an actual direct question, other than something like "Where is the fossil evidence?". Answering that question isn't a problem at all, of course, but the question is so vague and the whole presentation so lacking in content that it is not at all clear what evidence is sought.

Riddle's approach here is the standard creationists arguments and uncreative. Mostly he says we should find millions of transitional fossils but we find none. To do this he has to first misrepresent what we should see, and then misrepresent what we do see.

He uses the standard argument that we should see every single transition, completely ignoring all studies on the completeness of the fossil record (the incompleteleness is not an assumption, by the way, but a conclusion from observation). No place is this better seen than when he says that we should see everything from a 1 celled creature to two celled to three celled and 10 cell and a hundred cell, etc. Anyone with basic knowledge of fossilization knows that individual cells rarely fossilize. Furthermore, there is no reason to think that multicellular life arose by adding one cell at a time. Single celled creatures have evolved into clumps of a dozen or so cells by simply growing them in culture for a few months. Why do we even need fossils when we can show it can happen in real time?

Riddle claims that the fossil record does not show a pattern of increased complexity, by showing that the Cambrian has a high level of complexity. He completely ignores the pattern of increasing complexity shown in precambrian times, from prokaryotes through simple algae through the Ediacara fauna , the small shelly fauna, trace fossils of increasingly complex burrows, and only then the blossoming of life in the mid Cambrian.

Riddle repeatedly declares there are no transitions but doesn't address a single claimed transition. The one and only time he deals with specifics is the following: "What about a whale with hind legs? These are four inch growths on a 70 foot whale. That's not a leg, that's a pimple." He believes that is an argument. No Mark, it is a leg, with a femur and radius and ulna. And there are transitions with longer legs that have the ankle characteristic of ungulates, and with intermediate blowholes and almost every stage. There are dozens of transitions just in the whale lineage alone.

Basically Riddle claims there should be millions of transitions by expecting a perfect fossil record. In fact, we have tens of thousands at least. He simply ignores them. There is absolutely no content to his presentation, no attempt to explain the transitions we have. He doesn't even do the usual creationist misrepresentation of what a transition should look like. He just says there are none. This is one of those common creationists refrains that is simply repeated over and over, hoping that repition will make it true. Donald Prothero's new book, Evolution, what the fossils say and why it matters, is a beautiful refutation of this claim.

Eventually he says that evolutionists claim maybe a half a dozen transitions (even these he doesn't explain). He says not to let them go off on Archeopterix, but stick to the foundation. The foundation apparently is the lack of transitions. So what he is saying is don't let them distract you with discussions of specific transitional fossils, ask where are the transitional fossils.

Needless to say, Riddle offers no positive explanation for the fossil record and patterns within it at all.

This section is by far the worst in the video so far. The other two questions at least identified topics of relative scientific ignorance. This question is amazingly lacking in content. It is argument by bald assertion. If a creationists were to approach an evolutionist with this question, he or she would be buried if the evolutionist has even a basic knowledge of the fossil record.