Nipples on Men: Problem for Intelligent Design?

Yes, but why does a man have an appendix?

Same reason a woman does. ;)

TRoutMac
Intelligent (Graphic) Designer

http://www.sciam.com/askexpert_question.cfm?articleID=000CAE56-7201-1C71-9EB7809EC588F2D7&catID=3

For years, the appendix was credited with very little physiological function. We now know, however, that the appendix serves an important role in the fetus and in young adults. Endocrine cells appear in the appendix of the human fetus at around the 11th week of development. These endocrine cells of the fetal appendix have been shown to produce various biogenic amines and peptide hormones, compounds that assist with various biological control (homeostatic) mechanisms. There had been little prior evidence of this or any other role of the appendix in animal research, because the appendix does not exist in domestic mammals.

Among adult humans, the appendix is now thought to be involved primarily in immune functions. Lymphoid tissue begins to accumulate in the appendix shortly after birth and reaches a peak between the second and third decades of life, decreasing rapidly thereafter and practically disappearing after the age of 60. During the early years of development, however, the appendix has been shown to function as a lymphoid organ, assisting with the maturation of B lymphocytes (one variety of white blood cell) and in the production of the class of antibodies known as immunoglobulin A (IgA) antibodies. Researchers have also shown that the appendix is involved in the production of molecules that help to direct the movement of lymphocytes to various other locations in the body.

In this context, the function of the appendix appears to be to expose white blood cells to the wide variety of antigens, or foreign substances, present in the gastrointestinal tract. Thus, the appendix probably helps to suppress potentially destructive humoral (blood- and lymph-borne) antibody responses while promoting local immunity. The appendix–like the tiny structures called Peyer’s patches in other areas of the gastrointestinal tract–takes up antigens from the contents of the intestines and reacts to these contents. This local immune system plays a vital role in the physiological immune response and in the control of food, drug, microbial or viral antigens. The connection between these local immune reactions and inflammatory bowel diseases, as well as autoimmune reactions in which the individual’s own tissues are attacked by the immune system, is currently under investigation.

In the past, the appendix was often routinely removed and discarded during other abdominal surgeries to prevent any possibility of a later attack of appendicitis; the appendix is now spared in case it is needed later for reconstructive surgery if the urinary bladder is removed. In such surgery, a section of the intestine is formed into a replacement bladder, and the appendix is used to re-create a ’sphincter muscle’ so that the patient remains continent (able to retain urine). In addition, the appendix has been successfully fashioned into a makeshift replacement for a diseased ureter, allowing urine to flow from the kidneys to the bladder. As a result, the appendix, once regarded as a nonfunctional tissue, is now regarded as an important ‘back-up’ that can be used in a variety of reconstructive surgical techniques. It is no longer routinely removed and discarded if it is healthy.

I've been looking for an explanation of that. I was actually looking for that sort of thing recently for another reason, that's why I had it on my mind here. I couldn't find anything about it. I wish the article had cited some research papers so I could look up exactly what he's talking about. I just searched "appendix immune" and the very first hit was talkorigins. :)

They say: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/vestiges/appendix.html

"To date, all experimental studies of the function of an appendix (other than routine human appendectomies) have been exclusively in rabbits and, to a lesser extent, rodents. Currently it is unclear whether the lymphoid tissue in the human appendix performs any specialized function apart from the much larger amount of lymphatic tissue already distributed throughout the gut. Most importantly with regard to vestigiality, there is no evidence from any mammal suggesting that the hominoid vermiform appendix performs functions above and beyond those of the lymphoid-rich caeca of other primates and mammals that lack distinct appendixes."

Sorry for going off topic. This post was about nipples. Well, it was really about suboptimal design, I guess.

Ok ok. Uh uh. Here's another one.

Why do men grow beards and women don't?

There's a broader point here. Whether or not we have a feasible explanation of the function of an appendix is really quite irrelevant. (although I appreciate Patrick's very informative post) Even if we DO NOT have knowledge of a specific function of any given organ does not mean that organ doesn't have a function. This is the same mistake made with regard to "junk DNA." Evolutionists tend to write it off as "junk" simply because they don't have knowledge of its function. It's difficult to imagine a conclusion which exhibits more arrogance than that. In truth, its just another argument from ignorance. We don't know what its function is, therefore it must be junk. And sure enough, more research is revealing functions in what used to be called "junk DNA." As for the appendix, just because you can remove one from a patient without a significant impact on their health or lifestyle in no way confirms that the appendix has no function. It only confirms that, assuming the appendix HAD a function, it wasn't a function that was absolutely critical.

Seems like we need to honest about what we really KNOW and what we don't and we need to be aware (evolutionists in particular) that scientific knowledge advances. That means that some ideas will eventually be abandoned no matter how "right" they may have seemed at one point in history.

Why do men have beards? Well I can't really answer that beyond reminding you that both men AND women have facial hair. That means both men and women have hair follicles in their facial skin. That mens' facial hair is darker and more stiff is probably the result of testosterone production or the lack of estrogen or both.

And you actually believe TalkOrigins?! Many of their arguments are admittedly plausible at first glance but you have to look deeper into them. The section on vestigial organs dealing with human tails, the human coccyx, and whale "hind legs" is equally as bad in my opinion. At the same time there are perfectly valid examples of vestigial organs such as the famous blind cavefish (you won't find many ID proponents who'll argue against devolution!). Other examples like the wings of flightless birds such as ostriches are debateable since the wings serve as stabilizers when they run and they're used for attracting mates.

As for "suboptimal" design this has been rehashed over and over at UD.

The Model T Ford was an engineer’s worst nightmare, featuring all manner of suboptimal design. Therefore, by your argument, no intelligence was involved in it’s origin and existence.

When ID critics invoke suboptimal design, it is almost always a theological argument that points out that an omniscient, omnipotent designer can potentially avoid suboptimal design if he chooses to do so. You can argue that you THINK that a designer who has both of these characteristics wouldn’t do this or that, but it doesn’t argue against design in general, as you can hardly know what a designer would and wouldn’t do.

Overall, it just doesn’t make for a valid complaint against design. Clearly, Christians (the largest religious group on earth) and Muslims (the second largest group) have an answer for apparent poor design- The Fall and The Curse which caused all of creation to degrade. So, apparent poor design wouldn’t bother too many believers in God, as far as I can tell.

Bill discusses this subject in depth here:

http://www.designinference.com/documents/2000.02.ayala_response.htm

This particular paragraph is the real meat of it, although I'd recommend reading it in its entirety.

No real designer attempts optimality in the sense of attaining perfect design. Indeed, there is no such thing as perfect design. Real designers strive for constrained optimization, which is something completely different. As Henry Petroski, an engineer and historian at Duke, aptly remarks in Invention by Design: "All design involves conflicting objectives and hence compromise, and the best designs will always be those that come up with the best compromise."[1] Constrained optimization is the art of compromise between conflicting objectives. This is what design is all about. To find fault with biological design because it misses an idealized optimum, as Stephen Jay Gould regularly does, is therefore gratuitous. Not knowing the objectives of the designer, Gould is in no position to say whether the designer has come up with a faulty compromise among those objectives.[2]

On cave fish:

http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2004/1013/2

When a body part is no longer needed, scientists usually assume that mutations accumulate in the genes controlling the structure, eventually preventing it from working or being made. “That was the dogma,” says Stephen Ekker of the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities.
….
…new research suggests that for some cave-dwelling fishes, blindness results from the careful coordination of gene expression, not simply from lack of use.

I also remember reading somewhere that the eyes are “turned back on” when conditions change. But I unfortunately cannot remember where I read this.

On the supposed atavistic hindlimbs of whales:

http://digitallibrary.amnh.org/dspace/bitstream/2246/4849/1/N0009.pdf

This paper is almost exclusively responsible for the modern myth of the whale leg. Unfortunately Darwinists typically choose to ignore this portion completely. It's pretty much like like the old myth about "gills" in human embryos. The idea that the embryo of a complex animal goes through stages resembling the embryos of its ancestors is called the Biogenetic Law. This "Law" known as recapitulation theory (ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny) was formulated in 1866 by Haeckel, an early convert to Darwinism who also famously fake evidence in attempts to persuade doubters. Of course, this gill slit fraud is pretty infamous now.

In a paper entitled ’Untersuchungen an walen,” Professor W. Kukenthal has described external rudimentary hind limbs in three early embryos of Megaptera. These appear as two more or less caudally directed papillae on either side of the genital organ in the same relative position as the hind limbs which I have described in this paper. In Kukenthal’s Stage I (an embryo 32 mm. in length) the rudiments are best developed and are 12 mm. long. In Stage II (an embryo 28 mm. long) the rudiments are somewhat less distinct, reaching a length of 9 mm. In Stage III (an embryo 30 mm. long) the hind-limb rudiments have still more decreased in size and appear as minute papillae.
Kuikenthal has also discovered hind-limb rudiments in embryos of Phocaena communis and P. dalli, and Guldberg has recorded them in embryos of Lagenorhynchus acutus and Phocaena communis.
Kukenthal states that the hind-limb rudiments are found in later embryonic stages of the Mystacoceti than in the Odontoceti and concludes that in the evolution of cetaceans the hind limbs lost their functional character in the Odontoceti earlier than in the Mystacoceti.
Since Kiikenthal’s and Guldberg’s researches have shown that external hind-limb rudiments are still present in some cases in embryonic life, it is by no means impossible that, these vestigial organs should continue their growth and persist until the adult stage.

Keep in mind this is a fairly old document. They’re interpreting this evidence in the light of recapitulation theory, claiming it as ”rudimentary hind limbs” present during development. Another valid interpretation would be to consider this structure as temporary ”scaffolding” (extra-embryonic) that is ”normally” removed as the creature grows. After all, many other creatures have temporary structures that have no apparent ultimate morphogenetic significance (as in, they disappear completely in later stages of development) but they DO serve a purpose. And based upon the description given that does appear to be the case...but that doesn't stop certain Darwinists from hanging onto this modern myth.

On human tails and the coccyx:

First of all the, the coccyx is only a vestigial organ if one assumes a tail in the past (on a side note, by the definition of vestigial organ the component in question doesn't have to be completely useless...it can lose its original function and gain new ones). Several muscles converge from the ring-like arrangement of the pelvic bones to anchor on the coccyx, forming a bowl-shaped muscular floor of the pelvis called the pelvic diaphragm. The incurved coccyx with its attached pelvic diaphragm keeps the many organs in our abdominal cavity from literally falling through between our legs. Some of the pelvic diaphragm muscles are also important in controlling the elimination of waste from our body through the rectum.

http://www.dimaggio.org/Archive/tails_in_humans.htm

Human “tails” are disarrangements that occurred during embryological development. Most of them are just flaps of skin but some do have useless disconnected bones in them that would appear to be shaped along the same lines as the bones in the coccyx. I highly doubt these “tails” are normal extra-embryonic features. That interpretation of the data is only a possibility with the whale leg so don’t attempt to confuse the two in an attempt to make a bad argument. I don’t believe the precise genetic basis for these examples of “tail” growth in humans is known, but I’d say the best bet is Hox (homeobox) genes. Mutations in these genes cause alterations in the development of the axial skeleton (vertebral column and ribs) and limbs, among other things. The Pax-6 regulatory group–which is about 130 amino acids long–shares a 94% similarity between humans and insects. They are conserved across all animal phyla, with similar or homologous functions (you can argue over the cause of this–designer reuse or common descent–later). Mutations in these regulatory gene sets can cause biological components to not be built (an animal losing their hind legs). They can result in more than the correct number of elements being built (as in the case of Hox-4.6 in chickens which create an extra “thumb”). They can even result in the construction of components in the wrong places. Ultimately, manipulations to these genes can only result in the rearrangement of elements already present in the biological development plan for a given organism. If I wanted to give someone’s child a tail, we’d need to know the exact pattern of expression of the correct gene(s) and how to achieve it by artificially engineering promoter-gene fusions and inserting them into the genome of an embryo. Otherwise you’d end up with these useless extensions as seen in the above pictures.

But let’s ask some questions. Some human females are born with mammary glands under the armpits; does this mean they’re regressing to an earlier mammalian stage? After all, some mammals have mammary glands in their armpits. Does a second nipple on my right breast mean I’ve generated CSI? Of course not. Besides, if the bony tail is evidence that we evolved from tailed creatures, why also bother to insist that we evolved from a common ancestor with pan troglodytes, which doesn’t have tails?

But let's say you argue that it doesn't have to be a fairly "recent" common ancestor that had a tail. In effect, you might claim that this reversion to conserved tail information comes from an ancestor from before Ardipithecus ramidus–over 4.5 million years ago. Unfortunately Sahelanthropus tchadensis, dated at around 7 million years, is just a skull so we cannot tell if it had a tail. Or we can go back 20 million years ago to Proconsul heseloni, which lived in the trees of dense forests in eastern Africa. Proconsul is claimed to have had features that closely link it to the common ancestor of humans—for example, the lack of a tail. But you go ahead and persist to claim that this useless information for tails has somehow survived elimination by Darwinian processes for millions of years instead of accepting that a simple genetic mistake is the cause. Just exactly who is stretching logic here?

Obviously I’m in the search for the truth, not some tired attempt to defend an old framework. Whether humans came from pan troglodyte, or another route through convergent evolution, or were specially created…I don’t care. I just want to make certain it’s true and TalkOrigins does NOT have that goal.

Is there a direction to evolution to where devolution is backward evolution?

I would say not.

Anyway, are the blind fish a separate species from similar fish that can see? If so, this is evidence of speciation by "devolution". And if you can agree that evolution really isn't a directional process, then you might as well say that this is evidence of speciation by evolution.

And if I shouldn't believe anything from Talk Origins, then what websites would you recommend I believe?

Yes, Darwinism proposes evolution to be blind/purposeless/directionless and many Darwinists don't like the usage of the word of "devolution" since it implies directionality. ID proponents will not say that blind RM+NS is completely toothless nor would I reject the cavefish as an example of speciation (although did you miss the point that--if I remember correctly--these cavefish "apparently" can regenerate their eyesight by an internal mechanism?). But are you seriously attempting to argue that a loss of functionality is somehow a challenge to ID?

EDIT: A clarification: Speciation is also not as clearly as defined as everyone would like. Take the lion, tiger, and "liger" for example. I have no idea if these blind cavefish can reproduce with non-blind variants so it might be a bit early to call this an example of speciation.

I also advocate reading the original studies YOURSELF. Do not rely on your favored organization to do your thinking for you. So far you've been regurgitating common bad arguments that are passed around on the net. You should also buy a bunch of books from both ID proponents and Darwinists in order to get a balanced view.