"Natural selection is the only mechanism of adaptive evolution"

[truethat]

So Richardson says that Haeckel's faked data are "important" as "evidence for evolution", and you consider that a mere historical reflection?

There is a difference between a historian talking about Mein Kempf and a Neo-Nazi saying it has merit.

Richardson is ONE scientist. Oh wait........wait maybe I missed the memo, let me go check my email............wait.......no.........no I didn't get the memo that says that Richardson is the National Spokesperson for the Theory of Evolution.

Yeah and when did he say that.......wait........yesterday? Last year? Ten years ago.......when?

 

[randman]

Here's another one then.

In his 2009 book Why Evolution is True professor Jerry Coyne, whom people pay to teach their children, informs his readers that "All vertebrates begin development looking like embryonic fish because we all descended from a fishlike ancestor with a fishlike embryo. We see strange contortions and disappearances of organs, blood vessels, and gill slits because descendants still carry the genes and developmental programs of ancestors." [79] There's only one problem: it isn't true.

First, humans—and most other vertebrates for that matter—do not "begin development looking like embryonic fish" and second humans do not have gill slits at any embryonic stage.

http://darwins-god.blogspot.com/2010/06/jerry-coyne-human-embryo-has-gill-slits.html

 

[randman]

truethat, I am not about to provide you with personal information of any sort that might enable you to track down my identity, but if you would like to tell us who you are, what universities you went to and your degrees and employer, that's fine.

 

[randman]

That statement is absolutely not true as has been proven several times in this thread.

If you want to hang on your drawings because you have absolutely no other leg to stand on, I suggest that you keep it in the appropriate thread.

However it should stand to show others that your argument seems to always be reduced to some drawings in a book that were never really used as part of the scientific discovery anyway, just as neato illustrations.


It has happened many times in books. As I mentioned before, the depictions of the T rex as an upright animal with it's tail dragging on the ground. And even Gould makes mention of a flip of snails prints in a book. The title is Left Snails Right Brains



http://penelope.uchicago.edu/~grout/encyclopaedia_romana/aconite/symmetry.html

You have reduced your argument to some messed up prints in a book. It happens a lot because the people printing the books are not scientists.

Nowadays we find out these things much faster and correct them much faster.

Anyway I think it is very telling to our lurking readers that if a ID fan has nothing to defend his position but some old pictures from the 1800's that no one uses in the theory anyway, that is QUITE telling.

No evidence has been presented in this thread that contradicts anything I have written. The fact you think it has is just more evidence of the same evo mindset that says Haeckel's faked data is "important as evidence for evolution" in a well-respected peer-reviewed publication.

 

[truethat]

No evidence has been presented in this thread that contradicts anything I have written. The fact you think it has is just more evidence of the same evo mindset that says Haeckel's faked data is "important as evidence for evolution" in a well-respected peer-reviewed publication.

Um


Are you suggesting that this is used and taught today as "accurate' if not then what is your point?

I took a biology class in 1992 and the drawings were shown to be fakes. So uh? As I asked, have you ever gone to college and taken a biology class?

Were they presented to you in your high school class as accurate?

 

[A'isha]

So you admit evos still use the idea of recapitulation and the biogenetic law?

No, I'm saying those terms mean something other than what they used to mean, something other than what Haeckel used them to mean, and they definitely mean something other than what you're trying to claim them to mean.

And you're quote-butchering Richardson in an attempt to do so.

Far from agreeing with you that Haeckel's ideas were part and parcel of evolutionary theory, Richardson's 2002 paper admits they were tossed out and are not accepted among other evolutionary scientists. Richardson is arguing that Haeckel's views shouldn't be discarded entirely, as they have been up till now, because some of what he said was, in Richardson's view, really not as incompatible with the Synthetic Theory as everyone thought up till now, and therefore his ideas can add some new insight into our views of evolution. Which is...well, as I said above, pretty much the opposite of what you're claiming is Haeckel's role in evolutionary theory

Richardson, in any case, holds a minority opinion on Haeckel's more generalized use of his recapitulation theory. Richardson himself acknowledges that Gould, Lehman, de Beer, Miyazaki, and Mikevich did not think Haeckel was so ambivalent about what he was really saying with his Law of Correspondence, since he was very specific about identifying correspondences in the embryonic structures to structures in the adult organism. The view of Gould and the others is supported by the fact that Haeckel was actually very explicit about the entire adult form of certain ancestor organisms being recapitulated, as even Richardson admits Haeckel did, though he tries to say the implications are more limited (Richardson uses the word "exceptional" to describe the specific times Haeckel uses that direct whole-form comparison).

Richardson even admits that, regarding Haeckel's Law of Terminal Addition, "The idea that new adult stages are added terminally, then telescoped or pushed-back into the embryonic stages of descendants, is assumed to be part of the Haeckelian package (Gould, 1977: pp. 74± 75; de Beer, 1951: p. 5; Lehman, 1987: p. 206; Richardson, 1999: p. 605; Miyazaki and Mickevich, 1982: p. 394) and can reasonably be inferred from his alphabetical analogy and some of his writings."

This stands in contrast to von Baer's idea that embryonic structures show similarities only to other embryonic structures, an idea expanded on and confirmed by science since then, without any need to rely on Haeckel at all, making his views actually irrelevant to phylogenetics in its currrent form. That's why no one in science really cares any more whether Haeckel was right or wrong in any of his specific theories in any context outside the historical. Richardson could be totally right and Gould totally wrong, or Gould could be totally right and Richardson totally wrong, and it wouldn't matter one whit to the current Synthetic Model.

And I told you all this two weeks ago, randman.

 

[truethat]

truethat, I am not about to provide you with personal information of any sort that might enable you to track down my identity, but if you would like to tell us who you are, what universities you went to and your degrees and employer, that's fine.

Well some of the people on here know who I am because of going to Union Theological Seminary at Columbia University for a second Masters, in Divinity.

But that's another story.

I own my own company. I have BA in English and a MA in Liberal Studies with a focus on Theology and Mythology.

I'm also the only person with my name in the entire world. So I'll spare you that.

Now,

Asking you what kind education you have doesn't have to be that specific. Just saying I have a degree in X and I've taken X number of science classes at college would be helpful.

 

[randman]

Um


Are you suggesting that this is used and taught today as "accurate' if not then what is your point?

I took a biology class in 1992 and the drawings were shown to be fakes. So uh? As I asked, have you ever gone to college and taken a biology class?

Were they presented to you in your high school class as accurate?

So you were in college in 1992?

That explains a lot. You need to keep in mind that when someone like me tells you what evos were saying, in textbooks, in debates, in scientific literature, and what IDers and others were saying going back to the 80s, we're not lying to you. You can pretend that's the case if it makes you feel better, and you can listen to those trying to rewrite history, but all you are doing is deceiving yourself then.

As far as courses and education, I absolutely will not share that with you but I will say this, most biology doesn't really address criticisms of evolution in the sense of looking at the data WITHOUT the assumption of evolution.

Even grad students and Phds specialize fairly quickly. Generally whatever they were taught when introduced to evolution in college, if outside of their speciality, they uncritically accept.

From my experience, most are unaware of critical arguments that stem from outside the evo camp, which is one reason an Ivy League biology professor was surprised to learn in 1997 that Haeckel's drawings were faked. (Most evos were.)

If you want to be educated on the subject, you really need to do your own reading and studying. I have done mine gradually over a 25 year period and am still learning.

I'd also like to point out your continual character assassination is just a ploy to avoid talking about the data and is wrong. When I first posted, all the usual bs came out; "you are dumb, etc, etc,...." ...typical childish and baby-ish behavior. One who engaged in that eventually relented in a backhanded way saying they were impressed that at least someone came on here arguing against evolution being aware of epigenetics.

Of course, that was a backhanded insult, but still a small admission.

You can behave like a child, pretending I don't know what I am talking about, or you can admit I do and try to defeat what I am saying or clarify it based on facts.

You appear to have chosen the first option.

 

[Halfcentaur]

Lovely how he insinuates revealing such a thing is sinister and connected with tracking down his identity, isn't it?

 

[truethat]

Here's another one then.



Quote:
In his 2009 book Why Evolution is True professor Jerry Coyne, whom people pay to teach their children, informs his readers that "All vertebrates begin development looking like embryonic fish because we all descended from a fishlike ancestor with a fishlike embryo. We see strange contortions and disappearances of organs, blood vessels, and gill slits because descendants still carry the genes and developmental programs of ancestors." [79] There's only one problem: it isn't true.
First, humans—and most other vertebrates for that matter—do not "begin development looking like embryonic fish" and second humans do not have gill slits at any embryonic stage.
http://darwins-god.blogspot.com/2010...ill-slits.html

He doesn't say anything about the drawings in here? What is wrong with you? Did you really think we wouldn't notice that he's not talking about Haeckel at all?

Is this how you work?


Just quote mining for things that sorta seem to match what you are saying?


Coyne was valedictorian of his class[citation needed] (1971) at the College of William & Mary and received a Ph.D. in Biology from Harvard University, an NIH postdoc in genetics at UC Davis, and a 1989 Guggenheim fellowship. At Harvard, Coyne studied under Richard Lewontin, who sponsored his doctoral degree. He has served as Vice President of the Society for the Study of Evolution (1996) and as Associate Editor of Evolution (1985–1988; 1994–2000) and The American Naturalist (1990–1993). He currently teaches evolutionary biology, speciation, genetic analysis, social issues and scientific knowledge, and scientific speaking and writing.

 

[truethat]

So you were in college in 1992?

That explains a lot. You need to keep in mind that when someone like me tells you what evos were saying, in textbooks, in debates, in scientific literature, and what IDers and others were saying going back to the 80s, we're not lying to you. You can pretend that's the case if it makes you feel better, and you can listen to those trying to rewrite history, but all you are doing is deceiving yourself then.

I've been in college for about 20 years now. On and off. I've never seen anything you are saying happening in an academic setting.


So to be clear, you are moving the goal posts back to the 80's and saying because things were not kosher then, everything from then onward is a Conspiracy Theory and a cover up.

 

[truethat]

double posg

 

[randman]

I've been in college for about 20 years now. On and off. I've never seen anything you are saying happening in an academic setting.


So to be clear, you are moving the goal posts back to the 80's and saying because things were not kosher then, everything from then onward is a Conspiracy Theory and a cover up.

I think that's wishfulness on your part. Not only does it happen in a college setting but I have showed you it happens in peer-reviewed literature. It's part of evo's approach to science, and you are also making a false accusation on moving the goalposts. You know full well as I've stated many times about a visiting botany professor, a creationist from NC State, is where I first learned Haeckel was faked.

But now, maybe for the lurkers as you have often said you are writing for their benefit?, you suggest I just fabricated going to school in the 90s in response to you post here?

Have you no integrity?

 

[truethat]

I don't know what you are talking about. But when we tell you that you are completely ignorant on topics you purport to have studied for 25 years you say we are picking on you?

Seriously if you think what you've shown on these sites amounts to an education on the topic of evolution I am shocked. That and "talking to a botany professor and a creationist!"

Your job as a human being is to educate yourself, not to rely on other people to tell you how to think. You were shocked to find out they were fakes? Seriously my parents had magazines and books in the house in the 80s and they showed how they assumed that all embryos were the same. Haeckler drew approximations, they weren't "SCAM" pictures and they were NOT uses as factual evidence.

What you are doing now is as if someone took a picture of the T-rex that were in our dinosaur books as kids, and saying that the whole foundation of evolution is falling apart because they depicted the animal in the wrong way.

It is this kind of thinking that shows you have no idea what you are talking about.

 

[randman]

Show me one thing I have been factually ignorant of in regard to evolution, just one piece of data? and yes, then show another if you can find one?

I don't think you can but perhaps there is something I have misunderstood about the data somewhere on this forum in regard to evolution.

All you are doing is engaging in character assassination of another human being because he disagrees with your faith.

 

[Dinwar]

You need to keep in mind that when someone like me tells you what evos were saying, in textbooks, in debates, in scientific literature, and what IDers and others were saying going back to the 80s, we're not lying to you.

To be fair, no, they're not. They honestly believe they're telling the truth. However, they are still wrong.

You can behave like a child, pretending I don't know what I am talking about, or you can admit I do and try to defeat what I am saying or clarify it based on facts.

As someone who was put on Ignore because I pointed out the fact that randman is a lier, has commited libel, and has no credibility this is pretty hillarious.

As far as courses and education, I absolutely will not share that with you but I will say this, most biology doesn't really address criticisms of evolution in the sense of looking at the data WITHOUT the assumption of evolution.

When I was in grad school I had the pleasure of looking at a map of the sea floor created prior to the development of plate tectonics. What struck me (and all geologists, really) was the linear nature of the mid-sea mountain ranges. There was no theoretical paradigm superimposed on this map--it was just depth readings from ship sonars (WWII was a great boon to geology, it turns out). Yet you could still see all of the evidence of plate tectonics. You see the chunks of Africa in America, you see the parallel faults perpendicular to the ocean ridges, you see the central valley in the ridges, you see the clear evidence of volcanism.

Similarly, when European explorers found (find) native peoples who had not been in contact with European science before (back in the Age of Exploration Asia and Africa weren't contributing much to science, due to cultural issues) the tribes tended to group things in the same way as the Europeans. There were a few oddities, on both sides (bats aren't birds and fish are meat, people!), but by and large the two schools of thought agreed. Similarly, Linnaean taxonomy, which presents NO evolutionary perspective whatever, drove Linnaeus himself to question Creationism, long before Darwin's time. The only explination that satisfies the data is evolution.

The experiment has been run. Several times. And evolution is the correct answer. If you think otherwise, it is due to a lack of comprehension on your part.

truethat: I remember that picture. I have many fond memories of days spent playing with plastic dinosaurs and reading books on them (oddly enough, the text to picture ratio in books on dinosaurs hasn't greatly altered between my 5-year-old reading and my professional reading...we are a visual species). And it still hurts my neck and legs to see therapods standing like that. I can hear the hips popping, and my neck hurts just thinking about it......Thanks for that.

ETA:

Show me one thing I have been factually ignorant of in regard to evolution, just one piece of data?

Yet more dishonesty. ANTpogo already demonstrated multiple errors in randman's view. None are so blinid as those who refuse to see...

 

[randman]

Also, just want to add something about and point again to your claim to have invented the term "evo."

Evo is just short for evolution, evolutionary or evolutionist. Evo-Devo, for example, has been a term that's been around far longer than your internet life. You'd think something as simple as realizing evo can be shorthand for evolutionist, evolutionary or evolution, depending on the context, would be self-evident.

 

[truethat]

Show me one thing I have been factually ignorant of in regard to evolution, just one piece of data? and yes, then show another if you can find one?

I don't think you can but perhaps there is something I have misunderstood about the data somewhere on this forum in regard to evolution.

All you are doing is engaging in character assassination of another human being because he disagrees with your faith.

No I'm not. This is your way out of the conversation.


How is it character assassination to ask you if you've gone to college and taken biology classes. The reason I ask you this, is because you seem to think scientists just show up and pay for some classes and get a degree. That is not how simple it is. If you have not gone to college then it makes sense that you would have this misconception, but if you have gone to college for serious degrees like a Phd then you'd know how involved and dedicated the field is.

You seriously suggest you are more versed on the topic of evolution than COYNE?

Coyne was valedictorian of his class[citation needed] (1971) at the College of William & Mary and received a Ph.D. in Biology from Harvard University, an NIH postdoc in genetics at UC Davis, and a 1989 Guggenheim fellowship. At Harvard, Coyne studied under Richard Lewontin, who sponsored his doctoral degree. He has served as Vice President of the Society for the Study of Evolution (1996) and as Associate Editor of Evolution (1985–1988; 1994–2000) and The American Naturalist (1990–1993). He currently teaches evolutionary biology, speciation, genetic analysis, social issues and scientific knowledge, and scientific speaking and writing.

You attributed a comment to Coyne saying he was talking about Haeckel's drawings when he was not.

You position Haeckel's drawings as some sort of "backbone, or foundation" of evolutionary theory when they are just interpretive drawings.

You discuss niches or slots as if they are created in advance of the animal that is evolved and fills them.

You represent individual scientists, papers, ideas etc as being the foundation of evolutionary theory when they do not represent that.



You say that an imaginary intelligent entity created life, (we'll let that one slide because it's got nothing to do with evolution)

You quote mine and string together comments that are often unrelated or say the opposite of what you think they do.

I'm sure others can add to it...

 

[randman]

No I'm not. This is your way out of the conversation.


How is it character assassination to ask you if you've gone to college and taken biology classes. The reason I ask you this, is because you seem to think scientists just show up and pay for some classes and get a degree. That is not how simple it is. If you have not gone to college then it makes sense that you would have this misconception, but if you have gone to college for serious degrees like a Phd then you'd know how involved and dedicated the field is.

You seriously suggest you are more versed on the topic of evolution than COYNE?




You attributed a comment to Coyne saying he was talking about Haeckel's drawings when he was not.

You position Haeckel's drawings as some sort of "backbone, or foundation" of evolutionary theory when they are just interpretive drawings.

You discuss niches or slots as if they are created in advance of the animal that is evolved and fills them.

You represent individual scientists, papers, ideas etc as being the foundation of evolutionary theory when they do not represent that.

.

No, I showed where he still makes incorrect statements which in my opinion is due to Haeckel's legacy.

Also, you just can't stop making stuff up, can you? Historically, Haeckel is a type of backbone, an icon, used to promote evolution, but I have stated a number of times Haeckel being wrong is not the death knell for evo theory, and have stated a number of times I brought up the episode as an example of how evos treat data in an unscientific way.

I don't really care if you believe in evolution or not. I am just showing how it's not real science in the way evos have treated data. The reason you and actually so many working evolutionist scientists treat it as a political campaign is because they want people to believe it so badly instead of merely wanting them to understand it and the data.

If you wanted people to think critically of it, you'd welcome criticism and be glad when people bash it, realizing they are then thinking of it and learning more about it. You'd want "the controversy" taught in schools. You'd even insist on it.

Oh, and you have still not shown of one single thing showing I've misunderstood evolution.

Provide a quote and show it.

You cannot.

 

[Reality Check]

What professor was surprised to learn in 1997 that Haeckel's drawings were faked

From my experience, most are unaware of critical arguments that stem from outside the evo camp, which is one reason an Ivy League biology professor was surprised to learn in 1997 that Haeckel's drawings were faked.

Citation please: What Ivy League biology professor was surprised to learn in 1997 that Haeckel's drawings were faked?
It was not Richardson

• He is not an Ivy League biology professor.
• He knew that the 1874 drawings were in question:
  "However, their accuracy has been questioned and only a narrow range of species was illustrated."

He may have expressed surprise in the paper itself. So since you obviously have it to assert that he was surprised - can you post it so that we can read it?