Why are wisdom teeth not evidence of evolution ?

HARUN YAHYA
www.harunyahya.com

ONE of the theory of evolution's important deceptions is its claim
regarding "vestigial organs." Evolutionists claim that some organs in
living things lose their original function over time, and that such
organs then disappear. Taking that as a starting point, they then try
to send out the message, "If the living body had really been created,
it would have no functionless organs in it."
Evolutionist publications at the start of the twentieth century
announced that the human body contained up to a hundred organs that no
longer served any purpose, including the appendix, the coccyx, the
tonsils, the pineal gland, the external ear, the thymus, and wisdom
teeth. However, the decades that followed saw major advances in medical
science. Our knowledge of the organs and systems in the human body
increased. As a result of this, it was seen that the idea of vestigial
organs was just a superstition. The long list drawn up by evolutionists
rapidly shrank. It was discovered that the thymus is an organ which
produces important immune system cells, and that the pineal gland is
responsible for the production of important hormones. It also emerged
that the coccyx supports the bones around the pelvis, and that the
external ear plays an important role in identifying where sounds come
from. In short, it emerged that ignorance was the only foundation on
which the idea of "vestigial organs" rested.

Modern science has many times demonstrated the error of the concept of
such organs. Yet some evolutionists still try to make use of this
claim. Although medical science has proved that almost all of the
organs that evolutionists claim are vestigial actually serve a purpose,
evolutionary speculation still surrounds one or two organs.The most
noteworthy of these is our wisdom teeth. The claim that these teeth are
a part of the human body that has lost all purpose still appears in
evolutionist sources. As evidence for this, it is stated that these
teeth give a great many people a lot of trouble, and that chewing is
not impaired when they are surgically removed.
Many dentists, influenced by the evolutionists' claim that wisdom teeth
serve no purpose, have come to see their extraction as a routine
matter, and do not make the same kind of effort to protect them as they
do for other teeth. However, research in recent years has shown that
wisdom teeth have the same chewing function as other teeth. Studies
have also been carried out to show that the belief that wisdom teeth
damage the position of other teeth in the mouth is completely
unfounded. Scientific criticism is now amassing ways in which problems
with wisdom teeth which could be solved in other ways are instead
solved by extracting them. In fact, the scientific consensus is that
wisdom teeth have a chewing function just like all the others, and that
there is no scientific justification for the belief that they serve no
purpose.

So, why do wisdom teeth cause a substantial number of people problems?
Scientists who have researched the subject have discovered that wisdom
tooth difficulties have manifested themselves in different ways among
human communities at different times. It is now understood that the
problem was seldom seen in pre-industrial societies. It has been
discovered that the way in which soft foodstuffs have come to be
preferred to harder ones, over the last few hundred years in
particular, has negatively affected the way the human jaw develops. It
has thus been realised that most wisdom tooth troubles emerge as a
result of jaw development problems relating to dietary habits.

It is also known that society's nutritional habits also have negative
effects on our other teeth. For instance, the increasing consumption of
foodstuffs high in sugar and acid has increased the rate that other
teeth decay. However, that fact does not make us think that all our
teeth have somehow "atrophied." The same principle applies to wisdom
teeth. Problems with these teeth stem from contemporary dietary
customs, not from any evolutionary "atrophy."