Are human tails an example of macroevolution?

Faith claimed in the thread “Origin of new genes” that human tails This is not supported by the facts. Human tails are described in the following
abstract: There are rare cases where even skeletal structures are developed, as can be seen in this case: For creationists the human tail is the result of a mutation and not “the recurrence of a formerly expressed allele” - as Faith put it - because that would be evidence for a shared ancestor of humans and great apes.This has interesting consequences for the creationist viewpoint.For one this implies that benefical mutations should be quite common. Only in this century there are several documented cases where humans where born with a moveable tail containing connective tissue, nerves, blood vessels and muscles. In three cases tails containing vertebrae have been reported.
On the other hand one would conclude that macroevolution understood as the development of new and complex biological structures has been observed in humans.-Bernd

Thread moved here from the Proposed New Topics forum.

Oooh, let me do this one.* puts on magic creationist hat *There's nothing in the Bible to say that humans weren't originally created with tails. (Of course, there's nothing to say we were, but I can add anything I like to the Bible to save the appearances.) So humanity originally had tails. We subsequently lost 'em 'cos the genome is degrading, donchaknow? (A scientific fact I made up. I'm allowed to do that too.) Occasionally, enough of the fragmented genes are brought together by recombination (a statement I have not even tried to prove, and won't) that some child is born with a tail.Damn, I see why for some people this has more appeal than actual science. It's easier.

Thank you Dr. Adequate for your nice post! Hopefully I'm going to get some more more answers. So, would the real creationists please stand up and clarify the issue?-Bernd

Of course, the reason most people don't have tails is that the tails were cut off by God many years ago.

nah, they fell off as a consequence of the Fall. I mean, how else did the Fall get its name? :laughing:on their journey out of eden
(oh no! my tail fell of adam!
eh, mine did too, about ten miles ago.)

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And Man has been looking for a little tail ever since.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

The following image taken from the article Human Tails
should illustrate that we are not talking about "a flacid rope of skin". Its a lateral radiograph which shows "the sacrum and three well developed coccygeal vertebrae" of a nine year old girl. (case three mentioned in the above linked article)So, how do creationists explain this?-Bernd

I do not see how Faith’s description of human tails as a ”rope’ can be distinguished from from Eramus Darwin’s notion of “a filament” as cited by GS Carter: If these words in English are comparable (rope-filament)then what you are asking could be asked about ANY part of anantomy that is deemed important in the process of species change. Since these bones do not posses any large lateral projections I do not see how one is going to even think beyond E. Darwin's "revolution."I take it then you are explicitly asking how creationists "revolve" this "monster" in their minds. I would bet you, and I will go out on the internet and search, that modern creationists have some response to the issue of degeneration. If not I would not hold my breath that they will not have one.

Hello Brad,I’m sorry but I have some difficulties to understand your point. On page 32 of “A hundred years of evolution” we find the sentence: “If we interpret, as we clearly should, a single living filament as an ancestral stock, the position taken up by the grandfather is extraordinary close to that of the grandson in the ”Origin of Species’”. This usage of the term filament by Erasmus Darwin has obviously nothing to do with Faith’s way to describe a tail as a “flaccid rope of skin”. Please clarify what you tried to express.Besides that, please reread my opening post, where I indeed have asked how creationists “revolve” this “monster” in their minds, given that they probably can’t acknowledge “the recurrence of a formerly expressed allele” nor the origin of a complex structure by mutation.-Bernd

don't feel bad when you can't understand brad's posts. I'd wager that most of us here don't except on very, very rare occasions.

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Thanks for reply Bernd.I will respond to the first paragraph and then go back to the firs post and answer your second paragraph in message 10. Thanks again for asking!!I do not think it is difficult to "read" the Grandfather's use of the word "filament" as a precursor idea to Charles' use of "common descent"? Yes???Assuming we get that far, I should note that Darwin derided comparisons of his work to Lamarck's when compared to his Grandfather ( I will show this quote Gould quoted if it is critical, I doubt this is either).Now look CLOSELY at how Erasmus thought out the transformation and notice how the Elder Darwin leads his "mind" to the notion of a "filament" as a conclusion and unity of the thought of biological form-making and translation in space. As an aside about his grandson to be writing, it is quite obvious that unlike Lamarck Eramus presents a style of argument that Charles simply made extended and overwhelming but I will leave that as my own opinion for now lest it might confuse you if you are still with me on this interpretation.Issac Newton's book on Opticks had been around for almost a century by the time E.Darwin wrote and in the end parts of that work one can think Newton "revolving" 'metamorphisis' in his mind purley interms of the relation of bodies and light (and heat). So assuming that my earlier reference to "revolution" is not suspect I think we can easily enter the E.Darwin quote at the point that most closely resembles a current issue - that due to the difference of artifical and natural selection aka domestic breeding without having reached the "third" rotary 'gear' in Grandads thought process which becomes the principle one in the "sons'". But now notice that some of the words that the Grandfather uses ARE NOT purely "evolutionary" as we read them today but contain linguistic usages that really belie a non-evolutionary perspective (let's even leave aside the phrase "led to believe" etc). He speaks of a "PLAN" but he does this AFTER he mentions 'men' and ONLY with respect to WARM-BLOODED creatures, what about snakes? (I have my own ideas). So by the time the speculatively thinking Erasmus reaches his conclusion he has actually thought through some anthropology rather than strict evoluionary psychology say thus the term "filament" IS NOT stricly referring to common descent without the modifications and future mutations of Darwinism and post-Darwinian biology.In the context of E.Darwin's restricted reference to taxonomy I see no reason that the circular symmetry and labileness of a rope or a filament IS ALL that is being cognized here, whether the tail of human through it common ancestry or the notion of the Flesh Faith referred to. Without a discussion of clade geometry which is not found in E.Darwin and single leveled by C.Darwin except in diversification despite the appearence in the words beling form-making it really only expresses translation in space (hence the puncutations etc.).

You asked me

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Besides that, please reread my opening post, where I indeed have asked how creationists “revolve” this “monster” in their minds, given that they probably can’t acknowledge “the recurrence of a formerly expressed allele” nor the origin of a complex structure by mutation.

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Notice that it is "YOU" not an iconic "creationist" that revolves the mutilation or monster mentally.

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For creationists the human tail is the result of a mutation and not “the recurrence of a formerly expressed allele” - as Faith put it - because that would be evidence for a shared ancestor of humans and great apes.

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This has interesting consequences for the creationist viewpoint.

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For one this implies that benefical mutations should be quite common.

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Well it did not take long to find out a creationist position on the internet.I typed “human tail creationism” into Google and the first entry returned was:
Evolution and the Human Tail (#117)
by Duane Gish, Ph.D.
which reads a transition between an evolutionary and a creationary view precisely as I surmised (about lack of lateral projections) where Gish had

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First of all, the caudal appendage does not contain even rudimentary vertebral structures

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Gish’s argumentation rotates between two sentences:

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How can it be said that the presence of this "tail" brings us tangibly and inescapably to the reality of evolution if we cannot exclude the possibility that it is nothing more than a dermal appendage coincidently located in the caudal region? As a matter of fact, even a superficial reading of Ledley's article makes clear that this so-called tail was no tail at all but was nothing more than an anomalous growth coincidentally located in the caudal region.

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which seem to NOT deviate from my reading of E.Darwin in GOING from the first sentence into the second and the second can be accomadated if I was writing as a creationist apologist at the issue of “laws of growth” that Darwin subsequently admitted but Gould deprecated. It would only remain to argue against Gould. This I do repeatedly here on EVC.Yes it is frustrating to me when I can not be understood on EVC but this is not really my fault it is the real difficulty of a proper cut among creationists and evolutionists that is in error.It is one thing to say that a creationist can not admit recurrent allele expression and another to state it exists for a particular trait or anatomy.Desptie the fact that you presented a rather bonier example than Gish, Gish nonetheless said, “If malformations may possibly be due to the expression of genes inherited from distant ancestors but long suppressed” it is hard to see how you are generalizing to all creationists except when you make it A FUTHER condition in the revolution that mutation of a complex trait must be thought in the rotation.So we have two questions rather than an answer.
Do you have evidence that your depiction is falsely explained by Gish’s

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If this caudal appendage were due to a mutation, the mutant gene would be passed on to offspring and would eventually be reexpressed in some of those offspring. This has never been known to occur. The anomaly is thus not due to a mutation but to some disarrangement that occurred during embryological development.

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????????????????And is there evidence that the "occupation" of a human tail IS the result of a complex mutational existence rather than a narrowed or broadend developmental constraint?Lamarck spoke of "motion" and Cuvier divided anatomy by locomotion. It is hard for me to see how a creationist with a moveable tail beyond what Gish commented on, must MEAN that there was a prior generational benefit necessarily. Unless of course the rotation is done wholly by YOU as a creationist. In that case I would not have thought you would have said,

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For creationists...

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Correct me if I am wrong. Where was the "implication" here??? I assume that you are not going to say that where Gish means descendant you mean offspring. If so the difference splits hairs and can not function across the space E.Darwin provided his grandson to artifically devolve or preselect as per the form made.

Dear Brad and Bernd-It does appear quite clear that the creationist response to all these tails is that they are just growths of skin and not “real” tails. It’s also clear from the medical evidence that these are as real as tails get, often with nerves, bone, muscle, structure, etc. I haven’t seen any real challenge to that other than the creationist denial of reality.On another note, I have to admit that I generally don’t read Brad’s posts anymore. When I started in this forum I read them completely, and found them very difficult to understand. With effort it is possible to get the meaning, and it usually is a deep down repetition of a well known and well disproven creationist canard. After working hard to get the meaning, only to find that the same point is often made more clearly by Faith or other creationists (though the point is just as illogical and obviously false), I gave up slogging through Brad’s posts.Brad, I don’t mean this post as an attack on you, and I’m sorry if this post hurts you. I have to be honest though, and admit that I simply have given up trying to read your posts.All the best-

There is no musculature, nerve endings, or ligaments attached to these anamolies. All it is either a protuberant coccyx or distended skin, not a tail. Aside from which, if humans developed atavisms that are not normally expressed alleles, one might expect to see traits that are more current to the evolutionary timescale. What I mean to say is that if humans are indeed primates and we trace our lineage back to primates with tails, we are taling about hundreds of millions of years in between. Why wouldn't excessive body hair be a more prominent atavism than tails when there has been a hundreds of millions of years of disparity in between? It seems much more reasonable to recognize that these are deformities just like any other deformity, not tails. I've yet to hear of any cases where they were able to move their 'tails'. If you have any links to support the claim I would definitely like to peruse them. But even the event that some people were born with musculature and nerves in their distended coccyx, how would this be an example of beneficial mutation? If these people were born with opposable tails and could leap from tree to tree from their tails, I would certainly concede. But as of now its been reported as a discomfort when people sit down, in which case, I hardly see how it could be deemed beneficial.Edited by nemesis_juggernaut, : typo

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