Creationist response to cetacean femur, leg atavism, and limb bud.

First of all, this was a very well presented opening post Aaron,even though it showed me that anatomy wasn't my forte.And for this reason, I will let you and GM grind out the discussion about the specific issue of whales vestigial part, but this has become a very good example of what I am saying about the paradigm-based approach of evidence. Clearly, the femur's and buds of whales will only be seen as evidence of evolution only for a person who already believes in evolution.The one part I thought was very interesting in your OP, and that I feel comfortable in discussing, is this section about vestigial organs: This is in fact a rather good formulation of what had been going in the back of my head for a while now: I can understand that a vestigial organ should not be obliged to have no function, but it seems to me that within an evolution perspective, there should be some vestigial features that have no purpose or function at all, I would even go as far as suggest that this should be a majority. We should expect some features to have had a single function, lost it's usefulness with evolution, and hasn't had the time to evolve other functions.Yet if the vast majority (if not all) of claimed vestigial features have functions, and usually pretty specialised function, it begs the question as to why we should consider them any more or less vestigial then feathers being vestigial scales, etc. and it brings into question if the issue of vestigiality has any relevance at all.(Might I suggest that we make this a great debate thread with Aaron, GM, myself and another evolutionist ? perhaps Percy ?)Edited by slevesque, : No reason given.

I say it is clear because a creationist will see the specificity in the design of form and function, while the evolutionists will see that the bones have analog counterparts in terrestial mammals that will hint at common descent.As I said, the vestigial argument would be much more effective if the vestigial features had no function. This is clearly not the case for the vast majority of claimed vestigial features, and in fact I think we should expect much more functionless vestigial features then we see., because a vestigial feature with a function should only arise if the orignal feature had either more then one original feature, or if it evolved a second function afterwards, both possibilities which shouldn't be an overwhemling majority, yet it seems it is.Edited by slevesque, : No reason given.