Great Debate: Nuggin v. Randman

Nuggins, this isn't going anywhere if you don't admit reality. Heackel's drawing as I repeatedly showed have not been used primarily to show something historical nicety that has been corrected, but as factual descriptions which evolutionists rely on, both to teach and in research.Do you accept this or not?If you won't accept historical fact, then it's useless debating with you and imo, you are being disingenious and not owning up to something completely verifiable, and repeatedly verified by me. It's like if I was claiming Bush was president, and you insisted he was not.I have provided pics with statements referring to the drawings as illustrations for current, not historical teachings. I have repeated that same pic twice even. I have provided several other citations of specific instances of Haeckel's drawings used for current theory, and showed where 2 evolutionist scientists admit the same thing.Here is this pic for the third time. http://www.bible.ca/...iology-barrett-prentice-hall-1986.gifTHis is what they say. For you to pretend they are not presenting Haeckel's drawings as accurate is dingenious, and indicative of the general deceptive practices of evolutionists.Here are additional comments following Haeckel's drawings in other textbooks. [qs] "Figure 20.7. All vertebrates have similar gill slits as embryos (upper diagrams). The different fates of the structures associated with the gill slits in a shark and in man are illustrated in the lower diagrams." ... "{/qsThe specifically refer to faked portions of Haeckel's drawings to make false claims based on the faulty data.I gotta go, but you cannot run from this forever. Haeckel faked his drawings and evos relied on his drawings for over 100 years to be factually accurate when they are not.This message has been edited by randman, 12-10-2005 09:14 PM

Apparently you didn't even read the message you responded to.I have said, and will say once again, that Haeckel's drawings can and should be used to a) teach the history and/or b) teach the concept.You feel that they are presented as the sum total of data on the theory.I'm sure that there are textbooks that actually and literally say this.Just as I am sure that there are textbooks which present Haeckel's work as some, but not all of the data.Just as you have shown that there are textbooks which present Haeckel's work in a historical perspective.You are getting mad because there is not a uniform method for textbook creation spanning a 100 year period, countless authors, and used to educate everyone from 3rd grade to post-grad.If you could write a textbook which would be 100% factually accurate today, factually accurate 100 years from now, and would express all the concepts so that a young child and a post doc student could read it and come away feeling they'd learned something, I would buy it. Hell, I'd buy 10 of them.But don't get angry with me, or science, just because such a textbook does not exist. What I have said, quite clearly, is that there is a difference between something being inaccurate and something being fraud.I don't believe that Haeckel was committing fraud. I do believe that there were mistakes in his drawings.Do the mistakes cut in his favor? Not always. Haeckel's drawings don't necessarily agree with Haeckel's own theory. Seems a little silly for the man to intentionally doctor his own work in order to discredit his theory. Speaking of running from something, I noticed that you dropped the topic of whale evolution like it was a hot rock.

I am generally unhappy with the tone this thread has slid into, and I take resposibility for it.The original intent here was not to get into mud slinging, but to hear each other out.Unfortunately, this topic is not much of a "feel the other guy out" kind of topic. Too many links and quote from experts who know more than either of us ever will.You've made some good points about Haeckel, I've raised my objections to your points.I've made some good points about recapitulation, you've raised your objections to my points.We both have our evidence, and we both apparently disregard the others evidence as being faulty.As a result we haven't made much progress.I do think that we've gotten somewhere with this. I certainly know more about Haeckel now than I ever wanted to. And, I'd like to continue one on one debating with you, but let's drop the hostilities and move onto a new topic.Perferably something that's either way more fun than Haeckel, or something where we can express ideas of our own.Here are some suggestions:
-Giants of the past - I know you've tried to get this thread going before and been shut down.
-Where is the line between micro and macro evolution?
-Randman Believes - While I know you aren't a YEC, I don't feel I have a good understanding of where you fall on this whole topic.
-Archie! Flying lizard or lizard bodied bird? - One of my personal favorites.Or, if you're completely fed up with me, I understand and we'll go our seperate ways.Have a good weekend

Haeckel's drawings are used as evidence, btw, not of a few hypothetical claims of suppossed recapitulation of vestigal organs, as you claim, but as deception in showing as accurate various stages being similar when they are not.In other words, the process the drawings show do not occur. It is a lie. To teach a lie of a large process, showing it as real, so that you can reinforce claims of some potential vestigal organs, very, very few, is lying.That's what evos are doing, and I don't think I can be more blunt than that.Let me put it this way. Let's say that I claim everyone that takes this pill will grow 3 inches, and put up before and after shots, and show 10 people that grew 3 inches, and called it recapitulation.But in reality, no one gree 3 inches. There was however one or two people, still teens so there are other explanations, that grew .5 inches.Would it be OK to put the original doctored photos in as evidence to show that recapitulation is true? Heck, you can't even do that in advertising. It's a criminal offense, and those guys can get away with making all sorts of suggestions.Basically, evolutionism has some of the lowest standards, not just for science, but for anything. It's crookedness and deceit.Btw, Haeckel did intentionally doctor his work. Just look at the depictions. He included the same pseudo-gill slits in all the embryos for example, even though they do not exist in real life or look like them. He falsely stated their stages of development time-wise. He used the same cut-out for more than one species. He fabricated evidence.And here is the last point you are running from, imo. It is not just textbooks, but college professors, researhers in the field, etc,...that believed and maintained that Haeckel's drawings were accurate and falsely insisted his claims were true when they were not.It's not science, but indoctrination. Reminds me very much of how people could and can use religious doctrine to insist it everyone that rejects it is a heretic.This message has been edited by randman, 12-10-2005 09:53 PM

Before posting the one that is very contentious. I think there is a pattern here with the way data is being used, and yes, it is upsetting, and I wanted to avoid making this personal, but let me try to explain how some of this appears to me.Initially, you admitted Haeckel's stuff was wrong, but said they were not being used except as historical references. I think you may still be holding to that.But it's clear that evolutionists themselves admit that they widely accepted and used Haeckel's work and data as accurate, not just for textbooks, but for their peer-reviewed work.Then, you started saying, hey, maybe they are OK for teaching materials. It appears as if you are backtracking and not admitting to the history here of what has occurred, and this history and present use of data is what I am getting at.I posted a lot of material, and not sure if you read it, and we can discuss embryonic data, but I think you miss what is happening here.Evos are just loathe to get rid of an argument, even if completely false, because these arguments are the basic tenets of their faith rather than real science. So they flip-flop. As scientists, they may come out and say, hey, Haeckel's drawings are one of the biggest fakes in all of biology and Richardson said that. He said that exact phrase, "one of the biggest fakes in all biology."But then as religionists, a few years later after creationists rubbed it in that the creationists were telling the truth for the last 100 years on this stuff, the evos, in this case Richardson, start backtracking and preserving "one of the biggest fakes."What do you think someone not predisposed to automatically accept evo's should think about it?If this was being done in some other field, what would you think about it?About trying to minimize the fact evos accepted and taught a lie, a fake?
About trying to even resurrect the Biogenetic law?Look at your stance. You suggest it's OK if we use Haeckel to demonstrate the concept. What concept? That all of these embryos share single identical stages. That's his claim and what the doctored pics show. They are not dealing with some instances of a potential whale leg. They are making a wholesale claim for all embyos across the board, and so to use his drawings to make your claims is blatant propaganda and deception. To use doctored photos and believe and tell people they are accurate, or largely accurate, or anything like that is totally wrong. It is lying.Those embryos do not share identical stages.But evos seem to think it's OK to use such a gross exagerration and overstatement, and even hoax, to present "the concept", and then use some small details that don't support the claim, but are really a separate claim, and think that's OK.From what I can tell, the same false reasoning processes governing the way they cling to using doctored drawings and false claims with Haeckel, governs how they treat all data across the board in support of evolution, except maybe genetics, and I just say that because that's an area I am not as educated in.It'd be like showing pictures of the Holocaust and telling people this is what this man did in a trial of a drunk driver that killed someone in an accident. You know, it could be the guy is guilty or not, depending on whether he was drunk, etc,..of manslaughter or something. For sake of argument, it could be that whale legs exist, but to show that all embryos recapitulate and share a highly conserved embryonic stage as evidence to support the notion of whale legs is lying, plain and simple, just as it would be to call a drunker driver a NAZI prison guard. Yea, the ideas are related, but they are not the same.Why the lie?The guy never sent people to prison camps in the Holocaust. Embryos never share a phylotypic stage, which is what Haeckel's drawings claim.Why keep teaching and presenting, as true, a blatant lie?This message has been edited by randman, 12-10-2005 09:49 PM

Let me sum up the discuss so far as I have seen it I don't *know* that Haeckel's stuff is right or wrong. I don't have a large collection of embryos or even a microscope.I took your word for it that they contained factual errors. You posted a number of links that support that they contain factual errors, so I see no reason to contest that.Are Haeckel's illustrations 100% inaccurate? No. They are hand drawn images of embryos. Errors and all they are way better than I could do on my best day.Have Haeckel's theories been taught as fact? You bet. Just because a theory falls out of favor with one group of scientists does not mean that it falls out of favor with all groups simultaneously.Is Haeckel's original theory (unmodified) currently taught as fact? I don't believe that it is. I think the theory of adult form recapitulation is very much out of favor. No one thinks that you can cut open a woman and take out a pig embryo.Are theories based on Haeckel's theory (modified) currently being taught as fact? Yes. As they should - more on this below.Haeckel proposed a theory. He offered data to support that theory. That data is problematic, as is his complete theory. However, that does not mean that Haeckel was 100% wrong.Let's say you came up with a theory about the origins of life on Mars and you completely made up a collection of data giving examples of life on Mars. You would be falsifying data. But, what if we travelled to Mars and discovered life there, and discovered that your theory about the origins of life on Mars was correct (although your data was still incorrect). We are now left with a theory which is valuable, which describes what we see in the real world, but also a collection of data which is incorrect. Do we discard your theory?I feel that Haeckel was onto something, that recapitulation does in fact take place, and that there is evidence which supports this. As such, Haechel's work deserves to be taught in schools. If Haeckel's drawings or similiar drawings get that point across - fantastic.Now, let's get down to brass tacs.You believe that the "gill slit" stuff is completely wrong. I am no expert on embryo development, but it smacks me as being wrong as well. So, I'm all for the "gill slit" stuff to be taken out and replaced by better material.But, your stance on whale limbs makes me think you are just arguing from a religious stand point.Clearly there is plenty of evidence to show that ancestors of modern whales seen in the fossil record have larger hind legs the further back you go, until we find creatures with fully functioning hind limbs. Additionally, I have shown evidence of hind limbs in modern whale embryos - which you have agreed become internal leg bones found within modern whales.As near as I can figure, your counter argument seems to be that the genetic variability within whales includes those features we see in the fossil record - so by that line of thinking pakicetus is just an extreme version of the genetic variability within whales as a group.You have your disagreements with recapitulation as I have described it. That's fine. I'm not asking that you write a textbook and include it. However, the evidence supports what I am describing, therefore it belongs in the textbooks.

Well, it took 170 posts, but I have officially won the argument. Godwin's Law Yay for me!

Nuggins, you threw in the towel when you started resorting to bashing Bush and the neocons. That's the science version of the Hitler rule. When in a science debate, you resort to attacking the neocons, .....For you guys, the neocons and Hitler seen roughly analogous, or is that homologous? So I'd say you lost it about 10 pages back.This message has been edited by randman, 12-11-2005 02:16 PM

I think it's well-established:1. Haeckel faked his famous comparitive drawing sets to make it look like embryos shared a highly conserved stage.Agreed?2. Haeckel's drawings, and the underlying claims of embryos sharing a highly conserved stage, were and sometimes still are accepted and used in research, scientific articles in peer-reviewed journals, textbooks, classes, etc,....But embryos do not actually share a highly conserved stage, nor do embryos more closely related always appear and develop more similarly than embryos less closely related; that Haeckel was thus wrong to claim a Biogenetic law and a single phylotypic stage, and his data was wrong too, possible whale legs nonetheless (which are not shown by the way in his drawings).Agreed?3. That using false data to make an argument is wrong.Agreed?4. Therefore, evolutionists have had a standing practice for well over 100 years of justifying and using faked data, and passing off fakes as real data to themselves and the public.The above 4 points are the core of this debate, and imo, are totally uncontestable and proven.Now, to get into embryonic similarities that do not reflect Haeckelian theory of either the Biogenetic law or a highly conserved stage (since those theories were wrong, and the diagrams used to illustrate those ideas are fakes), I asked you some specific questions about why if embryos recapitulate, that more genetically related embryos are not always more similar than less genetically related embryos.Why is that?This message has been edited by randman, 12-11-2005 02:25 PM

Hehe, touchewe'll call that the Randman Law

I like the sound of that. Maybe the randman rule flows better though.

How many times do I have to answer this. Yes, Haeckel's drawings do not accurately reflect reality. Some of the mistakes reinforced his theory. Weither or not this is an intentional fraud on his part or an unintentional inkblot situation where he sees what he wants to see, I do not know. Were? Yes. Sometimes still are? That depends on what you mean by "highly conserved stage". I seriously doubt that anyone is doing research based solely on Haeckel's original drawings. In the strictest sense, yes. His Biogenetic Law, if taken verbatim with no accounting for additional data, is not valid. Just like Newton's Laws do not hold up when you run them by particle physics. However, that does not mean that the spark of the idea present in Newton's laws is therefore false. Knowingly using false data is morally wrong. Using data which you believe to be correct is not morally wrong, even if the end result is actually incorrect. Here's where you are over reaching. What you are trying to imply is that evolutionists have intentionally mislead the public by knowingly presenting false data. However, you have not shown that.Additionally, a sub-implication here is that all evolutionists knew/should have known about Haeckel's drawings. That's an unreasonable assumption to make.Further, you have completely left out whole other fields of science that Haeckel influenced. Are you willing to say that all of Freud's work is invalid, or that he deliberately mislead people, because he was a believer in Haeckel's Biogenetic law?Additionally, you are implying is that Haeckel's Law is a cornerstone (and necessary part) of evolutionary theory. Frankly, it isn't. You could strike Haeckel and embryology from textbooks completely and still teach evolution without a hitch.Lastly, you are trying to suggest that a theory which had rocky beginnings is automatically invalid no matter what additional evidence is discovered.As I showed with geocentric astronomy vs modern astronomy, several core assumptions were wrong, while several other core assumptions were correct.By your accounting, Venus is not a planet and does not follow an orbit because it was once though that Venus orbitted the Earth.How many years was geocentric astronomy the law of the land (and church)? I'm gonna bet it was more than 100. Not so, at the very core is weither or not recapitulation is true.If recapitulation is 100% false, then everything you claim above is absolutely correct.If recapitulation is even partially true, then your demands are draconian and unrealistic.Additionally, you have failed to suggest an answer which accounts for the data. Nothing you have presented answers both what we see in embryos, living species and the fossil record.If you can not present a different theory which unifies that data, there's no reason to discard the one which does. They were fakes? You mean they weren't drawn by Haeckel? Who drew them then and when?Or do you mean, "the diagrams used to illustrate those ideas were erroneous"? I am not doubting this assumption on your part, but I'm having trouble finding an example. Can you post some embryo pictures of closely related species which look more like distantly related species.The only thing I can come up with in my imagination at the moment is that an eel embryo probably looks very snake like and vice versa, but snakes are more closely related to turtles than to eels.However, obviously, snakes are more morphologically similiar to eels than to turtles, so it stands to reason that we'd expect similiar physical development in snakes and eels than either when compaired to a turtle.I assume there are other examples, just having trouble guessing what they are.

Let's deal with this first. You have read, I assume, the earlier comments where Richardson said this was "one of the biggest fakes in all of biology." You can easily tell by viewing the depictions, such as presenting all the embryos with exagerrated pharyngeal arches as the same stage when that does not occur.Here is some additional material. Haeckel's Embryos : It is well nigh undeniable that Haeckel faked his drawings to make embryos appear more similar than they did in real life.Can you admit that now?Note as a fyi: : I threw this last quote in there to show you that Haeckel's claims were qualitatively different than merely claiming embryonic similarities. You seem to think that Haeckel originated Van Baer's claims at times, and fail to understand the differences between them, or the context of the debate on recapitulation. Not knocking on you, but it would be good to learn a little about the evolution of these ideas. I think if you did, you might see why so many like myself consider it an outrage to include Haeckel's drawings and ideas as "teaching tools."

Why is it unreasonable to expect evos when they make evidentiary claims to have actually verified at some point that the claims were true?

The debate imo is how evos use data. Take your quote above. You use the term recapitulation in the same deceptive, unscientific manner. Theories have specific meanings. The Theory of Recapitulation was the Biogenetic Law, which was wrong.Then, evos claimed another Theory of Recapitulation, the single phylotypic stage, and it was also wrong.You are claiming that some claims of recapitulation somehow validate the prior 2 theories, and that is wrong and deceptive. Keep in mind Haeckel's drawings say nothing about the examples you gave of potential whale legs. Using Haeckel's drawings is claiming more embryonic similarity than what exists.It is a form of lying because evos are claiming that it's OK to make a false wider claim in order to substantiate a debatable smaller claim. How so? How can you present something as totally true when you know it is not, and claim it's OK to lie about the process in order to make claims that you feel are partially true?Keep in mind Haeckel was not claiming recapitulation occurs in some small minor features. That is not what his drawings show either. What you are saying is like a real estate agent showing a mansion, and then when the person buys the house, there is a shack out back with no running water or electricity, and you say, well, the concept was in the big picture. So it's OK.NO, it's not OK. It's lying. You could have a dozen actual instances of what you call recapitulation, or even a hundreds, and using Haeckel's drawings would still be lying.Keep in mind you have no real evidence of recapitulation since the whale bones are attached to muscles as well as the human bones at the base of the spine, and so do serve a function.In other words, one could just as easily claim the whales are just beginning to evolve a hind limb as claiming the limbs are vestigal.But once again, the whole issue is a moot point since the embryonic claims evos present are false. You cannot say, well, if only part of what we claim is true, then the lies we tell are not lies.That's not how truth and honesty work.