Ah. The lovely condescending attitude of evolutionists. Yes, the word is ontogeny. Forgive me for not having my biology textbook at hand while writing it up. I assume you got 100% on every paper you ever wrote. I am truly humbled by your greatness.
The original poster's statement was that the tail on a human embryo was proof of macroevolution. That is the PRECISE and EXACT point made by the ontogeny argument; that the stages of embryonic development modeled the evolutionary history of that organism. I did address his argument by pointing out that the science he so boldly proclaims is at the very core of evolution has abandoned that argument.
To turn your argument back on you, I might claim that using valid scientific examples would give him a better chance of seeming like he knows what he's talking about. But that would be rude, so I instead politely pointed out that the theory was discredited.
Be careful there ... here it comes ... look out ... I feel it brewing ... in
3 .... 2 .... 1 ....
"You know nothing about science"
That is the favorite thought-terminating cliche of the evolutionist.
Ah. The lovely condescending attitude of evolutionists.
I'd have been nicer if you hadn't been condescending yourself in your own reply -- you know, the one I was repling to. Look up the word "hypocrite" sometime.
My point, in case I haven't yet been clear enough, is that if you're going to attempt to be condescending, as you did, it's best not to f*** it up by blowing the easy stuff. And you hardly cover yourself in glory by getting petulantly defensive about your elementary error:
Yes, the word is ontogeny. Forgive me for not having my biology textbook at hand while writing it up. I assume you got 100% on every paper you ever wrote. I am truly humbled by your greatness.
Now you're just being childish.
The original poster's statement was that the tail on a human embryo was proof of macroevolution.
No it wasn't. Science does not deal in "proof", nor did he make the mistake of claiming it did. Are you sure you actually know what in the hell you're talking about?
That is the PRECISE and EXACT point made by the ontogeny argument; that the stages of embryonic development modeled the evolutionary history of that organism.
No, the recapitulation slogan claims (incorrectly) that embrylogy "walks through" in sequence each evolutionary step which led to the current organism. It does not. And as you correctly stated, this postulate was abandoned long ago.
HOWEVER, it is still true that due to the nature of both evolution and embryology, many vestiges of past evolutionary history occur during the development of the embryo (just not every one, and not necessarily in sequence) because evolution proceeds by modifying that which came before, including prior embryological development, and is not free to "undo" how things were done previously and start with a clean slate de novo -- as a designer would have done. See for example:
Mayr E. 1994. Recapitulation reinterpreted: the somatic program. The Quarterly Review of Biology (69): 223-232.Gould, Stephen J., 1977. Ontogeny and Phylogeny. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press
Gilbert, Scott F., The morphogenesis of evolutionary developmental biology, Int. J. Dev. Biol. 47: 467-477 (2003)
For example, humans descended from tailed ancestral primates, and evolution "de-tailed" us (and the other great apes) by simply absorbing the proto-tail (late in fetal development) which was already part of primate embryological development, rather than preventing it from forming early in the embryo in the first place (presumably because being a much earlier stage of development, that would have had negative consequences for other aspects of spinal development).
that I did address his argument by pointing out that the science he so boldly proclaims is at the very core of evolution has abandoned that argument.
And you were, in short, wrong and ignorant and condescending.
To turn your argument back on you, I might claim that using valid scientific examples would give him a better chance of seeming like he knows what he's talking about.
He did, actually. You however fell on your face by failing to understand his actual point, and by invoking an irrelevant side issue that was (due to your ignorance) only tangentially related in a historical sense.
But that would be rude, so I instead politely pointed out that the theory was discredited.
Again, you are in error. His point does not rest in any way on the recapitulation concept being correct, contrary to your misunderstanding.
To repeat something I must unfortunately post several times in these threads: Before one attempts to critique a field of science, it really helps to actually be pretty familiar with that field.