Bird down feathers have enough similarities to mammal hair to suggest they evolved to serve the same purposes.
Consider:
These facts suggest that mammal hair likely evolved many mullions of years before the earliest bird feathers.
But there is no reason I know of to expect any connection will be found between the earliest mammal hair and later bird down feathers.
ARepublicanForAllReasons: "I don't have the answers to the vital questions, but I can recognize dissembling on the part of advocates of mechanistic evolution when I encounter it."
I shudder to think whom you might have "encountered".
Did you not have a good science teacher in any grade in school?
Basic science consists of facts (=confirmed observations), hypotheses (unconfirmed explanations) and theories (confirmed explanations), plus an occasional scientific "law" which can be expressed mathematically.
Regarding evolution, there are facts, a confirmed theory and a number of unconfirmed hypotheses.
There are no mathematical "laws" of evolution, that I know of.
So, my point is: what, exactly is your problem with the scientific facts, theory and hypotheses relating to evolution?
Re feathers vs hair. You wrote a lot but still didn't explain why mammals have hair, rather than feathers. The default answer for most defenders of Darwinian evolution is that "they are optimal for survival". Yet what experiment has been done to demonstrate that mammals would not fare just as well or better with some sort of feathers? The answer of course is none. So your reply is just a reiteration of Darwinian dogma.
Re what I have "encountered": I had good science teachers in public school. 8th grade science, HS biology and chemistry, where I was introduced to the scientific method of confirming or disproving theories based on analysis of observed facts. I also have earned a BA in Philosophy, where I studied scientific methods, and learned both deductive and inductive logic. (Plus experimental Psychology, laboratory Chemistry, Biology and Astronomy.) I understand that any scientific theory is never 100% proved, nor can it be.
I did not say I was in doubt of evolutionary facts that are supported by strong evidence. What I said was that there are some things that evolutionary theory implies must be true (such as one species evolving into another) that science cannot explain at the present time. IOW, there is no mechanistic model which demonstrates the fact of one species giving rise to another, much less any model which demonstrates with any precision just how this could have occured. There are only extinct intermediary species, which scientists assume to be confirmation of what they already believe, namely, a small number of species giving rise to a greater number and variety of different species no longer able to interbreed. But note please, this has never been observed to occur, nor does the paleontological evidence prove, even within the accepted statistical certainty associated with inductive reasoning, that this must have occured!
You talk down to me as if I were largely unacquainted with science and carried bagload of unquestionable religious dogma. I assure you that I am neither a scientific novice nor a religious dogmatist. In fact, I was a strong evolutionary dogmatist before I came to question whether life could have originated and/or evolved without intelligent guidance.
-- ARFAR
There is no good reason for you to put law in quotes...
BJK “There are no mathematical “laws” of evolution, that I know of.”
Except the need/wishful think of evolution to ignore the 2nd law of thermodynamics. All systems tending toward disorder - a direct observation of all things under the sun - including the accumulation of mutations breaking down all DNA.
The opposing evolutionary wishful thinking is DNA re-writing itself for new organs, abilities, and lifeforms which by the way has never been observed in nature.
Also consider the fruit fly experiments where ‘intelligent’ re-design was super-imposed and all the mutants returned to their normal programming within a few generations.