CurtC
Illuminator
I've been listening to recorded audio via podcasts lately, and I've now heard a couple with Kent Hovind as a guest. I tried listening to his seminar lectures, but couldn't stomach that. The past couple of days I listened to Kent on the Infidelguy.com program. He was a guest for two hours, and debated callers instead of Reggie, the host. I'd like to brush up on the facts surrounding some of this stuff, and need some help.
Kent spent a lot of time on "lies in the textbooks," repeatedly singling out Ernst Haeckel's "enhanced" drawings of embryos. He makes these points:
* Haeckel forged the drawings.
* Human embryos do not have gills as the drawings show and the textbooks state.
* Haeckel was put on trial by his university over the faked drawings in 1874.
* They still teach this even today in every biology textbook. They all have Haeckel's drawings and all state that the gills are proof of evolution.
I thought I'd dig into this a little. Haeckel proposed a "law of biogenetics," which is captured by the phrase "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny," which means that the developing embryo passes through phases that resemble steps in its evolutionary history - first it's fish-like, then an amphibian, then reptile, then mammal. To support his law, he studied the embryos and did exaggerate the similarities in embryos from various animals. They were slight exaggerations, but it was dishonest. Haeckel's law was not entirely Darwinian, and depended on Lamarckian concepts. It was discredited soon after he proposed it, well over 100 years ago.
Also, he apparently was not tried by the university as Kent says. There was an unrelated slander suit that he was involved with. Haeckel had a long career as a professor and then retired.
On the other hand, vertebrate embryos do closely resemble each other in the early stages. The science of evolutionary development is shedding light on how development and evolution are closely related, and the embryo similarity is strong evidence for evolution, just not how Haeckel said it was. They get to a similar common starting point, then the various gene differences activate after that point to grow the structures into what they will become for that type of animal. Instead of progressing though a linear progression mirroring how that animal evolved, the animals share a common starting point and then branch out from there. This concept is called homology.
The question I have is this: do current textbooks still show Haeckel's drawings, and to they still state that all vertebrate embryos start out with gill slits? Hovind made a big deal about how the books said they all have gills, not seeming to grasp the difference between gill slits and actual gills, but the pharyngeal arches that the embryos have are not gill slits, are they? Do the folds between those arches develop into the gill slits in fish, or is it that they simply resemble gill slits? If they do not develop into gill slits in fish, and textbooks still refer to them as gill slits, I agree with Hovind (spit spit spit) that the textbooks should be corrected.
Kent spent a lot of time on "lies in the textbooks," repeatedly singling out Ernst Haeckel's "enhanced" drawings of embryos. He makes these points:
* Haeckel forged the drawings.
* Human embryos do not have gills as the drawings show and the textbooks state.
* Haeckel was put on trial by his university over the faked drawings in 1874.
* They still teach this even today in every biology textbook. They all have Haeckel's drawings and all state that the gills are proof of evolution.
I thought I'd dig into this a little. Haeckel proposed a "law of biogenetics," which is captured by the phrase "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny," which means that the developing embryo passes through phases that resemble steps in its evolutionary history - first it's fish-like, then an amphibian, then reptile, then mammal. To support his law, he studied the embryos and did exaggerate the similarities in embryos from various animals. They were slight exaggerations, but it was dishonest. Haeckel's law was not entirely Darwinian, and depended on Lamarckian concepts. It was discredited soon after he proposed it, well over 100 years ago.
Also, he apparently was not tried by the university as Kent says. There was an unrelated slander suit that he was involved with. Haeckel had a long career as a professor and then retired.
On the other hand, vertebrate embryos do closely resemble each other in the early stages. The science of evolutionary development is shedding light on how development and evolution are closely related, and the embryo similarity is strong evidence for evolution, just not how Haeckel said it was. They get to a similar common starting point, then the various gene differences activate after that point to grow the structures into what they will become for that type of animal. Instead of progressing though a linear progression mirroring how that animal evolved, the animals share a common starting point and then branch out from there. This concept is called homology.
The question I have is this: do current textbooks still show Haeckel's drawings, and to they still state that all vertebrate embryos start out with gill slits? Hovind made a big deal about how the books said they all have gills, not seeming to grasp the difference between gill slits and actual gills, but the pharyngeal arches that the embryos have are not gill slits, are they? Do the folds between those arches develop into the gill slits in fish, or is it that they simply resemble gill slits? If they do not develop into gill slits in fish, and textbooks still refer to them as gill slits, I agree with Hovind (spit spit spit) that the textbooks should be corrected.
