VESTIGIAL ORGANS, WHALE PELVIC BONE, APPENDIX, PITUITARY GLAND TONSILS, ADENOIDS, VALVES IN VEINS, PINEAL GLAND, THYMUS GLAND, MALE MAMMARY GLANDS

ARE VESTIGIAL ORGANS PROOF OF EVOLUTION?

Hello to all my readers out there! Are all of you well this week? Lord please heal and comfort any who read this if they are sick or in sorrow, and please bless everyone. I have been well myself and am enjoying the company of my youngest daughter and grandson. They have moved in with us while my son-in-law is in Alaska looking for a job. Once he has a few paychecks in the bank he’ll be sending for them. But I will get to enjoy them for a month or so. Yeah!

And that brings us to our topic this week. Vestigial organs. What exactly are these thing? Basically they can be explained as “rudimentary organs”. But are they? Let’s take a closer look.

The dictionary defines vestigial organs as a part of the body which is small, degenerate or imperfectly developed as compared to fully developed organs.” Charles Darwin even had a chapter on them in his book, The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection: The Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life, in which he said they bore “the stamp of inutility (uselessness) and described them as common throughout nature. He believed (as many still do today) the vestigial organs once served a purpose in

survival but when they were no longer needed began to shrink until only tiny bits remained. In his book The Descent of Man he wrote that humans had a dozen or so of these organs including the appendix, body hair, the coccyx or tailbone, the muscles of the ear, and wisdom teeth just to name a few. Several years later, Robert Wiedersheim, a German anatomist added another seventy five organs to this list including adenoids, valves in the veins, the pituitary and thymus glands, tonsils, the pineal glands, and even male breast tissue and nipples. 

Unfortunately vestigial organs are still used as evidence for evolution in science magazines, evolution websites and blogs, and most regrettably textbooks. It is interesting that vestigial organs are to today being presented as evidence of evolution when doctors are finding out more and more uses for these “rudimentary” organs. We now know that organs such as the pituitary gland regulates the bodies natural insulin, tonsils help to prevent disease from spreading to the rest of the body, the valves in veins regulate blood flow, adenoids are part of the immune system, and very importantly the pineal glands produces melatonin which is essential sexual

development, sleep and metabolism. My favorite however, is the male breast tissue and nipples. When people claim that these parts of the male body are vestigial, vestigial from what? Are they saying that our male ancestors once nursed babies? This is ridicules and once pointed out, even evolutionists back up on this one. It seems the function of male and young female mammary glands takes place while still in the womb. The fetus secretes hormones through these glands that move through the fetal circulatory system then are passed through the placenta to induce milk production in the mother. So much for vestigial mammary glands!

Another example is body hair and its associated erector pili (the small muscles attached to the hair follicles). Evolutionists argue that human body hares are the useless remains of fur from our animal ancestors. “Hair serves a thermal insulation in most mammals, which is important because most animals are incapable of regulating their body temperature by sweating. Man, on the other hand, is a profuse sweater and can maintain body temperatures over a much wider range of ambient temperatures than nearly all other mammals.”1 So we don’t need hair for endothermic temperature

control, but we do use our body hairs as sensory organs. “All hair follicles, regardless of size, are supplied with sensory nerves so that stye may be considered to be mechanoreceptors. Our hairs are like small levers that, when moved by any physical stimulus including air, send sensory signals to our brain.”2 Hardly vestigial! Also the erector pili muscle moves our hairs from a flattened or inclined position to a standing or erect position. We have all experienced this in the form of goose bumps when we are frightened or get cold. When these small muscles contract, it produces heat. Again, hardly vestigial!

What about in animals? There has been a lot of emphasis on the pelvic bones found in whales and manatees being the vestigial remnants for the attachment of their “lost” hind limbs. “Although the manatee pelvic bones are not attached to the skeletal frame, they are near reproductive organs and the bladder. In whales, the pelvis is used to support internal organs and serves as an attachment point for muscles—very similarly to the function of the coccyx (tailbone) in humans (also claimed to be vestigial). It is highly probable that a similar function is served by the pelvis in manatees. Further research may determine whether the 10%

asymmetry is inconsequential or whether it has a function. God may have designed the manatee to produce the level of PitX1 protein necessary to produce a pelvis that would be just the right size to perform the functions of support and attachment. The manatee pelvis is not reduced in size, implying it was once bigger; it’s just the size the Creator intended it to be.”³ 

In reality is, it is dangerous to declare organs to be useless (vestigial) when in fact they do have a purpose. “The problem with declaring any organ to be without function is discriminating between truly functionless organs and those that have functions that are simply unknown. Indeed, over the years nearly all of the organs once thought to be useless have been found to be functional. When we have no evidence for the function of an organ, it is well to bear in mind that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence...The most conspicuous logical flaw in the use of vestigial organs as evidence for evolution is circular reasoning. Evolutionists first declare vestigial organs to be a result of evolution, and then they turn around and argue that their existence is evidence for evolution. This kind of argument would hardly stand up in a court of law…”4 It is the same circular reasoning used by secular scientists in regards to the geologic column and fossils and the cosmos. 

Our great Creator knows what He is doing and it would be wise of mankind to not underestimate Him. If God put it there, it must be there for a reason.

Until next time, God bless and take care,

Willow Dressel 

This week in the night skies; How many of you had a chance to view the blood moon? It was gorgeous! “On Sunday the 19th, the faint Comet Siding Spring (C/2013 A1) makes its much-awaited

blood moon of oct 8th 2014

close pass by Mars, as told in the September Sky & Telescope, page 53, with chart. This will be an extremely challenging observation, with Mars low in the southwest right at the end of twilight and the comet only 10th or 11th magnitude, fainter than originally predicted. But you can follow a webcast of the encounter courtesy of the Virtual Telescope project; watch in real time starting at 16:45 UT (12:45 p.m. EDT) October 19th, or the recording later. Also: NASA Prepares Its Science Fleet for Oct 19 Mars-Comet Encounter.”⁵

For the southern lats; C/2013 A1 and Mars can be seen the nights of 13 October to 22 October at 9 pm ACDST from Adelaide. “Similar views can be seen at equivalent times elsewhere in the Southern Hemisphere...Another problem is that for any eyepiece/CCD camera frame that gets both Mars and the comet in the  same frame  Mars will be tiny (at least from Australia, from South Africa, larger magnifications will allow both the comet and Mars in the same field)….Despite the difficulties, this will be an historic encounter, and well worth the effort if you have medium to high end astronomical gear. If you are clouded out, there may be live coverage from iTelescope and the Virtual telescope (watch this space). Labels: C/2013 A1 Siding Spring, Conjunction.”⁶

References:

^1-4Ham, Ken. The Answers Book 3 Over 35 Questions On Creation/Evolution and the Bible. Master Books, Green Forest, AR, 2013. Pp 229-240.

⁵http://www.skyandtelescope.com/observing/weeks-sky-glance-october-10-18/

⁶http://www.astroblogger.blogspot.com/