Do You Have “Extra” Parts?

I remember reading in grade school that the human appendix is a useless organ. My textbook said that scientists thought that the appendix was once used to help digest the tree bark that our supposed ape-like ancestors ate. Does the human body have “extra” parts? Do we have organs that we no longer use because we have evolved away from needing them?

Atheists have argued that our “useless” organs prove that we weren’t created. No Creator, they said, would make useless organs that can threaten our health. Creationists responded that since our knowledge of the human body is incomplete, we cannot say that an organ is useless simply because we are ignorant of its job.

In the 1890s, scientists said that the human body has about 180 organs that are useless leftovers of our past evolution. As a result, doctors used to be quick to remove a child’s tonsils. Today, we know that our tonsils have several jobs and are an important part of our immune system. Our appendix has been found to serve as a backup for other organs. If your spleen is damaged, your appendix will take over some of its functions. Wisdom teeth are important in chewing food, especially when the diet includes more coarse materials.

The argument over whether we have extra parts left over from evolution has been completely won by creationists. Today, science recognizes that we have no useless leftovers from evolution.

1 Peter 2:15-16
“For so is the will of God, that with well doing ye may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men: as free, and not using [your] liberty for a cloke of maliciousness, but as the servants of God.”

Prayer: Father, You know all things and we know so little. Help me to realize my error when I imagine that I know things about which I am ignorant. Through Your Word, enlighten me with truth. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.

Notes: Jerry Bergman, Ph.D. Vestigial Organs – A Brief Summary of the Latest Research, pp. 111-115. Photo: Even today, evolutionists persist in asserting that the appendix is a vestigial structure. According to Wikipedia, “It has lost much of its ancestral function.”