The Unacceptability of Insufficiency

June 28, 2007 by Dr. Mc.

It has been several months now since my appendix was removed (see entry April 10), and I am yet to detect what my body no longer does or gets that it did or got when I had an appendix. The evolutionist’s response to this is that it is a vestigial organ, one made useless by evolution away from the need while the organ remains. I have several problems with this concept: First, if the organ is useless, then why is it there at all? Nature is very frugal with energy, and anything not used can disappear rather quickly, like the eyes of the blind cave fish (permanently and genetically) or the legs of a developing tadpole that gets no opportunity to exercise its new legs on dry land (a missed developmental stage), or even the atrophying of the limbs of an accidental paraplegic (recession simply from lack of use). Yet the organ is there generation after generation. Second, I have a problem with the vestigial concept, because there is no clear ancestral function for the organ, including in our supposed more primitive relatives. How could we make such major changes as is suggested by the stated relations and yet the appendix remains unchanged?

It would make more sense to assume that the organ has one or more functions that are quickly duplicated by other organs in the absence of the appendix. When my appendix ruptured, my intestines took on a new function of walling off infection. Isn’t it rational to assume other organs could do the same? Why do we have two kidneys when one can do the job? Why do we have two lungs, when a person can live with one? Two ovaries? Two testicles? Two parathyroid? We are replete with duplication. the problem with this assumption is not that it is without parallel in the body, but that it flies in the face of evolution. How could an organism evolve a back-up system, which is needed only once over many generations? The answer is, it can’t. Evolution is an insufficient explanation. The real question is, why isn’t that OK?

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