The Fact Of Creation: Confessions Of The Evolutionists

In the 19th century, the theory of evolution began to exert an influence over a wide sphere, beyond such branches of science as biology and paleontology, extending from human relations to the analysis of history, from politics to society. Efforts were made to adapt Darwin's idea of the struggle for survival in nature-as a result of which the fittest would survive while the weak were eliminated-to human thought and behavior. Applying Darwin's claim that nature was a battleground to human societies served as a justification of class conflicts, a social order in which the strong oppressed the weak, racism, colonialism, exploitation, repression and other forms of inhumanity.

Reading between the lines, even evolutionists admit the inhumanity that Darwinist ideas continue to inflict on societies.

Theodosius Dobzhansky is a geneticist and evolutionary biologist at Columbia University:

Natural selection can favor egoism, hedonism, cowardice instead of bravery, cheating and exploitation, while group ethics in virtually all societies tend to counteract or forbid such "natural" behavior, and to glorify their opposites: kindness, generosity and even self-sacrifice for the good of others of one's tribe or nation and finally mankind. 462

P. J. Darlington is of Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University, Cambridge:

The first point is that selfishness and violent are inherent in us, inherited from our remotest animal ancestors.... Violence is, then, natural to man, a product of evolution. 463

Robert Wright, author of the book, The Moral Animal:

Evolutionary theory, after all, has a long and largely sordid history of application to human affairs. After being mingled with political philosophy around the turn of the century to form the vague ideology known as "social Darwinism," it played into the hands of racists, fascists, and the most heartless sort of capitalists. 464

Kenneth Hsu:

We were victims of a cruel social ideology that assumes that competition among individuals, classes, nations or races is the natural condition of life, and that it is also natural for the superior to dispossess the inferior... The law of natural selection is not, I will maintain, science. It is an ideology, and a wicked one... 465

462- Theodosius Dobzhansky, "Ethics and Values in Biogical and Cultural Evolution" Zygon, the Journal of Religion and Science, as reported in Los Angeles Times, Part IV (June 16, 1974), p. 6.

463- P.J. Darlington, Evolution for Naturalists, 1980, pp. 243-244.

464- Robert Wright, The Moral Animal, New York:Vintage Books, 1994, p. 7.

465- Earthwatch, March 1989, p. 17; cited in Henry M. Morris, The Long War Against God, Baker Book House, 1989, p. 57.

Evolutionists' Confessions Stating that the Order in the Universe Cannot Have Come about by Chance

Paul Davies is a theoretical physicist and cosmologist at Arizona State University:

Everywhere we look in the Universe, from the far flung galaxies to the deepest recesses of the atom, we encounter order... Central to the idea of a very special, orderly Universe is the concept of information. A highly structured system, displaying a great deal of organized activity, needs a lot of information to describe it. Alternatively, we may say that it contains much information.

We are therefore presented with a curious question. If information and order always has a natural tendency to disappear, where did all the information that makes the world such a special place come from originally? The Universe is like a clock slowly running down. How did it get wound up in the first place?452

Careful measurements put the rate of expansion very close to a critical value at which the universe will just escape its own gravity and expand forever. A little slower and the cosmos would collapse, a little faster and the cosmic material would have long ago completely dispersed. It is interesting to ask precisely how delicately the rate of expansion has been "fine tuned" to fall on this narrow dividing line between two catastrophes.

If at time I S (by which the time pattern of expansion was already firmly established) the expansion rate had differed from its actual value by more than 10-18, it would have been sufficient to throw the delicate balance out. The explosive vigour of the universe is thus matched with almost unbelievable accuracy to its gravitating power. The Big Bang was not evidently any old bang, but an explosion of exquisitely arranged magnitude.453

The laws [of physics]... seem to be the product of exceedingly ingenious design... The universe must have a purpose.454

It is hard to resist that the present structure of the universe, apparently so sensitive to minor alterations in the numbers, has been rather carefully thought out.... The seemingly miraculous concurrence of numerical values that nature has assigned to her fundamental constants must remain the most compelling evidence for an element of cosmic design.455

Had nature opted for a slightly different set of numbers, the world would be a very different place. Probably we would not be here to see it... Recent discoveries about the primeval cosmos oblige us to accept that the expanding universe has been set up in its motion with a cooperation of astonishing precision.456

If the world's finest minds can unravel only with difficulty the deeper workings of nature, how could it be supposed that those workings are merely a mindless accident, a product of blind chance?457

Prof. Fred Hoyle:

If you wanted to produce carbon and oxygen in roughly equal quantities by stellar nucleosynthesis, these are the two basic levels you would have to fix, and your fixing would have to be just about where these levels are actually found to be... A commonsense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed with physics... and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature.458

I do not believe that any scientist who examined the evidence would fail to draw the inference that the laws of nuclear physics have been deliberately designed with regard to the consequences they produce inside the stars.459

Hoimar Von Ditfurth is a German professor of neurology and psychiatry and a well-known evolutionist science writer:

If dozens of mutual relationships and just about countless natural phenomena, of which we have only become aware as the result of centuries of experiments and a great deal of hard work by scientists, are not sources of amazement and astonishment, genuine awe, then what will be? There is an endless list of astonishing natural phenomena that we have only learned as the result of scientific research, from the dimensions of the universe and the laws governing the rate of expansion of stars to the secret-filled relationship between matter and energy, and from the events taking place in the cell nucleus, in which is stored the blueprint for a living organism to the discovery of the electrical currents in our brains... Indeed, looking at the unique properties inherent in the formation of a single protein molecule performing biological functions, it appears impossible to account for the atoms needing to combine at the right moment, in the correct sequence, and with the correct electrical and mechanical properties, to do so by chance.460

W. Press, an astrophysicist, writing in an article in Nature magazine:

There is a grand design in the Universe that favors the development of intelligent life.461

452- Paul Davies, The Accidental Universe, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982, Preface.

453- Paul Davies, Superforce: The Search for a Grand Unified Theory of Nature, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1984, p. 184.

454- Ibid., p. 243.

455- Paul Davies. God and the New Physics. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1983, p. 189.

456- Paul Davies. The Accidental Universe, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982, Foreword.

457- Paul Davies, Superforce, pp. 235-236.

458- Fred Hoyle, "The Universe: Past and Present Reflections," Engineering and Science, November 1981, pp. 8-12. 461- Fred Hoyle, Religion and the Scientists, London: SCM, 1959; M. A. Corey, The Natural History of Creation, Maryland: University Press of America, 1995, p. 341.

459- Fred Hoyle, Religion and the Scientists, London: SCM, 1959; M. A. Corey, The Natural History of Creation, Maryland: University Press of America, 1995, p. 341.

460- Hoimar Von Ditfurth, Dinozorlar›n Sessiz Gecesi 1, ["The Silent Night of the Dinosaurs 1"], p. 123.

461- W. Press, "A Place for Teleology?," Nature, Vol. 320, 1986, p. 315.

Materialists' Confessions Stating that the Universe Has a Beginning

Up until the beginning of the 20th century, the prevailing view was that the universe was of infinite dimensions, and that it had always existed, and would continue to exist for ever. According to this view, known as the Static Universe Model, there was no question of the universe having any beginning or an end.

This perspective, which represents the basis of materialist philosophy, regarded the universe as being a stable, fixed and unchanging accumulation of matter, while denying the existence of any Creator. This view is still accepted, in various forms, by evolutionists for ideological reasons. They espouse their claims by maintaining that the universe is eternal end without end. This view, refuted by science, is used by its supporters to keep the false religion of Darwinism alive, in the face of all the scientific evidence.

Today, in the 21st century, modern physics has proven with a certainty that does not permit any hesitations or objections, through many experiments, observations and calculations, that the universe had a beginning and was created in a single moment with an explosion known as the Big Bang. This utterly repudiated all evolutionists’ accounts, claims and statements to the effect that matter and the universe are without beginning or end.

In addition, it has been established that contrary to materialist claims, the universe is not fixed and stable as our Almighty Lord has declared in the Qur'an, but is rather in a constant state of flux and is also expanding. These facts are today accepted by the scientific world.

Hoimar Von Ditfurth is a German professor of neurology and a well-known evolutionist science writer:

To put it another way, scientists encountered phenomena suggesting that the universe had a beginning.

This idea seemed so revolutionary, or unscientific to put it in other terms, or odd, a word beloved of many scientists, that a number of concepts and opinions were put forward in order to avoid the striking conclusion that would be reminiscent of those in ancient myths and religions. We are not going to discuss these often complex concepts and universal models here. Because as stated at the beginning, we consider that the American Penzias and Wilson's (scientists who put forward the Big Bang theory)discoveries represent a final answer to this question. The universe did indeed have a beginning.443

Anthony Flew is a British philosopher known for several decades as an atheist but who later acknowledged that atheism is an empty philosophy and stated that he believed in Allah. He expressed his views about how the Big Bang proved Creation as follows:

Notoriously, confession is good for the soul. I will therefore begin by confessing that the Stratonician atheist has to be embarrassed by the contemporary cosmological consensus. For it seems that the cosmologists are providing a scientific proof, that the universe had a beginning. So long as the universe can be comfortably thought of as being not only without end but also without beginning, it remains easy to urge that its brute existence, and whatever are found to be its most fundamental features, should be accepted as the explanatory ultimates. Although I believe that it remains still correct, it certainly is neither easy nor comfortable to maintain this position in the face of the Big Bang story.444

Dennis Sciama is a scientist who, together with Fred Hoyle (who came up with the steady-state theory), spent many years defending the fixed universe theory. In Stephen Hawking's words:

Defending the steady-state theory alongside Fred Hoyle for years, Dennis Sciama described the final position they had reached after all the evidence for the Big Bang theory was revealed. Sciama stated that he had taken part in the heated debate between the defenders of the steady-state theory and those who tested that theory with the hope of refuting it. He added that he had defended the steady-state theory, not because he deemed it valid, but because he wished that it were valid.

Fred Hoyle stood out against all objections as evidence against this theory began to unfold. Sciama goes on to say that he had first taken a stand along with Hoyle but, as evidence began to pile up, he had to admit that the game was over and that the steady-state theory had to be dismissed.445

Stephen W. Hawking is a British theoretical physicist and professor of mathematics at the University of Cambridge:

Why should the Universe be in a state of high order at one end of time, the end that we call the past? Why is it not in a state of complete disorder at all times? After all, this might seem more probable. And why is the direction of time in which disorder increases the same as that in which the Universe expands? One possible view is that God simply chose that the Universe should be in a smooth and ordered state at the beginning of the expansion phase. We should not try to understand why, or question His reasons because the beginning of the Universe was the work of God. But the whole history of the Universe could be said to be the work of God.446

Don N. Page is professor of physics at the University of Alberta:

There is no mechanism known as yet that would allow the Universe to begin in an arbitrary state and then evolve to its present highly ordered state.447

Prof. Dr. Ali Demirsoy is a biologist at Hacettepe University and specializes in zoogeography:

Today, however, we know that infinite time and infinite space belong to God, that the universe is finite...448

Hoimar Von Ditfurth:

We cannot know what there was before this point and at its beginning. That is a sphere closed to science. Even the question of why there was a beginning is unanswerable. In addition, the questions of the origins of the first structure of the initial matter, hydrogen, its characteristics, and what gave rise to that hydrogen, are all parts of this mystery.449

Leonard Huxley is a biographer and writer, and elder professor of physics at the University of Adelaide:

... "creation" in the ordinary sense of the world, is perfectly conceivable. I find no difficulty in conceiving that, at some former period, this universe was not in existence; and that it made its appearance in six days... in consequence of the volition of some pre-existing Being.450

Prof. Fred Hoyle is a British astronomer and a mathematician at Cambridge University:

The Big Bang theory holds that the universe began with a single explosion. Yet as can be seen below, an explosion merely throws matter apart, while the Big Bang has mysteriously produced the opposite effect-with matter clumping together in the form of galaxies.451

443- Hoimar Von Ditfurth, Dinozorlar›n Sessiz Gecesi 1 (The Silent Night of the Dinosaurs), p. 56.

444- Henry Margenau, Roy Abraham Vargesse, Cosmos, Bios, Theos, La Salle II: Open Court Publishing, 1992, p. 241.

445- Stephen Hawking, Evreni Kucaklayan Karinca, Alkim Kitapcilik ve Yayincilik, 1993, pp. 62-63.

446- Stephen W. Hawking, "The Direction of Time," New Scientist, Vol. 115, 9 July 1987, p. 47.

447- Don N. Page, "Inflation Does Not Explain Time Asymmetry," Nature, Vol. 304, July 7, 1983, p. 40.

448- Prof. Dr. Ali Demirsoy, Kal›t›m ve Evrim ["Heredity and Evolution"], p. 21.

449- Hoimar Von Ditfurth, Dinozorlar›n Sessiz Gecesi 3 ["The Silent Night of the Dinosaurs 3"], p. 7.

450- Leonard Huxley, Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley, MacMillan, 1938, Vol.1. p. 241.

451- Fred Hoyle, The Intelligent Universe, London, 1984, pp. 184-185.

Evolutionists' Confessions Stating that Life Can Only Have Been Created

Every living thing in the world has been equipped with flawless systems and immaculate harmony. The impeccable biological characteristics and systems that living things possess to protect themselves, reproduce, feed or hunt, and their compatibility with their environmental surroundings, is definitive evidence of the existence of a single Creator.

The planned activity that even a tiny caterpillar demonstrates in order to protect and camouflage itself, the combs that honeybees construct using sophisticated mathematical calculations, and the muscles possessed by the mosquito, and equipment which today's technology can only imitate as a general concept, accurate down to millimetrical levels, through which it is able to beat its wings 1,000 times a second, all introduce us to the supreme and extraordinary artistry of our Omniscient Lord.

No evolutionist can explain how these characteristics came into existence, because mechanisms such as random mutations and natural selection cannot give rise to these perfections. Evolutionists are in fact perfectly well aware of this. But some are reluctant to say so, for the sake of their ideology, while others express their despair in the face of all the miraculous attributes they observe in all living things. They have generally had to admit that such perfection exists in these living creatures, for which reason a conscious Intelligence has been manifested in these.

Darwin himself was one of the first to admit this.

Charles Darwin:

I cannot anyhow be contented to view this wonderful universe, and especially the nature of man... I am inclined to look at everything as resulting from designed laws... All these laws may have been expressly designed by an omniscient Creator, who foresaw every future event and consequence. But the more I think, the more bewildered I become.417

I am conscious that I am in an utterly hopeless muddle. I cannot think that the world, as we see it, is the result of chance…418

I could give many most striking and curious illustrations in all [biological] classes; so many that I think it cannot be chance.419

You have most cleverly hit on one point, which has greatly troubled me; if, as I must think, external conditions produce little direct effect, what the devil determines each particular variation?420

I remember well the time when the thought of the eye made me cold all over, but I have got over this stage of complaint... and now trifling particulars of structure often make me very uncomfortable. The sight of a feather in a peacock's tail, whenever I gaze at it, makes me sick.421

Roger Lewin is a well-known evolutionist science writer and former editor of New Scientist magazine:

Much of evolution looks as if it had been planned to result in man, and in other animals and plants to make the world a suitable place for him to dwell in. Like Wallace, Broom also saw a spiritual guiding hand behind the whole process.422

Prof. Fred Hoyle, a British astronomer and a mathematician at Cambridge University:

Once we see, however, that the probability of life originating at random is so utterly minuscule as to make it absurd, it becomes sensible to think that the favourable properties of physics on which life depends are in every respect deliberate.423

Rather than accept that fantastically small probability of life having arisen through the blind forces of nature, it seemed better to suppose that the origin of life was a deliberate intellectual act. By "better." I mean less likely to be wrong.424

David M. Raup:

It is certainly true that one would be most unlikely to develop a functioning flying insect, reptile, or bird by a chance collection of changes. Some sort of guidance is necessary.425

Prof. Cemal Yıldırım:

According to some critics, equating evolution with natural selection alone is like expecting a cat or a pigeon sat at a typewriter keyboard to be able to write Shakespeare's Hamlet or Goethe's Faust by tapping the keys for a million years. When we examine even the simplest life form, however, we cannot ignore the fact that a sublime intelligence has played an active role in it.426

It is far from being convincing to attribute this order in living things, which seems to have a particular purpose, to chance or coincidence.427

Niles Eldredge is an evolutionist paleontologist at the American Museum of Natural History:

Indeed, the only competing explanation for the order we all see in the biological world is the notion of Special Creation.428

Hoimar Von Ditfurth is a German professor of neurology and psychiatry and a well-known evolutionist science writer:

These two polymers [egg white and nucleic acids] have been constructed in such a complex manner and, as if that were not enough, their structures exhibit such a high level of individuality that to imagine these came to that level by acquiring wealth solely as the result of chance goes far beyond being even an astronomically and inconceivably small possibility.429

The statistical impossibility of the living structures in question emerging as the result of chance alone is a rather current example of the present-day level of development of science. Indeed, looking at those extraordinary individual features in the formations of a single protein carrying out biological functions, it appears impossible to explain a large number of atoms combining together, all in the correct and requisite sequence, at the right time and moment and with the right electrical and mechanical features, all in terms of chance.430

No matter how large the universe may be, chance giving rise to the birth of protein and nucleic acid is [an] impossibility that...431

It is of course possible to account for the story of the birth of the world in all its details, and the emergence of the complex structure of the building blocks of living organisms in particular, with the possibility of a planned course being followed and the direct intervention of a supernatural power. In fact, we can ascribe the conditions on Earth, and ask why subsequent developments occurred in such an astonishing way as to meet the requirements of life, as if this had been foreseen beforehand, only to the intention to create life from one end of the world to the other of a Creator existing beyond nature, omnipotent.432

The question posed in a mocking tone of voice by one ever-present celebrity during a debate on the origin of life constitutes a well-known example on this subject: "How long would a human being's 1,000 trillion atoms have to be mixed up for a Volkswagen to emerge by chance?" Another variation of the same question is "How long would 100 monkeys have to sit randomly tapping the keys of a typewriter until they produced a single one of Shakespeare's sonnets?" Such objections are really astonishing.433

The life span of the Earth would be insufficient for cytochrome-C (or any other enzyme currently in existence) to be manufactured once again in exactly that form out of coincidences.434

It is more reasonable seeming to think that the development of animate and inanimate nature is the work of a single moment, a flash of creation...435

Attempting to produce a conclusion on the basis that life is the work of a miracle may more reasonable in the current state of affairs.436

Pierre-Paul Grassé is a French biologist and former president of the French Academy of Sciences:

The opportune appearance of mutations permitting animals and plants to meet their needs seems hard to believe. Yet the Darwinian theory is even more demanding: A single plant, a single animal would require thousands and thousands of … appropriate events. Thus, miracles would become the rule: events with an infinitesimal probability could not fail to occur... There is no law against daydreaming, but science must not indulge in it.437

Chance becomes a sort of providence, which, under the cover of atheism, is not named but which is secretly worshiped.438

Susumo Ohno is an American geneticist:

As far as I am concerned, the uniqueness of the immune system lies in its ability to cope with all sorts of previously unexperienced contingencies, thus giving an impression of having evolved in anticipation of future needs. The Darwinian concept of evolution by natural selection does not predict the development of a system that can cope with the future.439

Prof. Ali Demirsoy is a biologist at Hacettepe University in Turkey and specializes in zoogeography:

In essence, the probability of the formation of a cytochrome-C sequence is as likely as zero. That is, if life requires a certain sequence, it can be said that this has a probability likely to be realized once in the whole universe. Otherwise some metaphysical powers beyond our definition must have acted in its formation. To accept the latter is not appropriate for the scientific cause. We thus have to look into the first hypothesis.440

Douglas Futuyma is professor of ecology and evolution at the State University of New York:

Organisms either appeared on the earth fully developed or they did not. If they did not, they must have developed from pre-existing species by some process of modification. If they did appear in a fully developed state, they must indeed have been created by some omnipotent intelligence.441

San Francisco Chronicle:

What really astounds me is the architecture of life.... The system is extremely complex. It's like it was designed.... There's a huge intelligence there.442

417- Francis Darwin, The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Vol. II, p. 105.

418- Ibid., p. 146.

419- Francis Darwin, The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Vol. I, p. 455.

420- Francis Darwin, The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Vol. II, p. 28.

421- Norman Macbeth, Darwin Retried: An Appeal to Reason, p. 101.

422- Lewin, R., In the Age of Mankind: A Smithsonian Book of Human Evolution, Washington D.C.: Smithsonian Books:, 1988, p. 26.

423- Fred Hoyle and N. Chandra Wickramasinghe, Evolution from Space, p. 141.

424- Fred Hoyle, "The Universe: Past and Present Reflections," in Engineering and Science, November 1981, pp. 8, 12.

425- David M. Raup, “Conflicts Between Darwin and Paleontology,” Bulletin, Field Museum of Natural History, vol. 50 (January 1979), 26.

426- Cemal Yildirim, Evrim Kurami ve Bagnazlik [ "Evolution Theory and Bigotry"], p. 62.

427- Ibid., p.108.

428- Niles Eldredge, Time Frames: The Rethinking of Darwinian Evolution and the Theory of Punctuated Equilibria, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1985, p. 29.

429- Hoimar Von Ditfurth, Dinozorlar›n Sessiz Gecesi 1, ["The Silent Night of the Dinosaurs 1"], p. 122.

430- Ibid., p. 123.

431- Ibid., p. 126.

432- Ibid., pp. 126-127.

433- Ibid., p. 260.

434- Ibid., p. 265.

435- Ibid. p. 27.

436- Ibid., p. 91.

437- Pierre-P Grassé, Evolution of Living Organisms, p. 103.

438- Ibid., p. 107.

439- Ohno, Susumo, "The Significance of Gene Duplication in Immunoglobulin", Immunoglobulin, ed. G.W. Litman and R. A. Good, 1978, p. 199.

440- Ali Demirsoy, Kalitim ve Evrim ["Inheritance and Evolution"], p. 61.

441- Douglas J. Futuyma, Science on Trial, New York: Pantheon Books, 1983. p. 197.

442- San Francisco Chronicle, 19 February, 2001.

Evolutionists' Confessions Regarding the Invalidity of the Theory of Recapitulation

The theory of recapitulation, first proposed by Ernst Haeckel towards the end of the 19th century, claimed that during their embryological development, living things repeated the evolutionary process experienced by their forerunners.

He suggested, for example, that during its development in its mother's womb, the human embryo exhibited first fish-like and then reptilian features, before finally becoming human. Subsequently, however, it emerged that this theory was totally a figment of the imagination. In fact, Haeckel himself confessed to the frauds he had perpetrated in the illustrations he produced to support this imaginary scenario. The fact that some evolutionists still give credence to Haeckel's imaginary scenario, and the illustrations that he admitted were fraudulent, shows how far they have lagged behind the scientific literature.

Ernst Haeckel:

After this compromising confession of "forgery," I should be obliged to consider myself condemned and annihilated if I had not the consolation of seeing side by side with me in the prisoner's dock hundreds of fellow-culprits, among them many of the most trusted observers and most esteemed biologists. The great majority of all the diagrams in the best biological textbooks, treatises and journals would incur in the same degree the charge of "forgery," for all of them are inexact, and are more or less doctored, schematisized and constructed. 412

Haeckel's aim in preparing this imaginary picture was to give the impression that living things are descended from one another. But in doing so, Haeckel perpetrated a fraud. In order to be able to point to a similarity among embryos that actually bore no resemblance to one another, he added imaginary sections to them, or else removed others.

Haeckel's theory of recapitulation maintained that during the developmental process, living embryos repeated the evolutionary process undergone by their ancestors. He suggested, for example, that in its mother's womb, a human embryo first exhibited fish-like gills, followed by reptilian characteristics, before finally turning into a human being. Later years, however, showed that this scenario was utterly imaginary. The supposed gills that appear during the earliest stages of development actually turned out to be the middle ear canal and the beginnings of the parathyroid and thymus glands.

Another part of the embryo, equated with a fish's yolk sac was revealed to be a sac that produces blood for the baby. That part described as the tail by Haeckel and his followers is in fact the human backbone and resembles a tail only because it develops before the legs. Evolutionists now describe this hoax committed by Haeckel as one of the worst frauds in biology.

George Gaylord Simpson professor of zoology at Columbia University:

Haeckel misstated the evolutionary principle involved. It is now firmly established that ontogeny does not repeat phylogeny.413

From an article in American Scientist:

Surely the biogenetic law(theory of recapitulation) is as dead as a doornail. It was finally exorcised from biology textbooks in the fifties. As a topic of serious theoretical inquiry it was extinct in the twenties...414

From an article in Science magazine:

The impression [Haeckel's drawings] give, that the embryos are exactly alike, is wrong, says Michael Richardson, an embryologist at St. George's Hospital Medical School in London.... So he and his colleagues did their own comparative study, reexamining and photographing embryos roughly matched by species and age with those Haeckel drew. Lo and behold, the embryos "often looked surprisingly different."

Not only did Haeckel add or omit features, Richardson and his colleagues report, but he also fudged the scale to exaggerate similarities among species, even when there were ten-fold differences in size. Haeckel further blurred differences by neglecting to name the species in most cases, as if one representative was accurate for an entire group of animals. In reality, Richardson and his colleagues note, even closely related embryos such as those of fish vary quite a bit in their appearance and developmental pathway. "It [Haeckel's series of drawings] looks like it's turning out to be one of the most famous fakes in biology,' Richardson concludes.415

From an article in New Scientist:

[Haeckel] called this the biogenetic law, and the idea became popularly known as recapitulation. In fact, Haeckel's strict law was soon shown to be incorrect. For instance, the early human embryo never has functioning gills like a fish, and never passes through stages that look like an adult reptile or monkey.416

412- Francis Hitching, The Neck of the Giraffe: Where Darwin Went Wrong, New York: Ticknor and Fields , 1982, p. 204.

413- G. G. Simpson, W. Beck, An Introduction to Biology, New York: Harcourt Brace and World, , 1965, p. 241.

414- Keith S. Thomson, "Ontogeny and Phylogeny Recapitulated," American Scientist, Vol. 76, May/June 1988, p. 273.

415- Elizabeth Pennisi, "Haeckel's Embryos: Fraud Rediscovered," Science, 5 September, 1997.

416- Ken McNamara, "Embryos and Evolution," New Scientist, vol. 12416, 16 October 1999.