It states early in this piece that: "Here's a chance to compare the scientific merits of the competing views." But nowhere in here is a competing view, only the same old argument for irreducible complexity, which is not a scientific theory at all. For example, here:Taylor wrote:evolutionnews.org/2013/10/the_origin_of ... 77291.html
Just for the interest of it. here's an article from the Intelligence Design side of the debate as to avian flight. I don't think its a valid counter point but just interesting in how they form their anti-evolution argument.
This is the same argument used against eye evolution by the way. But the eye is not irreducibly complex. There are numerous examples in nature that show the stages that evolution could have taken, from very basic light sensitivity to full vision. I'm not sure we are able to document as clearly the progression of flight evolution, but clearly it did. Because flying critters exist. Unless you assume that an intelligent being conjured up a fully equipped bird at some point in the past. But if that's the case, we have heaps of evidence that show speciation in many other animals. So why single out birds except for the fact that the evidence is not yet glaringly obvious due to the incomplete nature of the fossil record.Here's the bottom line. You look at the anatomy of a bird, its behavior, its metabolism, the structure of its feathers, the structure of its muscles and so forth -- these are multiple independent points in a complex space, out of which flight emerges. And I think from a biological standpoint, to fly at all requires a cause that is able to visualize a distant functional endpoint, and bring together necessary to achieve that endpoint. Uniquely, and universally in our experience, only intelligence is capable of that kind of causal process.
So here follows the ID argument in a nutshell: 1) assumption of intelligent designer 2) Nothing will convince them otherwise. The ID article attempts to frame evolutionary theory as a fallacious argument, but this is disingenuous because the evidence already proves evolutionary theory. Based on this knowledge we can assume that flight evolution follows the same rules that other evolved systems, such as the eye, have followed.
The reason why we believe feathers preceded flight actually comes from the fossil record, and so scientists can only surmise there was some advantage to feathers before flight came along. The fossil record will either bear this out or not. The recent discovery of a feathered tail in amber is exciting because it provides yet another piece of the puzzle. And it also refutes one of the earlier theories about feathers. This is how science works. And, meanwhile, the ID community will pounce on areas where the evidence is fragmentary, always looking for their god of the gaps.
http://www.theverge.com/2016/12/8/13892 ... no-fossils