Is “vestigial organ” a term that should be retired?

_{Denyse O'Leary

March 7, 2014

Convergent evolution, Intelligent Design, News}

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Get a look at this item from The Scientist :

For decades, researchers and marine fisheries managers have considered the adipose fin—a small protuberance between the dorsal and tail fins—a vestigial organ, a relic of a bygone evolutionary era. But a study published today (March 5) in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B shows that bony versions of these structures have evolved independently and from more than one ancestor, suggesting that the adipose fin could play a subtle, yet vital, as-yet unidentified role in fish.

Then there’s “Elephant’s extra “toe”: Another “vestigial organ” bites the dust – in this case, literally

and

Your appendix: The king of vestigial organs has a job again

Is the term retained so people can attract attention to a new article by pointing out that such and so was thought to be vestigial but really isn’t? Or is the term itself a vestige of Darwinism? Perhaps it is itself the only example of the idea?

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Hatchery salmon have their adipose fin clipped off(under sedation), to distinguish them from wild salmon, who are protected. If the fin is not vestigial, maybe this isn’t such a good idea:

Comments

Let me google that for you http://lmgtfy.com/?q=Free+will+C+S+Lewis%3Fbornagain77_{March 7, 2014
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Jaceli123, a bit of advice? Perhaps you should actually try to google some answers to these rather silly videos you fall prey to?bornagain77_{March 7, 2014
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Well Jaceli123 if you have no free will, then what use is it to argue one way or the other? You have no choice to believe whether you have free will of not if materialistic determinism is true since you must believe whatever your molecules in your brain 'randomly' dictate to you to believe! :) Dog, tail, and round and round we go!bornagain77_{March 7, 2014
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Is it true that babies do not contain free will and so would this be considered vestigial because how do babies make decisions? BTW does free will not exist because we sometimes make unconscious decisions. Also is it true that we are not conscious of our memories and taht their stored in the brain because we are not conscious of these memories or words all the time. Doesn't this show we have no free will because we have to access this unconscious and since were not in control of this this shows no free will? Sources: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rm0NfFAWtQAJaceli123_{March 7, 2014
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OT: CPAC 2014 - Eric Metaxas, Author - video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iisLW6KJ1UMbornagain77_{March 7, 2014
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It is the 'unscientific' for man to think that if he does not know the function of something then it must not have a function.
Stability and Maneuverability in the Knifefish - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRHRZTIvg-w "Bad Design" Debunked in a Fish: It Actually Achieves the Impossible - November 7, 2013 Excerpt: the team reported that these extra forces are not wasteful after all: they allow animals to increase both stability and maneuverability, a feat that is often described as impossible in engineering textbooks. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2013/11/bad_design_debu078801.html
Leave it to Darwinists to seize upon such ignorance of function as proof for their theory. Moreover please note how plastic the word 'vestigial' becomes in the hands of a Darwinist:
From Jerry Coyne, "Evolution-of-the-Gaps" and Other Fallacies - Jonathan M. - December 5, 2012 Excerpt: Coyne anticipates the typical response to the argument from vestigiality: "Opponents of evolution always raise the same argument when vestigial traits are cited as evidence for evolution. "The features are not useless," they say. "They are either useful for something, or we haven't yet discovered what they're for." They claim, in other words, that a trait can't be vestigial if it still has a function, or a function yet to be found. But this rejoinder misses the point. Evolutionary theory doesn't say that vestigial characters have no function. A trait can be vestigial and functional at the same time. It is vestigial not because it's functionless, but because it no longer performs the function for which it evolved. (p. 58)" But surely, by Coyne's reckoning, this loose definition of "vestigiality" would entail that every organ and structure is vestigial, since, in Coyne's view, all traits have evolved from something else. As Jonathan Wells explains in his own review of the book, "If the human arm evolved from the leg of a four-footed mammal (as Darwinists claim), then the human arm is vestigial. And if (as Coyne argues) the wings of flying birds evolved from feathered forelimbs of dinosaurs that used them for other purposes, then the wings of flying birds are vestigial. This is the opposite of what most people mean by "vestigial." http://www.evolutionnews.org/2012/12/from_jerry_coyn_15067091.html
Notes;
“There are, according to Wiedersheim, no less than 180 vestigial structures in the human body, sufficient to make of a man a veritable walking museum of antiquities.” -evidence submitted to the Scopes trial “The thyroid gland, pituitary gland, thymus, pineal gland, and coccyx, … once considered useless by evolutionists, are now known to have important functions. The list of 180 “vestigial” structures is practically down to zero. Unfortunately, earlier Darwinists assumed that if they were ignorant of an organ’s function, then it had no function.” "Tornado in a Junkyard" - book - by former atheist James Perloff Vestigial Organs: Comparing ID and Darwinian Approaches - July 20, 2012 Excerpt: A favorite criticisms of ID is that it is a science stopper. The opposite is true. The Live Science article shows that the "vestigial organs" argument has not changed for over a century, since Wiedersheim coined the term and listed over a hundred examples (in 1893). Evolutionary theory, in fact, has been worse than a science stopper: its predictions have been flat out wrong. Only a handful of alleged vestigial organs remains from Wiedersheim's original list, and each of those is questionable. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2012/07/vestigial_organ062281.html
Throw on top of that the fairly recent debacle of Junk DNA, which many Darwinists still argue passionately for in spite of ENCODE's findings, and the harmful effect of Darwinism on science starts to become more readily apparent:
Junk No More: ENCODE Project Nature Paper Finds "Biochemical Functions for 80% of the Genome" - Casey Luskin - September 5, 2012 Excerpt: The Discover Magazine article further explains that the rest of the 20% of the genome is likely to have function as well: "And what's in the remaining 20 percent? Possibly not junk either, according to Ewan Birney, the project's Lead Analysis Coordinator and self-described "cat-herder-in-chief". He explains that ENCODE only (!) looked at 147 types of cells, and the human body has a few thousand. A given part of the genome might control a gene in one cell type, but not others. If every cell is included, functions may emerge for the phantom proportion. "It's likely that 80 percent will go to 100 percent," says Birney. "We don't really have any large chunks of redundant DNA. This metaphor of junk isn't that useful."" We will have more to say about this blockbuster paper from ENCODE researchers in coming days, but for now, let's simply observe that it provides a stunning vindication of the prediction of intelligent design that the genome will turn out to have mass functionality for so-called "junk" DNA. ENCODE researchers use words like "surprising" or "unprecedented." They talk about of how "human DNA is a lot more active than we expected." But under an intelligent design paradigm, none of this is surprising. In fact, it is exactly what ID predicted. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2012/09/junk_no_more_en_1064001.html
Comment and Music:
Steve Meyer's comment yesterday about the anti-ID 'COSMOS' seems apt: "The problem with materialists is they think that in [the brief span of the history of modern science], science has got all the mysteries of existence figured out.... In fact, we are just beginning to uncover the scientific evidence that the material cosmos is not all there is." http://www.evolutionnews.org/2014/03/new_cosmos_seri082941.html Sarah McLachlan - Ordinary Miracle http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqZE4ZDnAkQ
bornagain77_{March 7, 2014
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Darwinists here in previous posts still seem to defend the term with great passion even in the face of incontrovertible evidence to the contrary. My beef is that they claim things are "vestigial," implying that they are sure that there's no function for what they claim is an evolutionary artifact, when the truth is that they don't know. Worse yet, the list of "vestigial" structures is shrinking with boring regularity. I've read that a list of 150 (or 180) vestigial structures were presented as evidence at the Scopes trial. My argument is that brushing off structures as vestigial impedes scientific progress, whereas with an ID paradigm, these same structures would be investigated under the assumption that they do have some, as of yet unknown, function. The Darwinists here typically have emitted clouds of ink (pun intended) at my argument, and after I arm wrestle them down, they walk away announcing that they've "won" the argument. -QQuerius_{March 7, 2014
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