Mistakes of Evolution
Vestigial Features, Genetic Dysfunction and Extinctions

4 billion species, up to 99% of all that have ever existed, are long extinct_1,2,3. Evolution has led almost all species into dead-ends, where they could not adapt to changing circumstances, or, forced them to evolve into new forms, new species, in order to survive. No design of life has been good enough to survive changing circumstances unaltered.

All species are half-evolved: they have attributes that were once useful (vestigial features), new features that are inefficient or barely functional, and, all species suffer from genetic diseases that can doom them to suffering or early death. Countless imperfections from flightless birds to the battle between parasites and hosts reveal evolution to be a tangled web of trial and error, a chaotic mess, belying any idea that evolution 'knows' what it is doing₄. Improvements are ratcheted-in almost no quicker than they are made redundant by other factors; but the scale and repetition of attempted improvisions results in moments of brilliance, some of which endure, but most of which don't.

Problems with evolved traits of humanity are well-studied. We have vestigial features that are trivial - well-known ones such as goose bumps_5,6, wisdom teeth and male nipples are joined by the vomeronasal organ₆, Darwin's Point (that some people have on the top of their ears to control a non-existent ear flap)₆, the coccyx that serves only to cause us pain sometimes, and various blood vessels._5,6. Other ones are nuisances: the appendix₆, the route of nerves across our spine that made sense when we cooped, but in a straight-back species cause multiple issues₇, and the wrong-turns of childbirth mean we birth our young problematically and somewhat too early₈.₉. Foetal development sees only half of all grown neurones used (the remainder are surplus and left to die during early neuroblast growth)₁₀. Many problems of old-age are a direct result of blind evolutions' inability to plan for the future_7,11,12.

Like other animals, we also suffer from a range of genetic diseases₁₃, running in families and throughout our populations, they cause deformation, early death and suffering.₁₁. Our capabilities to remedy some of these problems are improving, but, to smoothen out the rough edges of evolution will take intelligence, time, effort, and some cultural changes₁₄. A combination of directed intelligence and bioengineering will eventually allow us to fix some of the mistakes of evolution.

1. The Extinction of Species: Designs With No Foresight
2. Human Evolution Gone Wrong
   1. Some Vestigial Features
      1. Goose Bumps
      2. Wisdom Teeth
      3. The Vomeronasal Organ (VMO)
      4. The Appendix
      5. The Cocyx, Without a Tail
      6. Darwin's Point
   2. The Poor Engineering of Evolution, With Inadequate Foresight
      1. Too Few Backup Organs (Why Two Kidneys, But Only One Heart?)
      2. Old Age Problems
      3. Problems Caused by a Body Once Designed For an All-Fours Existence
      4. The Inside-Out Retina of the Human Eye
      5. Wasteful Proliferation of Early Neurones
      6. Why Evolution Sends Human Babies Round the Bend
   3. Genetic Diseases
3. Flightless Birds
4. Animal Oddities
5. Links

1. The Extinction of Species: Designs With No Foresight

#evolution #extinctions

Most species of life that have ever lived, are now completely extinct₁. Paul Davies in "The Origin of Life"₁₅ says the figure is as high as 99% of all species - around 4 billion species, gone forever₂. That's between ten to a hundred times the number of species that still exist now₃. That's not including the present "sixth mass extinction" which is caused by humankind's mass destruction of natural habitats. The vast majority of biologists and zoologists know that life is not 'designed' at all - let alone in an intelligent manner. Victor Stenger in his book documenting the scientific evidence against a designer God, includes this in one of his arguments:

“Estimates of the number of biological species on Earth range as high as one hundred million. Species on the order of ten or a hundred times this number once lived and have become extinct. [...] The large number of species results from the many, largely random attempts that evolution makes to produce a solution to the survival problem; many failures are to be expected as the bulk of these solutions fail. Many successes are marginal, leaving the species open to eventual extinction. [...] Earth and life look just as they can be expected to look if there is no designer God.”

"God, the Failed Hypothesis: How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist"
Prof. Victor J. Stenger (2007)₃

2. Human Evolution Gone Wrong

#evolution #humanity

2.1. Some Vestigial Features

Our evolution is like that of other animals: a path of many misadventures. Some of what was once useful is now a nuisance. These wrong-turns vary from the interesting to the deadly. Here are some mild examples:

• Goose Bumps

  : Professors Bear, Connors & Paradiso in their book "Neuroscience" (1996)₁₆ explain that the hypothalamus evolved to give us goose pimples when we are cold and call it "a futile attempt to fluff up your nonexistent fur - a reflexive remnant from our hairier ancestors"₅ with Laura Spinney adding that "human hair is so puny" that goose bumps are simply incapable of keeping us warm₆.

• Wisdom Teeth

  (the third molars) are in the process of being actively de-selected in primates, because they can dysfunction to the point of diminishing successful parenting. In humans, up to 35% of us have no wisdom teeth, proving that these flat, pointless structures are also flatly pointless.

• The Vomeronasal Organ (VMO)

  was once used to detect pheromones, but is a function that we've lost. Most humans still have one in their nose, but, it no longer has nerve cells and is no longer connected to the brain; "virtually all the genes that encode its cell-surface receptors - the molecules that bind incoming chemical signals, triggering an electrical response in the cell - are pseudogenes, and inactive"₆.

• The Appendix

  : The common problem of appendicitis can result in a rupture, an abscess or a blockage, all of which risk death if left untreated; the solution is surgical removal of the appendix.

  “In 1998, evolutionary theorists Randolph Nesse of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and the late George Williams of the State University of New York at Stony Brook argued that while you might expect natural selection to eliminate the annoying human appendix if it could, we might paradoxically be stuck with it. They pointed out that a smaller, thinner appendix would be more likely to become blocked by inflammation and inaccessible to a cleansing blood supply, increasing the risk of life-threatening infections.”

  Laura Spinney (2013)₆

• The Cocyx, Without a Tail

  . Designed to sprout the tail, the genes that would grow it are now inactive in the human genome, but, there have been over 100 cases where the signal that is sent during foetal growth to suppress the genes failed, leading to a human child with a tail. The cocyx in humans is evolving in new directions, finding itself now as the inefficient, sometimes-problematic and just-good-enough anchor for some muscles and as part of the support for our sitting position.₆.

• Darwin's Point

  "is a minor malformation of the junction of the fourth and fifth hillocks of Hiss. It is found in a substantial minority of people and takes the form of a cartilaginous node or bump on the rim of their outer ear, which is thought to be the vestige of a joint that allowed the top part of the ancestral ear to swivel or flop down over the opening of the ear" (Laura Spinney 2013)₆.

2.2. The Poor Engineering of Evolution, With Inadequate Foresight

• Too Few Backup Organs (Why Two Kidneys, But Only One Heart?)

  : Anthropologist Scott Atran concludes in his essay Unintelligent Design that no sensible God would have designed our bodies with many of its current features, asking, "why, in making us upright, did he render us so liable to back problems? Why did he give us just one head, heart, and liver, instead of two, like the lungs and kidneys? After all, having two lungs and kidneys is surely better than having one of each"₁₁. It is ironic that we simultaneously have vestigial features in the same bodies that lacks a backup organ for the heart! If our bodies have "a designer" then such a being was certainly not a good engineer (for starters - it took hundreds of millions of years to finally come to modern versions of the eye).

• Old Age Problems

  : Evolution is poor at steering long-term health beyond fertile years. Although there is some positive pressure - because healthy family elders can look after younger members' children - there is much that could be improved with a little intelligence. Scientists Olshansky, Carnes and Butler published an article mentioning many defects of age, noting what improvements could be made. Some of these are simple changes that any engineer would clearly have seen to make:

  “Our bones lose minerals after age thirty, making them susceptible to fracture and osteoporosis. Our rib cage does not fully enclose and protect most internal organs. Our muscles atrophy. Our leg veins become enlarged and twisted, leading to varicose veins. Our joints wear out as their lubricants thin. Our retinas are prone to detachment. The male prostate enlarges, squeezing and obstructing urine flow. [... Improvements include] bigger ears, rewired eyes, a curved neck, a forward-tilting torso, shorter limbs and stature, extra padding around joints, extra muscles and fat, thicker spinal disks, a reversed knee joint, and more.”

  "God, the Failed Hypothesis: How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist"
  Prof. Victor J. Stenger (2007)₁₂

• Problems Caused by a Body Once Designed For an All-Fours Existence

  : The biologist Prof. Richard Dawkins supplies a few more examples:

  “Many of our human ailments, from lower back pain to hernias, prolapsed uteruses and our susceptibility to sinus infections, result directly from the fact that we now walk upright with a body that was shaped over hundreds of millions of years to walk on all fours.”

  "The God Delusion" by Prof. Richard Dawkins (2006)₇

• The Inside-Out Retina of the Human Eye

  The human eye is a prime example of the blind and unintelligent nature of evolution. As species branched and evolved from one-another, the eye has undergone many changes. Solutions that are selected for in one species sometimes, by pure chance, never occur in another species. The Human eye sees fewer colours than some other species₁₇, doesn't capture quite as much field of vision as many, is less accurate than some, and suffers from problems such as a detached retina and isn't well-designed for close-range work with tools and devices; we develop short-sightedness, long-sightedness and colour-blindness as a result of genetic shortcomings built-in to the very design of life.

  The evolution of the eye has been a key intellectual battleground between religious creationists and scientists₁₈, which creationists (or 'intelligent design' proponents) lost. But we now know in detail across species, from how partial-vision evolved in fish into full-vision: what we don't know is why God would have designed the octopus with a sensible eye with its neurones outside of the eyeball, but in primates such as humans, foolishly put the neurones inside the eye-ball, creating the small blind-spot₁₉. That was just poor engineering. Why don't eyes across species all have maximally functional and efficient designs? Because evolution is itself blind.

  For more, see:

  • " The Evolution of the Human Eye, Complete With Its Inside-Out Retina" by Vexen Crabtree (2025).

• Wasteful Proliferation of Early Neurones

  . Evolutionary success saw selection, in primates, of larger brains, with new brainal structures, more complex than before. The benefits outweighed the importance of efficiency, so evolution charged forwards accumulating mistakes - as long as the general aim of 'more neurones' was achieved and successful traits are acquired.

  “There is a huge proliferation of neurones in early life. [...] One feature of the proliferation is worthy of note: it is very wasteful. Over half of the neuroblasts produced die without achieving any functional capacity. [For example, half of all retinal neurones are never used] Some 25-30% of retinal ganglion cells fail to reach their correct targets in the brain and hence die. This leaves the death of a further 25% of retinal ganglion cells to make up the known loss of 50% of retinal ganglion cells.”

  "Exploring the Brain" by Terry Whatson (2004)₁₀

  The reason why so many neurones die without being used is that our genes did not know, during the course of evolution, how many neurones were going to be required. So, an adequate way to proceed was to produce as many neuroblasts as possible. This comes about because species that can capitalize on genes that lead to greater brain growth outperform those that don't. A surplus of neuroblasts allows future mutations involving brain growth to have a greater chance of being successful; this was selected-for via the better survival of families that went down that route. This is all clear evidence that evolution does not have any lookahead or intelligent aspect to its 'design'.

• Why Evolution Sends Human Babies Round the Bend

  . Compared to other animals, why are Human babies so incapable? It is because of engineering solutions that turned out to be inappropriate for later Human evolution. As evolutionary pressure altered Human posture to an upright position, the birth canal was effectively made narrower₈. Our birthing would work better if our hips were still orientated for all-fours walking. Human brain sizes has evolved to be larger, meaning that now Human babies have to be born underdeveloped so that their brain can continue to grow outside the womb after birth at an awkward angle through the too-narrow birth canal. Giving birth through the pelvis has turned out to be severely limiting; now, agility (defined by narrow hips) and baby brain-size are in direct competition. What a mess! If only evolution operated with some foresight, things would have turned out somewhat more practically.

  The anthropologist Prof. John Bock talks about some of these issues in a recent article:

  “A horse can walk within an hour after birth. A newborn baboon baby can cling to its mother's hair while she jumps through the trees. Even among our closest evolutionary relatives - chimpanzees and bonobos - babies are far more agile than their human counterparts. That's because humans are born with brains that are largely immature. [...] This uniquely human attribute is the result of a lengthy evolutionary battle between big brains and narrow pelvises. [...]

  Over time, natural selection increased brain size in these early humans. But at some point, the selection for bigger and bigger brains collided head on, so to speak, with the narrow pelvis. [...] There is simply not enough room for a big, mature brain to pass through. [...] So in contrast to other mammals, humans have a good bit of development to do after birth. The result is a relatively underdeveloped infant who needs lots of care and can do much less for itself than other newborn primates.”

  Prof. John Bock (2009)₈

  Anthropologist Scott Atran in his essay Unintelligent Design says:

  “[Childbirth is particularly difficult. This results from] evolution's having jammed the outlets of three major expulsive functions into a narrow basin [pelvis]: the expulsion of the large-headed human fetus though a narrow region at childbirth occurs at considerable cost. The 'design flaw' of human childbirth has had cascading effects: Human offspring profit from having big brains, but only at substantial cost-to-fitness of relatively high fatality rates for child and mother, long periods of postnatal care, reduction in fertility rates [...] and so forth.”

  Atran (2006)₁₁

2.3. Genetic Diseases

#disease #evolution #genetics #life

The Human species, just like other animal species, is afflicted with a wide range of genetic diseases - around 4,000 of them - which are mostly incurable₂₀. Some are inherited and passed on from parents to children, others are the results of the failure of genes to reproduce properly. The cruellest ones are those that convey a "heterozygote advantage" if just one chromosome has it, but which have terrible effects if both chromosomes have it. This means that there is evolutionary pressure to promulgate the gene, but if two parents both have it, then their child suffers. One example is a gene that gives resistance to malaria - if both parents have this gene, their child gets sickle-cell anaemia. In 2007 we had found 1,250 disease-related gene mutations, all of which could potentially be fixed through genetic engineering₂₁ - or avoided by screening at conception. This has theological implications: If us humble Human Beings are capable of fixing these errors, how could they be part of a 'design' that is maintained by an intelligent supernatural being? In other words, if these horrible diseases were part of God's plan, then, they wouldn't have such a reachable physical cause. They'd be no way to stop them. If, on the other hand, they are not part of God's plan, or, it is God's plan that we humans strive to reduce suffering by fixing these problems, then we have a clear mandate to do whatever we can to eliminate the horror caused by some of these diseases. Also, the existence of these types of diseases means that evolution is proven to be blind and meandering rather than intentionally directed.

For more, see:

• "What the Worst and Most Horrible Genetic Diseases?" by Vexen Crabtree (2016).

The following are some of the more horrific:

• Cystic fibrosis: "A rare disease of the endocrine glands [...] caused by a genetic defect [... That] occurs most frequently in Caucasian Europeans and is the most common fatal genetic disease of Caucasian children. As yet, there is no cure"₂₂.

• Down's syndrome "occurs when an individual is born with an extra copy of chromosome number 21 [and] causes mental retardation, distinctive facial features, and abnormalities of some systems of the body. [It] is caused by a defect in the separation of the chromosomes, called nondisjunction. Most scientists do not consider Down's syndrome hereditary"₂₂.

• Haemophilia, the blood disease, carried on the X chromosome₂₂.

• Huntingdon's disease "is a rare hereditary disease of the nervous system that appears in early adult life or middle age. It is characterized by involuntary muscular twitching. It is a degenerative disease that eventually affects the entire body and causes mental deterioration, and eventual death. No medical treatment exists, though certain sedatives minimize the symptoms"₂₂.

• Lesch-Nyhan Syndrome is "one of the most terrifying diseases imaginable. Children born with it cannot process uric acid properly, so it builds up in their tissues. In the first year of life this leads to symptoms like severe gout, poor muscle control, and moderate retardation. [They] compulsively bite their lips and chew their fingers. Eventually they have to be placed under restraint. ... They die at a young age"₂₃.

• Lissencephaly, untreatable, results from an error in the L1S1 gene during fertilisation. It causes the brain's cortex to develop only into four layers instead of six. "Babies born with lissencephaly have a very poor prognosis; the disease proving lethal before their second birthday. Behaviourally, lissencephaly results in epilepsy, mental retardation, motor impairment and a general lack of development"₂₄.

“

If I was an evil architect who wanted to create a species that would suffer needlessly, then, I would design evolution in such a way that terrible diseases were hidden by genes that conferred an advantage and therefore spread well in the population. If I was a good designer, I wouldn't create genetic diseases at all. Which way does the evidence point? The existence of genetic diseases with heterozygous advantage is evidence that, if there is a creator, or a designer of evolution, such a being is either malevolent or a very poor geneticist.”

"God Must Be Evil (If It Exists): 2.5. Genetic Diseases" by Vexen Crabtree (2005)

3. Flightless Birds

One of the most obvious examples of a half-evolved species are flightless birds. These typically occur when birds found themselves on remote islands (through geological changes or by chance flights), or, when predators diminished and land-life provided better food.₂₅. Over time, evolution selected replacement traits to suit the new situation, allowing old features to find partial new purposes, or simply to go unused. Some beetles have had enough time to change that, for example, their wings are now encased within their bodies, never able to open out₉.

4. Animal Oddities

Another symptom of the blindfolded nature of evolution is the presence of masses of unused and out-of-use genes (such as flightless birds' old genes for flight control). The results of mutations and changes have rendered them useless and ignored by our bodies. Genetic junk. Sometimes, entire organs ('vestigial organs') are no longer required by a species.

“Vestigial characteristics are still another form of morphological evidence, illuminating to contemplate because they show that the living world is full of small, tolerable imperfections. Why do male mammals (including human males) have nipples? Why do some snakes (notably boa constrictors) carry the rudiments of a pelvis and tiny legs buried inside their sleek profiles? Why do certain species of flightless beetle have wings, sealed beneath wing covers that never open? Darwin raised all these questions, and answered them, in The Origin of Species. Vestigial structures stand as remnants of the evolutionary history of a lineage.”

National Geographic (n.d.)₂₆