My Body Carries Evidence for Evolution?

Several features of the human body are best explained by common descent.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://biologos.org/blogs/chris-stump-equipping-educators/my-body-carries-evidence-for-evolution

the tail bone and the appendix have functions:

so darwin actually was wrong about his predictions.

by the way- monkeys (and many other animals) doesnt have an appendix. so its also contradict the phylogeny of this organ. so we need to believe that this organ evolved about 20 times convergently.

That doesn’t seem to be a problem for evolutionary biologists according to this Science Magazine article based on this paper.

Just because Darwin was wrong about his assumptions about the appendix, doesn’t thwart the whole theory like you are insinuating. It actually gives a good example of what real scientists do; they refine and update their models according to evidence.

Having a purpose does not mean a structure is not vestigial. Through evolution, structures are often re-purposed to function in new ways, and may have residual function that differs in some way from the original, or that may be unique to the species. It is part of our amazing creation story that embryology and comparative anatomy link together, and then as genetics has developed with DNA analysis, it confirms the relationship. Rather than evolution being an orphan discipline unrelated to the rest of science, it is part of an interwoven web that helps explain the mechanism by which things work together.

This article on the TalkOrigins website discusses the appendix and vestigial organs:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/vestiges/appendix.html

Some monkeys do have an appendix, but our closer primate relatives all have them.

The most interesting point about the current function of the appendix is
“Its major importance would appear to be financial support of the surgical profession.”

Alfred Sherwood Romer and Thomas S. Parsons
The Vertebrate Body (1986), p. 389.

The appendix is probably where the soul is. :grimacing:

…Maybe the soul is a vestigial organ, though …

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according to the link sited above, 'possums must have a lot of soul, then!

its just a belief.

I would have pointed to many pseudogenes and similarity of gene order as often vestigial.

Good one. I really enjoy off-beat humor. Seriously, that was very clever wit—even though I will accept that a great many people would probably just think it odd.

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No. A definition is not “just a belief”, @dcscccc.

A vestigial organ is one which no longer serves its original purpose. As a result, it may have been “re-purposed” or it may simply be a “left-over relic” of a past use which serves no substantive function. The same term, “vestigial organ” (or “vestigial structure”) applies in either case.

Of course, use the term “purpose” can confuse the uninformed reader into thinking that it means some sort of deliberate design by a designer was involved. Yet, even though I certainly believe that God purposed everything and “designed” everything when he created a universe where the laws of physics would produce evolutionary processes—and as a Molinist I believe that God chose this particular “reality path” in which we live, so that he was fully mindful of exactly what would happen and when, just as he willed—that doesn’t mean any “intelligence” within nature or even within the organ/structure itself decided, “I think I will now cease to have my original purpose now.” [Oops. Having high-speed typing skills has many advantages, but one of the multiple disadvantages is that sometimes a single sentence grows in length and complexity to have far too many ideas condensed into one verbose sprint. Yet, another of my faults is laziness when I’m casually taking a break outside of my priority tasks for the day. So I’m going to leave that sentence as it is. It comes close enough to saying what needs to be said.]

Yes. genomes are so full of vestigial coding of various sorts that it is really is amazing that anyone insists on denying them. But one advantage of knowing nothing about what is inside of genomes is that one can make simplistic statements like “All future genetic potential for the entire baramin which will develop in the future, such as the entire cat-kind after the flood, is hidden away in what naive scientists foolishly claim is ‘junk DNA’.”

I’m glad someone appreciates my attempts at humor!

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