After going through a huge spiel about dino/bird ancestry and feathered evolution similar to the old worn-out claims of "If humans evolve from monkeys, why are still monkeys around?" Creationist Shaun Doyle ends his CMI article, Feather Fossil (sic} Fantasy with this tripe,
"From a biblical view, these feathers are likely to have come from a chick and were encased in amber during the Flood."
No, Doyle. Not from a biblical worldview, but from a stupid, fantasy young earth worldview, the real feathered fossil fantasy, entirely made up without presenting a single evidence for any conclusion creationists made up in response to primitive feathers found encased in amber dated around 100 million years old in which they claim to have come from "a chick" (not a dromaeosaur chick, mind you, but a modern baby chicken) which fell off and "were encased in amber during the Flood." Now that's a real feather fossil fantasy Doyle is making up here without presenting a single evidence for what he says about it. Even these guys at Access Research Network, a site advocating intelligent design, makes the very same unfounded conclusion Doyle makes about where the feathers came from as well. Except that these guys here claims that these feathers are as just as advanced as the feathers of Archaeopteryx and are not necessarily primitive.
Much of the CMI article is all about dealing with origins of bird feathers in a bigoted matter similar to "If humans evolve from monkeys, why are still monkeys around?" Only this time it's about "If modern feathers evolve from primitive feathers, why were there modern feathers found in supposed primitive birds like Archaeopteryx?" or "If Archaeopteryx's feathers evolved 150 million years ago from a dinosaur with primitive feathers, why do dinosaurs with primitive feathers exist 50 million years later?"
Answer: When lineages diverge from a common ancestor, it is possible for one of the child lineages to preserve a "primitive" trait from the common ancestor and the other to have that trait modified because it experienced a different selective pressure from its sibling lineage. Like, one clade of feathered dinosaurs could retain primitive feathers, while a clade with which it shares common ancestry could have those feathers modified into a more "modern" form, because it felt selective pressure to modify those feathers that the other clade did not.
It's because both birds with primitive feathers and birds with advance feathers all share a common ancestor. It's all about common ancestry. Something creationists and all of their supporters have blindly failed to accept and grasp when they ask such pathetic worn-out questions such as the "if humans evolve from monkeys…" and other similar tripes. And just representing these amber-trapped primitive feathers as "feather [sic] degeneration in dinosaurs, not evolution " is not going to change the fact that this is the work of evolution done backwards.
Evolution is not just about simpler forms evolving into complex forms, it's all about complex forms evolving into simpler forms, too. And these once complex, now simpler forms is what we call vestigials, seemingly useless features that creationists have a very hard time trying to comprehend without resorting to attacking them in anyway possible from regarding them as "degenerate forms" to outright denying them.
Now concerning the fictional chick Doyle and the IDers assumes where the feathers came from, one has to wonder, is the chick really was where the feather came from? Is Doyle and the IDers sure it's from a chick? Did the Flood really formed the amber around the feather? Heck, how did the Flood formed amber altogether? Don't creationists like Doyle know just how amber really formed without resorting to Noah's Flood to explain the formation of the amber? The answer is no, they don't.
Amber is resin (tree sap) that drips from trees, hardens, and becomes well preserved over many millions of years. There is no way can the Flood from amber without tearing trees up limb from limb and rotting them out of existence. The real cause of the formation of amber is for tree sap to ooze out and go through a period of fossilization through natural polymerization of the original organic compounds. This is one of the greatest debunkers of the creationist Flood Folly which creationists are having a very hard time explaining because they are so indoctrinated in the 6,000 year lie that they couldn't comprehend the fact that you don't need violent floods to form spectacular fossils like small animals and plants trapped in amber.
Amber is formed when sap gets oozed from the tree to protect it against disease and to cover the scars inflicted on the tree bark. Often, tree leaves, feathers, insects, frogs, and other small animals would become unfortunate in being encased in the oozing sap they'll never escape from. On the bright side, however, it gives paleontologists a great opportunity to learn lots about them and how they are related to their modern counterparts of today.
Fossil deinonychosaur teeth have been found near the area where the feathered encased amber is found. Is the feather really from a deinonychosaur like Troodon, Utahraptor, and Deinonychus? No one knows for sure. But I do know for certain is that these feathers is certainly not from a baby chicken whose feathers are much different from the feathers found in the amber.
Reference:
The early evolution of feathers: fossil evidence from Cretaceous amber of France. 2008. Vincent Perrichot et al. Proceedings of the Royal Society B. Tuesday, February 19, 2008.
