The Institute for Creation Research is going on and on again about Haeckel and gill slits. It gets tiresome; I’ve explained so many times that Haeckel’s theory was wrong and he skewed his drawings to fit his model, but that it really is true that human embryos have pharyngeal arches that are modified in a peculiar way to build the face and neck, and this really is evidence for our evolutionary history. Fortunately, this time, I don’t have to go into it because Troy Britain has covered all the details. Yay!
But I do want to mention one really strange thing. The ICR is going on and on about Haeckel faking his embryo drawings, but this is what they used to illustrate their own article.
CHRIST JESUS, WHAT IS THAT THING? That is creepy — no human embryo ever looked like that. They’ve neatly painted out any kind of branchial structures, and it has no post-anal tail — yet it’s supposed to be a 7-8 week embryo. I guess reality was too uncomfortable for them, so they dug up some uninformed stock art that leaves out those vestiges of our ancestry, tails and gill slits, that refute their claims.
Either that or they performed an abortion on a Grey. Good for them, those UFO pilots are always sticking probes up our butts, it’s only fair that someone grabbed one and did a D&C on them.
Haeckel was a naughty boy? Thank FSM we didn’t use this banner: Linky.
Ugh. Prometheus flashbacks.
(I had to cover my laughter during that scene.)
I’m trying to picture how that poor little pink blob would develop. I guess a fully formed jaw is just another one of those evolutionist lies to them.
I thought Troy performed a regulation NHL smackdown on the ICR, and decided to become a regular reader at pigeonchess because of it. Unfortunately, all he had to bring to the table were facts, evidence and, you know, logic, and everyone knows that to cretinists facts, evidence and logic are as alien to cretinists as that picture is to us evilutionists.
Jesus Christ, PZ! Warn a lady before you post horrific shit like that!
…It’s a muppet embryo
If that’s a mammalian embryo, shouldn’t it be connected to something? Or at least have some evidence of an umbilical cord?
Haeckel’s work has always both attracted and repelled me. His marine invertebrates, especially the jelly beasts, are often very fanciful. Finally, I figured he did a good bit of invention because his specimens were delicate and not in the best of shape because they were either pickled or washed up on the beach.
It’s a pre-Fall embryo, of course.
That’s what they (would have) looked like before sin put a bunch of evolutionary traits into a previously pristine created form.
Glen Davidson
But if one biologist lied about part of his work 100 years ago how can I be expected to believe anything any biologist tells me???
According to TinEye, the source of the stock photo seems to be this:
http://www.istockphoto.com/stock-photo-11823866-human-embryo.php
#11: Ugh. So many fake photos of fake cells by artists who never looked in a microscope at real cells. I browsed the cell biology section of the stock photo site — hideous. Like that embryo.
When the Greys find out, and come down here with their death rays, heat beams and weird looking attack craft with a score to settle, I’m telling them that Ken Ham did it…
Nah, they just bought a bag of them at the candy store and photographed the pink one.
Roberto Aguirre Maturana says:
Checked out the rest of his work, piss poor 3D modeling. Some proper texture maps might have helped. Along with some RESEARCH into the subject matter. Lazy power point shit.
If you drew tusks on it, it would kind of look like a pink walrus.
A pink walrus with freakishly perfect human hands.
We must count our blessings. At least the ICR didn’t photoshop a sweet little smile onto the “baby”‘s face. Or, worse, a single little tear trickling down its cheek.
Hard to do a D&C on a Grey.
AFAIK, the Space Reptiles lay eggs.
Given the ICR’s general biological competence, I doubt if they know that either.
@14 It really does look like delicious a strawberry jelly candy. *insert Homer Simpson hunger noise*
Before I read the post I thought it must be an illustration of a marsupial embryo–old enough to be in the pouch. Now that I know what it is…. no, I take that back. I still don’t know what it is.
It’s a creationist embryo. The tail is tucked into its anus since its head can’t reach yet.
@raven> Jeez, get it right. The greys AREN’T space reptiles. The -reptilians- are the reptiles, and they’re mortal enemies with the greys. Honestly, if you can’t be bothered to do even the most rudimentary research, how can anyone take your comment seriously.
I don’t know if it’s necessary to spell out that I’m being snarky, but I’ll err on the side of caution and just do it. I’m being snarky.
Everybody knows Greys don’t use their vestigial wombs any more–they come out of tanks.
That has to be an embryonic schmoo.
Honestly, if you can’t be bothered to do even the most rudimentary research, how can anyone take your comment seriously.
Matrim, you win the internet.
@Matrim
PZ’s knowledge of alien abductions would make a first year ufology student wince. Has he read Icke on reptilian conspiracies, Leider on the Zeta Reticuli star system, or Hoagland on Martian pyramids? Has he even heard of them?
Slightly OT, but the conversation’s gone there anyway:
If you’ve* ever played the super excellent turn-based strategy game UFO: Enemy Unknown/X-COM: UFO Defense in which you can do exactly that, you might be interested to know that a remake is scheduled for release** in the fall!
*I know Teh Poopyhead didn’t, given his preference for lobotomising critters over video games
**Whenever I think of it, I release just a little bit. Need to change. BRB.
Of course it’s an abstract embryo, you can’t show a real human NAKED!! What are you, a bunch of pornographers!! *faints/clutching pearls*
Maybe that’s a picture of someone from the ICR in the womb. Eh?
hyperdeath #25 wins an internet.
And I know from experience that people who believe in alien visitations often do sound like religious apologists.
Brownian @ 26;
I have heard much about the original X-COM game from the nineties, but I never actually played it. I have been following the development of the turn-based remake with interest as a result.
Thus far, it is looking rather good.
As for the other game based upon the X-COM franchise that is currently in evelopment – I will have to withold judgement on that for now.
Yes. Once got into a face-to-face argument with Carlotto over his ridiculous abuses of image processing, too.
Also, I’m going to be on a BBC program this year as the skeptic arguing with a team of UFOlogists, one of whom is convinced that the Jews are alien hybrids.
hyperdeath@25:
Are we getting into sophistimicated ufology? This is gonna be fun!
The Prime Directive of the Elders of Zion?
I get the Gumby background. Awesome!
AlanMac
That reminds me of Conservapedia’s articles on “sex” and “human reproduction”. Neither use the word “penis” or “vagina”.
PZ:
Funny, Mr Darkheart never mentioned that.
@ #36 hyperdeath says:
Conservatives think sex is dirty, ditto nudity to any degree. Also the use of proper terms for anatomical features. This is a symptom of their obsession with other people’s sex lives.
Like the anti-gay haters, who are obsessed with thoughts of anal intercourse. Project much?
Pfft, I have embryo beads handcrafted from FIMO that look far more realistic, and they glow in the dark! Human, mouse and (I think) chicken, really ought to finish turning them into a necklace…
(Related note: crafty friends in developmental biology are awesome!)
Agreed. And that brings to mind my favorite quote from that great Texan songwriter/singer Butch Hancock . . .
“Life in Lubbock, Texas, taught me two things: One is that God loves you and you’re going to burn in hell. The other is that sex is the most awful, filthy thing on earth and you should save it for someone you love.”
PZ, I think hyperdeath was being facetious.
The original X-COM game has to rank as one of the finest computer games ever made (and, pertaining to an earlier comment thread, it has NO SEX! Plenty of violence, of course, but no sex.)
It also, IIRC, fits onto a single floppy disc.
Is it a seal? I’m no biologist, but something about the angle of the second set of limbs says “seal” to me.
Having clicked through to the stockphoto site, I’m now getting targeted ads from them, FEATURING THIS PHOTO. A bit unnerving…
Well, apparently these things can be rated. Though the page suggests “reviews” too, of which there are none. Maybe a few biologists should, I don’t know.. down rate the things, and post some reviews on just what is wrong with them, possibly with links to real frakking photos?
So good. So so so so sosososossoogogooooooooooooooooodddd!!
And the other one looks terrible. I dunno. Maybe not. FPS aren’t my favourite (though I did like Borderlands, and Borderlands 2/i> is coming out in September.)
O_o
Could Chrysalid implantation potentially count? It is a reproductive act that leaves the player up to his armpits in Chrysalids.
Remember kids, when fighting Chrysalids in a terror mission, every civilian is a new Chrysalid waiting to happen. Same goes for your own men if they’re potentially in the buggers’ movement range.
It certainly doesn’t look like any of the pictures in my (long gone now) Human embryology book.
@cactuswren: I thought baby seal, too, though maybe Audley is right with baby walrus.
@Audley: now I wanna know, since pregnant women tend to have vivid dreams, if you’ll dream about this tonight and blame PZ…
In my final playthrough, I went for the interceptor as soon as I could. Once I had the air superiority, not a single UFO managed to land, meaning every ground mission was a recovery one.
Obviously, it’s the fetal Aquaman.
I was actually introduced to X-COM late, when the original game was already graphically many years out of date. (IIRC, it wasn’t hyped much when it was first released).
It was still one of the best games I have ever played. Even with that bug that set all the difficulty levels to the easiest one.
You think that’s bad, you should see the last scene in “Screamers: The Hunting”. A screamer/human hybrid fetus with a switchblade growing in it’s hand.
I thought it was a little pink version of the Slovenes from Dr. Who. Whatever it is, there’s nothing like it on this planet.
Shows what he knows. Hybrids are usually sterile.
Jews are of course fully alien.
–o–
“Slovenes”? Really?!!
that made me look up which of my “co-workers” needed to be slapped silly for making that. results: http://www.istockphoto.com/stock-photo-11823866-human-embryo.php
over 30 downloads, and most of them probably from anti-choice sites. *sigh*
oh, looky. someone else already found the source waaaay before me, hehe
*is having very impolite but tempting visions of having the Horde pharyngulate her competition with negative reviews*
:-p
@53
Did you mean Slitheen?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slitheen
X-D
Specifically, I think hyperdeath was performing a parody of the Courtier’s Reply.
:-)
That’s a Spacing Guild Navigator. Definately human, with some spice added.
Please don’t go after the author of the embryo picture. He made no representations that this was intended as a biologically accurate image. He did not use it to illustrate a scientifically worthless, dishonest, pile of antievolution propaganda (that was ICR).
However, he was very nice and cooperative in answering my questions about his picture and I really don’t want to return the favor by making his life miserable.
#37 RFW
Such slander! (no, wait, I guess that’s libel)
Every xtian knows that the
fivethree minutes it takes to have sex is a sublime pleasure granted to xtian men by god.Unfortunately, it involves icky things like women and vaginas and pregnancy and poopy crying babies. But that is a burden placed on men for original sin which totally wasn’t their fault!
It’s not the UFO pilots who insert the anal probes, they have technicians do that. The pilots just fly the craft and brag about being a pilot in an attempt to improve their sex lives. Whereas the technicians don’t go into details, they just say they work in the xenobiology field and leave it at that.