One of the most popular and familiar pieces of evidence used to bolster the theory of evolution – reproduced for decades in most high school and college biology textbooks – is fraudulent, and has been known to be fraudulent for nearly 100 years.
Most people have seen those drawings of developing human embryos next to developing animal embryos, and they look virtually indistinguishable. (The Haeckel embryo sequence shown purported to show – left to right – a hog, calf, rabbit and human). This has long been said to demonstrate that humans share a common ancestry with these animals and thus prove the theory of evolution.
These pictures were designed by German zoologist Ernst Haeckel. What few people know – and one of many surprises in the evolution debate reported in the current edition of WorldNet magazine – is that they were fakes. At Jena, the university where he taught, Haeckel was charged...
Blair, why don't you share your sources here? The sources that I've just looked up indicate that Haeckel was a major proponent of evolution, started his own monist church, and his work is even linked to genocide.
For the purposes of this discussion, the following fact will suffice; Haeckel's "drawings" of various embryos are at variance with reality. Although this became known before 1915, his drawings are still being used today.
Mr. Reynolds, are you therefore saying that Haeckel's drawings are biologically accurate? Please offer evidence. That is the point at issue, not whether there are creationists with phony PhDs, which is a fallacious ad hominem distraction.
You are way off base on Haeckel. There is no hard evidence that he faked anything. You creationists are fond of saying he was tried by his university. Complete fib! Richardson, who got this thing started, has retracted this claim. Also, Haeckel was neither a Darwinist nor an atheist. Indeed, his doctrine of God come right out of the pages of St. Thomas Aquinas. If you are concerned about frauds, why don't you takea good hard look at the credentials of the icons of creation science: The folloiwng have only bogus, mill-degree doctorates: McMurty, Purchase, Patton, Baugh, Hovind, Ham, Bergman , Slusser. Setterfield has no doctorate whatwoever, is not even enrolled in a doctoral program. Yet creatinists continually refer to him as "Dr." Why? They are trying to puff up the credentials of their prized idol. Setterfield fudged much of his data, including the letterhead (SRI) he used for his "definitive" paper. Bergman got canned from his teaching position at Ball State because he faked data on his resume. Blair Reynolds
Heather, your comments on the diagrams should probably be directed to the original source, WorldNetDaily (wnd.com).
You do make a good point; the relevant question, though, is not whether the pictures are distorted or not. It is whether diagrams following Haeckel's logic are still used. My biology textbooks used 'em, for example. Can you comment?
For "Buffrin"; good question. The 2nd Law really applies most readily to thermodynamics, not biology (duh?). The principle more applicable to biology would be one of Augustine's reasons for the existence of God; a design implies a designer.
To wit, despite an incredibly messy "primordial soup" woodshop, nothing remotely of use has come out of it without my intervention.
The application of the 2nd law would be along the lines of another of Augustine's arguments; that if there is no start to time, then everything that could have happened should already have happened.
Entropy works with this principle this way; if the entropy of a closed system always increases, then the entropy of the universe (a closed system) must also increase. The end result at "time infinity" is that no transfer of energy is possible--i.e. we're all a great mass of warm vanilla pudding.
Since we are posting notes to this web site, we can safely conclude that we are not a large mass of vanilla pudding, and therefore the universe has a starting point. Hence, there is a creator.
Hi, I believe in Creationism and until seeing the website at http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/thermo/probability.html I believed the odds of evolution were not possible. I still believe in creationism but now I am unsure of whether or not the odds are against it or not. Can someone who understands these scientific laws discussed in that website on therdonamyics and entropy please either refute the article or admit errors in teh creationist argument and show why or why not evolution is still not probable even if this website were true? I'd like to know what the answer to this website would be that would still show why evolution could not have occured if it were true.
feel free to visit my website at http://webking.tv
I am a biologist and a creationist, but must point out an error in your article. I own a copy of the text "Molecular Biology of the Cell" (Third edition) and I referenced the diagram above (which occurs on page 33 of my text) and they are not the same diagrams. The diagram that you show at the beginning of your article is greatly distorted. More so than I have ever seen in any of the college Biology texts that I have used. Please make sure that you double check your sources before you release an article to the public.
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