Why Do We Have Wisdom Teeth?

It’s a simple question really, why do we have wisdom teeth? Most humans don’t have room in their mouths for them which requires a simple surgery and an annoying recovery.

According to the bible we were created that way in god’s perfect plan for us. He gave us extra teeth that would only cause problems because… well because he did, and that’s a perfect plan and you must accept it. At least that’s the answer you’d hear from most Christians.

But if god is real and creationism is what happened, why is god such a terrible engineer? I would think omnipotence would bring better designs but of course my thoughts cannot fathom god’s.

Or can they? It is after all, pretty easy to compete intellectually with imaginary friends. I’m actually undefeated against them.

Evolution has a much more reasonable answer. It states that as primates evolved into modern humans we evolved our eating habits which changed the size of our stomachs, the teeth we have and even our brain size.

Our primate ancestors needed those rear molars to chew and break down food so that their stomachs could digest it easier.

Then we started cooking food, this allowed us to digest food more efficiently beginning the breakdown process before the food was even put into our mouths.

It also made food softer which required less smashing of the food as prep work before digestion rendering our wisdom teeth unnecessary.

Over time our mouths have gotten smaller, evolving to be more efficient. After all, why burn the energy and resources to create extra things if you don’t need them? As our mouths have gotten smaller we ran out of room for our wisdom teeth.

That’s why I love science, it provides reasonable, logical answers for questions such as these. It’s unfortunate that so many others find “god did it” as reasonable and logical.