A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words

A thought occurred to me today as I was riding home from one of my trips of running the girls to and fro, to and fro. I was pondering what I read yesterday from Francis Collins' interview on beliefnet, and evaluating my thoughts about evolution. It occurred to me that perhaps human gestation tells the story of evolution in an abbreviated form. Creationists are offended at the thought that we climbed out of the waters (having evolved from some creepy little blob of fleshly life) and that our beginnings are much more grandiose than that. But truly...don't we all start life as a little blob of fleshly life that "climbs out of the waters" via the birth canal?

I remember when I found out I was pregnant with Matthew. First baby...oh so mesmerized by the wonders of life and feeling so motherly with all those pregnancy hormones pulsating through my body. I checked a book out of the library about pregnancy and it showed the developing fetus during different gestational periods. I found the picture that corresponded with my stage of pregnancy and I was shocked. Truly shocked. It was about as far from cute as you can get. Ewwwwwwwww. I continued to feel motherly, but I liked it a lot better when pictures of the embryo became pictures of a fetus that looked more like a real baby.

So pondering this all today, I typed all kinds of things into google...just to see what might come up. Being very unlearned in evolutionary theory I came upon a picture from The Descent of Man - Darwin Volume 1 that showed the similarities between the embryo of a dog and the embryo of a human. The picture follows:

I thought the similarities between the little blobs of fleshly life were striking. However as I read more about it online, I discovered there has been some controversy as to whether the pictures were doctored. So having google to help me with my research, I found the following pictures of embryos. One is an elephant, another is a dog, several are human.

Okay...the first embryo is a dog, the second embryo is an elephant, the last two embryos are human. If you look, even to the naked, untrained eye there are differences...but striking similarities too. They all begin as blobs. I do not mean any of this to be controversial. I do not mean to offend or poke fun at the sanctity of life because I do believe that even at these rudimentary stages, a baby is a baby is a baby. And I am just thinking this evolution stuff all through. As Francis Collins said in the article I posted about yesterday "God Is Not Threatened By Our Scientific Adventures" (no matter how amateur and ignorant they might be). And it is with that thought, and because I have an affinity for offbeat humor that I post a picture of a fetus at 7 wks gestation...truly a face only a mother could love :)