Moot The Point

In the movie “Fracture” a Ryan Gosling portrays a prosecutor that is convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt of a defendant’s guilt. The problem is that there’s no evidence that will legally stand up that proves that guilt. Gosling is enticed by a detective to use planted evidence in order to ensure a conviction. If Gosling doesn’t use the planted evidence, he loses the case and the antagonist (Anthony Hopkins) goes free. If he does, he’s sacrificed his personal integrity and manipulated the legal system but ensures that the bad guy pays for his crimes. The movie, in part, wrestles with this moral dilemma – Is it OK to deceitfully manipulate the evidence to convince someone of the truth? I think this is a great question that has to be posed in the ID/Evolution debate.

I can say from personal experience that Christians have been quite guilty of providing completely false evidence to bolster what they believe in an ultimately true claim. There are endless e-mails that circulate that serve as evidence of this. The “Missing Day”, the “man who was swallowed by a whale and lived”, “Darwin’s deathbed confession” These and other equally erroneous pieces of evidence are used in the Christians arsenal to move faith from beyond the shadows of doubt into the light of empirical evidence.  The problem is that they’re patently false and those that propagate them are either deceitful or ignorant, neither of which is a particularly confidence-inspiring trait to be found in a Christian.  If anything they ultimately serve to weaken rather than bolster the faith.

My question is this – Has the same thing happened in the evolution debate?  In a zealous desire to see the what is considered an unassailable truth (evolution) has deceit been used in conjunction with the ignorance of those being propagated?

If you’re steeped in evolution and it’s defense you’ll cringe at the mention of the name I’m about to write, but I think it’s a fair target for such a discussion.  The drawings by Earnest Haeckel of developing embryo’s seem like a clear example of such a deceit. Haeckel drew his infamous embryo’s in 1874. Astonishingly, despite the fact that they were proven erronous and dismissed by Haeckel’s contemporaries within a few short years, they’ve continued to show up in textbooks published as late as 2004!

Even in 2000 Stephan Jay Gould, certainly no friend of Intelligent Design, noted his disapproval of the perpetuation of Haeckel’s drawings used in textbooks. Gould mentioned that it was possible that the textbook writers were “probably quite unaware of their noted inaccuracies and outright falsifications”. This may be even more disturbing. It means that either these drawings are used with the full knowledge of their fraudulence or they’re being used ignorantly. Either way it doesn’t inspire much confidence.

Haeckel’s embreyo’s are by no means the only misleading images being used to prop up evolution. Dr. Well’s in his book “Icon’s of Evolution” list a number of false and misleading images.

• a laboratory flask containing a simulation of the earth’s primitive atmosphere, in which electric sparks produce the chemical building-blocks of living cells;
• the evolutionary tree of life, reconstructed from fossil and molecular evidence;
• similar bone structures in a bat’s wing, a porpoise’s flipper, a horse’s leg, and a human hand that point to their origin in a common ancestor;
• fruit flies with an extra pair of wings, showing that genetic mutations can provide the raw materials for evolution;

While Haeckel and others may be dismissed by the scientific establishment they’re still being used in many current textbooks. If we truly want the best current information why are these images still being used? Doesn’t it undermine the cloak of impenatrable and unbiased science that seems to surround the discussion of evolution?

Furthermore the perpetuation of these images serves as a reminder that deceit can be passed off as evidence, even to those who should know better, even for decades. How are we to know that many of the “commonly held” facts about evolution that are offered today are true? I’m not advocating being overly skeptical of every and all claims but a quick, “everyone know this is true” from a scientist in a lab coat is no longer good enough. If we are to believe we need good, clear and obviously true, evidence.

This is not an attack on evolution itself but upon the way evolution is propagated.  I think it’s fair to expect clarity and truth (from both sides) in the discussion of such a subject.  It’s fair to point out it’s flaws and strengths.  It’s not fair to plant evidence and hope nobody notices or to be offended when the falsehood is pointed out.  I’m just as offended by the ridiculous e-mails of modern Jonah’s and NASA finding a missing day as I am with Haeckel and his drawings.  Extraordinary claims require proof that is above suspicion.