Missives

This year we’re going to take a break from archaeology and turn to another favorite subject of this author, namely, creation versus evolution. God’s fingerprints are absolutely imprinted upon all living things, but the devil sends waves of deceived charlatans to twist God’s claims. We begin with a famous case, and one you’ve probably seen.

German scientist Ernst Haeckel in 1874 depicted a series of side-by-side embryos of a fish, salamander, tortoise, chick, hog, calf, rabbit, and a human. His drawings were conveniently adjusted to the same size, using a fudged scale to exaggerate the similarities while blurring key differences. It was prima facie evidence “that the stages an animal embryo undergoes during development are a chronological replay of that species' past evolutionary forms.” [1] Many concluded that we all have a common ancestral start, and it looks like we came from a fish (see his original fetal diagrams from 1874, below). Pretty compelling evidence, right?

So long as your sources of truth verification are the Walt Disney Fantasy Imagineers, but not if you look at reality. Atheistic scientist Dr. Michael Richardson notes that “An international team collaborated to compare Haeckel’s drawings to actual photographs of embryos because apparently despite the known forgery of the old drawings, no one had yet corrected the data. The team collected embryos from 39 different creatures, including marsupials from Australia, tree-frogs from Puerto Rico, snakes from France, and an alligator embryo from England. They found that the embryos of different species are very different. In fact, they were so different that the drawings made by Haeckel (of similar-looking human, rabbit, salamander, fish, chicken, etc. embryos), the team concluded that Haeckel’s drawings could not have even been based on any real specimen.” (see comparison below) [2]

Good science would reject this fake data, yet it remains in use because it’s so powerfully influential despite the facts. Rice University’s Adaptive Curriculum re-published the diagram in 2011, and the State of Texas nearly adopted it. The National Center for Science Education website as of 2022, and biology textbooks as recent as 2013, unashamedly propagate (and defend!) the myth as legitimate.

Christians must understand that in the devil’s science classroom, even information like embryonic depictions are distorted to maintain evolution’s lies. Proud men refuse to give our Creator the glory He rightfully deserves and will recycle error to deceive many. Scripture says he that is first in his own cause seemeth just; but his neighbour cometh and searcheth him.  All Christians should immediately reject any bold assertion which ascribes the truth of divine design to chance. These errors will be eventually exposed in due time.