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[[User:Philip J. Rayment|Philip J. Rayment]] 11:16, 1 June 2007 (EDT)
[[User:Philip J. Rayment|Philip J. Rayment]] 11:16, 1 June 2007 (EDT)
:I am giving the creationist sources equal weight to the one I found. I think that is more than fair given the lack of sources. I want to make it clear that I don't inherently distrust creationist sources, what I do distrust are unsourced statements. Just look at the "Cutting out a useless vestigial argument" source. The first paragraph asserts a function and is sourced. So what's the source? A popular press magazine. The second paragraph presumably comes from the same source, but it relies solely on the word of a magazine writer. The third paragraph relies solely on the word of "Johan Uys of Bellville, South Africa." No qualifications are listed. After that, the rest of the evidence is merely used to show what evolutionists have said about the appendix. Are you beginning to understand why I have a problem with this source? It is just a summary of a popular press magazine question and answer column. That is the extent of the evidence, unless you count the two lay-people's personal opinions.
:Now look at the "Your appendix...it's there for a reason." The only two sources (other than the glover piece, which we already settled was not definitive) are one medical textbook from 31 years ago and one from 12 years ago. I am not sure where to begin here because not only do the quotes from those books '''not''' mention a role in development in any way, one of them isn't even definitive in its assertion of an immunological role for the appendix. I won't even get in to the question of what makes that one definitive-sounding source from 1995 take precedence over divided scientific opinion that persists to the present day. Not to mention that we have no idea what original research the 1995 medical text used, or what other more current medical texts say about the issue. What we do know is that we have a very well sourced article arguing otherwise, and that is enough to keep the statement from being definitive. In summary, there is absolutely no way you can claim a definitive developmental function of the appendix based on these sources, and the case for an immunological function would be weak at best.
:In retrospect I wish I had taken a closer look at those two sources earlier instead of just futilely trying to find the sources they cited. We could have avoided a long and unneccesary debate. [[User:GodWarrior|GodWarrior]] 13:27, 1 June 2007 (EDT)