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Unfortunately, I do not possess Darwin's origin of species. The quote comes from a creationist source. I you do want to invalidate that quote as being misquoted, you'll have to provide the context and show how Darwin was not meaning that our embryos ressemble our ancestors adult forms.
Like many books old enough to be out of copyright the
Origin can be found online. And you should always be very cautious when dealing with using creationists as secondary sources. They often omit important context - or worse. (In fact you should always be cautious using secondary sources - but creationists are among the worst).
You may find the relevant
chapter here.
In this case the omission of the start of the sentence is a pretty clear attempt at deliberate misrepresentation.
On the other hand it is highly probable that with many animals the embryonic or larval stages show us, more or less completely, the condition of the progenitor of the whole group in its adult state.
I have italicised the words omitted.
Also Darwin goes on to support this idea, appealing to the work of Fritz Muller
In the great class of the Crustacea, forms wonderfully distinct from each other, namely, suctorial parasites, cirripedes, entomostraca, and even the malacostraca, appear at first as larvae under the nauplius-form; and as these larvae live and feed in the open sea, and are not adapted for any peculiar habits of life, and from other reasons assigned by Fritz Muller it is probable that at some very remote period an independent adult animal, resembling the nauplius, existed, and subsequently produced, along several divergent lines of descent, the above-named great crustacean groups
There is no specific reference to humans in this case, but there is one to mammals in general.
So again it is probable, from what we know of the embryos of mammals, birds, fishes, and reptiles, that these animals are the modified descendants of some ancient progenitor, which was furnished in its adult state with branchiae, a swimbladder, four finlike limbs, and a long tail, all fitted for an aquatic life.
This should make it clear that the qualifications used by Darwin were genuinely meant.
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I've thought about this a bit and I may be wrong, but doesn't the fact that embryology hasn't developped a complete theory relating it to Darwinian evolution (since embryonic recapitulation) speak about the reticence of embryologist to associate their field to the ToE. Principally because of the errors of the past ?
I don't think so. Certainly there is more work than you seem to be aware of. And 10 years ago "evo-devo" was recognised as a field of research in itself (which in itself required the accumulation of sufficient work to justify it).
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I would disagree. Saying to childrens 'things evolve all the time, such as mickey mouse, etc" and then using this fact to present the ToE as fact is not a strategy that should be promoted at school.
Kids aren't idiots, if they are too young to understand the basic mutation+Natural selection concepts, then it is children indoctrination. If they are old enough to understand these two concepts, why not present them to them ?
If you remember the article you know that the teacher was facing a major obstacle - Creationist indoctrination of the children. He had to work hard to stop the kids just shutting down and rejecting what he had to say.
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We will be discussing this counter-example, as to determine in which category it is. Besides, I could just as quickly find and example this kind from talkorigins.org
I very much doubt it. The CMI argument is one that has been known to be false for decades, at the least. And it is a major part of their discussion of evolution. You might find an old and outdated article on talkorigins.org (especially as the site doesn't seem to be actively maintained), but that would not be a true equivalent.
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Of course, this allopatric model of speciation was an integral part of ponctuated equilibrium. But it is also true that it was Eldredge and Gould who proposed that this speciation process would explain the gaps in the fossil record.
Is it ? Where is your evidence ?
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In other words, why did they favor this model of speciation over another and as such developped ponctuated equilibrium ?
Because it was ALREADY the favoured model of speciation when they formulated their theory. They would need a good reason to use some other model !
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