Evolution is a story

[Warden_of_the_Storm]

I think the tailbone is also a very important part to human. It is not a vestige.
Does Neanderthals have a longer tailbone?

No. No species of Humans has had a tail bone. Out ancestors did, which we can see from the DNA evidence and the fact that some people are born with a vestigial tail.
Hence why the human coccyx is a vestigial tailbone.

 

[Loudmouth]

If by evolution you mean that we share a common ancestor with apes, that is indeed a matter of belief,

It is a matter of evidence, and we have the evidence.

a belief meant to exclude God from his creation.

The only people excluding God are the ones who claim that God can't exist if humans and chimps share a common ancestor.

Darwin never meant to include God, this is what he said about the reference to a creator in his book:
"But I have long regretted that I truckled to public opinion & used Pentateuchal term of creation, by which I really meant “appeared” by some wholly unknown process."

Evolution is no more a problem for theism than gravity is.

"It can hardly be supposed that a false theory would explain, in so satisfactory a manner as does the theory of natural selection, the several large classes of facts above specified. It has recently been objected that this is an unsafe method of arguing; but it is a method used in judging of the common events of life, and has often been used by the greatest natural philosophers ... I see no good reason why the views given in this volume should shock the religious feelings of any one. It is satisfactory, as showing how transient such impressions are, to remember that the greatest discovery ever made by man, namely, the law of the attraction of gravity, was also attacked by Leibnitz, "as subversive of natural, and inferentially of revealed, religion." A celebrated author and divine has written to me that "he has gradually learnt to see that it is just as noble a conception of the Deity to believe that He created a few original forms capable of self-development into other and needful forms, as to believe that He required a fresh act of creation to supply the voids caused by the action of His laws."

— Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species (1859)​

 

[Loudmouth]

I do not know any vestigial organ except the suggested appendix of human.

I am sure that we could start a thousand threads on the things that you do not know about.

But just 15 (?) years ago, the medical field started to discover that it has some vital functions. So, if you say other animals have some useless vestiges, I really have hard time to believe that.

Vestigial does not mean "has no function". That would be your first mistake. Vestigial means, "not having the same function as that seen in other species". The human tailbone, for example, does not support the movement of a tail as seen in other species. That makes the human tailbone vestigial, even if it is found to have other rudimentary functions.

More importantly, vestigial organs are evidence for evolution because they match the proposed evolutionary history of species. For example, we find vestigial pelvises in whales. However, we don't find any vestigial feathers in any mammal species. Vestigial organs match evolutionary history, and that is why they are evidence.

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

I do not know any vestigial organ except the suggested appendix of human. I was told it is useless since I was a child. But just 15 (?) years ago, the medical field started to discover that it has some vital functions. So, if you say other animals have some useless vestiges, I really have hard time to believe that.

Did you read the post where I gave some examples (#181)? I also linked to a list of human examples and noted that the appendix was controversial.

To repeat what I said in #193, "Just because you're ignorant of them doesn't mean they don't exist. They form a strong independent thread of evidence for evolution, and can often help identify relationships between close lineages."

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

Does Neanderthals have a longer tailbone?

No; Neanderthals are not direct human ancestors, and a common ancestor with a tail would have been before the evolution and separation of the apes (superfamily Hominoidea) - including gibbons & hominins, from the Old World monkeys.

 

[USincognito]

We know the idea of vestige is wrong. They all have important functions to the life form.

What important function does the extensor coccyges muscles have in humans and our fellow apes?
What important function does a broken GULO gene have in primates?
What important function does a non-functioning Sonic Hedgehog/Hand2 gene package have in cetaceans?

 

[Shemjaza]

I know little about mole. But I always found deep sea oceanic life facinating. Why would they want to migrate (evolve) from shallow sea to deep sea?

Same reason any new environment is colonised, because there was an opportunity for resources that other life wasn't taking advantage of better.

 

[acehighinfinity2015]

Evolution is a story?

Yep, must be a really good story if the atheists believe in it.

 

[lewiscalledhimmaster]

Evolution is a story?

Yep, must be a really good story if the atheists believe in it.

Funny! haha it's evidence based, and once one begins to understand how it 'works' (?) there is certainly that sense of joy and wonder and excitement at what one has found / learned / discovered! However, that is where the similarity between religious assumption ( i.e Creation 'science') and scientific 'fact' ends.

Faith ( belief in the 'supernatural' ) rests on a foundation of assumptions, which require blind acceptance of it's teachings ( i.e "God exists" ) where as scientific fact doesn't have the luxury of such a story telling device

--- though it is a story, its actually quite boring by comparison ( no virgin births, dying or rising incarnations or afterlife, or wand waving magicians surrounded by demons and wizards -- who recite incantations and make matter pop into existence ( i.e. "Let there be light!" ) Let there be light indeed! Let it open our understanding of the evidence based on years of observation! --- at the wonderful work being done by millions of scientists everyday, to help us better understand ourselves and --- how we have evolved!

 

[juvenissun]

Did you read the post where I gave some examples (#181)? I also linked to a list of human examples and noted that the appendix was controversial.

To repeat what I said in #193, "Just because you're ignorant of them doesn't mean they don't exist. They form a strong independent thread of evidence for evolution, and can often help identify relationships between close lineages."

I don't know much about vestigial organ about human. But I know what happened to the wrong idea about the appendix. As a consequence, I don't have any confidence to any of those suggestions. Provided that human is a really really bad example of evolution.

 

[juvenissun]

What important function does the extensor coccyges muscles have in humans and our fellow apes?
What important function does a broken GULO gene have in primates?
What important function does a non-functioning Sonic Hedgehog/Hand2 gene package have in cetaceans?

Don't know. But only questions would not be enough to convince anyone.

What important function does the appendix have?

 

[juvenissun]

Same reason any new environment is colonised, because there was an opportunity for resources that other life wasn't taking advantage of better.

What resources the deep sea has but not the shallow sea? I don't see ANY advantage for fish to evolve from shallow sea to deep sea.

 

[Shemjaza]

What resources the deep sea has but not the shallow sea? I don't see ANY advantage for fish to evolve from shallow sea to deep sea.

Deep sea is way worse then shallow sea... but there wasn't any competition for it. That's why adapting to harsh environments is an advantage.

 

[USincognito]

Don't know.{snip}

Then you don't know as much about vestiges as you think you do and your claim that the idea of vestiges is wrong is itself wrong.

 

[Shemjaza]

Don't know. But only questions would not be enough to convince anyone.

What important function does the appendix have?

I got mine cut out after the damn thing nearly killed me. We can thrive without it.

It boosts your immune system, but is massively over complicated for that task and so can get infected and septic. It's a vestigial organ that is analogous with organs for digesting cellulose.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

No. In most cases, function A still exist. It only add function B onto it. And the new life has both function A and B.

Can you give a specific example thereof and explain why it is apparantly a problem for evolution theory?

Juve, it seems as if you have missed my question here.

I ask again: Can you give a specific example thereof and explain why it is apparantly a problem for evolution theory?

 

[Jimmy D]

Don't know. But only questions would not be enough to convince anyone.

No, but the answers might be. If you allowed yourself to look.

 

[juvenissun]

Deep sea is way worse then shallow sea... but there wasn't any competition for it. That's why adapting to harsh environments is an advantage.

So it should not happen.

 

[juvenissun]

Then you don't know as much about vestiges as you think you do and your claim that the idea of vestiges is wrong is itself wrong.

I say what I know. What I know is that it is wrong.

 

[juvenissun]

Juve, it seems as if you have missed my question here.

I ask again: Can you give a specific example thereof and explain why it is apparantly a problem for evolution theory?

I only answer good questions.