The appendix gets to feel special, but yet so does the ID movement

It seems that the lowly appendix has had its functionality within the body revised. No longer a useless organ attached to the side of the beginning of the large intestine, the worm-shaped tube (hence its proper name, the vermiform appendix) is thought to have some immune and bacteriological functions.

Well, according to this article about the appendix on ScienceDaily, that is.

But I’m not a guy who mistrusts science journalists just because they possibly could be wrong, I’m not that cynical. Sorry to disappoint.

While this news, which isn’t really news since medical scientists have known about these functions for a few years now, is interesting in itself, I only brought it up on Homologous Legs because of the obvious implications it will have for the intelligent design movement in the coming weeks. You see, people like the Discovery Institute fellows have the habit of making annoying noises when facts emerge from the constantly-churning machine of scientific process, yet only when those facts can seemingly be used to “drive another nail in the coffin of Darwinism”, so to speak.

These new discoveries about the functions of the appendix are sure to, I guarantee you, appear in some form on Uncommon Descent, Evolution News and Views, and/or Darwin’s God, with their authors proclaiming that evolution has been proven false once again. Plus, Cornelius Hunter, the author of Darwin’s God will end the post with “Religion drives science, and it matters.” Or something like that. I don’t know, he does it all the time.

The reason these ID-ers will foam at the mouth in excitement is because the appendix is considered a classic vestigial organ – it’s a remnant of part of the caecum, a segment of the gastrointestinal tract found in herbivorous mammals and, for some reason, squid (Eat your heart out PZ Myers). ID proponents have got in their heads that for an organ to be vestigial, it must have no function, and the functionality of the appendix, to them, seems like the perfect refutation of its status as such an evolutionary remenant.

What they fail to realise is that vestigial organs don’t have to be functionless to be vestigial, they just need to have lost their original function. The example of the coccyx is useful here – it used to be the bone structure that lead into the tail, but now it simply sits at the back of the pelvis, holding quite a number of pelvic floor muscles in place. Without it you’d be in a lot of trouble, but that doesn’t diminish its status as a vestigial tail structure.

The same applies to the appendix. It can still be vestigial and have other functions.

Plus, there are plenty of other vestigial organs in humans for the pro-ID crowd to fret about, including:

• The plica semilunaris of the eye, a vestigial remnant of the nictitating membrane, or “third eyelid”, which is found in birds and some mammals
• The muscles of the outer ear, which are no longer used for directional hearing like they are in monkeys
• The occipitalfrontalis muscle, which is no longer used for the control of head movement, but has been adapted to allow for complex facial expression

There are also a whole host of molecular and genetic vestigies, including pseudogenes, the most well-known of which is the pseudogene that would allow for the internal production of vitamin C in humans if it were functional.

So, when you see research like this come out, don’t fret. Darwinism will still be okay, because it’s the one true faith. Just accept what the evidence says. Don’t fall prey to faulty arguments and fallacious logic.