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From: mrh@cybvax0.UUCP (Mike Huybensz)
Newsgroups: net.origins
Subject: Re: Orphaned Response
Message-ID: <649@cybvax0.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 1-Aug-85 16:08:10 EDT
Article-I.D.: cybvax0.649
Posted: Thu Aug  1 16:08:10 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 3-Aug-85 20:39:13 EDT
References: <347@scgvaxd.UUCP> <14600028@hpfcrs.UUCP>
Reply-To: mrh@cybvax0.UUCP (Mike Huybensz)
Organization: Cybermation, Inc., Cambridge, MA
Lines: 30

In article <14600028@hpfcrs.UUCP> lief@hpfcla.UUCP (lief) writes:
> Do these "vestigal" organs show "pregression" or "regression".  In otherwords,
> can these mean that at one time whales could walk, but due to some mutation,
> the legs became useless?  I would call this "regression".  On the other hand,
> does this mean whales never could walk, but may in the future as the legs
> further develop?  I would call this "progression".

Whales have abundant organs that you would classify as "progressive".  Such
as the flukes of the tail, the insulating layer of blubber, the melon (oil
filled chamber in the head for the directional reception of sonar), baleen
(the filters of mysticete whales), and others.  Most of these don't make
any sense for land-living animals, just as legs don't make sense for whales.

> As a creationist, I believe that "vestigal" organs demonstrate "regression" of
> species over time, and serve no evidence for evolution.  I may be all wet, but
> I really fail too see how "vestigal" organs serve as good evidence of
> evolution.

They serve as evidence of the history of the ancestral line.  Presumably
the organs were once functional in a homologous way to homologous organs
in other animals.

There are a number of practical problems with theories of regression or
degeneration (as well as theological problems.)  The major one is that we
should be able to find evidence of regression if it occurred in as short a
span as the past 10000 years (assuming a young-earth creationism.)  But
we don't find recent bones of "non-regressed" animals.
-- 

Mike Huybensz		...decvax!genrad!mit-eddie!cybvax0!mrh