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Index to Creationist Claims,  edited by Mark Isaak,    Copyright © 2004
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Claim CB361.1:

Even if a vestigial organ has no use today, we can be sure it had a function in the past. God does not make junk, but things deteriorated after sin entered the world. Calling an organ useless reflects evolutionary thinking.

Source:

Morris, John D. 2005. Does the gallbladder have a necessary function? Back to Genesis 194d (Feb.).

Response:

  1. This claim is dogmatic assertion. It is based purely on personal religious belief; it cannot be tested against evidence. It is scientifically useless.

  2. The idea that death and decay entered the world only after the original creation implies that many presently functional organs were originally useless. For example, defenses would have had no function when there were no threats to defend against.

  3. Calling an organ useless reflects its having no detectable use, nothing more. Morris's view of deteriorating life is also evolutionary thinking, just with a very different mechanism of evolution.

  4. Vestigial does not mean useless.

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created 2005-2-15