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You don’t even need to go to a natural history museum or library to see evidence for evolution; our own bodies have many signs of our evolutionary heritage. When we get goose bumps, our bodies are trying to keep warm by raising hairs that are no longer dense enough to help. The muscles that allow us to wiggle our ears are of no use for us, but they did help some distant ancestors. Humans also have many other useless, vestigial organs such as nipples and mammary glands on males (like all mammals) and the tailbone, which is just a holdover from when our primate ancestors actually had tails millions of years ago.
Many other species also have obvious useless, vestigial organs:
- Flightless birds such as kiwis and ostriches have vestigial wings.
- Some whales still have vestigial legs and pelvic bones, as noted above.
- Some fish which live in caves still have vestigial eyes.
- Dandelions reproduce without fertilization and basically clone themselves; altho they have the proper organs necessary for sexual reproduction, they do not use them.
Intelligent Design completely fails to explain these vestigial organs on embryos, adults, and plants — which are obviously suboptimal. The Theory of Evolution explains them perfectly. If some god designed us and all life, he/she/it certainly didn't do a perfect job. Stephen J. Gould stated it well; “Odd arrangements and funny solutions are the proof of evolution — paths that a sensible God would never tread but that a natural process, constrained by history, follows perforce.”
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