Tom, The Dancing Bug

MSNBC ^ | 2 July 2005 | Ruben Bolling

[Junior]

I'd love to reproduce some of your posts on the "Darwin Central" section of my website (which is currently under construction."

[MacDorcha]

OK, it's about to be explained.

"Micro" means it's the same species, but has adaptations.

"Macro" would be observing a rat change to a cat. (ie, change from a species to another)

[Modernman]

This was published in textbooks long after it was proven to be a fake. If it's such ironclad, settled science, then why all the fakery?

School textbooks are riddled with errors. There was one notable case where a geography textbook showed the Equator running through Kansas.

It's hardly the fault of the supporters of the TOE that education bureaucracies in this country do a poor job of fact-checking science textbooks.

[Junior]

Why do you feel the need to belittle and criticize the Bible by posting this banal garbage?

The cartoon is not belittling or criticizing the Bible. It is poking fun at people who think the Bible is a science book.

I am beginning to despair at the lack of rational thought evinced on this forum. People have a tendency to go with their initial knee-jerk reaction rather than parsing the actual message. I used to think only liberals were driven by emotion; now I see the tendency is universal.

[Junior]

I will admit that the Christian faith that I had when I signed on to FR has been whittled away to agnosticism, as a direct result of the disengenuousness and sometimes outright block-headed stupidity of the creationists.

I was nearly there myself, but since the Almighty chats with me on a regular basis I figure this might be a bad move.

Creationism is Satan's greatest ploy to discredit Christianity.

[Modernman]

"Macro" would be observing a rat change to a cat. (ie, change from a species to another)

If a rat species evolved into a cat species in one step, that would disprove the TOE.

[PatrickHenry]

Your post 62 is excellent. I've added a link to it in The List-O-Links, in the section on alleged Evolutionist frauds. It appears thusly:

NEW Ichneumon's Discussion of Haeckel's embryo drawings. A FreeRepublic post.

[MacDorcha]

It was an example, using animals we "know" to have a common link, but no (living?) link.

[Junior]

"Macro" would be observing a rat change to a cat. (ie, change from a species to another)

Well, if a rat changed to a cat, the entire ToE would tossed out the window. This of course, is the typical ignorant creationist strawman. Now, as for one species changing to another, explain donkeys and horses. Both are separate species, but can still interbreed to a limited extent. The same for lions and tigers. Indeed, I've found that most creationists actually move the goalposts of "macro" evolution to the genus level because of these examples.

Now, let's take a look at these macro changes. Can you tell me the radical differences between cats, dogs, bears and weasles? They strongly resemble one-another but would be considered separate "kinds" by most creationists. However, looking at the fossil record for all these kinds you find they gradually begin to converge in looks. You'll eventually find the last common ancestor of these critters resembles all its descendents:

So, is the miacid a weasel, cat, dog or bear?

[Modernman]

It was an example, using animals we "know" to have a common link, but no (living?) link.

Perhaps. But what environmental pressures would push rats into evolving into cats? Even if rats evolved cat-like features, they still wouldn't be cats, but rather some new member of the rodent family.

[swampfox98]

I don't believe man evolved from anything, period. Man was the special creation of God. God breathed His Spirit into Man and he became immortal. Man meaning all mankind including women, for the boomers who think God hated women and left them out. I know many things evolve and mutate. I just think the cartoon reminded me of Doonesbury's childish anti conservative idiocy in our newspaper.

[RadioAstronomer]

"Macro" would be observing a rat change to a cat.

Good grief. How many times do we have to tell you “rats to cats” (or some other such silliness) is not what evolution postulates. If we were to see that, it would actually fly in the face of the theory of evolution.

[RadioAstronomer]

I don't believe man evolved from anything, period.

Ardipithicus ramidus
http://www.msu.edu/~heslipst/contents/ANP440/ramidus.htm

Australopithecus anamensis
http://id-archserve.ucsb.edu/Anth3/Courseware/Hominids/04_A_anamensis.html

Australopithecus afarensis
http://id-archserve.ucsb.edu/Anth3/Courseware/Hominids/03_A_afarensis.html
http://www.msu.edu/~heslipst/contents/ANP440/afarensis.htm
http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/biology/humanevolution/afarensis.html

Australopithecus africanus
http://www.umanitoba.ca/faculties/arts/anthropology/courses/121/fyde/africanus.html
http://www.mnh.si.edu/anthro/humanorigins/ha/afri.html
http://www.msu.edu/~robin400/africanus.html

Australopithecus aethiopicus
http://www.mnh.si.edu/anthro/humanorigins/ha/aeth.html
http://www.as.ua.edu/ant/bindon/ant275/presentations/Human_evolution.PDF

Australopithecus boisei
http://faculty.vassar.edu/piketay/evolution/A_boisei.html
http://www.csus.edu/anth/physanth/an-img08.htm
http://www.sckans.edu/anthro/index.php?page_ID=305

Australopithecus robustus
http://www.mnh.si.edu/anthro/humanorigins/ha/rob.htm
http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/biology/humanevolution/robustus.html
http://www.oneonta.edu/academics/anthro/links/aust.html

Homo sp.
http://www.academie-sciences.fr/publications/comptes_rendus/pdf/CRPalevol_article4.pdf
http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/atapuerca/gallery/africa.php?image=6&page=branches
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~jasonww/africa/transvaal2.html

Homo rudolfensis
http://www.mnh.si.edu/anthro/humanorigins/ha/rud.html
http://calvin.linfield.edu/~mrobert/originsfigure1a.html
http://www.msu.edu/~heslipst/contents/ANP440/rudolfensis.htm

Homo habilis
http://www.wsu.edu:8001/vwsu/gened/learn-modules/top_longfor/timeline/habilis/habilis-a.html
http://www.mnh.si.edu/anthro/humanorigins/ha/hab.html
http://dekalb.dc.peachnet.edu/~pgore/students/s97/bonetgar/habilis.htm

Homo ergaster
http://www.mnh.si.edu/anthro/humanorigins/ha/erg.html
http://www.msu.edu/~heslipst/contents/ANP440/ergaster.htm
http://cogweb.ucla.edu/ep/Ergaster_00.html

Homo erectus
http://www.wsu.edu:8001/vwsu/gened/learn-modules/top_longfor/timeline/erectus/erectus-a.html
http://www.mnh.si.edu/anthro/humanorigins/ha/erec.html
http://www.d.umn.edu/cla/faculty/troufs/anth1602/pchomoer.html

Homo heidelbergensis
http://www.mnh.si.edu/anthro/humanorigins/ha/heid.htm
http://www.msu.edu/~heslipst/contents/ANP440/heidelbergensis.htm
http://www.archaeology.org/9709/newsbriefs/dna.html

Homo neanderthalensis

http://www.msu.edu/~heslipst/contents/ANP440/neanderthalensis.htm
http://www.mnh.si.edu/anthro/humanorigins/ha/nead_sap_comp.html

Homo sapiens
http://www.mnh.si.edu/anthro/humanorigins/ha/sap.htm
http://anthro.palomar.edu/homo2/modern_humans.htm
http://hpgl.stanford.edu/publications/Science_2000_v290_p1155.pdf

[RadioAstronomer]

ROFL! :-)

[RadioAstronomer]

LOL! I thought the cartoon was very funny. :-)

[Michael_Michaelangelo]

5. This is often taken as evidence of conscious fraud, but more prosaic explanations are possibilities as well. Haeckel may not have had actual specimens of those species at that stage of development, and drew what he actually believed they would look like, for example.

That's because it was a conscious FRAUD....a fraud that seemed to live on and on and on, for some strange reason, in virtually every textbook. Take it from the folks who actually publish textbooks for a living:

===========================

British embryologist Michael Richardson and his colleages published an important paper in the August 1997 issue of Anatomy & Embryology showing that Haeckel had fudged his drawings to make the early stages of embryos appear more alike than they actually are! As it turns out, Haeckel's contemporaries had spotted the fraud during his lifetime, and got him to admit it. However, his drawings nonetheless became the source material for diagrams of comparative embryology in nearly every biology textbook, including ours!

From:

Haeckel and his Embryos

For more information, see:

Biology Textbook Fraud

Quote referenced from the above:

Thompson: Haeckel, who in 1868 advanced this "biogenetic law" that was quickly adopted in textbooks and encyclopedias throughout the world, distorted his data. Thompson explains: "A natural law can only be established as an induction from facts. Haeckel was of course unable to do this. What he did was to arrange existing forms of animal life in a series proceeding from the simple to the complex, intercalating [inserting] imaginary entities where discontinuity existed and then giving the embryonic phases names corresponding to the stages in his so-called evolutionary series. Cases in which this parallelism did not exist were dealt with by the simple expedient of saying that the embryological development had been falsified. When the `convergence' of embryos was not entirely satisfactory, Haeckel altered the illustrations of them to fit his theory. The alterations were slight but significant. The `biogenetic law' as a proof of evolution is valueless." W. R. Thompson, "Introduction to The Origin of Species," p. 12.

[DoctorMichael]

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[GOPJ]

Thanks for the ping.

[swampfox98]

LOL

[PatrickHenry]

100. Prime!