Whats Wrong With Evolution.ppt

Page
3

Slide 20

Slide 21

“This news might not have been so shocking to Haeckel’s peers in Germany a century ago: They got Haeckel to admit that he relied

on memory and used artistic license in preparing his drawings, says Scott Gilbert,

a developmental biologist at

Swarthore College in Pennsylvania.

But Haeckel’s confession got lost after

his drawings were subsequently used in a 1901 book called Darwin and After Darwin and reproduced widely

in English-language biology texts.”

— Elizabeth Pennisi. 1997 (Sept. 5). “Haeckel’s Embryos:

Fraud Rediscovered.” Science 277:1435.

Slide 22

Slide 23

Slide 24

Ernst Haeckel’s Influence (according to Stephen Jay Gould)

“Haeckel’s forceful, eminently comprehensible, if not always accurate, books appeared in all major languages and surely exerted more influence than the works of any other scientist, including Darwin and Huxley (by Huxley’s own frank admission), in convincing people throughout the world about the validity of evolution.”

“. . . we do, I think, have the right to be both astonished and ashamed by the century of mindless recycling that has led to the persistence of these drawings in a large number, if not a majority, of modern textbooks!”

Slide 25

Ernst Haeckel’s Influence (Michael Behe’s personal story)

After citing Elizabeth Pennisi’s article, Behe says:]

“. . . the misleading drawings were used in biology texts

for a hundred years because they were thought to support Darwinian evolution. In seventh grade in parochial school my wife’s science class was shown Haeckel’s drawings by their teacher, a Holy Cross brother. ‘Evolution is true,’ the good Brother told them with a flourish, ‘get used to it.’ He certainly thought he was giving his students the straight facts, and he wanted them to form their views in weighty matters based on those facts. But, unknown to him, the facts were fraudulent.”

— Michael Behe. In William A. Dembski (ed.). 2004.

Uncommon dissent: intellectuals who find Darwinism unconvincing.

Wilmington, Delaware: ISI Books. p. 147.

Slide 26

Charles Darwin’s Favourite Evidence

Hardly any point gave me so much satisfaction when I

was at work on the Origin, as the explanation of the wide difference in many classes between the embryo and the adult animal, and of the close resemblance of the embryos within the same class. . . . Within late years several reviewers have given the whole credit to Fritz Müller and [Ernst] Häckel, who undoubtedly have worked it out much more fully,