Page 117 - The Errors the American National Academy of Sciences

The NAS's Errors in Portraying Common
Structures as Evidence of Evolution

have been greatly strengthened if embryologi-
cal and genetic research could have shown
that homologous structures were specified
by homologous genes and followed patterns
of embryological development… But it has
become clear that the principle cannot be
extended in this way. Homologous struc-
tures are often specified by non-homolo-
gous genetic systems and the concept of
homology can seldom be extended
Michael Denton's book Evolution: A
back into embryology. 6 Theory in Crisis
In the same book, Denton sum-
marizes his conclusions:

The evolutionary basis of homology is perhaps even more severely
damaged by the discovery that apparently homologous structures
are specified by quite different genes in different species. 7
In a 1997 article, Richard Milton describes how molecular biol-
ogy has shattered evolutionists' hopes regarding homology:
It isn't only embryology that experienced such disappointments. In
the 1950s, when molecular biologists began to decipher the genetic
code, there was a single glittering prize enticing them. When they
found the codes for making proteins out of amino acids, they natu-
rally assumed that they were on the brink of discovering at the mol-
ecular level the same homologies that had been observed at the
macroscopic level in comparative anatomy.

If the bones of the human arm could be traced to the wing of the bat
and hoof of the horse, then the miraculous new science of molecular
biology would trace the homologies in DNA codes that expressed
these physical characteristics… Yet when biologists did begin to ac-
quire an understanding of the molecular mechanism of genetics,
they found that apparently homologous structures in different

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