1. ORIGIN OF LIFE. Why do textbooks claim that the 1953 Miller-Urey experiment shows how life's building blocks may have formed on the early Earth -- when conditions on the early Earth were probably nothing like those used in the experiment, and the origin of life remains a mystery?
2. DARWIN'S TREE OF LIFE. Why don't textbooks discuss the "Cambrian explosion," in which all major animal groups appear together in the fossil record fully formed instead of branching from a common ancestor -- thus contradicting the evolutionary tree of life?
3. HOMOLOGY. Why do textbooks define homology as similarity due to common ancestry, then claim that it is evidence for common ancestry -- a circular argument masquerading as scientific evidence?
4. VERTEBRATE EMBRYOS. Why do textbooks use drawings of similarities in vertebrate embryos as evidence for their common ancestry -- even though biologists have known for over a century that vertebrate embryos are not most similar in their early stages, and the drawings are faked?
5. ARCHAEOPTERYX. Why do textbooks portray this fossil as the missing link between dinosaurs and modern birds -- even though modern birds are probably not descended from it, and its supposed ancestors do not appear until millions of years after it?
6. PEPPERED MOTHS. Why do textbooks use pictures of peppered moths camouflaged on tree trunks as evidence for natural selection -- when biologists have known since the 1980s that the moths don't normally rest on tree trunks, and all the pictures have been staged?
7. DARWIN'S FINCHES. Why do textbooks claim that beak changes in Galapagos finches during a severe drought can explain the origin of species by natural selection -- even though the changes were reversed after the drought ended, and no net evolution occurred?
8. MUTANT FRUIT FLIES. Why do textbooks use fruit flies with an extra pair of wings as evidence that DNA mutations can supply raw materials for evolution -- even though the extra wings have no muscles and these disabled mutants cannot survive outside the laboratory?
9. HUMAN ORIGINS. Why are artists' drawings of ape-like humans used to justify materialistic claims that we are just animals and our existence is a mere accident -- when fossil experts cannot even agree on who our supposed ancestors were or what they looked like?
10. EVOLUTION A FACT? Why are we told that Darwin's theory of evolution is a scientific fact -- even though many of its claims are based on misrepresentations of the facts?
A magazine cover article a few years back was titled something like "The Big-Bang of Evolution (the Cambrian Explosion)" as if that somehow or other wasn't an oxymoron. Kind of like "the big sex orgy of chastity" or some such.
If Wells so mischaracterized the state of the fossil evidence, he's a bigger charlatan and humbug than I thought. This statement is right out of the old creationist pamphlets and it is dead wrong.
It would only be true if the Cambrian were the start of all life on earth. It once appeared that way but that was proven wrong a long time ago. Many phyla are in evidence before the Cambrian, and there is ample indirect evidence (tracks, burrows, etc.) of others.
It would only be true if we couldn't see the origins of phyla. We can.
It would be true if no phyla originate after the Cambrian. This too is false.
If one considers the Vendian/Cambrian animals as constituting the Cambrian Explosion, then we have 13 phyla appearing in the Cambrian Explosion and 20 AFTER the Cambrian Explosion. While one can assume that the 13 phyla which have no fossil record arose in the Cambrian, assumptions are NOT data. The plain fact is that the Cambrian Explosion doesn't even represent the majority of the phyla. Will these other phyla be found in the Cambrian? Maybe. But one can't rationally assume what the future holds in order to argue to his case.Phylum Level Evolution by Glenn R. Morton.
Wells, a senior fellow at the infamous Discovery (of Nothing) Institute, recently made a totall ass of himself trying to spin-doctor the announcement of of a study with evolutionary implications. Like one tallhappy, he apparently jumped in without reading to see what he was talking about, in this case, the study itself. I'll see if I can't find the thread for you.
Skip 55. I never know what I'm talking about and everyone knows there are no transitional insect fossils.
Karl_Lembke's 57 exposes Wells pantless in public.
You might also want to read some less-fawning reviews of Icons, compiled here.