Atheism is unreasonable

[Anomalocaris]

Bullshit. Archaeopteryx is supposedly the missing link in the idiotic reptile to bird chain..or are you that ignorant?

No, Archaeopteryx is the missing link in the dinosaur to bird chain; dinosaurs and reptiles are on different prongs of the classification system. They aren't even in the same class, let alone anything of more specificity.

That depends on how the term reptile is used. Traditionally, reptile is purely a bucket word, meaning it is a term used to contain air breathing quadruped vertebrate animals which are neither mammals, nor amphibians, nor birds.

Dinosaurs were obviously not mammals nor amphibians, and their close relationships with birds were not understood, therefore they became reptiles by default.

So any transitional form between dinosaurs and birds were by traditional definition transition between reptiles and birds.

Only later did it become generally accepted that classification in this manner conveys little reliable information about deeper physiological similarities and interrelationship between different classes, and is therefore not very useful. It is much more useful to classify organisms by their natural ancesteral relationships as inferred by their deeper physiological and genetic similarities.

Basically, a class of animals should contain their physiologically or genetically inferred last common ancester, as well as every last one of the descendants of that common ancester, and nothing else.

When seen this way, it becomes clear "reptile" is not a natural grouping of animals. The word reptile retains currency because of its antiquity and long use. It does not retain currency because in it traditional application it actually implies meaningful description of ancesteral relation or fundamental physiological similarity. In the word of the moron that styles himself "his majesty". Reptile is not a "kind". It is a bucket containing arbitrary collection of different "kinds" that are only superficially similar, but examined more deeply are clearly not physiologically more similar to each other than each is to "kinds" outside the reptile bucket.

What is worse, traditional "reptile" classification sometimes arbitrarily bisects major deep physiological "kinds", such as archosaurs and synapsids, by including some of their members Under the reptile bucke, and excluding other members simply because presumed superficial similarity. For example, the archosaursian crocodiles and land dwelling dinosaurs were considered reptiles, while avian dinosaurs were not considered reptiles, despite the fact that archosaurs were clearly physiologically closer to birds than to any other members of the traditional reptile group.

When we dispense with the burdensome and baseless "reptile" concept, we see Archaeopteryx was just another dinosaur, just as all descendants of archaeopteryx are still dinosaurs - birds being just a subset of dinosaurs, and dinosaurs in turn being just a subset of archosaurs. Dinosaurs are physiologically not more closely similar to other traditional members of the reptile bucket than they are traditional nonmembers of the reptiles bucket, like mammals.

Mammals, a traditional nonreptile bucket, in turn are not clearly distinct from all members of traditional reptile bucket. Clearly mammals are very physiologically similar to synapsid reptiles - traditional member of reptile bucket. Mammals and synapsid reptiles are clearly far more similar to each other physiologically, than synapsid reptiles are to other members of the traditional reptile bucket.