Customer Reviews

Vestigial Organs Are Fully Functional: A History and Evaluation of the Vestigial Organ Origins Concept (Creation Research Society Monograph Ser)

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This book provides a fascinating account of how supposedly-purposeless organs have been found to have a function--all in contradiction to ruling evolutionary beliefs. For instance, the "useless onetime third eye" pineal gland turns out to regulate circadian rythms. Those who try to find minor factual errors in the book, if any, are just throwing up a smokescreen to avoid this central issue. Furthermore, one could, without difficulty, call attention to numerous minor (and some not so minor) factual errors in evolutionary books. Do the latter indict evolutionary scholarship?

From time immemorial, evolutionists have argued that various purposeless organs in our body are evidence of our evolutionary past. But as knowledge has increased, the list of these supposedly purposeless organs has been growing shorter and shorter. The author, Bergman, shows that all of the so-called vestigial organs have a function. For instance, did you know that the appendix has a lymphatic function? It most certainly is not a useless evolutionary leftover.

This book fills a void in the scientific literature that many were happy that existed. The book covers many organs mainly in humans but also in animals and plants. The book brings together a lot of information into one book that is useful and highly informative for anyone.
You will be stretched to find another book of this genre.

Jerry Bergman and George Howe thoroughly dismantle a one-time favorite textbook "proof" for Darwinian evolution - the existence of functionless organs in contemorary organisms inherited from their evolutionary ancestors. Darwinists at one time argued that such "vestigial" organs provided support for Darwinism and failed to fit within a creationist model. But as Bergman and Howe convincingly show from the scientific literature, labeling an organ "vestigial" was really only a cloak for our own ignorance. All of the supposedly functionless organs touted by Darwinists do in fact have functions, as would be expected if organisms were in fact designed.

Unfortunately, as Bergman and Howe point out, the Darwinian view of life may have stunted scientific progress by causing scientists to label an organ as functionless (e.g. the human appendix) too quickly and failing to do the requisite research to unearth its actual function(s). More recently we've seen this happen in the case of so-called "Junk DNA" which is only now being discovered to play important functional roles. One wonders how much more quickly such functions would have been found if researchers had been working on the assumption of intelligent design rather than Darwinian evolution.

This a well researched and clearly written little book that belongs on the shelf of anyone interested in the creation/evolution controversy. It is also necessary reading for biology students who will no doubt be exposed to this tired and false argument for evolution at some point in their education.

This is a groundbreaking book by two professional biologists (Bergman teaches Anatomy to premedical and nursing students at a state college and at a large Medical school) that shows how the concept of vestigial organs has misled researchers in the past. It includes an excellent history and a discussion of the functions of the over 100 once, now we know incorrectly, labeled vestigial organs and structures. The anatomy books we use at my school (such as Hole's Anatomy) and the many others I have reviewed for potential adoption do not list even one organ or structure as vestigial, but some older A&P books had a whole chapter on vestigial organs. The harm that this idea has caused in medicine has been enormous, and is well documented in the case study literature, and I hope that this book will help to prevent such mistakes from ever happing again. I also hope that we have learned our lesson. Also, the coccyx is a small bone that does display minor movement to the side (check out your A&P lab skeleton).

...neither Bergman nor Howe are anatomists.

The book is riddled with errors. One such example involves the coccyx. Bergman and Howe claim that it is bifid and can move to one side during defecation.

It is not bifid, nor does it move to the side.

there are many such examples, ...