From LindaLou:
You are wrong too, as LinearAQ told you, because you have made a very silly strawman out of what Haeckel actually said.
From LinearAq:
But Hackel's hypothesis didn't say that. It was about the similarities between the embryos of different species and how they diverged from each other during development.
It is quite true that Häckel never made the claims attributed to him in the straw-man argument I presented. I shan't try terribly hard to wring further acknowledgments of truth from hostile witnesses in this thread. Instead, I shall proceed to the point.
Suppose for a moment, one desires to be a flat-earther, and wants to be respected. Step one: invent a new label. "Non-curved environmentalist" will suffice for this example. Step two: make the new label appear distinct from that which has been discredited. How to do so, while still remaining a flat-earther?
One way would be to assign a false belief to flat-earthism, and demolish it. Claim the flat earth theory requires lead plumbing and pumps to maintain water levels, and then prove/accept that no such plumbing can be found. By use of the straw-man, proceed to claim that Non-curved environmentalsim is modern & enlightened, and flat earthism is primitive rubbish.
See how that works? See the importance of the straw man in this process? Please consider the following from the wiki link provided by LinearAq, with a little bold emphasis:
Haeckel's recapitulation theory claims that the development of advanced species was seen to pass through stages represented by adult organisms of more primitive species.[2] Otherwise put, each successive stage in the development of an individual represents one of the adult forms that appeared in its evolutionary history.
And
For example, Haeckel believed that the human embryo with gill slits (pharyngeal arches) in the neck not only signified a fishlike ancestor, but represented an adult "fishlike" developmental stage.
This is the very same straw man I presented in the opening post of this topic. I maintained that nobody could ever have believed this nonsense, and I expect everyone can readily see that this is so.
Do other evolutionists employ this very straw man? I'll add some bold to
another example: The idea that the development of individuals is a progression through adult ancestral forms, epitomised in the saying "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny", has played an important part in the history of biology. Since the rejection of recapitulationist ideas in the early part of this century, however, the study of links between development and evolution has been relatively neglected. Ontogeny and Phylogeny is divided into two roughly equal sections. The first is an outline of the history of the idea of recapitulation and the second presents the author's own ideas on the relationship between evolution and development.
When we look at what Häckel's drawings, they do not contain adult versions of
any creature! Evolutionists have created their own straw man, and they continue to push the very same thing they "disavow". See LindaLou's link to talkdeceptions for a fine example. Have they more examples, redefined terms, newly-invented terms, and elaborations? Yes. Does their current teaching differ from the
(actual) discredited Recap Theory in any significant way? Not at all! Do they maintain it's evidence for evolutionism? You bet!
