Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

To: DeweyCA
Terminology is not the only thing that "evolves" with evolutionists. For instance, look up all the vestigial organs claimed by evolutionists to prove their theory. Most have now been proven to have uses and not be so vestigial at all.
2 posted on 02/18/2006 1:28:05 PM PST by the_Watchman
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies ]


To: the_Watchman
Terminology is not the only thing that "evolves" with evolutionists. For instance, look up all the vestigial organs claimed by evolutionists to prove their theory. Most have now been proven to have uses and not be so vestigial at all.

That is at the periphery of the discussion. It is used as supporting evidence.

To use that as a refutation is like me saying "well, the Shroud of Turin is probably not real, so there is no God."

IOW: Standard CRIDer Strawman.

3 posted on 02/18/2006 1:31:51 PM PST by freedumb2003 (American troops cannot be defeated. American Politicians can.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies ]

To: the_Watchman
"For instance, look up all the vestigial organs claimed by evolutionists to prove their theory. Most have now been proven to have uses and not be so vestigial at all."

Vestigial does not mean *useless*. It means that the structure isn't performing the same function it did in it's ancestors. That has been definition, ever since Darwin. For instance, the wings of an ostrich are vestigial, because they no longer can be used for flight. The appendix, which in our ancestors was much larger, was used for the digestion of cellulose.
58 posted on 02/18/2006 2:40:07 PM PST by CarolinaGuitarman ("There is grandeur in this view of life...")
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies ]

To: the_Watchman

Vestigial limbs on a Whale have a purpose? Interesting.

Considering that many 'features' have had their use modified over time why is it surprising to find some no longer serving their original function but perhaps being used for something else?


107 posted on 02/18/2006 5:28:22 PM PST by b_sharp (Science adjusts theories to fit evidence, creationism distorts evidence to fit the Bible.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies ]

To: the_Watchman; DeweyCA; freedumb2003; CarolinaGuitarman; b_sharp
Terminology is not the only thing that "evolves" with evolutionists. For instance, look up all the vestigial organs claimed by evolutionists to prove their theory. Most have now been proven to have uses and not be so vestigial at all.

Congratulations -- like most uneducated anti-evolutionists, you have no idea what "vestigial" means, or how vestigial features are used as evidence supporting evolutionary origins. Please try to actually *learn* some biology before you attempt to critique it.

On this long list of bone-headed, fallacious, or dishonest creationist claims, you'll find that your misunderstanding has already been identified and addressed:

Here is part of my reply to the last guy who tried attacking biology due to the same lack of knowledge:

Yes, VESTIGIAL FEATURES do indeed provide evidence of evolution "either way", because if they linger from a common ancestor, they indicate the link to that common ancestor, and if they have been "de-selected" as you say, they also provide evidence for evolution because they leave traces of their passing, such as the fact that birds do not have teeth, but still have "broken" genes to produce teeth (which can and have been chemically triggered to produce chicks with reptile-like teeth). Even though birds have lost the teeth of their reptile ancestors, they retain clear evidence that they *did* have teeth in a distant ancestor.

Vestigial features, even (and in some cases especially) ones which are not entirely non-functional, provide strong evidence for evolution precisely *because* they are the kind of "leftover" that a sensible designer wouldn't have put in if he were free to design things from scratch, but are exactly the kind of thing that evolution via common descent produces frequently (because it's slow to "weed out" things which aren't strictly detrimental, and because it "retasks" structures from earlier "models" instead of being free to "redesign" things from scratch.)

So can evolution ever be falsified? Sure -- by organisms having features that are *not* inherited from a common ancestor (by unmodified or modified descent). So far, no such feature has ever been found, despite 100+ years of searching, and despite the fact that *designed* objects have these kinds of non-heirarchical features all the time.

Try learning some biology before you attempt to critique it. Heck, you'd be a long way towards not making bone-headed errors on this topic if you had just *read* (and understood) the links I've *already* given to you for your education. They've already explained the problem with your fallacies, and yet you come right back and make them *again*.

Here, for example, are some of the passages you failed to either read or understand:

[From http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/vestiges/appendix.html]

Evolutionary vestiges are, technically, any diminished structure that previously had a greater physiological significance in an ancestor than at present. Independently of evolutionary theory, a vestige can also be defined typologically as a reduced and rudimentary structure compared to the same homologous structure in other organisms, as one that lacks the complex functions usually found for that structure in other organisms (see, e.g. Geoffroy 1798).

Classic examples of vestiges are the wings of the ostrich and the eyes of blind cavefish. These vestigial structures may have functions of some sort. Nevertheless, what matters is that rudimentary ostrich wings are useless as normal flying wings, and that rudimentary cavefish eyes are useless as normal sighted eyes. Vestiges can be functional, and speculative arguments against vestiges based upon their possible functions completely miss the point.

For more discussion of the vestigial concept, extensive modern and historical references concerning its definition (especially the allowance for functionality), see the Citing Scadding (1981) and Misunderstanding Vestigiality and 29+ Evidences for Macroevolution: Anatomical vestiges FAQs.

And:
[From: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section2.html#vestiges]

A vestige is defined, independently of evolutionary theory, as a reduced and rudimentary structure compared to the same complex structure in other organisms. Vestigial characters, if functional, perform relatively simple, minor, or inessential functions using structures that were clearly designed for other complex purposes. Though many vestigial organs have no function, complete non-functionality is not a requirement for vestigiality (Crapo 1985; Culver et al. 1995; Darwin 1872, pp. 601-609; Dodson 1960, p. 44; Griffiths 1992; Hall 2003; McCabe 1912, p. 264; Merrell 1962, p. 101; Moody 1962, p. 40; Muller 2002; Naylor 1982; Strickberger 2000; Weismann 1886, pp. 9-10; Wiedersheim 1893, p. 2, p. 200, p. 205).

For example, wings are very complex anatomical structures specifically adapted for powered flight, yet ostriches have flightless wings. The vestigial wings of ostriches may be used for relatively simple functions, such as balance during running and courtship displays—a situation akin to hammering tacks with a computer keyboard. The specific complexity of the ostrich wing indicates a function which it does not perform, and it performs functions incommensurate with its complexity. Ostrich wings are not vestigial because they are useless structures per se, nor are they vestigial simply because they have different functions compared to wings in other birds. Rather, what defines ostrich wings as vestigial is that they are rudimentary wings which are useless as wings.

Vestigial structures have perplexed naturalists throughout history and were noted long before Darwin first proposed universal common descent. Many eighteenth and nineteenth century naturalists identified and discussed vestigial structures, including Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), Georges-Louis Leclerc, Compte de Buffon (1707-1788), and Georges Cuvier (1769-1832). Over sixty years before Darwin's publication of On the Origin of Species, the eminent French anatomist Geoffroy St. Hilaire (1772-1844) discussed his observations of the vestigial wings of the cassowary and ostrich during his travels with Napoleon to Egypt:

"There is another species that, like the ostrich, never leaves the ground, the Cassowary, in which the shortening [of the wing] is so considerable, that it appears little more than a vestige of a wing. Its arm is not, however, entirely eliminated. All of the parts are found under the skin. ...

Whereas useless in this circumstance, these rudiments of the furcula have not been eliminated, because Nature never works by rapid jumps, and She always leaves vestiges of an organ, even though it is completely superfluous, if that organ plays an important role in the other species of the same family. Thus, under the skin of the Cassowary's flanks are the vestiges of the wings ..." (Geoffroy 1798)

Geoffroy was at a loss for why exactly nature "always leaves vestiges of an organ", yet he could not deny his empirical observations. Ten years later, Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744-1829) identified several vestigial structures in his Zoological Philosophy (Lamarck 1809, pp. 115-116):

"Eyes in the head are characteristic of a great number of different animals, and essentially constitute a part of the plan of organisation of the vertebrates. Yet the mole, whose habits require a very small use of sight, has only minute and hardly visible eyes ...

Olivier's Spalax, which lives underground like the mole, and is apparently exposed to daylight even less than the mole, has altogether lost the use of sight: so that it shows nothing more than vestiges of this organ. Even these vestiges are entirely hidden under the skin and other parts, which cover them up and do not leave the slightest access to light.

The Proteus, an aquatic reptile allied to the salamanders, and living in deep dark caves under water, has, like the Spalax, only vestiges of the organ of sight, vestiges which are covered up and hidden in the same way." (Lamarck 1809, p. 116)

Even Aristotle discussed the peculiar vestigial eyes of moles in the fourth century B.C. in De animalibus historiae (lib. I cap. IX), in which he identified them as "stunted in development" and "eyes not in the full sense".

As these individuals noted, vestiges can be especially puzzling features of organisms, since these "hypocritical" structures profess something that they do not do—they clearly appear designed for a certain function which they do not perform. However, common descent provides a scientific explanation for these peculiar structures. Existing species have different structures and perform different functions. If all living organisms descended from a common ancestor, then both functions and structures necessarily have been gained and lost in each lineage during macroevolutionary history. Therefore, from common descent and the constraint of gradualism, we predict that many organisms should retain vestigial structures as structural remnants of lost functions.


120 posted on 02/18/2006 6:04:00 PM PST by Ichneumon
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson