The Coccyx

[OldWiseGuy]

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[pshun2404]

It's not logical or sensible.

It's certainly possible for a creator to use the medium of evolution to create diversity... but then we have abandoned ID and all other forms of creationism.

However, when we examine the nested hierarchy, (which is detected, not created by scientists), we discover a whole lot of small attributes which make perfect sense as a consequence of small changes and improvements from mutations and selection, but create flaws a creator could trivially design around.

Assuming that there is a greater reason behind mistakes and flaws without evidence makes all moral and scientific observations and ideas pointless. Why is murder wrong if the murderer might have some special insight that we can't understand? Why is 1 + 1 equal to 2... what if maths is special in this circumstance and all logic and axioms are wrong?

No.

It's the patterns of commonality.

You said: “It's certainly possible for a creator to use the medium of evolution to create diversity... but then we have abandoned ID and all other forms of creationism.”

Not at all! Diversity was present as part of the original design (or intent) but that would not exclude the use of implementing such a process to produce variations of those themes (basic original creation of cats becoming the many varieties we now enjoy and see, the original few pairs of humans becoming all the variety we now see and enjoy, etc.). Many ID theorists as well as people who believe in a Creator believe in the process of evolution as part of His plan. One need not abandon one to accept the other. They are not an either or they are a both.

Then you said, “when we examine the nested hierarchy, (which is detected, not created by scientists), we discover a whole lot of small attributes which make perfect sense as a consequence of small changes and improvements from mutations and selection, but create flaws a creator could trivially design around.”

Of course it is made up. All systems of classification are made up by men. Now yes there are many areas of things that can be grouped together and yes many characteristics are shared and yes there are many small changes (for example variations by phenotype transmission within different types of organisms) and hallelujah we have discovered many such things but:

“A Hierarchy is an arrangement of items (objects, names, values, categories, etc.) in which the items are represented as being "above", "below", or "at the same level as" one another.” In this case the assumption is that similarity equals a lineal (as in a lineage) relationship, i.e., that one became the other or came from the other. However, the error of false causality assumes that if one thing preceded another that the latter came from the former or that the former was the cause of the latter and that is not always or necessarily true.

Any number of factors can be used to represent distribution within a hierarchy. All hierarchies are a matter of human choice and decision. In the case of Nested Hierarchies in biology, the standard for distribution in one or another grouping is similarity (predominately appearance in anatomical form or function, and secondarily, in more modern times, by similarity in the genomes (and these are determined mostly by intelligently designed algorithms the purpose of which is to find areas of similarity no matter how far apart, or how different the areas before or after may be (which can cause difference in function). Thus, some genes that appear similar serve totally different functions. The same gene sometimes has a different result or product, and in some cases a totally different gene performs the same result (same product).

Also remember the GIGO principle is the function of all programming. The program seeks the results we want and intend and programmed it to perform, and thus they are predetermined to a degree. The problem arises in that the resultant data can now be interpreted, and each interpreter takes into the equation their personal paradigm and expectation. The data can be seen as valid, but the story or explanation may not be.

“but create flaws a creator could trivially design around”

These are only flaws in your judgment. They may be mere consequence or even may have purpose you cannot see. God made this world to be a world that supports the continued production and existence of the optimal number of souls.

Such a planet has to be moving and changing, where weather alternates and has climate zones, plate shifting to compensate and make adjustments, and volcanoes erupt to release the mounting pressures building beneath our feet, and so on. Such occurrences are simply unfortunate natural occurrences. The buildup of filth and putrefaction, combined with the repressed lower classes inability to afford remedy, increased the diseased rat population allowing the fleas to bite the people passing on heinous disease or a volcano wiping out 100,000 people is neither evil or good, and it did not necessitate a judgment was taking place nor that it was a possibility a God should not have missed. Some are just wrong place wrong time.

God made bacteria. You might see this as a mistake but that does not mean it was. Most are beneficial and some cause disease, but the balance that exists allows for the production and existence of the optimal number of souls. Bacteria are not good or evil they are just bacteria. They are not bad judgment or a mistake, they were necessary for His intended purpose.

Your final paragraph is so absurd and assumption based that I won’t even address it. Reality is what it is. 2 things plus 2 things equaling 4 things is TRUTH. The TRUTH is that which is actual. 2+2=4 is the same in the past, and will be also in the future, it is true under the earth, on the earth, on the moon, and in Alpha Centauri. It is wonderful that we have what other animals do not (a spirit) and are able to discover and explore the what and how of what is. If we feel stressed to give this more meaning then that which it is, or to denigrate what it is, that is a flaw with us, not in the one who made it all happen.

 

[Nithavela]

Spectrum of human tails: A report of six cases

 

[Ophiolite]

Ves·tig·i·al

adjective

1. forming a very small remnant of something that was once much larger or more noticeable.

synonyms: remaining,

surviving, residual, leftover, lingering

• In BIOLOGY

(of an organ or part of the body) degenerate, rudimentary, or atrophied, having become functionless in the course of evolution.

Thus, the coccyx is not a vestigial tail at all because

a) as far back as we can go this feature was never a tail, never atrophied, or “degenerated” from something longer. Even in the alleged earliest human species the coccyx is short, and


b) because the coccyx is known to be there to support a ganglia of nervous tissue covered in grey matter (like a little brain - coccygeal plexus) and not only is the connective source of the two coccygeal and also sciatic nerves, but assists (and is necessary to) the autonomic urogenital functions. In its parasympathetic stimulated phase it is essential to our sexuality, thus mating, thus perpetuation and survival of the species. It carries the sensation/information through the axons to the central nervous system and back through transmission across the dentrites.

Gray's anatomy for students, Philadelphia, Elsevier/Churchill Livingstone, p. 423, tells us that the ganglia attached and supported there contribute to the innervation of the pelvic and genital organs. The nerves “regulate the emptying of the bladder, control the opening and closing of the internal urethral sphincter, motility in the rectum as well as sexual functions.” Thus they maintain their function.

Roberto Spiegelmann, Edgardo Schinder, Mordejai Mintz, and Alexander Blakstein, in "The human tail: a benign stigma," Journal of Neurosurgery, 63: 461-462 (1985) explain that “True human tails are rarely encountered in medicine. At the time when Darwin's theory of evolution was a matter of debate, hundreds of dubious cases were reported. The presence of a tail in a human being was considered by evolutionists as an example that "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny." But the theory that ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny has been disproven in modern times. The main proponent of this notion was Ernst Heakel who had produced a document showing the similarity of embryos allegedly demonstrating that embryos represent a fish like stage of evolution. We know now that Heakel had perpetrated an intentional fraud, and that these drawings were enhanced to produce the illusion of support for the theory. The premise is not true. Ontogeny does not recapitulate phylogeny. The alleged “gills” are just fat folds on the embryo and all non-egg laying animal embryos receive their oxygen through the blood of the mother, and in no other way.

"Pseudotails" which are often found in other locations on the lower back, are obvious aberrations since they are often associated with anomalies (remember and do not be fooled, the exception is never the rule). What is considered a “true tail” (extending from the coccyx) is far more rare, and together (both kinds) have only been observed on around 100 occasions from among the many millions of births. Secondly, they are not even a real tail (they totally lack vertebrae). The Journal confirms this. In all studies done all these alleged tails lacked “…bone, cartilage, notochord, and spinal cord.”

According to Allan Joel Belzberg, Stanley Terence Myles, and Cynthia Lucy Trevenen, in "The Human Tail and Spinal Dysraphism," Journal of Pediatric Surgery, 26: 1243-1245 (October, 1991), these extremely rare genetic abnormalities in humans have no spinal cord at all. After many surgeries they have determined they are nothing more than a “central core of mature fatty tissue divided into small lobules by thin fibrous septa. Small blood vessels and nerve fibers are scattered throughout. Bundles of striated muscle fibers, sometimes degenerated, tend to aggregate in the center.” This is nothing like any tail we would commonly find on any kind of ape (or any other animal for that matter) and NEVER have found this to be present in any demonstrable ancient ancestor.

And as far as the more common yet still extremely rare pseudo-tail formation, according to Se-Hyuck Park, Jee Soon Huh, Ki Hong Cho, Yong Sam Shin, Se Hyck Kim, Young Hwan Ahn, Kyung Gi Cho, Soo Han Yoon, "Teratoma in Human Tail Lipoma," Pediatric Neurosurgery, 41:158-161 (2005), it “has no embryological relationship to human tail development, but is any variable abnormal caudal tail-like structure or protrusion." Nothing more…not a tail…not indicative of some remote unfounded assumption about the past, not a degeneration, nor is it atrophied…

If these phenomena were truly vestigial in nature we should expect to see at least some vestige of vertebrae or controllable movement but alas we do not. Science offers no demonstrable evidence at all that the human coccyx is anything more than what it is, and likewise demonstrates no evidence whatsoever that it ever was anything other than what it is now.

The entire alleged theory that it is a vestigial organ is a contrived myth (science fiction) based on the acceptance of the hypothesis alone. In the 2012 paper, “Spectrum of human tails: A report of six cases”, four out of the six of the alleged “tails” were higher in the lumbar region, and three of these babies sadly had spinal bifida, one had the appendage protruding from its buttock, and the another from the sacral region. And according to the report 5 out the six allegedly vestigial tails were not even connected to the spine.

Please stop brainwashing our children with this heinous fairytale. If you have been brainwashed by it please wake up now and simply look at the actual data and block the hypothesis based “interpretation” out of your thinking?

Well, from what you say here, it is clear that scientists have been sitting on this for years and thereby hangs a tale.

 

[The Barbarian]

It is easy to refute creationist claims about the coccyx. A fair number of people lack a coccyx entirely. Most are not aware of it unless an x-ray happens to show it. Coccygeal agenesis rarely has any symptoms at all.

 

[tas8831]

Intelligent designers created all nested hierarchies (as a mater of systematic categorization), and they were not even omnipotent!

Humans did not create nested hierarchies. Your desperation is showing.

Besides, why couldn't an omnipotent intelligent designer use evolution as one the processes to accomplish His goals of producing variety in the continuation of the many species?

If you truly take that as an option, one has to wonder why you expend so much energy attacking it, to include employing plagiarism, misrepresentation, etc.

Or perhaps the severely perceptually limited puny finite minds who intelligently designed nested hierarchies would have not used this process. Unless you are omniscient, you simply cannot KNOW (because after all we are among those perceptually limited finite minds...just consider TAS).

At least Tas does not plagiarize, embellish, fabricate or doctor quotes, misrepresent articles (repeatedly), and pretend to understand things I do not.

One should remember, after all, the laughable errors that I documented in this very thread regarding your depiction of the coccyx, and your refusal to admit those errors.

In fact, I will start a new thread deconstructing the entirety of your OP that you can ignore at your integrity's peril.

 

[Shemjaza]

You said: “It's certainly possible for a creator to use the medium of evolution to create diversity... but then we have abandoned ID and all other forms of creationism.”

Not at all! Diversity was present as part of the original design (or intent) but that would not exclude the use of implementing such a process to produce variations of those themes (basic original creation of cats becoming the many varieties we now enjoy and see, the original few pairs of humans becoming all the variety we now see and enjoy, etc.). Many ID theorists as well as people who believe in a Creator believe in the process of evolution as part of His plan. One need not abandon one to accept the other. They are not an either or they are a both.

That invalidates ID because the whole point of ID is that evolution is impossible. If evolution is plausible, and we have evidence that it happened, and we don't have any evidence that some mysterious designer was also involved the belief in said designer is illogical.

Then you said, “when we examine the nested hierarchy, (which is detected, not created by scientists), we discover a whole lot of small attributes which make perfect sense as a consequence of small changes and improvements from mutations and selection, but create flaws a creator could trivially design around.”

Of course it is made up. All systems of classification are made up by men. Now yes there are many areas of things that can be grouped together and yes many characteristics are shared and yes there are many small changes (for example variations by phenotype transmission within different types of organisms) and hallelujah we have discovered many such things but:

“A Hierarchy is an arrangement of items (objects, names, values, categories, etc.) in which the items are represented as being "above", "below", or "at the same level as" one another.” In this case the assumption is that similarity equals a lineal (as in a lineage) relationship, i.e., that one became the other or came from the other. However, the error of false causality assumes that if one thing preceded another that the latter came from the former or that the former was the cause of the latter and that is not always or necessarily true.

Any number of factors can be used to represent distribution within a hierarchy. All hierarchies are a matter of human choice and decision. In the case of Nested Hierarchies in biology, the standard for distribution in one or another grouping is similarity (predominately appearance in anatomical form or function, and secondarily, in more modern times, by similarity in the genomes (and these are determined mostly by intelligently designed algorithms the purpose of which is to find areas of similarity no matter how far apart, or how different the areas before or after may be (which can cause difference in function). Thus, some genes that appear similar serve totally different functions. The same gene sometimes has a different result or product, and in some cases a totally different gene performs the same result (same product).

Also remember the GIGO principle is the function of all programming. The program seeks the results we want and intend and programmed it to perform, and thus they are predetermined to a degree. The problem arises in that the resultant data can now be interpreted, and each interpreter takes into the equation their personal paradigm and expectation. The data can be seen as valid, but the story or explanation may not be.

I think you are using both "created" and "hierarchy" in a misleading way. The nested hierarchy is a measure of ancestry, not some arbitrary measure of value, worthiness or superiority.

Certainly human researchers and algorithms aren't some kind of perfect discoverer of truth, but they can be tested against known quantities and against experimental data.

We have many extant examples of reproduction, ancestry ion both humans and animals.

“but create flaws a creator could trivially design around”

These are only flaws in your judgment. They may be mere consequence or even may have purpose you cannot see. God made this world to be a world that supports the continued production and existence of the optimal number of souls.

Such a planet has to be moving and changing, where weather alternates and has climate zones, plate shifting to compensate and make adjustments, and volcanoes erupt to release the mounting pressures building beneath our feet, and so on. Such occurrences are simply unfortunate natural occurrences. The buildup of filth and putrefaction, combined with the repressed lower classes inability to afford remedy, increased the diseased rat population allowing the fleas to bite the people passing on heinous disease or a volcano wiping out 100,000 people is neither evil or good, and it did not necessitate a judgment was taking place nor that it was a possibility a God should not have missed. Some are just wrong place wrong time.

God made bacteria. You might see this as a mistake but that does not mean it was. Most are beneficial and some cause disease, but the balance that exists allows for the production and existence of the optimal number of souls. Bacteria are not good or evil they are just bacteria. They are not bad judgment or a mistake, they were necessary for His intended purpose.

I'm not making value calls about things like bacteria of complicated webs of ecosystems, I'm talking about actual flawed designs. Vertebrates have a blind spot in their vision and nerves that take inefficient routs through their neck and hearts.

There is a trivial explanation within evolution, but a special creator must be incompetent, deceptive or cruel.

Your final paragraph is so absurd and assumption based that I won’t even address it. Reality is what it is. 2 things plus 2 things equaling 4 things is TRUTH. The TRUTH is that which is actual. 2+2=4 is the same in the past, and will be also in the future, it is true under the earth, on the earth, on the moon, and in Alpha Centauri. It is wonderful that we have what other animals do not (a spirit) and are able to discover and explore the what and how of what is. If we feel stressed to give this more meaning then that which it is, or to denigrate what it is, that is a flaw with us, not in the one who made it all happen.

My point is your willingness to just assume that the intelligent designer has some kind of superior idea despite evidence.

If facts can be ignored because the creators plan must make sense somehow, why should any truth be exempt?

 

[tas8831]

But remember - because the coccygeal plexus lies next to the coccyx, the coccyx HAS A FUNCTION and thus was DESIGNED by JESUS!!!

 

[The Barbarian]

It should be noted that "vestigial" does not mean "without function." It means that it's lost it's former function. And that's always been true. Darwin mentioned examples of such organs that evolved new uses. It is possible for a vestigial organ to be functionless, as we see in the coccyx, but others, like the appendix, have evolved new functions.

And it's absurd to claim that the coccyx is a necessary organ, when people who happen to lack one are normally completely unaware of it, unless they have an x-ray and the radiologist notices. In some cases, even part of the sacrum can be missing without any clinical significance.

 

[tas8831]

In fact, I will start a new thread deconstructing the entirety of your OP that you can ignore at your integrity's peril.

Which I did, and creationists avoided (or trolled and trashed) rather than admit their folly.

 

[The Barbarian]

BTW
Surgical removal of your coccyx would make normal movement for humans extremely difficult. Removal of a mere tail has no such effect.

You've been misled about that, too:

Significant neurological deficits are associated with the high sacral malformations, but isolated coccygeal agenesis is usually asymptomatic
CAUDAL AGENESIS & RELATED MALFORMATIONS

This isn't new information, or difficult to find. Either you're relying on someone who is wholly ignorant of the issue, or they're lying to you.

 

[The Barbarian]

Apes don't have tails. There have been apes around for at least 14 million years and they haven't had tails for that whole time.

The two groups of animals we call monkeys do have tails and we (along with the rest of the apes) are related to them and we still have signs we used to have tails.

Yep.

Chimpanzee pelvis. Notice the coccyx. Pretty much like other apes, including humans.

And orangutans?