Is it a bird? Is it a dinosaur? Or did God just do it like that?

I receive an interesting emailed news letter from an atheist called Ashley Haworth-Roberts. He has chosen  to singlehandedly take on the entire corpus of fundamentalist  anti-science. He reminds me of a terrier who spends his time sniffing around looking for places where fundamentalists have been urinating on science. And when he finds the scent he barks his head off thereby successfully drawing attention to their work. The fundamentalists don't like it one little bit; some of them, in particular one who calls himself "Cowboy Sorensen", barks back simply creating more noise.

This activity has actually proved to be very revealing and Ashley's newsletters often contain interesting material about the latest anti-science musings of the fundamentalists, although I don't usually have time to study the material in depth. One of his latest bulletins informs us that some fundamentalists are now taking on the "feathered dinosaur" fossil finds with some even going as far as denying that there were any feathered dinosaurs; others, however, are not so sure.

Fundamentalists tend to think in black & white categories anyway, but fossil finds which ostensibly appear to be a blend between dinosaur and bird make them feel uncomfortable. As a consequence of their insistence on an immutable taxonomy, different "kinds" must remain distinct and therefore as far as they are concerned fossil finds must fall unambiguously into strict taxonomic categories. In fundamentalist taxonomy "a bird is a bird is a bird" and "a dinosaur is dinosaur is a dinosaur"; the idea that the boundaries of distinction between species and kinds are blurred is anathema because to the fundamentalist mind this would reek of evolutionary thought. Therefore when fossils have features which might be interpreted as a blended phenotype (like feathered dinosaurs) the fundamentalist black vs white categorisation machine goes into over-drive in order to prove to themselves that the fossil is either unambiguously a bird or unambiguously a dinosaur - it can't be both/and. However, I must add the caveat here that the evidence for feathered dinosaurs is compelling enough for some fundamentalists to be unsure about the status of the apparently feathered dinosaur fossils; more about that later

For the record I reproduce below Ashley Haworth-Roberts bulletin. As it seems that once again fundamentalist anti-science, as with the star-light problem, is on a hiding to nowhere I thought I would keep my eye on the feathered dinosaur developments, although I don't have time to get into the technicalities (I only have time for fundamentalist cosmology in that respect!). In the piece below Ashley's words are in Arial and fundamentalist quotes are in Courier.

***

https://creation.com/feathered-dinosaur-debate

From the Conclusion:

"Believers in biblical creation agree ... on biblical grounds that if there were feathered dinosaurs, then God must have directly made them that way or designed them with the potential to develop that way." 

https://creation.com/dinosaur-quill-knobs

"The evidence for feathered dinosaurs is very flimsy and based more on ideology rather than the evidence."

I don't think so.

https://answersingenesis.org/dinosaurs/feathers/did-dinosaurs-evolve-into-birds/

"At least five families of theropod dinosaurs are claimed to have true pennaceous feathers like modern birds... Unfortunately, many dinosaur finds are claimed to have feathers when no pennaceous feathers are found. One such example is in the theropod Ornithomimosaurid group. Some fossil specimens only show marks on bony surfaces thought to be attachment points for feathers and detached filaments, while others show pennaceous feathers.

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/338/6106/510

 Wikipedia is somewhat more balanced than AiG:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ornithomimosauria#Feathers

"Unambiguous evidence of feathers is known from Ornithomimus/Dromiceiomimus, of which there are multiple specimens preserving feather traces. Deinocheirus and Pelecanimimushave been speculated to be feathered as well, the former due to the presence of a pygostyle, and the later due to possible impressions (otherwise taken to be collagen fibers). There is a debate on whereas ornithomimids possessed the pennaceous feathers seen in Pennaraptora."

Says Menton:

"These issues are persistent across most of the “theropod” families (or clades) that are claimed to have had feathers, which include Trooidontidae, Oviraptosauria, and Dromaeosauridae. Many members of these families do indeed have well-developed pennaceous feathers, but in each case the fossils appear to be birds and not dinosaurs." 

Says WHO (apart from creationists)?

"The clade of “theropod dinosaurs” known as Avialae clearly have pennaceous feathers, but this shouldn’t come as a surprise because the Avialae are in fact birds."

And many theropods are still considered to have been dinosaurs not birds.

From the Conclusion:

"Based on current evidence, there is no compelling reason to believe that true dinosaurs had feathers ...".  

If the Bible clearly suggested feathered dinosaurs, or if there were no evolutionary scientists inferring that birds are descended from some dinosaurs which probably developed feathers first, Menton would not be saying that I don't think.   

***

The second link Ashley quotes from is taken from an Creation Ministries International article. This article ends with the following conclusion (My emphases):

As mentioned in the movie review, we do not have problems with God creating dinosaurs with feathers, but the evidence just doesn’t seem to support such a conclusion.

Also noteworthy is Ashley's first fundamentalist quote which also comes from Creation Ministries International, the ministry which  fell out with Ken Ham's friend and ex-business partner, the nasty John Mackay. Here's the whole paragraph from which it comes (My emphases):

Differences among creation researchers over ‘feathered dinosaurs’ should not trump agreement on larger issues. Believers in biblical creation agree, on solid anatomical grounds, that dinosaurs did not evolve into flying birds. We also agree on biblical grounds that if there were feathered dinosaurs, then God must have directly made them that way or designed them with the potential to develop that way. Disagreement arises over whether any candidate fossil demands feathered dinosaur status

Unlike AiG's tame scholar David Menton, CMI are hedging their bets. Menton is more dogmatic and he finishes his article with this (my emphasis):

Finally, feathers appear to be as unique to birds as hairs are to mammals. Fossilized impressions of dinosaur skin resemble the skin of an alligator, not feathers on birds. Based on current evidence, there is no compelling reason to believe that true dinosaurs had feathers, or that they were related to birds.

This rather puts Menton in a hole as more evidence for feathered dinosaurs comes to light. In contrast to Menton CMI  reserves for itself the last resort of the anti-scientist: That is, if established science on the subject of feathered dinosaurs can't be picked apart by fundamentalist anti-scientists, it can always be claimed that God created them miraculously during the "creation week"! This is the anti-science methodology of fundamentalism: If the science can't be undermined, just claim "God did it....."

ADDENDUM 28/9/2018

In post on  PZ Myers blog here:

https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2018/09/26/ken-ham-innumerate-evolutionist/

We find this diagram which depicts Answer in Genesis' concept of the evolution of cats from their posited feline "kind" which came out of the ark:

Myers remarks that although this picture  is clearly a cartoon depiction designed for children  it is, nevertheless, a reasonable simplification of how palaeontologists would depict cat evolution. But the big difference are the time scales: 20 million years for paleontologists and probably a lot less than 4000 years for the AiG fundamentalists!

The key to the fundamentalist thinking here is the label "Genetic potential" just above their "original created kind". I think you will find that they would posit this "kind" to have been created with all the genes needed for the diversification shown in their picture. Whether or not, even given the existence of these genes, the diversification would follow so quickly I don't know (possibly less than 1000 years!). However, it's another case of the fundamentalist claiming that "God just spoke it into existence!" during the creation week.