Another Key Evidence For Evolution is Getting Squashed

A new paper out of Germany on the evolution of animal embryos reveals yet again the typical trajectory of evolution’s treatment of the science. Evidence that is barely understood is declared to confirm powerfully evolution. Then, years later, when science looks under the hood and uncovers the incredible details, the mismatch between the data and the theory becomes more clear. At that point the evidence, rather than confirming the theory, is interpreted according to the theory. Rather than the evidence explaining the theory, it is the theory that is explaining the evidence, no matter how awkward. In the end the evidence is contorted every which way in order to serve the theory of evolution. All of this must be presented with great care to avoid any sign of trouble:

There is a remarkable similarity in the appearance of groups of animal species during periods of their embryonic development. This classic observation has long been viewed as an emphatic realization of the principle of common descent.

In other words, before discussing evolution in the light of new scientific evidence, which inevitably makes evolution look bad, one first must give the secret handshake—a proclamation indicating that evolution is unquestionably true and good, and that all the evidential contradictions you are about to discuss will be force-fit into the evolutionary doctrine.

Despite the importance of embryonic conservation as a unifying concept, models seeking to predict and explain different patterns of conservation have remained in contention. 

Now you are free to openly discuss the evidence which, in fact, never did support evolution as much as evolutionists claimed. In fact,

Here, we focus on early embryonic development and discuss several lines of evidence, from recent molecular data, through developmental networks to life-history strategies, that indicate that early animal embryos are not highly conserved. 

with the inexorable march of scientific progress, the contradictions always monotonically increase with time.

Bringing this evidence together, we argue that the nature of early development often reflects adaptation to diverse ecological niches. Finally, we synthesize old and new ideas to propose a model that accounts for the evolutionary process by which embryos have come to be conserved.

And so new evolutionary just-so stories are badly needed to replace the old ones that fared so poorly.

von Baer’s observations, and in particular his third law, provided foundational evidence supporting Darwin’s theory of common descent.

See, it wasn’t just an English idea. The Germans also want some credit for the idea that took over the world, even if that idea requires an endless supply of just-so stories to fend off the evidential onslaught.

In fact evolutionists now must believe that those random mutations regularly produce embryological do-overs, without altering the adult form. This, to explain the evidence which is that sister species are often found to have very different development patterns.

As the figure shows, evolutionists have had to construct ever more elaborate just-so stories to explain the supposed evolution of embryonic development.

Confusion abounds and the evolutionists conclude, contra the traditional evolution view, that given the early embryo of an animal species, it would be possible to infer “comparatively little about its evolutionary trajectory.” That once powerful evidence that Darwin and the evolutionists proclaimed is now in the crowded dustbin of evolutionary proofs.