Tamara writes:
I just had to repost this from another forum I frequent.
Evolution mis-education in full force. And some people said here that calling those damn pouches gill slits does not matter! Arggh!
Repost begins here:
Oh dear, I forgot!, I have more personal "proof" of human evolution. ...
In my quotation from Tamara's post, I have added a bit of formatting.
Tamara is not repeating her own words; she is quoting from some other unnamed source.
Tamara: if you hit the edit button at the bottom of this post, you will see how I use tags. There are various ways to use tags to help show what are not your own words, but quoted from another source.
Overuse of tags can make posts unreadable, but a little bit of formatting is a big help. In particular, using the "[ indent]" tag (without the space) is a great way to make a quoted extract stand out from your own text, and would have avoided some of the confusion of others reading your post.
Is this really an example of "evolutionist mis-education" in full force? It reads like some badly confused individual; and I'm in favour of being a bit gentle with people who get confused on such details of biology. It is hard to tell if this is worth getting worked up about; no source is given.
It would be a different matter if mis-information was present in some formal teaching context, like a text book. There are isolated cases of texts which suggest the notion of embryos recapitulating the adult forms of their evolutionary ancestors; and creationists frequently inflate this to misrepresent any mention of this model as an attempt to teach it. I've seen excellent texts that give completely accurate historical information about this notion of Haeckel, and why it is incorrect, and then give an accurate discussion of evidence for evolution which can be seen in embryonic development. And yet these very texts are still being cited as being part of so-called "evolutionist mis-information" by charlatans like Jonathan Wells in his atrocious
Icons of Evolution.
In my experience, by far the majority of texts being used in biology explain the "gill slits" or "pharyngeal pouches" perfectly well. I do not think there is a problem about persistent evolutionist mis-information here.
In any technical field, there is a problem that students or amateurs get details incorrect from time to time. That is part of learning.
So Tamara: what's your point here? Sure, the person you are quoting is confused. You'll find confused individuals all over the place, in any technical subject. Is there something about this instance which is of any significance?
If your point is that there might be a few individuals who still manage to repeat Haeckel's long discredited notions of recapitulation in spite of the best efforts of education, then I agree; and I'd encourage you to give a helpful correction, with reference to just about any major biological text to help explain the actual state of affairs.
If you consider that there is a deeper malaise in education which actually promulgates such errors, then you need a better example, like an actual text book or lesson plan which makes this error.
Cheers -- Sylas