Information Related to "Drawings Faked to Support Evolution"
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Drawings
Faked to Support Evolution?
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Ever since Darwin wrote his famous book on evolution, The Origin of Species, evolutionists have pointed to exam- ples they claim support the theory of evolution. But how good is that evidence?
Darwin relied on the work of others to demonstrate his theory. One famous example, still found in virtually every textbook promoting evolution, is what is commonly called “Haeckel’s embryos.”
Ernst Haeckel, a German biologist, had supposedly shown that embryos from various animals were identical to each other in their earliest stages. Darwin had written that “it is probable, from what we know of the embryos of mammals, birds, fishes and reptiles, that these animals are the modified descendants of some ancient progenitor” (The Origin of Species, Great Books of the Western World series, p. 224).
Darwin also wrote that, since humans
and all other vertebrates apparently were so similar in the early stages of
their development, “we ought frankly to admit their community of descent”
(The Descent of Man, 1952, Great Books of the Western World series, p. 265).
He wrote to a friend that similarities in early embryos were “by far the
strongest single class of facts in favor of” his theory (The Life and Letters
of Charles Darwin, 1896, Vol. II, p. 131).
Darwin and others promoted this idea even though other experts in the field,
such as Karl Ernst von Baer (at one time Europe’s most famous embryologist),
disagreed. Von Baer stated that “the embryo of the higher form never resembles
any other form, but only its embryo” (as quoted by Jonathan Wells, Icons
of Evolution: Science or Myth?, 2000, p. 84). However, Darwin cited von Baer
in support of his theory even though von Baer did not believe in Darwinism and
strongly objected to it.
Today, however, biologists recognize that Haeckel faked his drawings to support
his theory that embryos in essence reenact their species’ evolutionary
history as they develop.
Related Information on UCG Sites:
Sidebar to Coming to a School Near You: Darwinism in the Classroom
Table of Contents that includes "Drawings Faked to Support Evolution"
Other Articles by Bill Jahns
Evolution and biology: