How do Creationists explain vestigal organs?

[CabVet]

You just need to have an opener mind.

The Tailbone Miracle

A Christian creationist linking to a website claiming proof for the existence of Allah, now that is a first!

 

[Split Rock]

A Christian creationist linking to a website claiming proof for the existence of Allah, now that is a first!

Well, it shows that Christian and Islamic creationists have a lot in common...

 

[CabVet]

Well, it shows that Christian and Islamic creationists have a lot in common...

Yeah, a lot except God, or do they think it is the same God? I sure hope not since they hate each other so much.

 

[Split Rock]

Yeah, a lot except God, or do they think it is the same God? I sure hope not since they hate each other so much.

Heck, Christians have a long history of killing each other over interpretation of scripture and the Muslims are still doing it today!

 

[SkyWriting]

How was it ever relevant to the digestion of cellulose like it is in other species?

Food enters mouth, gets digested. Why?

Perhaps? Methinks you are just making stuff up.

Then you DO know what perhaps means. Super.

Vestigial does not mean functionless.

Humans have no vestigal features from other species.

Where are the reports of humans using their coccyx to support a tail?

They never had tails. They have tail bones with multiple uses.

 

[SkyWriting]

A Christian creationist linking to a website claiming proof for the existence of Allah, now that is a first!

People have many belief systems. You'll learn.

Did you think I was kidding when I said I don't
screen my links much? I think even non-religious
people occasionally stumble upon a morsel of wisdom
---- once in a while.

 

[SkyWriting]

Heck, Christians have a long history of killing each other over interpretation of scripture and the Muslims are still doing it today!

Genocides in history

2.1 Before 1490
2.2 1490 to 1914
2.2.1 Americas
2.2.1.1 United States of America
2.2.1.2 Peru
2.2.1.3 Haiti
2.2.1.4 Mexico
2.2.1.5 Argentina
2.2.2 Australia
2.2.3 France
2.2.4 Philippines
2.2.5 German South-West Africa
2.2.6 Ireland
2.2.6.1 War of the Three Kingdoms
2.2.6.2 Great Irish Famine
2.2.7 New Zealand
2.2.8 Russian Empire
2.2.9 Qing empire
2.3 1915 to 1950
2.3.1 Ottoman Empire/Turkey
2.3.1.1 Armenian
2.3.1.2 Assyrian
2.3.1.3 Greek
2.3.1.4 Dersim Kurds
2.3.2 Soviet Union
2.3.2.1 Decossackization
2.3.2.2 Holodomor
2.3.2.3 Poland, 1937–38
2.3.2.4 Deportation of Chechen people
2.3.2.5 Deportations of Lithuanians, Latvians and Estonians
2.3.3 Nazi Germany and occupied Europe
2.3.4 Croatia
2.3.5 Massacres of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia
2.3.6 Dominican Republic
2.3.7 Partition of India in 1947
2.3.8 Republic of China and Tibet
2.4 1951 to 2000
2.4.1 Expulsion of Germans after World War II
2.4.2 Australia 1900-1969
2.4.3 Zanzibar
2.4.4 Guatemala 1968-1996
2.4.5 Pakistan (Bangladesh War of 1971)
2.4.6 Burundi 1972 and 1993
2.4.7 North Korea
2.4.8 Equatorial Guinea
2.4.9 Laos
2.4.10 East Timor under Indonesian occupation
2.4.11 Dirty War in Argentina
2.4.12 Sabra-Shatila, Lebanon
2.4.13 Soviet intervention in Afghanistan
2.4.14 Ethiopia
2.4.15 Iraqi Kurds
2.4.16 Tibet
2.4.17 Brazil
2.4.18 Democratic Republic of Congo
2.4.19 Somalia
3 International prosecution of genocide
3.1 Ad hoc tribunals
3.1.1 Bosnia and Herzegovina 1992–1995
3.1.2 Rwanda
3.1.3 Cambodia
3.2 International Criminal Court
3.2.1 Darfur, Sudan

 

[Mr Strawberry]

People have many belief systems. You'll learn.

Always boring when the person lacking education assumes airs.

Did you think I was kidding when I said I don't
screen my links much?

Seems an extremely stupid thing for you to do. And that is without even considering that posting links you haven't screened first is sure to go down a storm with the moderators here.

I think even non-religious
people occasionally stumble upon a morsel of wisdom

Sadly it would seem that you, however, haven't.

---- once in a while.

...it must be very depressing for you to set yourself such low standards and still fail to meet them.

 

[Loudmouth]

Food enters mouth, gets digested.

Cellulose does not get digested because we lack a functioning caecum. All we have left is a vestige of the caecum which is the human vermiform appendix.

Humans have no vestigal features from other species.

Yes, we do. We inherited a tailbone from our ancestors that does not function as a tailbone. It is vestigial.

They never had tails.

Our ancestors did, as shown by the evidence.

They have tail bones with multiple uses.

Those uses are secondary and rudimentary functions compared to the same feature in other species which is the very definition of vestigial.

"An organ serving for two purposes, may become rudimentary or utterly aborted for one, even the more important purpose, and remain perfectly efficient for the other"--Charles Darwin

"formerly of greater physiological significance than at present". --Robert Wiedersheim, 1896

"A vestigial character is reduced and rudimentary compared to the same complex structure in other organisms."
29+ Evidences for Macroevolution: Glossary

Vestigial has never meant "without any function". NEVER. Pointing to rudimentary functions does not negate the vestigial nature of an organ. IT NEVER HAS.

 

[USincognito]

Vestigial has never meant "without any function". NEVER. Pointing to rudimentary functions does not negate the vestigial nature of an organ. IT NEVER HAS.

Muscles and tendons that wiggle our ears and flare our noses. Ostensibly these things are so reduced in function that they could be mistakenly called "without". Flaring nostrils can help us to gather more scent into our highly reduced olfactory glands, but how exactly does that help us? We don't sense pheromones like our ancestors did, and we sense danger through vision more than smell or hearing. And wiggling ears has only benefitted on human being in the last 50,000+ years - Jerome "Curley" Howard - when his were made to appear to move like some of our fellow mammals in Three Stooges movies*.

And then there's our semi-prehensile toes. Yeah, they don't grasp branches like our brachiating and arboreal ancestors needed them to, but they certainly are helpful to upright quadrapeds with an evolutionary predisposition to back injury when lifting things. I have a bad back and pick up many things from bath towels to pens. Should I spill something on my kitchen floor, I drop a paper or kitchen towel and use my toes to clean it up.

Creationists love to obsess on the coccyx and appendix, but they ignore all the other parts of our bodies where we clearly have vestigial structures, but they can't explain or handwave them away so easily.




* As a disclaimer, some human, at some point, might have impressed a date by wiggling their ears and wound up married or having kids, but, really, what are the odds of that.

 

[Loudmouth]

Creationists love to obsess on the coccyx and appendix, but they ignore all the other parts of our bodies where we clearly have vestigial structures, but they can't explain or handwave them away so easily.

Creationists are a bit like a dishonest salesman. Let's say I buy a typewriter from this salesman. When buying a typewriter I expect it to be able to type. I take it home and lo and behold it doesn't type. It's "broken". I take it back to the salesman and demand my money back. The salesman exclaims, "What do you mean it's broken? It still has function!!!". The salesman picks up the typewriter, places it on a stack of papers, and then tells me, "See!! It functions perfectly as a paperweight!!!". That is what creationists are doing with vestigial structures. They think that finding any function nullifies our argument in the same way that the salesman thinks he has satisfied the customer.

 

[Split Rock]

Humans have no vestigal features from other species.



They never had tails. They have tail bones with multiple uses.

What are these "multiple uses?" By this, I mean a function unique to the coccyx that cannot be performed by any other organ or system.

 

[SkyWriting]

Always boring when the person lacking education assumes airs.

Agreed. If claiming that people have differing points of view make me stupid, then I'm as dumb as they come.

Seems an extremely stupid thing for you to do. And that is without even considering that posting links you haven't screened first is sure to go down a storm with the moderators here.

Don't be silly. The forum does not moderate the points of view expressed on sites linked to.

..it must be very depressing for you to set yourself such low standards and still fail to meet them.

I use a different accounting system than some.
This foolish plan of God is wiser than the wisest of human plans, and God's weakness is stronger than the greatest of human strength.

 

[SkyWriting]

Originally Posted by SkyWriting
Humans have no vestigal features from other species.
They never had tails. They have tail bones with multiple uses.

What are these "mulitple functions?" By this, I mean a function unique to the coccyx that cannot be performed by any other organ or system.

This is why you provide such good discussion.
Your "quotes" do not actually quote the writer, and
"mulitple functions?" means "a function unique to the coccyx".

 

[Split Rock]

This is why you provide such good discussion.
Your "quotes" do not actually quote the writer, and
"mulitple functions?" means "a function unique to the coccyx".

Sorry... I corrected myself. However, are you saying the coccyx has "multiple uses," but not "multiple functions?" I figured they were pretty much the same. Did God design the coccyx for multiple uses but not any functions??

I am still waiting for the list of "multiple uses."

 

[GoldenBoy89]

So in conclusion,
No. Creationists can't explain vestigial organs. At least not in any biological sense.

 

[SkyWriting]

So in conclusion,
No. Creationists can't explain vestigial organs. At least not in any biological sense.

Humans have no vestigal features from other species.
How exactly would that work, anyhow?
From the Creationist perspective.

 

[Split Rock]

Humans have no vestigal features from other species.
How exactly would that work, anyhow?
From the Creationist perspective.

This sounds like denial to me. "I don't believe in vestigial organs, therefore there are no vestigial organs." (paraphrasing)

Still waiting for the list of coccyx "multiple uses."

 

[Loudmouth]

Humans have no vestigal features from other species.

Evidence please.

 

[GoldenBoy89]

Humans have no vestigal features from other species.
How exactly would that work, anyhow?
From the Creationist perspective.

Says the expert in biology......