DO WE HAVE USELESS (VESTIGIAL) ORGANS LEFTOVER FROM OUR “EVOLUTIONARY ANCESTORS?”

Do we have now-useless organs that have been left over from our “evolutionary ancestors?” If this is so, it would constitute a powerful case against the Design Hypothesis (ID). Jerry Bergman has written:

·       The standard definition of ‘vestigial’ is an [leftover] organ that once was useful in an animal’s evolutionary past, but that now is useless or very close to useless. The list of vestigial organs in humans has shrunk from 180 in 1890 to 0 in 1999.

This is more than remarkable, since, if Darwinism is a fact, we should expect to find a messy collection of leftover organs that no longer function. Bergman provides example of organs that had once been considered to have no function:

·       The appendix is part of the immune system, strategically located at the entrance of the almost sterile ileum from the colon with its normally high bacterial content.

·       The tonsils have a similar function in the entrance to the pharynx.⁸

·       The pineal gland secretes malatonin which is a hormone that regulates the circadian rhythm and has other functions.

·       The thymus is part of the immune system, related to T-cells. HIV attacks T-cells, rendering them ineffective and for this reason is always eventually fatal.

Bergman adds:

·       The number of organs that once were believed to be functional in the evolutionary past of humans but are non-functional today has been steadily reduced as the fields of anatomy and physiology have progressed. Few examples of vestigial organs in humans are now offered, and the ones that are have been shown by more recent research to be completely functional (and in many cases critically so, see Bergman and Howe).

Because of this, Bergman is able to cite numerous cases where the definition of “vestigial” is now revised in the hope of salvaging Darwinist argument against ID: “Any organ that during the course of evolution has become reduced in function and usually in size.”

However, even it is true that a certain human organ has a less essential role than the similar organ in a primate, it can no longer be construed as a mere “leftover” to support Darwinism, since it still performs a needed function.

Taking this reasoning a step further – It is remarkable that there are no clear cases where humans carry leftovers from their “evolutionary past.” Even the idea of “junk DNA” has now been overturned. Consequently, it seems likely that everything plays a role.

This serves as a powerful argument for the Design Hypothesis. If macroevolution is a reality, then we should expect to observe a messy collection of incomplete organs and a genome in disarray. However, this is not what we observe. Therefore, Bergman concludes:

·       Evolutionists never have explained how and why so many structures could exist in humans (like the complex structures that enable music, song and dance) that confirm no survival advantage yet delight millions. Only creation can explain this observation. The clear conclusion is that the concept of evolutionary vestigial organs is useless, or largely speculative, and certainly is not good science. https://answersingenesis.org/human-body/vestigial-organs/do-any-vestigial-organs-exist-in-humans/