If Archaeopteryx did have feathers, there is a recent counter-example discovery of a similar yet older creature, Xiaotingia zhengi, in China. Researchers now conclude that these two creatures are NOT related to modern birds, but to extinct Velociraptors.
They are related MORE CLOSELY to Velociraptor than (the contemporary ancestors of) modern bird. These two lineages are direct sister groups, these animals were already extremely birdlike, with some even convergently evolving proto-flight, and indeed, if they were extant, we would certainly have counted them among the birds.
There is no solid evidence of change going from one species to the next. After all, you'd have to change the DNA code to change the organism, right?
Yes. DNA replication is imperfect, so there are several mutations each generation. And in addition to this, during meiosis, DNA is exchanged between pairs of chromosomes, increasing the variation even further.
Researchers have tried real time, but they’re unsuccessful. If you look at the mutation experiments on the fruit fly, drosophila melanogaster with its generation period of 11 days, you'll find that virtually all mutations are harmful if not lethal.
No, most mutations are neutral, with many having no effect at all due to the redundancy of the genetic code. Strongly harmful mutations are the most noticable, often most revealing and consequently the most studied, especially in early studies, but that is something completely different.
They've been breeding fruit flys for decades with NO transitional forms and NO change in species.
1. Those are only a few decades - in their short reproductive cycles, any given fruit fly has far less time to accumulate mutation than a human, so no, this does not happen instantly. Specification is one of those things that are apparent in retrospect, but all but impossible to see as it happens over timespans considerably longer than a human’s life, in an environment we can only observe to a limited extent. And obviously, the goal of laboratory breeding is not to create new species, but rather the opposite - look up “controlled conditions” and “reproducibility”.
Think about it – you’d have to not only modify, but ADD beneficial DNA coding to effectively change the organism.
There is no such thing as “beneficial DNA coding” in itself - just variations that, under certain circumstances, perform situationally better than other variants. So no, beneficial evolution would be possible through alteration alone. But even if not, addition of DNA does indeed happen - genes and indeed entire sections of the genome can get duplicated, resulting in two instances of a gene that can evolve independently, allowing one to diverge and acquire a new function while the other still maintains the original function. Indeed, this is how the old world monkeys (such as us) re-acquired the ability to distinguish red and green, unlike most other mammals.
How many protein sequences would it take and what is the probability of generating enough nucleotide changes to produce sufficient amino acids and then proteins for additional flight muscles? Don't be sheepish on the math here gentlemen.
The genome is not a blueprint directly encoding phaenotypical structures. It is a library of proteins and triggers, and development is in large parts a modular process governed by regulatory genes. An extra pair of wings does not require an encoding of every single protein of it; no, all that is needed is a change in regulatory genes so that both wing segments take the pathway of developing wings and not halteres. And this is not limited to an extra signal occuring in an abnormal area, but can also take the form of an absence of a signal - indeed, your very example is a case of the latter scenario, where a lack of the signal in question results in both wing primordia developing into wings.
Don't be sheepish on the math here gentlemen. Can you prove to me that you can accurately calculate biological probabilities?
Projection - it is you creationists who love to spew such spurious probabilities.
Just saying "it's possible" denies the fact that it's not probable.
Improbable things happen. Especially when countless dice are rolled countless times.