Ernst Haeckel

Ernst Haeckel was a German scientist and evolutionist, one of the chief proponents of Darwinism. He stated in 1876: "If we do not accept the hypothesis of spontaneous generation, then at this one point in the history of evolution we must have recourse to the miracle of a supernatural creation." [1] In addition to Ernst Haeckel being a very influential proponent of the evolutionary position, Haeckel was an advocate of atheism.[1] Ernst Haeckel attempted to portray himself as an ethical proponent of atheism, however, history shows he was a deceitful individual.[1][2][3][4][5] The March 9, 1907 edition of the NY Times refers to Ernst Haeckel as the "celebrated Darwinian and founder of the Association for the Propagation of Ethical Atheism."[1]

## Embryo pictures[edit]

Haeckel was infamous for producing faked drawings showing a series of minievolutions occurring in human embryos in 1869. His drawings depicted that during the nine-month period in the mother's womb, babies go from fish, amphibian, reptile and mammal. Haeckel called this the Biogentic Law. His work was proven wrong in 1875 by his own university.

Noted evolutionist Stephen Gould wrote the following regarding Ernst Haeckel's work in a March 2000 issue of Natural History:

“  |  "Haeckel’s forceful, eminently comprehensible, if not always accurate, books appeared in all major languages and surely exerted more influence than the works of any other scientist, including Darwin…in convincing people throughout the world about the validity of evolution... Haeckel had exaggerated the similarities [between embryos of different species] by idealizations and omissions. He also, in some cases — in a procedure that can only be called fraudulent — simply copied the same figure over and over again.…Haeckel’s drawings never fooled expert embryologists, who recognized his fudgings right from the start. Haeckel’s drawings, despite their noted inaccuracies, entered into the most impenetrable and permanent of all quasi-scientific literatures: standard student textbooks of biology... Once ensconced in textbooks, misinformation becomes cocooned and effectively permanent, because…textbooks copy from previous texts.... [W]e do, I think, have the right to be both astonished and ashamed by the century of mindless recycling that has led to the persistence of these drawings in a large number, if not a majority, of modern textbooks!"[6] |  ”

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Stephen Gould continues by quoting Michael Richardson of the St. George's Hospital Medical School in London, who stated: "I know of at least fifty recent biology texts which use the drawings uncritically".[6] Those textbooks he refers to point out to the assumption that human embryos have gill slits which is used to prove that man evolved from the fish stage millions of years ago. Those folds of skin evolutionists like to call gills are not gills. Those skin fragments grow into bones in the ear and glands in the throat, they have nothing to do with breathing.

Creationists have written regarding the fraudulent nature of Haeckel's work and how a prestigious German science journal published his dubious work.[7][8]

## See also[edit]

* Haeckel diagrams
* Western atheism and race

## References[edit]

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9C03EFDD123EE033A2575AC0A9659C946697D6CF
2. ↑ "Another Evolution Fraud Exposed" \- Creationism.org, INVESTIGATING GENESIS SERIES.
3. ↑ http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/index.php?command=view&id=1180
4. ↑ http://www.iconsofevolution.com/Icons of Evolution
5. ↑ http://www.discovery.org/articleFiles/PDFs/survivalOfTheFakest.pdf
6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 http://www.creationism.org/caesar/haeckel.htm
7. ↑ http://creationontheweb.com/content/view/974
8. ↑ http://www.creationontheweb.com/content/view/747