This is just...wow

I was perusing Yahoo Answers which, as you can see, has become almost a new hobby when I came across this question, which I'll just post a link to, since the question is a long one:

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=Am2o3cl0GYvZ84__Wj.fSxbd7BR.;_ylv=3?qid=20081114204541AAwAKlx

While I was reading the answers I came across this gem:

By harry killwater:

"Here is what's up...

The Atheist has to hold onto the theory of evolution because if it is ever disproven then they have to acknowledge that there is a creator. Unfortunately the theory will never be disproven nor will the theory ever be proven. We are stuck with the "theory". It will always remain with us as a "possibility" and therefore will remain a convenient hiding place for the Atheist to roost.

Having once stood on the cliff as an Agnostic considering the precipice of Atheism, I have to confess that jumping in had a very seductive draw at that time in my life. Jumping off the cliff would guarantee me a lifetime position of intellectual superiority and the comfort of being right without having to prove anything. It would also have set me free from the burden of hard thinking and the weakness associated with not "understanding".

It would have been so easy to put my brain on a shelf and ignore the questions that plagued me. I could easily have spent the rest of my life using my intelligence to develop arguments to make fools out of the spiritulaists of all flavors. I would be very successful and would be greatly admired on this path.

But instead of jumping into the abyss, I chose to not ignore the obvious. The bumblebee and the tulip and the ameoba and the hummingbird and the giraffe and the turtle and the shark and the ant and the jellyfish and me and you could not have a common ancestor. This is irrational. There is not a thimblefull of evidence to support anything this ridiculous. When evolution is taken to it's logical conclusion, one has to accept that everything living has a common ancestor. Yet there are billions of missing links and the Atheist does not seem to care. Some become so delusional as to actually "believe" this insanity. It is a faith that protects them from having to admit that a god exists and that this god may actually want something to do with us.

So I turned away from the lure of hiding my weakness in a superiority complex and decided to go down the road of seeking the "god" that had to exist.

I do not think the rest of my spiritual story is relevant to your question so I will just stop here and say in summary...Atheism is the epitome of irrational thought hidden behind a veil of intellectual superiority used by people to hide their inability to confess their fear of trying to understand the reality of a god who could create everything that we see. In many cases with the new breed of Atheist, it also protects them from their fear that the majority of the godviews of man considers their behavior or thoughts to be immoral.

And life goes on....

agapefromnc"

Honestly one of the most unjustifiably arrogant things I have ever read.  The irony of these words is thick given that mr killwater is asserting that he chose not to become an atheist to avoid pretending to be "intellectually superior" and yet that is exactly the tone he attempts to strike here.  Even to the point of questioning the sanity of an atheist for believing evolution.

Of course this arrogance could have been justified had he actually attempted to construct some kind of rational argument that would back up his assertions that evolution is rediculous, but he never does.  The closest he comes is:
"The bumblebee and the tulip and the ameoba and the hummingbird and the giraffe and the turtle and the shark and the ant and the jellyfish and me and you could not have a common ancestor. This is irrational. There is not a thimblefull of evidence to support anything this ridiculous."
He follows that bald assertion up with this blatant misunderstanding:
"Yet there are billions of missing links and the Atheist does not seem to care."

He never goes on to explain why they could not have a common ancestor, I would love to see him try.  He asserts that this is irrational but doesn't explain why the arguments used to support common descent are irrational.  He asserts that there is not a thimbleful of evidence to support anything which he considers to be this rediculous but is obviously either thinking of an exceptionally large thimble, or is just demonstrating his ignorance of mountains of evidence that do in fact support such an actually not so rediculous observation.

He apparently missed the fact that the apparent relatedness of every living thing was first suggested by a creationist named Carl Linnaeus in the mid to late 1700's.  It was this observation, among several other observations, which lead Darwin to his theory of evolution by natural selection.  It is true that common descent is a logica conclusion.  That much mr killwater got right.  He doesn't leave much of a jumping off point for a correction since he makes such general assertions and offers no logical support for any of them here.  Really all I can say is I would love to see his evidence that backs up anything he said in that answer.

As for the "billions of missing links".  There's a reason why scientists don't use that term.  Missing links don't exist.  You can't link humans to apes through any progression at all because humans didn't evolve from apes.  Mr killwater seems blissfully ignorant of the many transitional fossils that have been found, though, which serve as part of the mountains of evidence supporting common descent.  The thing about fossils that mr killwater also must be woefully ignorant of, is that fossilization is rare.  Fossils only form under a few very specific sets of conditions that are not met everywhere and are not met often.  On top of that it becomes even less likely for fossils to survive until discovery.  This is all dependent upon erosion, people looking in the right place at the right time, and fossils are very delicate.  If the wrong person finds a fossil and doesn't know what it is or how to handle it properly that fossil is lost.  If someone goes running a bulldozer through earth where a fossil was near the surface, that fossil is lost.  I'll leave it to anyone reading this to think of any other scenarios that could easily result in lost fossils.  I think in the interest of setting the burden of proof to high for anyone to ever meet it, creationists are willfully ignoring how impressive the collection of transitional fossils we actually do have really is.  Of course we don't see every representative species between the first cell and any modern species, but we do see a lot of them, and more than enough of them to establish that transitional forms do exist.  This is why creationists are forced to resort to calling fossils hoaxes that are actually genuine.  Archeoptrix springs immediately to mind.  Yes there have been hoaxes, but scientists are adept at spotting hoaxes.  Archeotryx has been proven genuine and there is no debate about its authenticity among paleontologists despite many claims to the contrary that I keep hearing from creationists.  You can very firmly count the fossil record among the evidences for common descent.
Here, these links are wikipedia articles but they're as accurate as any introduction to the topic really needs to be:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mammal_evolution
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reptile#Evolution
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hylonomus
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westlothiana
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petrolacosaurus
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesosaurus
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edaphosaurus
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dimetrodon
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anapsid
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diapsid
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lepidosauria
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archosaur I esspecially like that living archosaurs are crocodilians and birds.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synapsid which were reptiles but were the type of reptiles that mammals evolved from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bird_evolution
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_birds
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whale_evolution whale evolution is interesting we've found many transitional fossils
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_sirenians
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transitional_form This is also good for a general understanding of the subject of transitional forms, which is more accurate than "missing links".

The biggest problem with the term "missing links" is simply that it implies that evolution works in a way that no evolutionary biologist claims it does.

For more evidence of common descent check out this link:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/
You can also read this for more general and specific information about the theory of evolution:
http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/faqs-evolution.html

Then I found this line particularly funny:
"It is a faith that protects them from having to admit that a god exists and that this god may actually want something to do with us."

Hillarious is the assertion that it's faith that protects an atheist like me from having to admit the truth of a proposition I would have to support by faith.  That also is extremely ironic.  It takes faith not to have faith...what's the definition of faith here?  This reasoning really only serves to render the word faith effectively meaningless, which I find extremely funny.

"Atheism is the epitome of irrational thought hidden behind a veil of intellectual superiority used by people to hide their inability to confess their fear of trying to understand the reality of a god who could create everything that we see."
I, of course, also found this amusing.  The assumption here is, of course, atheists are afraid to try to understand that god is real and a real cause of everything we see.  The underlying assumption there is, of course that god is real.  Circular reasoning at its finest.  The entire assertion falls apart if god is not real.  If mr killwater tries to point at the fact that everything we see exists as proof that god is real the proof falls apart if god is in reality not real.  Circular reasoning is when a premise being used to support a conclusion depends on the truth of the conclusion it's trying to prove.  Arguments can't support themselves that way.  It's specifically for that reason that the existence of a god is anything but obvious.  It's certainly the easy way out as far as understanding the universe is concerned.  I'm not even saying it couldn't be correct, but it can't be proven.  Of course anyone is welcome to try to prove it.