Oolon Colluphid

Where?
In a nutshell, embryos all start off ‘female’, and the genes for maleness kick in after some things have already been laid down, nipples being one of them.
Erm, Why d’you think?!

Might it be because these things used to be more substantial -- a useful bit of the gut, and a tail? If something is no longer needed, natural selection can reduce it till building and maintaining it is no longer a significant cost. But there’s no reason why it has to vanish entirely... hence being a vestige!

Some things can vanish entirely, such as bird teeth. But unsurprisingly (though it surprises creationists), birds still have genes for making teeth, they’re just inactivated.

Why the appendix? Well creationists will tell you it’s not even vestigial, since it has a (tiny) immune system function. (It doesn’t have to be so dangerous a shape for that, but still...) But I’ve read that it may be maintained by selection, since making it any narrower would increase the already-present danger of blockage. Which makes sense, except I don’t see why it couldn’t be reduced in length too. Anyone know? I’d guess it’s just a matter of selection pressure. If it’s reduced enough that it doesn’t cost much to have, indeed if it does do some small amount of good, then there’s no reason for it to vanish entirely.

And coccyx? Well it’s just a greatly reduced tail (caudal vertebrae). And creationists will also tell you that it has muscle attachments, so it performs a function. They conveniently overlook it not having to be made of fused separate bones to do that. And they also ignore the extensor coccygis muscle, that would flex the ‘tail’ if only it weren’t a fused lump. But that’s creationists for you .

Cheers, Oolon

Invisible Insanity

The temporal side (towards the temples) of the retina actually gets light from the nasal portion of your field of vision and the nasal portion of the retina recieves light from the temporal. It is inverted because the cornea and the crystalline lens resemble magnyfying lenses as far as their refractive power is concerned. This is verified with basic optics.

http://www.glenbrook.k12.il.us/gbssc...n/u14l5db.html
http://thalamus.wustl.edu/course/basvis.html

Now check this out, this is where it gets hairy. The retina recieves the information and the information is sent through the optic nerve. The temporal portions of the retina stay on their respective sides (right side stays on right, left stays on left). The nasal (meaning towards your nose) recieving portion of the optic nerve crosses over and converge at the optic chiasm. From the chiasm the nasal portion of the vision is now on oppsoite sides (right nasal is now on the left side of the optic tract, and the left nasal portion of vision is on the right see link at the bottom, just note which parts of the retina the light is coming from).

The optic tract then goes to the lateral geniculate body (which is not shown in the diagram below) and each fiber then gets "radiated" out (the layers of fibers are described below), they are actually called optic radiations, into the visual cortex in the back of the brain allowing you to see. It's absolutely amazing how the whole thing works. I hope I didn't confuse you or over answer your query. I don't know how much you know, know what I mean?

http://ahsmail.uwaterloo.ca/kin356/v...ic_pathway.htm

mfaber

As many have already pointed out, then your God is a lousy designer. Here is that well-resourced post by Oolon Colluphid and edited/tweaked Kevin Dorner here on II, showing just how bad/weird/down-right-strange some of these designs are (not an exhaustive list, but hopefully you will get the idea) For everybody's enjoyment:

The Fabulous List of Bad Designs


One of my favorite posts....thanks Oolon and Kevin
:notworthy