The so-called vestigial organs, or “remnants,” selected for this video are structures and reflexes that are easily visible: a tendon in the forearm, seemingly useless muscles attached to your ears, goose bumps, the tailbone you may have bumped in a fall, and a tiny baby’s strong grasp. This YouTube video-as you can see below-opens by declaring the human body a museum of natural history, loaded with “parts that aren’t there because you need them, but because your animal ancestors did” (:06), and claiming, “These remnants of our deep history only make sense within the framework of evolution by natural selection” (:16). 1 Ever since Darwin branded organs he considered nonfunctional as evidence for his beliefs, drumbeaters for the evolutionary worldview periodically trot out lists of vestigial organs to convince people that humans are the advanced animal products of random chance processes and natural selection. “ Proof of Evolution That You Can Find on Your Body,” a YouTube video reporting over 14 million hits in its first two weeks online, is the latest presentation to prop up the human evolutionary story through tales about vestigial structures, our presumably useless body parts.
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