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A recent Facebook encounter is typical.
The x in question started off with the usual one-line bullshit about “atheistic beliefs”. This was quickly followed by an entirely typical strawman caricature of prebiotic chemistry, along the lines of “you think life came from a rock”. (Duh). Along with the usual snide comments about various other topics, including infantile dismissal of tetrapod ancestry with the cretinous “a fish growing legs and walking is a fantasy”.
So, I inform him about the reality of prebiotic chemistry, and show him video footage of Mudskippers, which are fish that are alive today and which walk on land.
This resulted in bluster and summary dismissal. No surprises there. Then he tried engaging in playground taunts, to the effect that because I didn’t supply him instantly with a raft of photos of tetrapod fossils, I had “nothing” to establish my claims.
So, after asking him why didn’t he do his own homework, given that it takes all of ten seconds to type “Tiktaalik” into Google and be presented with a link to the scientific paper describing the fossil, he then engaged in more bluster (and the usual ad hominem). So, I presented him with the scientific paper in question (which, of course, includes detailed photos of the fossil in question).
Cue more summary dismissal, and a lame complaint to the effect that the explanatory drawings accompanying the photos somehow didn’t count. Apparently this individual hasn’t heard of the concept of schematic diagrams.
Then, came the typical creationist bullshit about Tiktaalik being “deformed”. Yes, he dredged the barrel to that extent. Comparative anatomy being another subject he is apparently totally ignorant of (oh wait, there are Sarcopterygian fishes alive today with recognisably similar fin morphology to early Tetrapodomorphs).
An Illustrative scientific paper covering said fin morphology is this one:
Characteristic Tetrapod Musculoskeletal Limb Phenotype Emerged More Than 400 MYA In Basal Lobe-Finned Fishes by Rui Diogo, Peter Johnson, Julia L. Molnar and Borja Esteve-Altava, Scientific Reports, 6: Article no. 37592 (2016) [Full paper downloadable from here]
Though I suspect the moment I drop that in his lap, he’ll hand-wave it away again with “Lalalalala I can’t hear you”.