No new body parts have evolved (Talk.Origins)
From CreationWiki, the encyclopedia of creation science
The evolution of new body parts has never been observed.
- Kepler, Christian, n.d. Another false link discovered in the theory of evolution.
(Talk.Origins quotes in blue)
1. We would not expect to directly observe the evolution of new body parts. Major changes occur gradually over long periods of time. Finding a new body part one day where there was none the day before, or even a generation before, would be better evidence for creationism than for evolution.
So Talk Origins agrees that the claim is 100% correct. Why can’t they just admit it? Instead they try to turn it on Creationists, when Creation Science predicts that we should not observe new body parts and we don’t. Since we don’t, Evolutionists wave their magic wand of time, by saying that changes just happen too slowly.
The real point of this claim is that Creation predicts what is actually observed, whereas Evolution must assume that what has never been observed in nature still happens naturally.
What exactly is a new body part? Most evolutionary changes are changes to existing structures, not additions de novo. We have transitional sequences showing the evolutionary transition of fins to legs, plus some understanding of the genetic changes involved. Do legs qualify as a new body part?
Legs from fins would qualify as a new body part, but Talk Origins’s alleged transitional sequences do not stand up to scrutiny.
- None of the types in these sequences are considered actual ancestors of others in the sequence.
- The most critical types in these sequences are dated by Evolutionists at about the same age as those before and after them in the sequence.
- The most critical types—those that could actually bridge the gap between fin and leg—are too fragmented to make a legitimate case.
- Transition from primitive bony fish to amphibians (Talk.Origins).
We also sometimes see duplication of body parts. It is not uncommon for cats to have extra toes, for example. Should not these qualify as new body parts?
No; duplication of body parts is not new. The organism already had the genetic information to produce that part, some just happened to produce an extra copy. For example while some cats do have extra toes, they already have the genetic information to produce toes, so this is just a case of making an extra copy of what is already there.