Haeckel in Biology Textbooks

He did it because fiction worked better than fact could have. The facts don't support the story. He seemed to have been desparate to have other people believe what he wanted to believe and he liked evolution as an explanation for life a LOT!! The earliest stages are not most similar, that is the point, so his embryological 'discoveries' were not discoveries at all, they were fraud and deception trying to prove a non-existant point -how can that later become supportive of the theory? Some quote from Darwin that Haeckel's embryos constituted the best evidence for his theory at a particular point -can't find the quote but have heard it often. It is NOT true.Haeckel's story is not true.Evolutionists sure can fool themselves -the story is fraudulent so they just change it to carry on believing in any case. Evolutionists don't mind, there is very little that would or could convince them that evolution is not true. We, on the other hand, keep pointing out the many fraudulent and pure rubbish stories that have been used to convince people of the 'truth' of evolution over the past century plus. This is only one of many.

I have pulled out the first textbook that I could find. It is new. It has Haeckel's embryos in it. It may not call them Haeckel's embryos but it still clearly shows the earliest stages as being the most similar.Haeckel's fraud lives on. Edited by Beretta, : Incomplete

People who lie generally have good excuses for why they did it -it's called justification. It is supposed to turn them from a liar into a person with an excuse for doing what they did.

No, once again, that is not what he was doing. He was fraudulently representing the earliest stages of embryonic development as the most similar and again, this is not true. The midstages are the most similar -so he lied, selected only those cases that supported his case and represented the midstages as the early stages.Even Olsen in Flock of Dodos concedes that the drawings are fraudulent, but he states on camera that "you don’t find them" in recent textbooks as evidence for Darwinian evolution.So what if they are fraudulent, you won't find them in the textbooks in any case. But you do. So they are fraudulent and found in extremely recent textbooks still. I have found the Haeckel's embryo fraudulent scenario in a 2007 textbook -how more recent would you like it? If they are acknowledged as fraud -see my earlier quotes by embryologists as well as Olsen's admission along with his disclaimer that anyone uses them anymore, and add to that Gould's admission that they can only be called fraudulent and you have fraud and deception.
To say that it is only because the drawings were simplified misses the point -the earliest stages are NOT most similar -which was the point of the drawings.

They are not most similar in the earliest stages as Haeckel clearly said they were -they are clearly distinguishable and only become more similar in the midstages. Are you playing dumb or are you deceived OR are you lying for the cause of evolution and it's propogation as truth?

Charles Darwin thought that "by far the strongest" evidence that humans and fish are descended from a common ancestor was the striking similarity of their early embryos. According to Darwin, the fact that "the embryos of the most distinct species belonging to the same class are closely similar, but become, when fully developed, widely dissimilar . reveals community of descent."
But you're right, Haeckel only developed his fraud later to illustrate the point. It would not make sense if evolution were true; but it happens nonetheless so maybe......evolution is not true?!! No, not true. A quote from your article on developmental biology that says they are most similar during the phylotypic stage rather than during the earlier or later stages of development. So obviously by the reckoning of your own article, the phylotypic stage is not the earliest stage and that is my repeated point.So 1)are you trying to deceive me?
2) Were you hoping I would not read the article?
Or 3) did you not read it yourself?Edited by Beretta, : Incomplete

If you look at the molecular level and see the way the different proteins function together to make the flagella work, the schematic is illustrating the principle apon which the motor works via the inter-related protein parts.Haeckel lied completely misrepresenting his whole point and making the drawings fit the lie - putting the flagellar motor concept next to Haeckel's fraud is just plain ridiculous.

"Focus on Life Sciences" Maskew Miller Longman. First published in 2007. Chapter 7 (on evolution) p 121

The problem is that Haeckel presented the earliest stage (in his drawings) as the most similar but they are not most similar in the early stages -they actually start out looking very different, then converge somewhat in appearance midway through development before becoming more different again as adults.So the entire point of the 'ontogenic recapitulation of phylogeny' is lost if the embryos start out looking very different instead of looking very similar.
He represented the phylotypic stage as the early stage that looks most similar but obviously in order to press his point, left out the earlier stages where they look very different. It is fraud if he misrepresents midstages as early stages and fails to mention that they start out very different - which means the common ancestor imagination thing goes right out the window. They have to start out most similar and work through the supposed ancestral stages if what he was trying to say was actually true -which it isn't.

Cleavage is the stage of division during which the fertilized egg subdivides into hundreds of thousands of separate cells.
At the end of cleavage, the cells begin to move and rearrange themselves in the stage known as 'gastrulation'.
Apparently gastrulation even more than cleavage is responsible for establishing the animal's general body plan. and for generating basic tissue types and organ systems.
British embryologist Lewis Wolpert wrote that "it is not birth, marriage, or death, but gastrulation which is truelly the important event in your life."
It is only after cleavage and gastrulation that a vertebrate embryo reaches the stage which Haeckel labelled the 'first'.
Jonathan Wells writes :"If it were true that vertebrates are most similar in the earliest stages of their development (as Darwin and Haeckel claimed) then the various classes would be most similar during cleavage and gastrulation. Yet a survey of five classes (bony fish, amphibian, reptile, bird and mammal)reveals that this is not the case.Differences among the five classes are evident even in the fertilized eggs.Zebrafish and frogs eggs are about 1mm in diameter; turtles and chicks start out as discs about 3-4mm in diameter that rest on top of a large yolk; while the human egg is about 1/10th mm in diameter.The earliest cell divisions in zebrafish, turtle and chick embryos are somewhat similar, but in most frogs they penetrate the yolk.Mammals are completely different however,since one of the second cleavage planes is at a right angle to the other. Continued cleavage in the other 4 classes produces a stable arrangement of cells, but mammalian embryos become a jumbled mass.
At the end of cleavage, the cells of the zebrafish embryo form a large cap on top of the yolk; in the frog they form a ball with a cavity; in the turtle and chick they form a thin 2-layered discon top of the yolk; and in humans they form a disc within a ball.
Cell movements during gastrulation are very different in the five classes: in zebrafish the cells crawl down the outside of the yolk; in frogs they move as a coherent sheet through a pore into the inner cavity; and in turtles, chicks and humans they stream through a furrow into the hollow interior of the embryonic disc.If the implications of Darwin's theory for early vertebrate development were true, we would expect these five classes to be most similar as fertilized eggs; slight differences would appear during cleavage and the classes would diverge even more during gastrulation. What we actually observe however, is that the eggs of the five classes start out noticably different from each other; the cleavage pattern in 4 of the 5 classes show some general similarities, but the pattern in mammals is radically different. In the gastrulation stage, a fish is very different from an amphibian, and both are very different from reptiles, birds and mammals, which are somewhat similar to each other.Whatever pattern can be discerned here, it is certainly not a pattern in which the earliest stages are most similar and the later stages are more different."Embryologist Adam Sedgwick said in 1894 -"it is not necessary to emphasize further these embryonic differences -every embryologist knows that they exist and could bring forward innumerable instances of them. I need only say with regard to them that a species is distinct and distinguishable from its allies from the very earliest stages all through the development."
In 1987 Richard Elinson reported that frogs, chicks and mice "are radically different in such fundamental properties as egg size, fertilization mechanisms, cleavage patterns and gastrulation movements."Jonathan Wells also says: "Surprisingly, after developing quite differently in their early stages, vertebrate embryos become somewhat similar midway through development. It is this midway point that Haeckel chose as the "first" stage for his drawings.Although he greatly exaggerated the similarities at this stage, some similarities are there."
Jonathan Wells again:
"The actual pattern -early differences followed by similarities, then differences again- is quite unexpected in the context of Darwinian evolution. Instead of providing support for his theory, the embryological evidence presents it with a paradox."If one were to start with the evidence, then follow Darwin's reasoning about the implications of development for evolution, one would presumably conclude that the various classes of vertebrates are not descended from a common ancestor, but had separate origins. Since this conclusion is unacceptable to people who have already decided that Darwin's theory is true, they cannot take the embryological evidence at face value, but must reinterpret it to fit the theory. ????

That was Haeckel's whole point and that is the point illustrated in every textbook where it appears -embryos start out looking pretty much the same (heavily exaggerated and carefully selected to illustrate the non-point)and become less similar as they develop.The fact that he left out the big differences in the earliest stages shows that he purposefully misrepresented the actual picture. The fact that he was charged with fraud shows that I am not the only one that appears to understand the problem. If you don't see the relevance as per your last post then there is really no point in carrying on discussing it. We've said all we need to say.I'd like to get back to the other icons but can't find that topic. Was it erased when we were diverted to this thread or can you direct me there?
Thanks

Well the appearance of the first stage drawings is far more like Haeckel's drawings and far less like the actual appearance which gives a false message.
Also the text states:
"You can see a rabbit embryo is more similar to a human embryo than it is to a fish embryo. This similarity provides one piece of evidence indicating that rabbits are more closely related to humans than they are to fishes."Sentence one may or may not be true -the embryos I have pictures of do not include a rabbit but I have read more than enough embryologist's comments to know that the rabbit is probably not as similar as depicted in the picture. In fact they are all far too alike, far more like Haeckel would have liked them to be than they actually are so perhaps the text book writers copied them from Haeckel's drawings even though Haeckel isn't mentioned. Embryologists state that from their earliest stages different vertebrate embryos are easily identifiable and quite different from one another and I have a picture that illustrates the point but do not know how to insert my jpeg image. If you can tell me how, I'll post it. Certainly the fish and human embryos are far more different from one another than they are depicted in this textbook's image.
The problem with the second sentence is that evolution is assumed and relationship is assumed which is more easily done if pictures are altered to look far more similar than they actually are and the phylotypic stage (the midpoint) is shown rather than the first stages which are very different.

He drew false representations. Haeckel's drawings do seem to be reproduced in modern textbooks as can be seen from Modulous' example showing embryos in the phylogenetic stage looking far more similar than they really are - very much like Haeckel's in fact even though Haeckel's name doesn't appear. The one's in my book are just as similar -a series of fish, chicken, human and pig.Thanks for the link anyway.

The thing is they are not more closely related to humans than to fishes. If evolution is true, the embryos of rabbits and humans should look more closely related than do the embryos of fishes and humans BUT the sentence in the book by no means makes that clear -it just says:
This similarity provides one piece of evidence indicating that rabbits ARE more closely related to humans than they are to fishes.Whats wrong with "If evolution is correct....rabbits may be more related to humans than they are to fishes."The way the sentence is written is the way evolutionists like it since they think that evolution is a proven fact like gravity is a fact.
For us who are not convinced, the words indicate indoctrination rather than education because kids wouldn't even know the difference between evidence and proof -they think evidence is proof and so the article is saying that evolution is undoubtably true. Even without the problem with 'evidence' and 'proof', the impression of evolution being an unassailable fact is given clear as day.With embryos chosen so carefully, only at the perfect stage where they look most similar and only those species of embryos that are most fitting for the purpose of demonstrating that which evolutionists would have everyone believe; it is indoctrination pure and simple.

Looks to me like it illustrates my point well also -put them right next to each other and they are nowhere near as alike as they are depicted in textbooks -one wouldn't be able to get one's point across nearly as effectively with the real thing -I'm sure you'd have to agree that the different types are clearly distinguishable.