It is said that through history, as natural selection played its evolutionary part in the development of modern man, many of the useful functions and parts of the human body become redundant. What is most fascinating is that many of these parts of the body still remain in some form so we can see the progress of evolution.
I would like to apologise for opening this topic again but in recent debates it was endlessly bashed around with lots of insults and web links. However, only a few did take the effort of actually posing questions and answers that was of some value. It is very easy to fall into the trap of saying we all know that…but do we really? Or do we follow the general consensus, group, crowd, etc. If you are intrigued by unexplained phenomena in the macro and micro world we happen to exist in then you would agree that there are fascinating facts out there that begs for exploration and understanding. Also there are treasures of literature (not Wikipedia) available on these interesting facts that scientists are still exploring.
When you mention evolution then the alarm bells start ringing everywhere. There seem to be only two camps here which are kind of unique in that one is pro and the other against. In the “against” camps we apparently find the religious ones that range from fanatical to those who only see intelligent design as and answer. On the “pro” side we have the majority of the scientific community and the novices who believe them and some religious lukewarm compromising soles.
I’m not keen on old stuff so fossils don’t really interest me. Having said that, I know you have to go into the past to unravel the questions of evolution. However, with all the technological advancement we have made in measuring in ever increasing detail, surely we should be able to detect evidence of evolution in a modern day environment. Problem is that once your find the evidence the interpretation becomes a messy debate again. This is particularly true if we look at the best measurable human evolution from what we can clearly measure in the modern human body.
I have picked 3 examples and deliberately oversimplified my questions/reasoning in order that I can get my point across and hopefully understand the intelligent answers you will provide.
Evolutionist claims that some redundant components in our body are prove of modern evolution. So my dilemma is that if these components of the human body are now redundant and therefore of no use because we have safer or comfortable environments, how did they evolve in the first place. For example, the muscle in the ear that now is just a useless piece of flesh was once used to direct the ear in order to detect direction of sound and like the cat it serves as part of your armoury to hunt and to defend. Also known as the extrinsic ear muscles, the auriculares muscles are used by animals to swivel and manipulate their ears (independently of their head) in order to focus their hearing on particular sounds. If this had to go through a million years of redesign/evolution until an ear was capable to function as that of the cat then the dogs would have eaten all the cats surely by now.
The appendix is another one of those useless organs we have. It had some use when we were eating trees according to speculation by Darwin suggesting that it once helped to process the cellulose found in the leaf-rich diet that we once had but lately it just increase our weight and when it gets infected, causes some serious problems. What is particularly interesting is that many evolutionary theorists believe that natural selection (while removing all of the abilities of the appendix) selects larger appendices because they are less likely to become inflamed and diseased. So what is happening? It should shrink like the ear muscle but instead it get bigger and apparently to protect it from infection. Now which evolutionary rule applies here? And how big is it going to get?
What about the wisdom teeth that now is useless since we stopped chewing like cows? I read that some of us are even born without it. Mine had to be cut out. Why cant the teeth do like the appendix and look after its own. I get only two go’s at growing any one particular tooth. When it is gone the second time it is gone and my dentist who evolved into a rich mechanic replaces it with a nut and bolt.
I know there are many more examples and evidence to be presented but I am no scientist and only want to learn from the ones that know best. So please enlighten me in laymen’s terms so I can follow your arguments else don’t bother. If you do bother to reply, please keep to the topic however, insults are welcome as long as it is accompanied by some evidence of intelligence. If you can’t then perhaps your trust in evolution is unfounded.
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