One of the most controversial topics in science is the Theory of Evolution.  Even Charles Darwin knew when he proposed it that the idea would be fought against and he really took his time gathering data and supporting evidence before he released his ideas to the masses.  There is little debate about the validity of the Theory within the scientific community, but thanks partly to the media for perpetuating the "war" over evolution, there is always an ongoing debate.

Debates should be civil and respectful, of course, but sometimes it is hard to stay objective and calm in the heat of the moment when defending your beliefs.  This is a natural and understandable reaction to something you feel strongly about.  Everyone should prepare for a debate by being armed, and armed well, with facts that can be brought out in defense for all arguments against the belief of evolution.

Argument Against Evolution: "The fossil record doesn't have transitional fossils that show how monkeys evolved into humans."

How to Debate the Argument:  This argument may come all together as presented above, or it may come in different parts.  Let's break down each part and talk about why it is a common misconception and how you can win the debate if this argument comes up.

First of all, saying that humans evolved from monkeys is an incorrect assumption that unfortunately has persisted over the years.  Yes, it is correct to say monkeys and humans are related, but it is completely wrong to say that humans "came from monkeys".

 That would be the equivalent of saying that you "came from your cousin".  It makes no sense.  Humans and monkeys are different branches on the tree of life that split off at a common ancestor.  Both humans and monkeys belong to the order Primates in taxonomic classification, just as you and your cousin are descendants of your common ancestor (a grandparent of some sort) and belong to the same family, but a different branch on the family tree.

The other part of this argument against evolution talks about transitional fossils.  A transitional fossil is defined as a part of the fossil record that shows how one species evolves into another species.  There are a couple of ways to go about setting this fallacy straight.  One way would be to talk about the pace of evolution.  While a large number of people believe that evolution is a slow and ongoing process, there are others that believe that the change from one species to another is actually happens very quickly.  While there would have to be transitional fossils that show how the adaptations that were accumulating over time were changing the species from one form into another for a very slow paced evolution, they would not be necessary for the very fast paced evolution that would occur almost instantaneously without having one or more transitional species or forms of the species before evolution could be documented.

Another way to go about debating this point would be to make sure your debate opponent understands enough about fossils to correctly argue this way.  The way this anti-evolution argument is usually presented is very telling of how little the person knows about how fossils are formed.  In order for fossils to form, an organism must die (or get trapped) near a body of water or wet enough area for there to be mud, clay, or other sediments.  Once they have died and sunk to the bottom of the body of water, it must then be covered up by the sediments completely.  These sediments must then be cemented together to form a sedimentary rock with the remains of the organism still inside.  After that, the rock with the fossil in it would have to be discovered, brought up, sometimes even cracked open before the fossil could be seen and studied.  The likelihood that this happened for a transitional species that would only be present for a relatively short amount of time on the Geologic Time Scale is very slim.  It simply could be that no fossils of the remains of a transitional species survived various forces of nature long enough to become fossilized.  And if it did happen, maybe no one has discovered it yet.  Maybe they never will.