Stand up For Jesus In The Origin Of Life

As we continue to “stand up for Jesus” in 2002, another area where our stand is needed is in the origin of life.  For many years now the theory of evolution, as popularized by Charles Darwin, has dominated science.  Scientists tell us the facts show evolution is true.  The textbooks even contain references to this information.  This article will examine some of this evidence. Evidence from embryology.  German biologist Ernst Haeckel produced drawings of vertebrate embryos such as humans, chickens, fish, birds, mammals, etc. These drawings showed the various embryos were nearly identical in their early stages, changing only as they developed.  This was interpreted to show that they were a pattern of evolutionary change in nature.  Darwin is said to have relied on Haeckel’s drawings for support for evolution.  But upon closer examination, these drawings indicate something far different. The drawings by Haeckel did not show evolution, rather they show that Haeckel was not honest in his representation.  Jonathan Wells wrote,

This may be the most egregious of distortions, since biologists have known for over a century that vertebrate embryos never look as similar as Haeckel drew them.  In some cases, Haeckel used the same woodcut to print embryos that were supposedly from different classes.  In others, he doctored his drawings to make the embryos appear more alike than they really were.  Haeckel’s contemporaries repeatedly criticized him for these misrepresentations, and charges of fraud abound in his lifetime. In 1997, British embryologist Michael Richardson and an international team of experts compared Haeckel’s drawings with photographs of actual vertebrate embryos, demonstrating conclusively that the drawings misrepresent the truth. Yet some version of Hackel’s drawings can be found in most current biology textbooks (Jonathan Wells, “Survival of the Fakest,” American Spectator December 2000 / January 2001, pages 18 - 26).

Peppered Moths.  I still remember the pictures in my school science textbook of those moths on trees in England.  These moths were held up as evidence of natural selection in action.  The dark moths were more prominent in areas where pollution had darkened the trees and lighter ones were more prominent in areas where pollution had not so effected the trees.  The theory was that as moths rested on the tree trunks, the ones closer to the tree’s color were camouflaged.  In the 1950's Bernard Kettlewell, a physician in Britain, tested the theory by releasing the moths and he witnessed the birds eating more of the light colored moths in the polluted areas and the more dark colored moths in the unpolluted area. Therefore he concluded his experiment supported his theory.

In the 1980's, however, researchers discovered evidence that the official story was flawed – including the pertinent fact that peppered moths don’t normally rest on tree trunks.  Instead, they fly by night and apparently hide under upper branches during the day.  By releasing moths onto nearby tree trunks in daylight, Kettelwell had created an artificial situation that does not exist in nature.  Many biologists now consider his results invalid, and some even question whether natural selection was responsible for the observed changes (Wells).

So what about the pictures of moths resting on tree trunks?  “They were all staged. To expedite things, some photographers even glued dead moths to trees. Of course, the people who staged before the 1980's thought they were accurately representing the true situation.... Yet a glance at almost any current biology textbook reveals that they are still being used as evidence for natural selection” (Wells).

We need to know about such false evidence, expose it, and stand up against it.

—Denny