The Case for a Creator - Lee Strobel [22]
Wells stopped for a moment. He apparently felt some elaboration was in order. “Of course, descent from a common ancestor is true at some levels,” he continued. “Nobody denies that. For example, we can trace generations of fruit flies to a common ancestor. Within a single species, common ancestry has been observed directly. And it’s possible that all the cats—tigers, lions, and so on—descended from a common ancestor. While that’s not a fact, it might be a reasonable inference based on interbreeding.
“So as we go up these different levels in the taxonomic hierarchy—species, genus, family, order, class—common ancestry is certainly true at the species level, but is it true at higher levels? It becomes an increasingly uncertain inference the higher we go in the taxonomic hierarchy. When you get to the level of phyla, the major animal groups, it’s a very, very shaky hypothesis. In fact, I would say it’s disconfirmed. The evidence just doesn’t support it.”
The facts were compelling. Nobody can claim that Darwin’s tree is an accurate description of what the fossil record has produced. Protestations from Darwinists aside, the evidence has failed to substantiate the predictions that Darwin made. Yet when I encountered the drawing as a student, I walked away with the conclusion that it illustrated the success of his revolutionary ideas.
“Is the drawing still featured in textbooks today?” I asked.
“Not only is it included in the textbooks, but it’s called a fact,” Wells replied, sounding genuinely astonished. “I don’t mind that it’s shown; I think it’s a good illustration of an interesting theory. What I mind is when textbooks call it a fact that all animals share a common ancestor. Well, it’s not a fact!” he declared, his voice punctuating his point.
“If you consider all of the evidence, Darwin’s tree is false as a description of the history of life. I’ll even go further than that: it’s not even a good hypothesis at this point.”
IMAGE #3: HAECKEL’S EMBRYOS
Like every young student of evolution, Wells had seen Ernst Haeckel’s comparative drawings of embryos, often described as among the best evidence for Darwinism. But it wasn’t until Wells was working on his doctorate in vertebrate embryology that he saw the sketches for what they really were.
Haeckel’s most renowned images depict the embryos of a fish, salamander, tortoise, chicken, hog, calf, rabbit, and human side-by-side at three stages of development. The illustrations support Darwin’s assertion that the striking similarities between early embryos is “by far the strongest single class of facts” in favor of his theory that all organisms share a universal ancestor.
I was mesmerized by the nineteenth-century drawings when I first encountered them as a student. As I carefully compared the embryos at their earliest stage, looking back and forth from one to the other, I could see they were virtually indistinguishable. I searched my mind, but I couldn’t think of any logical explanation for this phenomenon other than a common ancestor. My verdict was swift: Darwin prevails.
The real explanation, as it turns out, would have been far too bizarre for me to have even considered at the time.
“When you saw these drawings,” I said to Wells, “did you have the same reaction that I did—that this was strong evidence for Darwinism?”
“Yes, I did, the first time I looked at them,” Wells answered. “It wasn’t until I was doing my graduate work that I began to compare actual photographs of embryos to what Haeckel had drawn.”
“And what did you find?”
“I was stunned!” he said, his eyes widening. “They didn’t fit. There was a big discrepancy. It was really hard to believe.”
As he described what had happened, I slowly shook my head in amazement at the implications of what he was saying. “I sort of rationalized by saying, well, textbooks tend to oversimplify things,” he continued. “But over time it bothered me more and more.”
I was hungry for details. “What was it specifically that bothered you?” I asked.