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by Steve Risner

I've been looking at transition fossils (and their total lack of existence) for the last few blog posts. In the last two on horses and whales, I mentioned how, especially in the case of horses, that the made up lineages are still portrayed in text books in high school and college and are on display in museums even though they've been discredited or, at the very least, shown to be suspicious and certainly not facts. I eluded to Haeckel and his infamous drawings that got him a great deal of acclaim, only to be found to be completely fraudulent a short time later. This, however, has not stopped the drawings or his ideas (which were supported by the fake drawings) from being taught and believed for over a hundred years later. If you're not familiar with Ernst Haeckel's drawings, you're in luck. I have a copy for you:

The idea in question is called recapitulation. Recapitulation, in the sense of evolution, is the belief that our alleged ancestry can be retraced through our development in the womb. This means we should be able to see a human embryo develop through different stages similar to fish, amphibians, and on through apes until we become more human-like. Evangelists for evolution have proclaimed this idea for almost 150 years. But does the evidence fit?

This idea was popular in the 1860's, shortly after Darwin's On the Origin of Species was published. The trouble Haeckel, who believed in this idea wholeheartedly, had was that there was no evidence for it. His solution? Make the evidence up! That's not an exaggeration but a proven fact. Haeckel distorted images of animals in the womb so humans would look like they came from these other animals. He exaggerated the similarities and erased the differences to a large degree. This was actually known very early on, but it was passed along as fact for nearly a century and a half after the fraud was proven. This is because these fake drawings supported evolutionary theory. There's no other explanation for it. In fact, most informed evolutionists have abandoned the idea as told by Haeckel, but it's still presented as evidence for this humanist origins myth.

The fraud goes further. It was reported that he made slight alterations to the images to make them fit his religious belief in evolution from a single common ancestor. However, in 1997, Michael Richardson et al made photographs of embryos at similar stages of development. There are little similarities at all.

These images suggest the deception was large. Haeckel even gave a soft admission to the fraud but blamed it on the artist. He didn't mention that he was the artist. The fraud was declared in the 1870's! That's right—over 140 years ago and we still see the pictures in textbooks and have the idea taught as evidence for Darwinism. It's really despicable.

Here are some interesting things to note concerning development as an embryo: homology is what evolutionists like to talk about. They think it supports their origins myth. Homology just means there are similarities in structures. For example: humans and apes and frogs all have 5 digits on their limbs—fingers and/or toes. Creationists believe this is a strong evidence for a Designer using common anatomical structures. The developmental evidence suggests this is more likely than common ancestry since, in many of the similar structures (which can be a matter of opinion in some cases), they develop completely differently. For instance, the human hand develops from a stub that spreads out and material dissolves from in between what will become fingers. In a frog, the opposite happens: a stump has projections that grow off of it. This is completely different but is only one example of many. If this was due to universal common descent, we would expect them to develop in a similar fashion. They don't.

This is important because it's not isolated to digits or even limbs. It's very often the case in embryonic development and has been known since the late 1800's and flies in the face of what we are told about evolution from a single common ancestor. I was taught this as evidence for evolution in school. I'm sure many of you were, as well, or will be. I was told that humans have gills when they are developing in the womb, showing they have fish as ancestors. This is a distortion of the truth, at best. The gill slits we have often been told about in the human fetus are nothing like gills in fish and do not function for breathing. People who teach this stuff are either completely ignorant about it or just want to proselytize for Darwinism and aren't concerned with the truth.

Embryonic development and homology have been a major problem for evolutionists for a very long time. It's not getting any better for them as we learn more about genetics and development. Homology (similarities between organisms) actually creates a number of issues for naturalism—that meaning evolution from a single common ancestor. Humans and the octopus have very similar eyes but did not acquire them through a shared ancestor. They believe natural, unguided processes independently generated this marvelous structure at least twice. The same is true for a number of other similarities that, according to the theory of evolution, could not have been inherited through a shared ancestor. In some cases, very complex physiology is claimed to have evolved even dozens of times independently but identically. To suggest it evolved once is a stretch. To suggest it evolved exactly the same way dozens of times reduces Darwinism to a naive and foolish attempt to explain away the obvious truth of the Creator God Almighty. Evolution, which is claimed to have a mountain of evidence, literally has none that is not shared with creation. In other words, any evidence for evolution that is actually real is equally valid to explain creation as described by the Bible. Evolution is a farce!

“Now they tell the youngsters in the schools and the students in the universities that evolution is the great unifying principle in biology. They tell us that Darwin explained the diversity of life. The celebrated evolutionist Theodosius Dobzhansky assured us that ‘nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.’ But this is simply not true. The reality is that attempts to reconcile the facts of biology with Darwin’s theory give rise to many and deep problems.” -Dominic Statham

He uses the phrase “many and deep problems” because a noteworthy evolutionist, Gunter Wagner, tells us there are many and deep problems with reconciling evolutionary theory with embryonic development. George Gaylord Simpson said, “It is now firmly established that ontogeny does not repeat phylogeny.” This means recapitulation has not had any evidence and he said this 50 years ago! Keith Stewart Thomson said, “In seeking to understand why the Haeckelian view persisted so long, we have also to consider the alternatives. We often are highly conservative and will hold to a viewpoint longer than is justified when there is no alternative or, worse, when the logical alternative upsets the rest of our world view.”

The facts of the hoax of Darwinism need to be taught to our children and, for the most part, to adults as well. The lies, fraud, and misrepresentations are really all there is to common descent, aka evolutionary theory. Well, that and imagination. It saddens my heart to see Christians who have bought into this deception and have tried to manipulate Christianity and the Bible to accept these lies which I honestly believe come from the pit of hell. More people have lost faith in Christ because of this nonsense than much else in recent years, in my opinion. I could be wrong, but if it's not the top reason for many it's near the top, especially among those with a college education. There is literally no reason to believe in evolution from a common ancestor which is not a scientific study but a belief system—a religion.

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