So how do Creationists explain Vestigial structures?

@Sicarium Dandelions, like all flowers, have the proper organs (stamen and pistil) necessary for sexual reproduction, but do not use them (dandelions reproduce without fertilisation... they basically clone themselves). Why are the dandelion stamen and pistil there in the first place?

Did some or other magical entity put them there, but then changed its mind? That wasn't very well planned, was it!

@newjaninev2 Doesn't sound very well evolved either.

@Sicarium On the contrary, the dandelion is a very reproductively successful species... ask anyone who has to maintain a lawn.

@newjaninev2 Those are mutually exclusive ideas.

@Sicarium In what way?

@Sicarium Cloning by dandelions indicates that the species has experienced a (quite rare) period of environmental constancy, and such constancy allowed the species to move from expensive sexual reproduction to the higher-risk but much easier cloning method

@newjaninev2 Unused biological components don't translate to increased reproductive success. It's a nonsensical statement. The components are unused, thus they have no bearing on reproductive success.

@Sicarium They. were used a very long time ago, but are now not used... they are vestigial. On the other hand, if they were not originally used, why are they there?

@newjaninev2 You were speaking about the present day, not the past. And, in the past, when those components were used, they wouldn't have been dandelions. They would have been the precursor to dandelions.

@newjaninev2 what do you mean they aren't used, dandelions do both

Note: I don't care either way about the argument here but this seemed false

@Sicarium I can supply many thousands of example of such vestigial structures, drawn from many species... fortunately, a mere few will suffice to establish validity. @Sicarium

@newjaninev2 Ok...great...and...?

@Sicarium I'm not sure what you mean by 'precursor'. Do you mean the common ancestor for [i]Taraxacum[/i] and closely-related genera ?

@Sicarium and so my original point stands: I structures were used a very long time ago, but are now not used... they are vestigial. On the other hand, if they were not originally used, [i]why are they there?[/i]

@newjaninev2 Before you muddle your original argument even further, what exactly was your original argument?

For some reason, we're talking about dandelions and you seem to want to expand that to the rest of genus. But, why?

@newjaninev2 Ok, so your original point was the dictionary definition of vestigial structures. Great, I guess?

@Sicarium and I've shown you a real-world example of the dictionary definition (we can look at whales next), but now that we've established the validity of vestigial structures, the point remains... [i]why are they there?[/i]

@newjaninev2 Oh ffs, seriously. You realize one can know an argument without agreeing with the argument, right?

@Sicarium I'm not suggesting we need to [i]agree[/i] with some or other argument (although I'm not actually making one). I'm saying that we need to [i]explain[/i] what we observe

@newjaninev2 Mmkay...

@Jackaloftheazuresand [quote]dandelions do both[/quote]

Yes, some other dandelion species still use sexual reproduction, but [i]Taraxacum officinale[/i] (the common, garden, everyday species), does not.

This, of course, indicates that originally all dandelion species used sexual reproduction, but [i]Taraxacum officinale[/i] was able to take the risk of moving away from that (expensive) method... while still retaining the vestigial structures of the original process.