Stupid Christian Article on Evolution

[A'isha]

You are dense, aren't you? When are you going to figure out I just might have my facts right.

You're going to have to start getting some facts right first for that to happen.

I stated embryonic evidence was a large part of Darwin's thinking.

No, you very specifically said Haeckel and "dubious embryonic analysis" played a "huge role" in Darwin's arguments.

That was wrong. Darwin's arguments were published long before Haeckel and his drawings entered the picture, and neither Darwin's thinking nor his arguments had anything to do with Haeckel.

It was, in reality, the other way around. All of Haeckel's work under discussion came about after Darwin's book was published, and in fact was inspired by Haeckel reading "The Origin of Species". Haeckel actually ignored a lot of what Darwin said on the subject of embryology, when if he'd followed the same cautious path Darwin did, he wouldn't have ended up in this mess.

Darwin used Von Baer, who opposed Darwinism all his life I might add, and who thought Darwin and evos in general misused his data.

And, as Richardson notes, von Baer was plenty wrong himself about a lot of things.

Haeckel came along and developed and expressed his biogenetic law. Evos at the very beginning jumped on Haeckel's concepts and as Richardson states, they relied on his data all the way until 1997.

"Relied on" is not the truth. A whole lot of people made drawings and, later, photographs of embryos for comparative embryological study in the more than a hundred years since Haeckel first published his drawings. Those were used and relied on.

And while Haeckel's drawings were still used in introductory textbooks because they represented the start of phylogenetic study in embryology, his specific theory of recapitulation was discarded early on.

Now you can try to say I don't know what Richardson says or the history of recapitulation, but that's hogwash. You cannot make a specific claim on how I've not gotten the picture right so you make a general one.

Actually, I made two specific claims (at least) in the post you replied to: you were wrong that Haeckel was important to (or even a tiny part of) Darwin's thinking and/or arguments, and you were wrong about what modern science thinks about what it labels "recapitulation theory."

Richardson called Haeckel's depictions factually wrong and a fake in 1997. Then, by 2002, he says those same fakes are "evidence for evolution" and all of this in peer-reviewed literature.

What more can be said? How can you defend that?

Because what was faked in the drawings is not the part that makes them evidence. Richardson's entire 2002 paper was about why Haeckel is still important, despite the errors in his drawings (errors which Richardson has not backtracked on in the least, despite your assertions that the Evo Inquisition got to him and made him recant).

You can't. You probably cannot explain the history of recapitulation theory either and how it keeps getting knocked down and coming back again. The process has been repeating itself well over 100 years. Just modern myth-making on the part of evos.

Haeckel's particular view of recapitulation stated that the embryo actually passed through discrete stages in development that mirror the adult forms of ancestor organisms ("ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny"). This idea actually contradicted Darwin's idea, which was that embryos of related species show similarities to each other when they're each at the same or equivalent stage of embryonic development, with that development having no relevance or relationship at all to the adult forms of their common ancestral organisms.

As early as the 1890's, biologists realized that Haeckel was wrong, with Cambridge embryologist Adam Sedgwick pointing out the flaws in the Biogenetic Law and noting that embryos of related species showed a surprising commonality of features, but were still different from each other and from adult organisms.

Haeckel's ideas were further marginalized as evidence against Lamarckism piled up (Haeckel was himself a Lamarckist, and his drawings were actually an attempt to support that theory, not Darwinism). In 1922, definitive opposition to Haeckel's ideas was solidified and codified by marine biologist Walter Garstang, who provided the first detailed analysis of the true relationship between evolution and embryological development.

After that, Haeckel became a footnote, known only for his work kicking off the science of phylogenetics. A survey of textbooks conducted in 1980, for instance, showed that Haeckel was only mentioned in 8 out of 36 texts examined. And two of those 8 were Creationist/ID textbooks.

In six of the eight textbooks that mention Haeckel, the text very clearly states that Haeckel's original theory of recapitulation was wrong, and while vertebrate embryos show similarities that indicate a common, related origin, the idea that the vertebrate embryo goes through stages corresponding to the forms of earlier ancestor organisms is false. Two of the eight textbooks that mention Haeckel don't make that clear at all.

Want to take a guess as to which two textbooks those were?

At any rate, the modern theory of recapitulation says that all vertebrate embryos go through a phylotypic stage during development, during which all vertebrate embryos show low phenotypic diversity from each other.

Which, you'll note, is a lot closer to what Darwin originally thought than the long-discredited idea that Haeckel promoted.

 

[aggle-rithm]

So this the heart of the objection. You guys insist the concept itself a priori cannot be given a fair shake based on your idea that we cannot include a conscious being as part of the process?

Consciousness isn't the issue. The issue is complexity...if we posit that less complex entities were created by more complex entities, that leaves open the question of where the more complex entities came from.

Of course, animals and people are conscious and genetics and the environment play a role in behavior but that's Ok.

We're all glad you approve.

You don't see an inconsistency in your logic here?

It's actually your logic. What you should do is ask other posters, "Is this an accurate representation of your position?" before you rush on ahead and say "what I assume to be your position is stupid!"

 

[A'isha]

Ok, then why does the coral have genetic sequences for vertebrate nerve function?

Because it uses those genes because its motile larva stage requires a more complex nerve function than its sessile stage requires, and it inherited those genes from the same LCA that also passed those genes on to the vertebrate and invertebrate linages (which the invertebrate lineages dropped during the course of evolution).

Why is the LCA now considered to be incredibly complex genetically?

Because studies of genomes in modern organisms indicate that, and there's no reason whatsoever in evolutionary theory that the LCA couldn't be that complex.

Why is it now the opiion that the creatures that gave rise to plants and animals had more types of genes available to them than plants and animals today?

It's not. Creatures that gave rise to plants and animals had more types of genes available to them than we previously thought, but that's not anywhere close to the same thing as saying that creatures that gave rise to plants and animals had more types of genes available to them than plants and animals today.

Not least because really the only clue we have to tell us what types of genes those ancestor organisms had is because we can see them in plants and animals today.

Did God do it?

Begging the question. You'd have to show that God existed before we could then determine if he was either capable of doing that, or that he did indeed do that.

The thing is neither he, nor you, seems to grasp the facts or the significance of these facts.

No, we both do. They have no significance.

Looking at other data, when was the last time a kingdom is thought to have evolved? How about new phyla? How about new orders? How about new families?

When was the last time a new genus evolved? And when was the last time a new species evolved?

Do you know why these things are the case?

Are you beginning to get the picture?

Trust me, I got the picture a long time ago.

 

[sphenisc]

I just wondered does anyone think that ID isn't creationism and is something different?

Me

 

[PixyMisa]

Do your own research. Most of the atheists here at JREF are agnostic atheists and will say so if asked. We don't pretend to have knowledge of the nonexistence of any possible version of God. We just don't see how belief in such a being is justified when none of the people who claim to have knowledge of this being can present more than hearsay evidence and they contradict each other.

Indeed, many of us were formerly believers of some description, before we noticed the huge holes where the evidence was supposed to be.

 

[Mister Agenda]

So this the heart of the objection. You guys insist the concept itself a priori cannot be given a fair shake based on your idea that we cannot include a conscious being as part of the process?

Of course, animals and people are conscious and genetics and the environment play a role in behavior but that's Ok.

You don't see an inconsistency in your logic here?

Not a priori. The concept itself has never been shown to have evidence supporting it, like a single example of irreducible complexity that holds up to scrutiny. In light of that, the explanation that doesn't involve a conscious being which explains all the known facts is the one to go with. I merely acknowledged that the process involved could be described as intelligent, in a very basic way, like a rotary phone is intelligent in comparison to a grain of sand.

Your desperation to latch on to any possible interpretation of other people's words that you can twist to suit your need for a 'gotcha' is very offputting.

 

[A'isha]

A survey of textbooks conducted in 1980

The editing period has passed, but I just want to correct myself here. This wasn't a survey done in 1980, but a recent survey covering textbooks published as far back as 1980.

EDIT: I'm sure randman will take this as a sign that my entire post is therefore completely wrong.

 

[Shalamar]

The editing period has passed, but I just want to correct myself here. This wasn't a survey done in 1980, but a recent survey covering textbooks published as far back as 1980.

EDIT: I'm sure randman will take this as a sign that my entire post is therefore completely wrong.

And therefore God.

 

[randman]

Because it uses those genes because its motile larva stage requires a more complex nerve function than its sessile stage requires, and it inherited those genes from the same LCA that also passed those genes on to the vertebrate and invertebrate linages (which the invertebrate lineages dropped during the course of evolution).

I don't think they have verified how those genes are expressed exactly, but it doesn't matter. How did the LCA use them then? Where did they originally come from?

Because studies of genomes in modern organisms indicate that, and there's no reason whatsoever in evolutionary theory that the LCA couldn't be that complex.

Wrong. They expected it to be simpler genetically, but their studies indicate it WAS genetically complex, not merely that it could be. Your comments strikes me as just an effort to pretend this is a matter of "no reason whatsoever in evolutionary theory that the LCA couldn't be that complex" when you know full well that's wrong. According to you, they knew before the studies, right?

They were expecting it to be genetically complex, eh?

The truth is they expected the opposite and now found their expectations were wrong.

Creatures that gave rise to plants and animals had more types of genes available to them than we previously thought, but that's not anywhere close to the same thing as saying that creatures that gave rise to plants and animals had more types of genes available to them than plants and animals today.

Prove it. I already showed the opposite.

But don't weasel around. You will surely argue after it's shown the ancestors to plants and animals had more types of genes available to them than plants and animals do today that:

1. Either you and other evos expected that along.

2. Or that this was predicted by evo theory all along but they just had the wrong idea.

Right?

If not, then take a stand. What if you are wrong on this point? What would that tell you?

Not least because really the only clue we have to tell us what types of genes those ancestor organisms had is because we can see them in plants and animals today.

Really? What if you are wrong here? Is that possible and if so, what significance would it be? In other words, why do you insist that the ancestors of plants and animals did not have the types of genes and more that are available to plants and animals today? What part of evo theory predicts your claim?

 

[randman]

Antpo, your facts on Haeckel are wrong. You wrote:

"Relied on" is not the truth. A whole lot of people made drawings and, later, photographs of embryos for comparative embryological study in the more than a hundred years since Haeckel first published his drawings. Those were used and relied on.

Richardson in his 2007 study says the opposite and that evos did rely on Haeckel's data set. Richardson wrote:

One puzzling feature of the debate in this field is that
while many authors have written of a conserved embryonic
stage, no one has cited any comparative data in support
of the idea. It is almost as though the phylotypic
stage is regarded as a biological concept for which no
proof is needed.

So evos believed in the phylotypic stage without proof of it. That's what he wrote in black and white.
Richardson again:

Haeckel’s drawings of the external morphology
of various vertebrates remain the most comprehensive
comparative data purporting to show a conserved stage.

They assumed Haeckel was right. That's the express purpose of the paper to see if the data they had been relying on all these years was correct.

You claimed:

And while Haeckel's drawings were still used in introductory textbooks because they represented the start of phylogenetic study in embryology, his specific theory of recapitulation was discarded early on.

Wrong. Evos clearly still believed in the phylotypic stage as Richardson says in his paper. You wrote:

Actually, I made two specific claims (at least) in the post you replied to: you were wrong that Haeckel was important to (or even a tiny part of) Darwin's thinking

I never claimed they were. This has been explained to you already. Are you just dense or misrepresenting me. I said embryonic evidence was and that's why Haeckel was so accepted and why evos have tried to maintain their mythology of recapitulation all these years and why evos wrote in 2002 that faked drawings are "evidence" for evolution.

You wrote:

and you were wrong about what modern science thinks about what it labels "recapitulation theory."

You have shown no such thing at all.

(me) Richardson called Haeckel's depictions factually wrong and a fake in 1997. Then, by 2002, he says those same fakes are "evidence for evolution" and all of this in peer-reviewed literature.

What more can be said? How can you defend that?

(you) Because what was faked in the drawings is not the part that makes them evidence. Richardson's entire 2002 paper was about why Haeckel is still important, despite the errors in his drawings ....

And you don't see that as backtracking. It's Ok to use faked drawings that exagerate things as evidence because, well, part of the drawings were accurate?

You call that science? Something accepted by evos in peer-review for publication even.

Unbelievable!

What more can be said!

(me) You can't. You probably cannot explain the history of recapitulation theory either and how it keeps getting knocked down and coming back again. The process has been repeating itself well over 100 years. Just modern myth-making on the part of evos.

(you) Haeckel's particular view of recapitulation stated that the embryo actually passed through discrete stages in development that mirror the adult forms of ancestor organisms ("ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny").

Not really. But he did come up with the phrase "ontogeny recapitulations phylogeny."

Are you saying it doesn't and evos have known this since the 1880s?

Please answer that last question.

This idea actually contradicted Darwin's idea, which was that embryos of related species show similarities to each other when they're each at the same or equivalent stage of embryonic development, with that development having no relevance or relationship at all to the adult forms of their common ancestral organisms.

That was Von Baer's idea, not Darwin's, and Von Baer for obvious reasons insisted that it did not support Darwinism, and Von Baer was correct though a highly conserved stage does not actually exist in the first place. Either way, the idea never backed up Darwinism except in the fantasies of evos.

As early as the 1890's, biologists realized that Haeckel was wrong, with Cambridge embryologist Adam Sedgwick pointing out the flaws in the Biogenetic Law

So why did they continue to cite Haeckel and say "ontogeny recapitulated phylogeny" and I bet many still do today? Why did they continue to use the terms "the biogenetic law" and "recapitulation"?

Isn't that kind of dishonest? If they used the terms to mean something else, isn't that shady too? Not really admitting they were wrong to accept Haeckel and kept using the same terms suggesting this was an established fact, a theory as Richardson says for which it appears needs no proof?

Plus, you don't even have your history right. Yea, Haeckel was debunked in the 1880s, 1890s and every decade hereafter but no, evos did not quit using him.

Haeckel's ideas were further marginalized as evidence against Lamarckism piled up (Haeckel was himself a Lamarckist, and his drawings were actually an attempt to support that theory, not Darwinism).

You finally hit on a half-truth. Only his Lamarckian ideas were marginalized, not recapitulation which is still a term used today along with the biogenetic law that "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny." The "adult form" thing is largely a myth used to try to claim Haeckel was not believed and relied on concerning "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny."

After that, Haeckel became a footnote, known only for his work kicking off the science of phylogenetics. A survey of textbooks conducted in 1980, for instance, showed that Haeckel was only mentioned in 8 out of 36 texts examined.

More deception and cherry-picking. Here is a comment from a biologist at Brown university and a popular textbook author that shows you are wrong.

This idea has been pushed back into the news recently by the news that Haeckel's drawings of embryonic similarities were not correct. British embryologist Michael Richardson and his colleages published an important paper in the August 1997 issue of Anatomy & Embryology showing that Haeckel had fudged his drawings to make the early stages of embryos appear more alike than they actually are! As it turns out, Haeckel's contemporaries had spotted the fraud during his lifetime, and got him to admit it. However, his drawings nonetheless became the source material for diagrams of comparative embryology in nearly every biology textbook, including ours!

http://www.millerandlevine.com/km/evol/embryos/Haeckel.html

In "nearly every biology textbook." Please don't cite his other nonsense such as Haeckel's drawings showing adult forms. They do not. He clearly was unaware the drawings were faked and basically says all evos were.

So his understanding of the history of that concept is weak, but he would be in a position to at least know what other textbooks and his own contained. You are just wrong to pretend the drawings were not in textbooks. Everyone knows they were.

At any rate, the modern theory of recapitulation says that all vertebrate embryos go through a phylotypic stage during development, during which all vertebrate embryos show low phenotypic diversity from each other.

Oh really? So now we are back to the claims of a phylotypic stage which Richardson debunked in 1997. Just as I expected. You guys have a hard time letting go of myths if they've been effective in getting people to believe in evolution.

 

[catsmate]

Yes you did. You, in fact, excised the main point Dinwar was making

Similar to his selective quotation of Grasse then?

 

[A'isha]

I think, randman, that a little more explanation of just what Richardson concluded, why, and what that meant for modern recapitulation theory is in order.

After the slow fading of Haeckel in the early 20th century (culminating with Garstang's work), no one really thought much about Haeckel's drawings in anything other than a historical context. Work on embryology continued, but it wasn't comparative embryology, but rather in-depth studies of embryos of species in isolation (eg, Hamburger et al's study of chicken embryo stages in the early 1950's). Haeckel's drawings played no part whatsoever in these studies, since there was no need to reference someone else's old drawings when you could (and should) just look at the embryos themselves.

Then, in the early 1990's, comparative embryology resurfaced. A number of things were looked at during these early studies, including (but not limited to) digging up and dusting off Haeckel's original drawings, since he was, after all, the first one to really do any sort of comparison like that). However, it was only Haeckel's drawings that were revived, not his theories...scientists were intrigued by the similarity of vertebrate embryos to each other at similar stages in their embryonic development, not because they thought these stages embodied any sort of ancestral form or organism (as Haeckel thought).

The use of Haeckel's diagrams in the burgeoning science of phylogenetics came to a screeching halt in 1995-1997, when Michael Richardson noticed that gross morphological similarities to form discrete "stages" that had been conserved during the evolution of vertebrate embryo development did not seem to exist. At least, not the ones depicted in Haeckel's drawings. That, of course, led to his famous discovery that Haeckel had essentially forged some of his drawings.

Haeckel's drawings were thus rendered useless from a broad phylogenetic standpoint. However, phylogenetics had advanced to the point where there was a lot of other evidence for it, not just in smaller morphological similarities, but in much more invisible ways like the patterns and timing of gene expression, which showed a surprising similarity of heterochrony among vertebrate species during what was now being called the phylotypic stage of embryonic development. Even Richardson, the man responsible for the final abandonment of Haeckel, recognized that Haeckel's non-forged drawings were still useful as a lesson in the history of phylogenetics and as evidence of the overall embryological similarities being explored via the new methods of investigating the phylotypic stage.

Richardson's discovery, though, left turbulence in its wake. Since phylogeny now had to rely only on genetic and epigenetic evidence that was less immediately obvious than the abandoned gross morphological similarities. This led to a period of much back-and-forth regarding the phylotypic stage during the early 2000's. One study would use one set of criteria to identify and analyze the phenotypic stage, another study would use a completely different set of criteria to say "No, there's no stage there, show us evidence for the stage", with yet a third study using an even different set of criteria to say "Look, here it is," and on and on.

This has gone on for nearly a decade now, but through it all, there's been one constant: once Richardson said "Hey, Haeckel's drawings are crap, don't use them!", scientists stopped using them. All of the intervening studies (and, really, the vast majority of the phylogenetic studies before then, too) have relied on the genetic and epigenetic data for (and sometimes against - that's why there was a controversy) the phenotypic stage.

In 2009, Ingmar Wurneberg attempted to standardize the way the phenotypic stage should be described, in his paper A Standard System to Study Vertebrate Embryos, so everyone would finally be on the same page and the debate could be resolved one way or the other. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to have caught on, since this study of the phenotypic stage in zebrafish embryos makes no reference to Wurneberg.

As a side note, the Wurneberg paper linked above contains a pretty good overview of what I talked about here, including citing pretty much all of the many papers that Richardson wrote regarding Haeckel's drawings.

 

[randman]

hy, and what that meant for modern recapitulation theory is in order.

So you admit evos still teach a form of recapitulation theory, exactly what I stated. Why are they still using that term if it's been discredited?

Then, in the early 1990's, comparative embryology resurfaced.

You left out the part about Haeckel's drawings and his phrase "ontogeny recapitulates ontogeny" was still being used. Why else do you think embryologists, according to Richardson, still relied on Haeckel's drawings and claims of a phylotypic stage?

Oh, and the fact some colored in the black and white drawings does not mean the original black and whites were not used, as sites like TalkOrigins claimed. The black and white drawings were the basis of the colored in drawings.

Then, in the early 1990's, comparative embryology resurfaced. A number of things were looked at during these early studies, including (but not limited to) digging up and dusting off Haeckel's original drawings,

Couldn't have something to do with critics writing books and doing presentations, such as the botany professor at NC State going around, showing they were fakes on college campuses and the students could look in their textbooks and still seeing them used? Then, along came the internet, and such things were widely publicized. Evos might have finally discovered it was a problem to keep claiming a phylotypic stage with faked data.

However, it was only Haeckel's drawings that were revived, not his theories...scientists were intrigued by the similarity of vertebrate embryos to each other at similar stages in their embryonic development, not because they thought these stages embodied any sort of ancestral form or organism (as Haeckel thought).

Wrong. Do you know what "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny" and "recapitulation" actually mean? They mean they follow through stages of ancestral forms and so by comparing those forms, it's evidence for evolution. Von Baer pointed out Darwin was wrong back in the 1800s on this, and now it's clear there is no "highly conserved stage" which is synonymous according to Richardson in 1997 with the phylotypic stage.

The use of Haeckel's diagrams in the burgeoning science of phylogenetics came to a screeching halt in 1995-1997, when Michael Richardson noticed that gross morphological similarities to form discrete "stages" that had been conserved during the evolution of vertebrate embryo development did not seem to exist. At least, not the ones depicted in Haeckel's drawings. That, of course, led to his famous discovery that Haeckel had essentially forged some of his drawings.

No creationists and IDers and some evos already knew and had loudly proclaimed the drawings were faked for over 130 uears. It took 130 years of sustained criticism to get evos to acknowledge the drawings were faked.

 

[A'isha]

Richardson in his 2007 study says the opposite and that evos did rely on Haeckel's data set.

...

So evos believed in the phylotypic stage without proof of it. That's what he wrote in black and white.

No, that was his 1997 paper. And while it might have been true then, it's certainly not true any more. Just look at the papers I linked in my previous post (and the papers they, in turn, reference).

They assumed Haeckel was right. That's the express purpose of the paper to see if the data they had been relying on all these years was correct.

And it wasn't, so they stopped relying on it, and looked at their other evidence.

Wrong. Evos clearly still believed in the phylotypic stage as Richardson says in his paper.

Except that wasn't Haeckel's idea.

You have shown no such thing at all.

Read the papers I linked to you. If you don't understand the distinction, that's not my fault.

And you don't see that as backtracking. It's Ok to use faked drawings that exagerate things as evidence because, well, part of the drawings were accurate?

As long as you're using the accurate parts and not the faked parts.

If a paper is published saying "2+2=4, and 4+4=98", what's the problem with referencing the first, correct equation while discarding the second, incorrect one.

You call that science? Something accepted by evos in peer-review for publication even.

Unbelievable!

What more can be said!

Well, we can say that you don't seem to have understood what Richardson meant with his statement.

Not really. But he did come up with the phrase "ontogeny recapitulations phylogeny."

Are you saying it doesn't and evos have known this since the 1880s?

Please answer that last question.

Haeckel meant it to say that the embryonic stages reflect the adult forms of ancestor organisms.

And no, embryonic stages don't reflect the adult forms of ancestor organisms, and yes, "evos" have known this since the 1880's.

That was Von Baer's idea, not Darwin's, and Von Baer for obvious reasons insisted that it did not support Darwinism,

No, it is absolutely what Darwin thought:

If, on the other hand, it profited the young of an animal to follow habits of life slightly different from those of the parent-form, and consequently to be constructed on a slightly different plan, or if it profited a larva already different from its parent to change still further, then, on the principle of inheritance at corresponding ages, the young or the larvæ might be rendered by natural selection more and more different from their parents to any conceivable extent. Differences in the larva might, also, become correlated with successive stages of its development; so that the larva, in the first stage, might come to differ greatly from the larva in the second stage, as is the case with many animals. The adult might also become fitted for sites or habits, in which organs of locomotion or of the senses, &c., would be useless; and in this case the metamorphosis would be retrograde.

From the remarks just made we can see how by changes of structure in the young, in conformity with changed habits of life, together with inheritance at corresponding ages, animals might come to pass through stages of development, perfectly distinct from the primordial condition of their adult progenitors.

He thought that some animals did indeed recapitulate their phylogeny in their ontogeny, but as you can see from the above passage in "The Origin of Species", he also said that others did not.

Haeckel thought they all did.

and Von Baer was correct though a highly conserved stage does not actually exist in the first place. Either way, the idea never backed up Darwinism except in the fantasies of evos.

This is where the modern science of phylogenetics has its root:

In two or more groups of animals, however much they may differ from each other in structure and habits in their adult condition, if they pass through closely similar embryonic stages, we may feel assured that they are all descended from one parent- form, and are therefore closely related. Thus, community in embryonic structure reveals community of descent; but dissimilarity in embryonic development does not prove discommunity of descent, for in one of two groups the developmental stages may have been suppressed, or may have been so greatly modified through adaptation to new habits of life as to be no longer recognisable.

That's it.

So why did they continue to cite Haeckel and say "ontogeny recapitulated phylogeny" and I bet many still do today? Why did they continue to use the terms "the biogenetic law" and "recapitulation"?

Isn't that kind of dishonest? If they used the terms to mean something else, isn't that shady too? Not really admitting they were wrong to accept Haeckel and kept using the same terms suggesting this was an established fact, a theory as Richardson says for which it appears needs no proof?

A theory for which other evidence totally unrelated to Haeckel has been found and discussed. And it's not "dishonest"...it's a good indication that you might want to research the terms used by modern biologists and how they use them before you go making assumptions about them.

Plus, you don't even have your history right. Yea, Haeckel was debunked in the 1880s, 1890s and every decade hereafter but no, evos did not quit using him.

Yes, they did. Except for a brief period in the 90's, then Richardson made his discovery and they stopped again.

You finally hit on a half-truth. Only his Lamarckian ideas were marginalized, not recapitulation which is still a term used today along with the biogenetic law that "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny." The "adult form" thing is largely a myth used to try to claim Haeckel was not believed and relied on concerning "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny."

No, it's only a "myth" to you because you don't understand what's being talked about.

More deception and cherry-picking. Here is a comment from a biologist at Brown university and a popular textbook author that shows you are wrong.

http://www.millerandlevine.com/km/evol/embryos/Haeckel.html

In "nearly every biology textbook." Please don't cite his other nonsense such as Haeckel's drawings showing adult forms. They do not. He clearly was unaware the drawings were faked and basically says all evos were.

Anecdote vs. survey...hmmm, what to trust as an accurate representational analysis?

EDIT: I've already told you that Haeckel was mostly forgotten until interest in comparative embryology picked back up in the early 90's. That's why at the time of Richardson's discovery Haeckel was mentioned in more textbooks. Before then, very few mentioned him at all because, as I said, no one really cared about him except as a historical footnote.

So his understanding of the history of that concept is weak, but he would be in a position to at least know what other textbooks and his own contained. You are just wrong to pretend the drawings were not in textbooks. Everyone knows they were.

No, they were in some textbooks, for a specific reason that had nothing to do with the way actual scientists used them, nor with the reason Haeckel used them.

Oh really? So now we are back to the claims of a phylotypic stage which Richardson debunked in 1997. Just as I expected. You guys have a hard time letting go of myths if they've been effective in getting people to believe in evolution.

He only debunked a specific view of it. As I showed you, the study of phylotypic stages now has nothing to do with Haeckel's drawings, and hasn't since...well, 1997.

 

[A'isha]

So you admit evos still teach a form of recapitulation theory, exactly what I stated. Why are they still using that term if it's been discredited?

Because it means something else. For one thing, "phylogeny" has an entirely different meaning now than how and when Haeckel used it.

You left out the part about Haeckel's drawings and his phrase "ontogeny recapitulates ontogeny" was still being used. Why else do you think embryologists, according to Richardson, still relied on Haeckel's drawings and claims of a phylotypic stage?

The modern phylotypic stage has nothing to do with what Haeckel meant by "ontogeny recapitulates ontogeny" when he used the term.

Evos might have finally discovered it was a problem to keep claiming a phylotypic stage with faked data.

Except an evolutionist found the problem, alerted other evolutionists, those evolutionists abandoned the incorrect data, and turned to new data, and science (and phylogeny) marches on.

That's the way science works. And no IDers either participated in, nor were needed for, any of the above process.

Wrong. Do you know what "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny" and "recapitulation" actually mean? They mean they follow through stages of ancestral forms and so by comparing those forms, it's evidence for evolution. Von Baer pointed out Darwin was wrong back in the 1800s on this, and now it's clear there is no "highly conserved stage" which is synonymous according to Richardson in 1997 with the phylotypic stage.

See, this is your problem. I keep trying to tell you that yes, the above is what Haeckel thought. But that's not what the modern phylotypic stage is.

The modern phylotypic stage or period is a period of development in vertebrate embryos, during which all vertebrate embryos show low phenotypic diversity from each other. Nothing to do with ancestral forms at all, but relating to Darwin's idea that "community in embryonic structure reveals community of descent."

 

[A'isha]

And is it just me, or is anyone else also disappointed that this "debate" has fallen from the great height of discussing new discoveries in the genome of a coral, to a beat-to-death rehash of the old Creationist canard about Haeckel's drawings?

 

[thaiboxerken]

True Believers won't let debunking stop their arguments.

 

[ehcks]

True Believers won't let debunking stop their arguments.

Of course not. Anything and everything that goes against their beliefs is a test from their god or an evil from their devil attempting to make them fail.

 

[A'isha]

All right, randman. Let's cut right to the chase.

Here is the full text, with diagrams, of Naoki Irie and Atsuko Sehara-Fujisawa's 2007 paper on the vertebrate phylotypic stage in mice, defined by genomic information and with no reference whatsoever to Haeckel or his drawings.

Tell me what's wrong with it.

 

[randman]

ANTpo, the posts are too long so will not include your entire post quoted.

No, that was his 1997 paper. And while it might have been true then, it's certainly not true any more.

So you are admitting I was right in saying that evos did rely on Haeckel right up to 1997 and that you were wrong to accuse me of error on that. Keep in mind studies after 1997 are irrelevant to the claim they relied on Haeckel.

Haeckel meant it to say that the embryonic stages reflect the adult forms of ancestor organisms.

Prove it. I don't think you read Richardson's 2002 paper as you claimed you did, or did not take the time to thoroughly read it.

No, it is absolutely what Darwin thought:

Semantics again. Darwin alluded to Von Baer's research; hence not "Darwin's thought" in that sense.

No, it's only a "myth" to you because you don't understand what's being talked about.

Laughable. Then why am I right on the history of the use of Haeckel and you wrong? Why did i know the drawings were faked before Richardson and the evo community finally admitted it 1997.

If you disagree, prove Haeckel always promoted the Biogenetic law as recapitulation of "adult forms."

Where'd you get that?

TalkOrigins? They used to say Von Baer was an evolutionist. Waste of time relying on them if that's where you get your info.

I

've already told you that Haeckel was mostly forgotten until interest in comparative embryology picked back up in the early 90's. That's why at the time of Richardson's discovery Haeckel was mentioned in more textbooks. Before then, very few mentioned him at all because, as I said, no one really cared about him except as a historical footnote.

That's just total bull-crap. Ontogeny repeating phylogeny was in nearly every evolutionist textbook along with Haeckel going back decades. A guy wrote a book in the 50s complaining it was still being used in textbooks. Doctors are very prestigious universities were taught the idea in medical school and earlier in college. I know from talking with them and also it's been well-documented. Same with the 60s, 70s and 80s. There was even a book in 1910 blasting the use of Haeckel's drawings though not sure all textbooks were evolutionist back then.

You have no idea what you are talking about.