40 Evolution and the Fossil Record
are almost the only carnivore that eats plants (bamboo). Consequently, pandas have
modified a wristbone, the radial sesamoid, into a crude thumb-like device, which is not
jointed and not very flexible or strong, but just strong enough to allow pandas to strip
off the leaves from the bamboo as they eat. Once again, a clumsy, poorly designed jury-
rigged device—good enough to allow the survival of pandas (although we’re now driv-
ing them to extinction due to habitat destruction in China), but evidence of a very clumsy
designer at best.
Examples of poor or at least very puzzling design can be accumulated endlessly. Many
cave-dwelling fish and salamanders have the rudiments of eyes but are completely blind.
If God specially created these creatures to live in totally dark caves, why bother to give
them nonfunctional eyes in the first place? Even more peculiar is the course of the recurrent
laryngeal nerve, which connects the brain to the larynx and allows us to speak. In mam-
mals, this nerve avoids the direct route between brain and throat and instead descends into
the chest, loops around the aorta near the heart, then returns to the larynx (fig. 2.4). That
makes it seven times longer than it needs to be! For an animal like the giraffe, it traverses
the entire neck twice, so it is 15 feet long (15 feet of which are unnecessary!). Not only is
this design wasteful, but it also makes an animal more susceptible to injury. Of course, the
bizarre pathway of this nerve makes perfect sense in evolutionary terms. In fish and early
mammal embryos, the precursor of the recurrent laryngeal nerve attached to the sixth gill
arch, deep in the neck and body region. Fish still retain this pattern, but during later human
embryology, the gill arches are modified into the tissues of our throat region and pharynx.
Parts of the old fishlike circulatory system were rearranged, so the aorta (also part of the
sixth gill arch) moved back into the chest, taking the recurrent laryngeal nerve (looped
around it) backward as well.
In fact, the more one looks at nature, the more one finds examples of clumsy or jury-
rigged design because, unlike a Divine Designer, evolution does not require perfection.
Any solution that ensures the survival of an organism long enough to breed is sufficient.
We humans are classic examples of an organism not optimally designed to our current
lifestyles. Our backs and our feet are not well adapted to walking upright, as those of us
who suffer with back and foot pain know. Our knees are poorly constructed and easily
damaged, as those who have had knee surgery can attest. Our eyes are designed back-
ward, with several layers of cells and tissues blocking and distorting the light hitting
the retina in the back of our eye before the light finally reaches the photoreceptor cells
on the very bottom layer. We have vestigial organs, such as our tiny tailbones, tonsils,
and appendix, the latter two of which no longer perform an important function but can
become infected and be deadly to us. These only make sense if they were inherited from
ancestors who had functioning versions of these organs. Our genome is full of nonfunc-
tional DNA, including inactive pseudogenes that were active in our ancestors. Humans,
like most primates, cannot make vitamin C and must get it from their diet. We still carry
all the genes for making vitamin C but no longer use them, probably because our primate
ancestors got it from their fruit-rich diets instead. Finally, ask any ID advocate: Why did
God give men nonfunctional nipples?
ID creationists may want to think twice before pointing to God’s handiwork as evidence
of a benevolent God, because it is full of examples of not only poor or incompetent design
but also outright cruelty. The most famous example is the family of wasps known as the
Ichneumonidae, which consist of about 3,300 species who all reproduce in a distinctive way.