Creationist Prediction about the Human Appendix

The creationist view of science is a robust paradigm that has made many predictions regarding the data. Time and time again, those predictions have been demonstrated to be correct. Not all that long ago, I wrote about the fact that the only successful predictions regarding the data related to planetary magnetic fields come from a young-earth creationist model. Well, it turns out that specific creationist predictions have been confirmed again, much to the chagrin of evolutionists.

I previously discussed how the human appendix has been demonstrated to be a useful, non-vestigial organ, which goes directly against the predictions of evolutionists since the time of Darwin. In fact, as Science Daily states,

Writing in the Journal of Evolutionary Biology, Duke scientists and collaborators from the University of Arizona and Arizona State University conclude that Charles Darwin was wrong: The appendix is a whole lot more than an evolutionary remnant. 1

Well, what I just recently learned is that a 1988 creationist study of the appendix predicted the essential nature of the appendix’s function. The study, entitled “The human vermiform appendix: A general surgeon’s reflections,” specifically predicted:

Through the cells within and overlying the lymphoid follicles and their production of secretory and humoral antibodies the appendix would be involved in the control of which essential bacteria come to reside in the caecum and colon in neonatal life. As well it would be involved in the development of systemic tolerance to certain antigenic agents within the alimentary tract whether they are derived from bacteria, foodstuffs or even the body’s own proteolytic enzymes.2

Indeed, we now know that at least one of the functions of the appendix is specifically to harbor intestinal bacteria so that they can quickly repopulate the intestine after an intestine-clearing disease like dysentery.3 So the appendix does, indeed, exert control over the type of bacteria that live in the colon and the systemic tolerances that must be developed for them to live there long term. Thus, roughly 20 years before the evolutionary scientific community came to accept it, creation scientists had already identified at least one of the functions of the appendix.

In case my evolutionist colleagues have forgotten, we test a scientific paradigm by looking at the predictions it makes about the data and seeing how well those predictions conform to the data. So far, the predictions of evolution have been shown to not only be wrong, but dreadfully so. The predictions of creation scientists, however, continue to be shown by the data to be correct. So who is following the scientific method when it comes to the issue of origins? The creationists are, and the evolutionists are not.

REFERENCES

1.
Evolution Of The Human Appendix: A Biological ‘Remnant’ No More

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2. J. Warwick Glover, The human vermiform appendix: A general surgeon’s reflections, Creation Ex Nihilo Technical Journal 3:31–38, 1988
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3. Smith HF, Fisher RE, Everett ML, Thomas AD, Randal Bollinger R, Parker W, “Comparative anatomy and phylogenetic distribution of the mammalian cecal appendix.,” J Evol Biol. , 2009 Published online ahead of the print date
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