Other articles have addressed such claims in detail, so for now, let’s look at how to think through “vestigial structure” arguments more generally using some of the 7 Checks of Critical Thinking. My textbooks also listed the reduced hindlimbs in some fossil snakes and bones dubbed “ vestigial hips” in whales as evidence for evolution. They include the appendix, the, rudimentary muscles that enable some people to move their ears or scalp, and the posterior molars, or wisdom teeth, that fail to erupt, or do so aberrantly, in many people.
In The Descent of Man, Darwin listed a dozen vestigial features in the human body, some of which occur only as uncommon varieties. Flightless beetles retain rudimentary wings, concealed in some species beneath fused wing covers that would not permit the wings to be spread even if there were reason to do so. Cave-dwelling fishes and other animals display eyes in every stage of degeneration. The adaptions of organisms have long been, and still are, cited by creationists as evidence of the Creator’s wise beneficence, but no such claim can be made for the features, displayed by almost every species, that served a function in the species’ ancestors, but do so no longer. The textbook from another class I’d taken explained vestigial structures this way: We have all sorts of problems as a result of our evolutionary history.”Īt the front of the lecture hall, a screen displayed a human body diagram labeled with “ vestigial structures.” Thought to offer evidence for evolution, these structures supposedly performed functions in humans’ evolutionary ancestors but now serve either no function, a reduced function, or a different function.
“If you were going to design a person from the ground up,” the professor declared, addressing my third-year zoology class, “you wouldn’t design a person the way we are now.
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