‘Vestigial’ Organs Questions and Answers

Are there several organs in the human body that have no useful purpose? Are there ‘badly designed’ parts of our body?

• Argument: ‘Bad design’ is evidence of leftovers from evolution (from Refuting Evolution 2)
• ‘Vestigial’ Organs: What Do They Prove?
• Do any vestigial organs exist in humans?
• Evolution and your surgeon
• Cutting out a useless vestigial argument
• Your Appendix: It’s There for a Reason!
• The Human Vermiform Appendix — a General Surgeon’s Reflections (Semi-technical)
• Appendix: a bacterial ‘safe house’ New research suggests function for appendix in maintaining good digestive bacteria populations
• Human tails and fairy tales
• Is lack of room for wisdom teeth proof of evolution?
• Oh! My aching wisdom teeth!
• Are wisdom teeth (third molars) vestiges of human evolution? (Technical)
• Does the Gallbladder Have a Necessary Function?
• Is Our ‘Inverted’ Retina Really ‘Bad Design’? (Technical)
• Fibre optics in eye demolish atheistic ‘bad design’ argument (Semi-technical)
• A vestigial tissue (finally)? What about male breast tissue? (response to critic)
• Male nipples prove evolution? (reply to sceptic)
• CMI misuses the term ‘vestigial’? (response to critic)
• More musings on our ‘useless’ appendix

What about design features in animals that seem to have no use, such as wings on penguins? Why have evolutionists had such interest in claiming that this supports evolution? Is there ‘bad design’?

• Refuting ‘bad design’ arguments (including the allegedly ‘backwardly wired’ retina, from a review of Dawkins’ Climbing Mt Improbable)
• Horse leg splint bones: useless leftovers or good design?
• New eyes for blind cave fish?
• Blind fish, island immigrants and hairy babies
• The panda thumbs its nose at the dysteleological arguments of the atheist Stephen Jay Gould (Technical)
• Rats! A toothless argument for evolution
• Useless horse body parts? No way!
• Snakes with legs? A preliminary reply
• Leggy snakes
• ‘Vestigial’ Organs: What Do They Prove?

What about ‘Vestigial’ (‘junk’) DNA that evolutionists claim is a useless leftover of evolution?

• The slow, painful death of junk DNA
• Astonishing DNA complexity uncovered
• Astonishing DNA complexity update
• DNA: marvellous messages or mostly mess?
• ‘Junk’ DNA—Again!
• No joy for junkies
• Pseudogenes: are they non-functional? (Semi-techical) See also the technical articles referred to by this summary article.
• Potentially decisive evidence against pseudogene ‘shared mistakes’ (Technical)
• Pseudogene function: more evidence (Technical)
• The junk dealer ain’t selling that no more
  (Semi-technical—Access Research Network)
• Pseudogenes and Origins (Technical, Geoscience Research Institute)
• Large scale function for ‘endogenous retroviruses’