Page 121 - The Errors the American National Academy of Sciences

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

C Co m m o n S t t r r u c t t u r r e s W i i t t h
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ommon Structures With
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Another piece of evidence that undermines the claims of homol-
ogy is the question of embryological development. Despite the fact
that the NAS authors insist in the chapter named "Similarities During
Development" that there are similarities between living things during
their development and that this is proof of descent from a common
ancestor (Science and Creationism, p. 17), this claim does not reflect the
true facts.
In order for the evolutionist thesis regarding homology to be
taken seriously, the developmental processes of homologous struc-
tures—in other words the stages of embryological development in the
egg and the mother's womb—need to be parallel. The fact is, how-
ever, that these embryological process for homologous organs are
very different in every living thing. No matter how much evolution-
ists choose to ignore it, this truth has been known to scientists since
the nineteenth century. For example, the American embryologist E.B.
Wilson wrote in 1894,
It is a familiar fact that parts which closely agree in the adult, and are
undoubtedly homologous, often differ widely in larval or embryonic
origin either in mode of formation or in position, or in both. 15
Sixty years after Wilson, De Beer repeated the fact and stated,
The fact is that correspondence between homologous structures
cannot be pressed back to similarity of position of the cells in the
embryo, or of the parts of the egg out of which the structures are ul-
timately composed, or of developmental mechanisms by which
they are formed. 16
This still applies today. The contemporary biologist Pere Alberch
makes the following analysis:
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