Why are Haeckel's drawings being taught in school?

Are you going to answer on the mammalian ear question?My understanding is you claim the same solution never occurs via convergent evolution, and thus that the mammalian ear, for example, did not evolve independently.I can and will show where you are wrong on the mammalian ear, but want to know ahead of time, if this fact falsifies your claims concerning convergent evolution or not, in your opinion.

I did. In the post that is actually listed as a response to yours. Please kindly read ahead before you accuse me of ignoring you.

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Well everybody knows that snakes used to have legs. That's evidence for biblical creationism. I'd like you to clarify: What do you mean by "starting from a reptilian jaw"?By definition, a mammal is not a reptile.Why do you insist "down the to genes responsible"?It looks to me like you are backtracking, as I expected. basically, you guys have totally unfalsifiable theory.You claim convergent evolution never produces the exact same solution, but in reality, common descent never does either, if you want to be hypertechnical.Convergent evolution does produce the same solutions, over and over again, in fact, and the truth is if convergent evolution produced the same genes responsible, you would deny it was convergent evolution, and hence maintain your circular, non-falsifiable claims of universal common descent. http://maroon.uchicago.edu/...02/22/professor_makes_ears.php

Being that this is a science form we do not indulge religious mythologies now do we? That snake embryos have legs is direct evidence for their ancestors being legged reptiles. Yes but the fossil sequence that shows the evolution of the mammalian inner ear proceeds from a reptilian like jaw to a mammalian like jaw with the bones descending into the inner ear. The fossil progression is a fact. Because that is what you are claiming, that convergent DNA is the reason why it looks like common decent when we compare genetic and morphological traits. I am not saying they have to be exactly the same genes, but the same genes that control inner ear development need to be the same if we are talking about two species that are not related yet look that way genetically and morphologically due to convergent DNA/evolution. I am certainly not backtracking. If you claim that as an alterative to common decent that creatures that only look related because of convergent evolution then it is up to you to show this. I am giving you a clear example that if you could show to be true would justify your claim. That is not the point. The point is that they are similar or different enough to diagnose common decent. No. If you could show that two species previously thought to have a common ancestor only looked that way because of convergent evolution then I would join you in your skepticism. Of course they did because the reason that monotremes are monotremes is because they were the first split from what we would consider the main line of mammalian evolution. Before the inner ear that is common to placental mammals evolved they monotremes were already a distinct taxa with their own evolutionary path.I hope you realize that this example not only does not support your claim but actually refutes it. Monotremes and placental mammals each developed acute hearing but did so using different evolutionary tools derived from their most recent common ancestry. Their similarities combined with their degree of differences is excellent evidence that monotremes and placentals had a common ancestor around the time that mammals in general had not yet developed the inner ear as we know it today.In order to contradict common decent between monotremes and placentals you would have had to show that the similarities between monotreme and placental evolution were due to convergent evolution. What you just did is show that they diverge from a semblance of commonality! This is exactly what we would expect if two different things had a common ancestry!I dont expect you to accept this because you have shown yourself to be highly skeptical toward criticism of your claims but I know that it will be clear to those reading that really what you just did here was step on your own argument.By the way...Why do baby whales have legs before they are born? Why are some baby whales born with legs? Why do whale embryos look indistinguisible from hippo embryos? Please address the parts of my post regarding the topic.Thank you,This message has been edited by Jazzns, 06-22-2005 01:54 PM

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Once again, you exhibit the same evolutionist pattern of falling on the whole to argue the details, the exact opposite of the scientific approach.First off, you claimed convergent evolution never produces the same solution, and I refuted that with the example of the inner ear bones in mammals developing independently.Do you agree or deny this?We need to have some sort of resolution on this before going on about whether and which traits in other species can be considered the result of convergent evolution or not.The rest of your post is nonsensical to me. Clearly, the same ear developed independently after the fact.Do you agree or disagree with that?As far as common ancestry, clearly the presumed common ancestor did not have the same inner ear, right?if you are arguing, well, but they shared a common ancestor, you do realize that is a circular argument since you guys claim all living things share a common ancestor.But you cannot use as evidence for common ancestry the claim that we all have a common ancestor. That's bogus.The fact is convergent evolution does indeed, according to the evolutionists' own paradigm, produce traits as similar as produced via the proposed mechanism of common traits passed on via a common ancestor.Now, whether evolution really produced these traits, etc,...via convergency or common descent is certainly debatable, imo, but the fact is a mutual ancestor did not pass along the ear bones to all the mammals that have ear bones. The fossil record disproves that, according to evolutionists themselves.Maybe you were just unaware of this fact?

Btw, your comment below is flat out hilarious on the face of it. 1. Evolutionists actually do claim similarities are the result of convergent evolution, totally contradicting you.2. But what is so funny is the claim, heard ad naeuseum, that "this is exactly what we would expect". LOL. The problem is if that was the case, you would have expected it, but you did not.You clearly on this thread did not believe such exact similarities as the inner ear bones could arise via convergent evolution, and prior to recent discoveries, no one seems to have predicted, nor expected that, at all.But in typical fashion, after the fact, it is "exactly what we would have expected."LOL.

I am sorry. I seriously do not understand what this sentence is saying. What is "falling on the whole to argue the details"? I really honestly and without malice do not understand what you are saying.To start off I would like to say that I misunderstood your position. I thought you claimed that the monotreme and placental inner ear were different and that this somehow disproved common decent. I attribute my misunderstanding to the following: No not clearly. You have given no indication that they are the same nor any evidence. Obviously there was so little evidence for this in your post that I originally thought you were arguing the opposite. The surprising thing about the discovery is that monotremes were found with less derived jaw/inner ear structure. This could mean that either the common ancestor between the two is less derived than previously thought or simply that placentals split later than previously thought. No I do not realize that anything is circular. We have a clear sequence that shows a transition from reptilian to mammalian jaws and ears. We have a split between the monotremes and the placentals each of which continued to evolve acute hearing independently. You have not shown that they are the same and in fact I got the impression from your previous post that you were saying that they are different. That is why I was shocked to see you trying to play that off as support for your position. Either way, you still haven't shown a clear example of your scenario.Surprisingly still, your evidence assumes that modern monotremes have followed the evolutionary sequence laid out by the fossil record. If evolution from a reptile to a platypus and from the same reptile to a monkey is not common decent I really don't know where the problem is. You cannot use evidence that relies on common decent to disprove common decent. Don't you see how ridiculous this is? Never did. I used the fact of the fossil transitional sequence from reptile to mammal with regards to the formation of the inner ear from the jaw bone. Similar in function but not form. I know you have been told this before. It is a very important difference. The ear of a whale and a bat can both echo locate but they are not built the same. Both placental and monotreme mammals have placental and monotreme ancestors with "incomplete" inner ear evolution. How does this do anything other than support common decent? I am perfectly aware of the fact. I just think it is slightly amusing that you think that this fact is somehow evidence against common decent rather than evidence for it. You really don't see it do you?What about the whale embryos? Please address the points that are part of the topic.

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Why did you respond to my post again? You are making things very confusing by doing this. You seem very pleased with yourself after assuming that you have actually shown anything. Given that you never said nor gave evidence for homology in inner ear structure between placentals and mammals one can not but expect the misunderstanding that produced: Given that it seemed your argument was reversed due to your lack of explaning anything, its hardly right to berate me.How about we get this back on topic? Why do whale embryos have legs if they are not derived from terrestrial mammals?

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It seems like there is some confusion in understanding each other's posts. So let's back up a bit and try to clear things up.First, the thread topic is why are (or were) Haeckel's drawings taught in school, not whale evolution, nor even the degrees to which embryos do or do not show a phylotypic stage.So let's dispense with moving the topic elsewhere and first review this basic issue.Why were Haeckel's drawings, being fraudulent, taught in schools? even well over 100 years after being exposed as frauds?Keep in mind arguments about whale evolution, whether embryos display a phylotypic stage (I don't see it and neither do many evolutionists) are not necessarily even germane to the discussion.Are the drawings false or not?If my memory serves me correctly, back in the 80s there was a NC State professor, a zoologist, who pointed out in a talk that these depictions were frauds. My first gut reaction is that evolutionists maintained the use of fraudulent "evidence" because they were not willing to admit to weaknesses in their arguments.I still believe that initial reaction is correct.In 1997, an evolutionist finally came out and said, yep, these depictions are wrong, and it was treated as breaking news, except for the fact the article stated Haeckel was tried for fraud at his university over these drawings a long, long time ago.I find it very telling that evolutionists, as late as 1997, actually were unaware that such a major piece of evidence was faked.It seems that even today evolutionists will continue to argue human gill slits and other such nonsense, a clear overstatement, and do so unashamedly.What do you think I should make of that, or other objective viewers of the evidence?Keep in mind I used to beleive in all the same evolutionist dogma. Someone challenged me to look into each piece of evidence I was presented concerning evolution, for myself, and I did, and was shocked to see the level of overstatement, and imo, outright deception within the scientific community over the issue of common descent.The evolutionist community, imo, deserves to be treated with suspicion as part of a giant hoax, until the community as a whole fully comes clean on it's use of false data, and relying on overstatements.In general, I have only seen a small minority even willing to admit to such errors, and the way evolution is presented, imo, is still highly deceptive, false, misleading, and characterized by indoctrination and propaganda techniques.Keep in mind this thread is about "Education" and "Haeckel's drawings."Imo, the validity or non-validity of any evolutionist claim is secondary to the issue of how it is presented and taught.If we can come to an agreement on:the fact Haeckel's depictions are wrongthe fact they should not have been used for so longthe fact they misled countless millions into thinking embryos were far more similar and displayed phylotypic stages than they really do, and that things like fish gill slits in humans were realthe fact that the evolutionist community refused to correct textbooks for decadesThen, I'll be glad to discuss whale embryos and other areas.Let's get past the 1st part though first, shall we?Whether common descent is true or not is completely separate from it's reliance on faked evidence such as Haeckel's drawings.This message has been edited by randman, 06-22-2005 06:39 PM

I am not replying to the linked message here, but using it and this thread to pursue your reply to my message (where it was off-topic anyway) on: Sorry, but I seem to have missed where you posted the name of the person who originally exposed the fake drawings, together with a link showing his credentials as a creationist.Without that bit of information, all creationists are doing is making a parade float out of beating a dead horse.Just because they are on the bandwagon for clearing science of the 'adjustments' made by Haeckel doesn't give them any particular {{street-cred}} of the fraud exposure bit.They didn't expose it. Claiming that they did is fraud too isn't it?On the other hand, try googling paluxy man tracks, polonium halo's, Darwin recanted, ... and see what sites you get. heck, google "creationist hoaxes" and "creationist frauds" and you can see lists of known hoaxes and frauds that are still posted as if they were the truth.If creationists are exposing fraud they need to do a little cleaning up of their own backyards first.

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
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Actually, I am famaliar with the claims from polonium halos, which were published in peer-reviewed journals, and have never seen anything in peer-reviewed journals discounting them, have you?On the subject of Haeckel's drawings, it appears they were originally exposed in 1868 by : Earnst Haekel‘s Lie There were others that showed that Haeckel actually used the same woodcut depiction for more than one species. I am unsure which of them were evolutionists or not.

more useful comments linkThis message has been edited by randman, 06-22-2005 08:44 PM

Yeah.We have no evidence but Robert Gentry's say-so that these halos can only be caused by polonium. We have some considerable evidence that they can be caused by other isotopes.Further reading:Wakefield, J. Richard , 1988, Geology of Gentry's "Tiny Mystery", Journal of Geological Education, May, 1988.Odom, L.A., and Rink, W.J., 1989, "Giant Radiation-Induced Color Halos in Quartz: Solution to a Riddle," Science, v. 246, pp. 107-109.Collins, Lorence G., 1997, "Polonium Halos and Myrmekite in Pegmatite and Granite," http://www.csun.edu/~vcgeo005/revised8.htm, 9 pgs.

how does posting this picture:
{from http://users.rcn.com/...ltranet/BiologyPages/T/Taxonomy.html}together with this message: (bold and red mine for emPHAsis)Constitute on-going fraud?and your other link says in part: As I understand it the drawings were fudged to make the similarities more apparent, not to make wholesale additions of features to embryos that did not in fact exist.Or do you claim that early human embryos do not have tails and gill pouches? Or that there are other species with similar embryonic developmental stages? Or that embryonic development is more similar the closer the species are related?It seems to me that presenting the drawing and then having a discussion about the accuracy of the depictions and then about the accuracy of the theory is a good way to bring awareness of {mistakes\fakes} and their effect on the understanding of what is correct into common awareness.And the question is: what is being taught in school (to bring this back to the topic) with these drawings? That Haeckel's theory is true or what we know to be the case?{{edited to add reference to picture}}This message has been edited by RAZD, 06*24*2005 08:05 PM

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we are limited in our ability to understand
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You aren't getting my point.Try reading for comprehension: the claim is not what the drawings depict but whether the {fudging\faking} was uncovered by other scientists or by creationists.My point is that it is other scientists, and that creationists are just on the bandwagon. This means they are NOT exposing frauds or fakes as you seem to claim.But you can prove me wrong by citing the original paper that exposed the drawings and then links showing that it was a creationist.Problem is, you already posted a reference that shows it was a scientist and not a creationist .... looks like my original point is still valid.capice?

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we are limited in our ability to understand
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