Creationism Refuted - A Giant Slamander - 5 Million Years Before 'Creation Week'

Reconstruction of Dynamognathus robertsoni

Matthew Inabinett

ETSU fossil discovery reveals giant ancient salamander

Unlike most of the palaeontology unearthed by science—which is often tens or even hundreds of millions of years older than Earth, according to creationist dogma—this discovery dates to a mere 5 million years ago. But the problem for creationists isn’t one of degree; it’s one of absolutes. If anything is older than Earth according to their doctrine, then that doctrine is simply wrong. It’s as straightforward as that.

Likewise, if even a single transitional or ancestral form exists, then the creationist insistence that such forms don't exist is demonstrably false.

Curiously, despite failing to grasp that binary logic, creationists continue to convince themselves that if they can cast doubt on even the tiniest detail of evolutionary science—perhaps a small gap in the fossil record or a question about a single species—then the entire edifice of modern biology collapses and “God did it!” triumphs by default, all without the faintest scrap of supporting evidence.

With that essentially childish view of how evidence and reasoning work, it will likely make no difference to their claims that a team of researchers from the Gray Fossil Site & Museum and East Tennessee State University (ETSU) have discovered the fossil of a comparatively large salamander dating back around 5 million years. This find sheds light on the explosive diversification of salamanders in what is now Appalachia some 12 million years ago. Today, Tennessee is home to about 50 species of salamander—roughly one in eight of all living species.

Refuting Creationism - How Living Organism's Survived - 700 Million Years Before 'Creation Week'

Researchers Ian Hawes of the University of Waikato and Marc Schallenberg of the University of Otago measure the physicochemical conditions of a meltwater pond.

Credit: Roger Summons

Pustular microbial mat section such as could have existend in small melt-water ponds.

When Earth iced over, early life may have sheltered in meltwater ponds | MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Only by systematically ignoring geological and archaeological evidence can creationists continue to delude themselves into believing that Earth is just a few thousand years old and was perfectly created by an anthropophilic god especially for humans – its supposed “special creation.”

The evidence, however, paints a radically different picture from that childish superstition. Not only was Earth clearly not perfectly created for humans, it wasn’t perfectly created for any life form. And it is far older than creationists assert. In truth, around 600 million years ago, Earth was such a hostile place for life that it was entirely covered in ice. The polar ice sheets had extended until they met at the equator. These “Snowball Earth” conditions led to a mass extinction so severe that it remains something of a mystery how any life survived – especially complex eukaryotic cells.

Now, a multinational team of researchers led by scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has found evidence that early life could have survived in small pools of surface meltwater. They reached this conclusion after studying similar meltwater pools on the McMurdo Ice Shelf in Antarctica. What they found not only showed that single-celled eukaryotes can survive in such conditions, but also revealed that the population of prokaryotes varies according to local environmental conditions

These meltwater pools act as microcosms of diverse environments and demonstrate how local factors shape the distribution of different species – exactly as predicted by the Theory of Evolution. Had the conditions been perfect as creationists insist, there could be no variation in the populations in these pools. Variation only arises because the species need to adapt to different conditions - something that would never be needed in perfectly designed conditions.

The team has just published their findings, open access, in the journal Nature Communications.

Christian Subversion - How Entitled Christians Feel The Law Shouldn't Apply To Them - But We Should Comply With Their Laws

A copy of the Ten Commandments is posted along with other historical documents in a hallway at the Georgia Capitol in Atlanta on June 20, 2024. On Friday, a panel of federal appellate judges ruled that a Louisiana law requiring the Ten Commandments to be posted in the state's public-school classrooms is unconstitutional.

John Bazemore/AP

Court blocks Louisiana law requiring schools to post Ten Commandments in classrooms

Yet another attempt by fundamentalist Christian activists to impose their religious beliefs on others has rightly been struck down by an American court as unconstitutional. In short, this was an effort to override the established law in the United States and instead enforce religious doctrine under the guise of state authority.

It seems to be a recurring feature of American fundamentalist Christianity that its adherents claim a privileged position based on the false notion that the United States is a Christian nation, created by and for Christians with the blessing of their particular god. This revisionist view is bolstered by professional Christian apologists and pseudo-historians like the notoriously unreliable David Barton, who has made a career of peddling misleading claims. In one infamous television interview, Barton declared that the U.S. Constitution was taken “verbatim” from the Bible — a claim so transparently absurd that it could only resonate with an audience unlikely to verify it. In truth, there is nothing in the Bible remotely resembling the principles or structure of the U.S. Constitution.

The reality is that many of the Founding Fathers — especially Thomas Jefferson, who authored the Declaration of Independence and helped draft the Constitution — were committed to the principle of religious liberty. Jefferson famously advocated for a “wall of separation between Church and State,” a principle enshrined in the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause. This was seen as essential to ensure true freedom of religion and to prevent any one sect from gaining control over public institutions.

The defeated Louisiana law, signed by Republican Governor Jeff Landry, required all public schools in the state to display a poster-sized version of the so-called "Ten Commandments." Notably, these were not the actual "Ten Commandments" identified in the Bible (Exodus 34:17–26), and the commonly quoted versions (Exodus 20:2–17 and Deuteronomy 5:7–21) even disagree on key points — such as the rationale for keeping the Sabbath holy (compare Exodus 20:8–11 with Deuteronomy 5:12–15). The biblical texts appear to be a conflation of multiple, inconsistent traditions regarding what was supposedly inscribed on the tablets kept in the Ark of the Covenant.

Malevolent Designer News - How Cold Sores Are Cleverly Designed To Maximise Suffering.

The human genome compacted inside cells
eight hours after infection.

Credit: Esther González Almela
and Álvaro Castells García

(Top) Cropped representative STORM-PAINT images of EdC-AF647 labeled hDNA (magenta), immunolabeled H3 (green), and their merge in mock and HSV-1 infected A549 cells. Scale bar: 2 µm. (Bottom) Zoomed-in regions are shown inside yellow boxes. Scale bar: 200 nm.

González-Almela, E., Castells-Garcia, A., Le Dily, F. et al. (2025)

Centre for Genomic Regulation Website

One of the many problems with Intelligent Design (ID) creationism is its complete failure to account for evolutionary arms races.

According to leading ID proponents like William A. Dembski and Michael J. Behe, living organisms and their parasites — including viruses — must have been intelligently designed because they are supposedly “irreducibly complex” and exhibit “complex specified information”. But if that were true, it would mean the same designer is deliberately crafting both parasites and the defence mechanisms their hosts use to fend them off — hardly the mark of a supremely intelligent creator.

A further problem, and one that creationists prefer to ignore, is theological: designing pathogens like viruses is fundamentally incompatible with the notion of a benevolent creator. In fact, it suggests a malevolent intelligence — one more concerned with maximising suffering than promoting life and maximising happiness. So, when science uncovers yet another example of a virus behaving with surgical precision and apparent ingenuity, ID creationists find themselves in a bind. Is irreducible complexity and complex specified genetic information not evidence of intelligent design after all? Or must they admit that the designer is, at best, morally indifferent — or worse, actively malevolent?

The latest headache for the ID camp comes courtesy of the Herpes simplex virus — the one responsible for cold sores. Researchers at the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG) in Barcelona, Catalunya, Spain, with colleagues in Guangdong Provincial People’s Hospital, Guangdong, China, have discovered that the virus can radically reorganise a host cell’s genetic architecture — and it does so using the host's own cellular machinery. Their findings have just been published open access in Nature Communications.

Refuting Creationism - Confirmation of A Denisovan Skull - Homo longi

A reconstruction of Homo longi from the ancient Harbin skull found in China.

Image credit: John Bavaro Fine Art
Science Photo Library

Figure 1 The geographic locations and proteomic profiles for the Pleistocene hominin individuals with palaeoproteomic data.

The Middle Pleistocene cranium recovered in Harbin, Heilongjiang Province, northeastern China.

Key Evidence Links Harbin Individual's Nearly Complete Skull to a Denisovan--Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology.

One of the enduring problems with the Denisovans has been the lack of substantial physical evidence. Although their existence was first confirmed through DNA analysis of a finger bone discovered in the Denisova Cave in Siberia, and genetic traces of interbreeding with Homo sapiens are widespread throughout Southeast Asia and Melanesia—suggesting a remarkably adaptable and far-ranging hominin—fossil evidence has remained frustratingly scant. Beyond the Siberian finger bone, we have only a few bone fragments from a cave on the Tibetan Plateau and a jawbone dredged up by fishermen off the coast of Taiwan. These scattered remnants were insufficient to assign a clear taxonomic identity, so the group remained simply ‘the Denisovans’.

That gap in the fossil record now appears to have been dramatically narrowed. A near-complete skull, dubbed the 'Harbin skull'—also known as 'Dragon Man' or Homo longi—has now been identified as belonging to a Denisovan. This remarkable specimen, found in northeastern China, may finally give the Denisovans a face and, by the conventions of biological nomenclature, the name Homo longi. Since it is the most complete and morphologically distinct fossil now associated with the group, Homo longi may become the formal species name, superseding the informal label ‘Denisovan’.

Of course, Denisovans pose an even greater challenge to creationist dogma than they ever did to palaeoanthropology. Their existence is fundamentally at odds with the belief that all humans descend from a single ancestral couple who committed the so-called Original Sin, for which redemption is supposedly possible only through accepting the mythologised sacrifice of Jesus. The evidence now shows not only that there was no original couple, but that there wasn’t even a single founding species. Modern non-African humans are the product of complex interbreeding events between at least three archaic human lineages—thousands of years before the Earth was allegedly created, according to young-Earth creationist timelines.

The identification of the Harbin skull as Denisovan has just been published by researchers from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology in Beijing, China. Their findings appear in papers in Cell and Science, and in a news release from the Chinese Academy of Sciences Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology.

Thou Shalt Not Bear False Witness - Unless Thou Art A Mormon President

Salt Lake Temple, Salt Lake City, Utah, USA

The LDS historical department just published an 1886 polygamy revelation

President John Taylor (1808 - 1887).

The (non-existent) 'revelation' permitting polygamy.

What Is Mormonism? Mormonism, officially known as The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), is a religious movement founded in the United States in the early 19th century. It was established by Joseph Smith in 1830, following his claim to have received divine revelations and discovered golden plates inscribed with sacred writings—later translated and published as the Book of Mormon.

Smith taught that his revelations restored the “true church” of Jesus Christ, lost after the early Christian era. The movement quickly attracted followers but also faced intense opposition due to its unconventional teachings, authoritarian leadership, and later, the adoption of polygamy (plural marriage), which Smith and his successors practised and defended as divinely mandated.

After Smith was killed by a mob in 1844, leadership passed to Brigham Young, who led the majority of followers westward to Utah, then outside U.S. jurisdiction. There they established a theocratic society and practised polygamy openly until growing federal pressure and legal crackdowns forced the official renunciation of the practice in 1890 (and again in 1904).

Today, the LDS Church claims over 17 million members worldwide, promotes conservative family values, and continues to regard modern revelation as a core part of its theology—although it now distances itself from its polygamous past, which is preserved only in certain fundamentalist offshoots.

One of the Bible's Ten Commandments that all believers — including Mormons, who profess to be Christians — are expected to follow is the prohibition against bearing false witness: “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour” (Exodus 20:16). The Hebrew word translated as “neighbour”—רֵעֶךָ (rēa‘ekā)—has an ambiguous scope, but is widely interpreted as referring not only to fellow Israelites but more generally to others within one's community. Across both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, this commandment has been expanded into a broader ethical principle against dishonesty in human relationships. Indeed, several passages reinforce this expectation:

• Proverbs 6:16–19 includes “a lying tongue” and “a false witness that speaketh lies” among the seven things God hates.
• Psalm 101:7 declares, “He that worketh deceit shall not dwell within my house: he that telleth lies shall not tarry in my sight.”
• Leviticus 19:11 instructs, “Ye shall not steal, neither deal falsely, neither lie one to another.”

Taken together, these form a clear moral framework throughout the Torah and Christian Bible emphasising truthfulness and personal integrity.

However, this moral imperative appears to have been selectively applied — if at all — by a past Mormon Church Presidency. The recent revelation that a long-denied handwritten document by the third president of the LDS Church, John Taylor (1808–1887), does in fact exist, raises troubling questions.

This document records what Taylor claimed was a divine revelation permitting plural marriage — a practice that later became the defining controversy within Mormonism. That controversy culminated in a split: traditionalists continued the practice of polygamy, while the mainstream LDS Church renounced it and condemned it as adulterous.

Refuting Creationism - How Dogs Spread Across The Americas - Then Survived The Legendary Biblical Global Flood

Chihuahua dog in Mexico.

Credit: Urvashi9, Getty Images

Figure 1. Distribution of archaeological samples analysed in this study.

Manin, Aurélie, et al (2025)

Ancient DNA reveals new clues about the incredible journey of dogs in the Americas | University of Oxford

According to the Bible, all living things outside Noah’s Ark were destroyed once Noah, his family, and his chosen animals were safely sealed inside (Genesis 7:4). This supposedly happened around 4,000 years ago, according to the biblical narrative — which creationists firmly believe to be inerrant history.

The snag is, the evidence simply doesn’t support that timeline—or a global flood involving mass extinction by drowning. Not only would such a flood have left a distinctive global deposit of sediment, containing a chaotic mix of ancient and modern animal and plant species from disconnected continents, but it would also have erased all archaeological traces of earlier civilisations and palaeontological evidence of past life. In effect, it would have reset the clocks of both archaeology and palaeontology to start around 4,000 years ago.

Unfortunately for biblical literalists, that’s not what we see. The predicted tell-tale layer of silt is conspicuously absent. Instead, both archaeology and palaeontology reveal a pattern of uninterrupted occupation of the planet by animals and humans stretching back tens of thousands—and, in the case of animal and plant species, hundreds of millions—of years. For anatomically modern humans, there is a consistent archaeological record documenting their spread across all land masses (except Antarctica), during which they domesticated animals such as dogs, which migrated alongside them.

One example of this pattern — the migration of domestic dogs with humans into the Americas between 7,000 and 5,000 years ago — has just been published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, by an international team of scientists led by Dr Aurélie Manin from the School of Archaeology at the University of Oxford. They have shown that all South American dogs prior to the arrival of Europeans, trace their ancestry back to a single female. One strain — the Mexican Chihuahua - still shows evidence of that ancestry.

Refuting Creationism - How We Know The Bible Was Made Up By Scientifically-Illiterate People

A new study broadens the horizon of knowledge about how matter behaves under extreme conditions and helps to solve some great unknowns about the origin of the universe.

Deciphering the behaviour of heavy particles in the hottest matter in the universe - Current events - University of Barcelona

The Bible contains no scientific insights or understanding beyond what would have been known to Bronze Age pastoralists—what Christopher Hitchens aptly described as the "fearful infancy of our species." Their knowledge was naturally constrained by the absence of scientific instruments, a lack of understanding of the planet's history, and a worldview shaped by tribal dogma and magical thinking.

Had the Bible truly been written or inspired by the deity it describes — as a vital message to humanity from the creator of the universe — one might reasonably expect it to contain some revelations unknown to its time. Yet it offers nothing by way of evidence to support such a claim. There is no mention of germ theory, no understanding of cells or cellular life, no grasp of atoms, electricity, or metabolic processes like photosynthesis and respiration. All living things are described as strictly male or female, with no recognition of genetics, hermaphroditism or parthenogenesis — except for a single, supposedly miraculous human birth of a genetically impossible male child. In short, the text contains nothing that was not already known or assumed until the development of tools like the microscope and telescope, and much of it was clearly and demonstrably wrong.

The Bible’s authors were storytellers, not scientists. Their goal was not to challenge the cultural assumptions of their time but to frame them within a compelling narrative.

Because religions are not founded on tested hypotheses or objective facts but rather on the best guesses of uninformed people, any alignment with modern scientific understanding is coincidental, not predictive. For example, the biblical phrase *"Let there be light"* is sometimes interpreted as metaphorically reflecting the early high-energy state of the universe following the Big Bang. But there is no indication that the authors understood photons, particle physics, or the quantum nature of space-time. Nor did they suggest that the universe originated nearly 14 billion years ago in a quantum fluctuation of a non-zero energy field.

Recent discoveries illustrate just how far modern science has advanced beyond anything conceivable to ancient authors. For instance, an international team of scientists has recently found evidence suggesting the existence of heavy particles during the universe's first microseconds—particles that influenced the behaviour of other matter. This discovery, utterly incomprehensible to a Bronze Age worldview, is detailed in a peer-reviewed article published in Physics Reports.

Refuting Creationism - A 600-Million-Year-Old Common Ancestor of Cnidarians and Bilaterians.

Adult polyp of the sea anemone Nematostella vectensis.

Grigory Genikhovich

Bodybuilding in Ancient Times: How the Sea Anemone Got Its Back

Childish creationist claims of a young Earth, the spontaneous magical generation of all living organisms without ancestry, and the supposed absence of evidence for the evolution of life from a common ancestor have taken another blow with the publication of compelling new research that refutes these basic creationist dogmas.

An open access paper published in Science Advances describes a candidate ancestral mechanism for establishing bilaterality — symmetry along a central axis — in both bilaterians (animals with bilateral symmetry) and the sea anemone Nematostella. The study, conducted by four researchers from the Department of Neurosciences and Developmental Biology at the University of Vienna, provides crucial insights into the deep evolutionary origins of body plan organisation.

It is also clear from both the paper and the researchers' explanation in a University of Vienna press release that they regard the Theory of Evolution as essential to interpreting their findings. Their discovery fits squarely within the evolutionary framework and aligns with the established timeline for the diversification of animal life from a common ancestor.

What Is Bilateral Symmetry? Bilateral symmetry is a body plan in which an organism can be divided into roughly mirror-image halves along a single plane—from head to tail. Most animals, including humans, insects, and vertebrates, display this type of symmetry.

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Why Is It Evolutionarily Significant?

• Directional Movement: Bilateral symmetry enables streamlined, forward-facing movement—ideal for seeking food, mates, and avoiding danger.
• Cephalisation: This symmetry is often associated with the development of a head region where sensory organs and the brain concentrate—an evolutionary advantage for processing information efficiently.
• Complexity and Specialisation: It allowed for greater internal organisation and the evolution of specialised body systems (e.g., digestive, nervous, and circulatory).

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Evolutionary Milestone

Bilateral symmetry is thought to have evolved over 600 million years ago in a common ancestor of all bilaterians. This innovation marked a major turning point in the history of life, leading to the vast diversity of animal forms we see today.

Bodybuilding in Ancient Times: How the Sea Anemone Got Its Back

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New insights into the evolution of the back-belly-axis.

A new study from the University of Vienna reveals that sea anemones use a molecular mechanism known from bilaterian animals to form their back-to-belly body axis. This mechanism ("BMP shuttling") enables cells to organize themselves during development by interpreting signaling gradients. The findings, published in Science Advances, suggest that this system evolved much earlier than previously assumed and was already present in the common ancestor of cnidarians and bilaterians.

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Most animals exhibit bilateral symmetry—a body plan with a head and tail, a back and belly, and left and right sides. This body organization characterizes the vast group known as Bilateria, which includes animals as diverse as vertebrates, insects, molluscs and worms. In contrast, cnidarians, such as jellyfish and sea anemones, are traditionally described as radially symmetric, and indeed jellyfish are. However, the situation is different is the sea anemones: despite superficial radiality, they are bilaterally symmetric – first at the level of gene expression in the embryo and later also anatomically as adults. This raises a fundamental evolutionary question: did bilateral symmetry arise in the common ancestor of Bilateria and Cnidaria, or did it evolve independently in multiple animal lineages? Researchers at the University of Vienna have addressed this question by investigating whether a key developmental mechanism called BMP shuttling is already present in cnidarians.

Shuttling for development

In bilaterian animals, the back-to-belly axis is patterned by a signaling system involving Bone Morphogenetic Proteins (BMPs) and their inhibitor Chordin. BMPs act as molecular messengers, telling embryonic cells where they are and what kind of tissue they should become. In bilaterian embryos, Chordin binds BMPs and blocks their activity in a process called "local Inhibition". At the same time, in some but not all bilaterian embryonic models, Chordin can also transport bound BMPs to other regions in the embryo, where they are released again – a mechanism known as "BMP shuttling". Animals as evolutionary distant as sea urchins, flies and frogs use BMP shuttling, however, until now it was unclear whether they all evolved shuttling independently or inherited it from their last common ancestor some 600 million years ago. Both, local inhibition and BMP shuttling, create a gradient of BMP activity across the embryo. Cells in the early embryo detect this gradient and adopt different fates depending on BMP levels. For example, in vertebrates, the central nervous system forms where BMP signaling is lowest, kidneys will develop at intermediate BMP signaling levels, and the skin of the belly will form in the area of maximum BMP signaling. This way, the body's layout from back to belly is established. To find out whether BMP shuttling by Chordin represents an ancestral mechanism for patterning the back to belly axis, the researchers had to look at bilaterally symmetric animals outside Bilateria – the sea anemones.

An Ancient Blueprint

To test whether sea anemones use Chordin as a local inhibitor or as a shuttle, the researchers first blocked Chordin production in the embryos of the model sea anemone Nematostella vectensis. In Nematostella, unlike in Bilateria, BMP signaling requires the presence of Chordin, so, without Chordin, BMP signaling ceased and the formation of the second body axis failed. Chordin was then reintroduced into a small part of the embryo to see if it could restore axis formation. BMP signaling resumed—but it was unclear whether this was because Chordin simply blocked BMPs locally, allowing a gradient to form from existing BMP sources, or because it actively transported BMPs to distant parts of the embryo, shaping the gradient more directly. To answer this, two versions of Chordin were tested—one membrane-bound and immobile, the other diffusible. If Chordin acted as a local inhibitor, both, the immobile and the diffusible Chordin would restore BMP signaling on the side of the embryo opposite to the Chordin producing cells. However, only diffusible Chordin can act as a BMP shuttle. The results were clear: Only the diffusible form was able to restore BMP signaling at a distance from its source, demonstrating that Chordin acts as a BMP shuttle in sea anemones—just as it does in flies and frogs.

A shared strategy across over 600 million years of evolution?

The presence of BMP shuttling in both cnidarians and bilaterians suggests that this molecular mechanism predates their evolutionary divergence some 600-700 million years ago.

Not all Bilateria use Chordin-mediated BMP shuttling, for example, frogs do, but fish don't, however, shuttling seems to pop up over and over again in very distantly related animals making it a good candidate for an ancestral patterning mechanism. The fact that not only bilaterians but also sea anemones use shuttling to shape their body axes, tells us that this mechanism is incredibly ancient. It opens up exciting possibilities for rethinking how body plans evolved in early animals.

Dr. David Mörsdorf, first author
Department of Neurosciences and Developmental Biology
University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria.

We might never be able to exclude the possibility that bilaterians and bilaterally symmetric cnidarians evolved their bilateral body plans independently. However, if the last common ancestor of Cnidaria and Bilateria was a bilaterally symmetric animal, chances are that it used Chordin to shuttle BMPs to make its back-to-belly axis. Our new study showed that.

Grigory Genikhovich, senior author.
Department of Neurosciences and Developmental Biology
University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria

Publication:

David Mörsdorf, Maria Mandela Prünster, Paul Knabl, Grigory Genikhovich.
Chordin-mediated BMP shuttling patterns the secondary body axis in a cnidarian.
Science Advances (2025) 11(24). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adu6347

Abstract Bone morphogenetic protein (BMP) signaling patterns secondary body axes throughout Bilateria and in the bilaterally symmetric corals and sea anemones. Chordin-mediated “shuttling” of BMP ligands is responsible for the BMP signaling gradient formation in many bilaterians and, possibly, also in the sea anemone Nematostella, making BMP shuttling a candidate ancestral mechanism for generating bilaterality. However, Nematostella Chordin might be a local inhibitor of BMP rather than a shuttle. To choose between these options, we tested whether extracellular mobility of Chordin, a hallmark of shuttling but dispensable for local inhibition, is required for patterning in Nematostella. By generating localized Chordin sources in the Chordin morphant background, we showed that mobile Chordin is necessary and sufficient to establish a peak of BMP signaling opposite to Chordin source. These results provide evidence for BMP shuttling in a bilaterally symmetric cnidarian and suggest that BMP shuttling may have been functional in the potentially bilaterally symmetric cnidarian-bilaterian ancestor.

INTRODUCTION
Bone morphogenetic protein (BMP) signaling acts in secondary body axis patterning across Bilateria, and its functions as morphogen have been studied in diverse animal species (1, 2). The mechanisms of the BMP-dependent axial patterning are similar between arthropods and vertebrates, indicative of the shared origin of the secondary, dorsoventral axis in protostome and deuterostome Bilateria, a notion strengthened once broader phylogenetic sampling became available (2–7). Intriguingly, the same mechanisms appear to regulate the secondary axis patterning in the bilaterally symmetric cnidarian Nematostella vectensis, indicating that a BMP-dependent secondary body axis may have evolved before the evolutionary split of Cnidaria and Bilateria [(8, 9), reviewed in (1, 10)]. However, a scenario in which BMP-mediated secondary axes evolved convergently in Bilateria and bilaterally symmetric Cnidaria is also possible (2).

BMPs are secreted signaling proteins of the transforming growth factor–β superfamily frequently acting as heterodimers (11–13). Signaling through the BMP receptor complex (Fig. 1A) results in phosphorylation and nuclear accumulation of the transcriptional effector SMAD1/5, which regulates the expression of many crucial developmental transcription factors and signaling pathway components [(14–18), reviewed in (19, 20)]. BMP signaling is tightly controlled by a plethora of intracellular (14, 21) and extracellular regulators (22–29) of which Chordin (= short gastrulation in insects) is, arguably, the most famous one. Like many other secreted BMP antagonists, Chordin binds BMP ligands, blocks the interaction with their receptor, and thereby inhibits BMP signaling (30). However, Chordin can also have pro-BMP effects and promotes long-range activation of BMP signaling in Drosophila, Xenopus, sea urchins, and in the sea anemone Nematostella (7, 31–34). The phylogenetic distribution of Chordin and two central BMP ligands, BMP2/4 and BMP5-8, and their importance for the secondary axis patterning across phyla suggests that, during early animal evolution, these molecules may have represented the minimum requirement for the formation of the bilaterally symmetric body plan (2, 10). However, to evaluate such a possibility, we need to understand the “mode of action” of BMPs and Chordin outside Bilateria, and our model, the sea anemone Nematostella, allows exactly that.

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Fig. 1. Possible modes of action of BMP signaling during axial patterning in Nematostella.

(A) BMP signaling pathway. BMP dimers bind the heterotetrameric receptor complex, resulting in the phosphorylation of SMAD1/5. pSMAD1/5 forms a complex with the Co-Smad SMAD4, which regulates transcription in the nucleus. Chordin binds BMPs preventing them from activating the receptor complex. Metalloproteases like Tolloid and BMP-1 cleave Chordin and release BMP ligands from the inhibitory complex in Bilateria. (B) Expression domains of BMPs and BMP antagonists in an early Nematostella larva. Oral view corresponds to the optical section indicated with grey dashed line on the lateral view. Pink circles show the nuclear pSMAD1/5 gradient. (C) The shuttling model suggests that in Nematostella, a mobile BMP-Chordin complex transports BMPs through the embryo. Receptor binding is inhibited in cells close to the Chordin source due to high concentrations of Chordin. On the opposite side of the directive axis, BMPs bind their receptors and activate signaling upon release from Chordin. Tolloid might be involved in the cleavage of Chordin and release of BMPs from the complex with Chordin also in Nematostella. (D) In the local inhibition model, Nematostella Chordin acts locally to inhibit BMP signaling and promote the production of BMP2/4 and BMP5-8 mRNA. Chordin mobility is not required for asymmetric BMP signaling.

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BMP signaling in Nematostella becomes detectable during early gastrula stage in a radially symmetric domain: The phosphorylated form of the BMP signaling effector SMAD1/5 (pSMAD1/5) is detected in the nuclei around the blastopore (14, 35). Shortly after the onset of BMP activity, the radial symmetry of the embryo breaks, establishing the secondary, “directive” body axis with minimum BMP signaling intensity detectable on the side of BMP2/4, BMP5-8, and Chordin expression and maximum BMP signaling on the side opposite to it (Fig. 1B) (14, 34, 35). The symmetry break occurs despite the fact that mRNAs of the type I BMP receptors Alk2 and Alk3/6 and the type II receptor BMPRII are maternally deposited (36) and remain weakly and ubiquitously expressed in the embryo (fig. S1) gradually developing a slight bias toward the “high pSMAD1/5” side of the directive axis by early planula stage (14). BMP2/4 and BMP5-8 are co-expressed in the late gastrula/early planula, and both these ligands are crucial for BMP signaling and directive axis patterning because knockdown of either ligand abolishes pSMAD1/5 immunoreactivity and completely radializes the embryo (34). Individual knockdowns of either BMP2/4 or BMP5-8 result in a strong up-regulation of transcription of both BMP2/4 and BMP5-8 in a radially symmetric domain showing that both these genes are negatively controlled by BMP signaling. Despite transcriptional up-regulation of BMP2/4 in BMP5-8 morphants and BMP5-8 in the BMP2/4 morphants, no nuclear pSMAD1/5 is observed in such embryos (9, 34, 35), suggesting that BMP2/4 and BMP5-8 signal as an obligate heterodimer during axial patterning in Nematostella.

The “core” BMPs, BMP2/4 and BMP5-8, are not the only BMP ligands present in the embryo at this stage. GDF5-like (GDF5L) is a BMP ligand expressed on the side of strong BMP signaling (Fig. 1B). GDF5L expression is abolished in the absence of BMP2/4 and BMP5-8, and the role of GDF5L appears to be in steepening the pSMAD1/5 gradient making it a “modulator” BMP (14, 34, 37). The BMP signaling gradient is stable over many (>24) hours during which it patterns the directive axis (9, 14, 34, 35, 37). Considering the short half-life of phosphorylated SMAD1/5 reported in other systems (15, 21), this indicates that long-range transport (~100 μm) of BMP2/4 and BMP5-8 and constant receptor complex activation is necessary to maintain BMP signaling. How it exactly happens that the core BMP ligands, BMP2/4 and BMP5-8, are expressed on one side of the embryo and the peak of BMP signaling activity is on the opposite side is currently unknown.

One possible explanation involves Chordin-mediated shuttling of BMP ligands, described in the dorsoventral patterning in Drosophila and Xenopus (7, 34, 38). In this model, Chordin inhibits BMP function locally, close to the Chordin source cells, but promotes long-range BMP signaling by forming a mobile complex with the BMP dimer, which is released once Chordin is cleaved by the metalloprotease Tolloid. The probability that this BMP dimer will bind its receptors rather than another, yet uncleaved Chordin increases with the distance to the Chordin source (Fig. 1C). In Nematostella, the shuttling model was proposed when we found that, unlike in all bilaterian models studied thus far, depletion of Chordin results in the loss of BMP signaling rather than in its enhancement (34). However, given that, in Nematostella, BMP signaling indirectly represses the transcription of the core BMPs, BMP2/4 and BMP5-8, and activates the transcription of the modulator BMP, GDF5-like (14), an alternative explanation is also possible: In this “local inhibition” scenario, Chordin locally represses BMP signaling enabling BMP2/4 and BMP5-8 production. BMP2/4 and BMP5-8 diffuse into the area of low or no Chordin (i.e., to the GDF5-like side of the directive axis) and bind the receptors there. In this scenario, Chordin knockdown results in a transient de-repression of the BMP2/4/BMP5-8–mediated signaling, which, in turn, leads to the repression of the BMP2/4 and BMP5-8 transcription. Because, in the absence of BMP2/4 and BMP5-8, GDF5-like expression is also lost (9), we may end in a situation when no BMP ligands are produced and no BMP signaling takes place, as it is the case in the Chordin morphant (9, 34). This local inhibition model, in which Chordin acts exclusively as a local repressor of BMP signaling (Fig. 1D), is similar to the situation in zebrafish, where extracellular mobility of Chordin is not required (39–41). Here, we address the role of Chordin in the BMP-dependent axial patterning in the sea anemone Nematostella and test these two alternative models.

David Mörsdorf, Maria Mandela Prünster, Paul Knabl, Grigory Genikhovich.
Chordin-mediated BMP shuttling patterns the secondary body axis in a cnidarian.
Science Advances (2025) 11(24). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adu6347

Copyright: © 2025 The authors.
Published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Open access.
Reprinted under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0)

This discovery poses a significant problem for creationist claims because it provides clear molecular and developmental evidence for a shared evolutionary origin between animals with bilateral symmetry and simpler organisms like sea anemones, which lack such symmetry as adults. The fact that the genetic and developmental mechanisms for establishing a "back" or body axis predate the emergence of bilaterally symmetrical animals suggests that these features evolved gradually through modification of existing biological systems—not through sudden, miraculous creation.

Creationism relies on the assertion that complex body plans appeared abruptly, fully formed, and without evolutionary precursors. However, the findings in this study directly contradict that idea. They show that the genetic toolkit required for bilateral body structures was already present in the common ancestor of cnidarians (like sea anemones) and bilaterians and was likely repurposed and elaborated upon over millions of years. This is exactly what evolutionary theory predicts.

Moreover, the study aligns neatly with the established evolutionary timeline based on genetics, developmental biology, and the fossil record. There is no need to invoke supernatural causes or to assume that animals were created independently and without shared ancestry. Instead, the evidence points to deep continuity in the genetic architecture of life—a hallmark of common descent and a major blow to the isolated, one-off acts of creation claimed by young-Earth and Intelligent Design creationists alike.

Unintelligent Designer News - Designed a Cure For COVID-19; Gave It To LLamas - Or Is It Malevolence?

How the single domain antibody locks onto the spike protein’s base

Researchers identify new antibodies against current and future coronaviruses | VIB.BE - Home

Hot on the heels of the news that the putative intelligent designer behind creationism apparently devised a method to prevent the spread of cancer cells through the body—then handed it to the sea cucumber, a group of species not especially prone to cancer—comes another remarkable revelation.

It now appears that this same designer, if we accept the claims of ID creationists, has also developed a highly effective mechanism for disabling the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19. And once again, rather than bestowing this gift upon humans, the species most affected by the virus, the designer gave it to llamas — creatures not exactly known for their vulnerability to coronaviruses.

The mechanism in question involves relatively simple molecules known as single-domain antibodies, or VHHs—also referred to as nanobodies. These are much smaller than the conventional antibodies produced by most animals, including humans. They work by binding tightly to the virus’s spike proteins, effectively neutralising it by preventing it from prising open host cells and initiating infection. Even more impressively, these nanobodies appear to be broadly effective against a wide range of SARS-related coronaviruses.

While creationists might marvel at the ingenuity of such a designer, they would be hard-pressed to explain — or more likely, would simply ignore — why this supposedly anthropophilic intelligence chose not to equip humans with such a defence. Instead, it stood idly by as millions suffered and economies collapsed, despite having the ‘cure’ readily available.

This unique llama-specific mechanism was discovered by a team of researchers led by Prof. Xavier Saelens and Dr. Bert Schepens at the Flemish Institute for Biotechnology (Vlaams Instituut voor Biotechnologie) – University of Ghent (VIB-UGent) Center for Medical Biotechnology.

Refuting Creationism - Co-Evolution of Trees And Mastodons In South America

The extinct proboscidean species Notiomastodon platensis is observed feeding on Chilean palm fruit in La Campana National Park.

Author: Mauricio Álvarez

The disappearance of mastodons still threatens the native forests of South America - Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona - UAB Barcelona

Reconstruction of the paleoenvironments in which Chilean mastodons lived, from the semi-arid north to the cold rainforests of Patagonia.

Credit: Mauricio Álvarez

Just ten millennia ago, the mighty mastodons of South America played a crucial role in sustaining vast forests by spreading the seeds of large‑fruited trees—and now, new fossil evidence confirms that without these giants, entire ecosystems are crumbling [1, 2]. This groundbreaking research, published recently in Nature Ecology & Evolution, conclusively demonstrates that Notiomastodon platensis was an active frugivore based on detailed wear patterns and starch residues found in fossilised teeth [3].

For creationists who claim that life existed in its present form from the very beginning, this revelation is deeply unsettling. The discovery undermines the belief that forest ecosystems were always fully functional without the need for extinct megafauna—those massive mammals were not mere background actors but ecological engineers whose disappearance left communities of fruit‑bearing plants stranded, fragmented, and genetically impoverished.

Most strikingly, nearly 40 % of plant species once reliant on these now‑vanished seed spreaders are currently classified as threatened—up to four times the rate seen in regions still served by extant dispersers like tapirs or monkeys [2]. For creationists, this means that the natural world was far more dynamic—and far more dependent on evolutionary processes over deep time—than their models allow. If entire forests trebled on species interactions across thousands of years, then the simplistic view that everything was created perfectly, all at once, is seriously called into question.

A new study led by the University of O’Higgins, Chile, with key contributions from Institut Català de Paleoecologia Humana i Evolució Social, Centres de Recerca de Catalunya (IPHES-CERCA), demonstrates for the first time—based on direct fossil evidence—that these extinct elephant relatives regularly consumed fruit and were essential allies of many tree species. The researchers have just published their findings in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution.

Creationism Refuted - How The Survivors of a Mass Extinction Evolved Into Dinosaurs

Euparkeria capensis, a small, 60 cm long reptile from the early Triassic period (245 - 237 million years ago).

Credit: Taenadoman, 2011
via Wikimedia Commons
CC A-SA 3.0

Triassic reptiles took 10,000 mile trips through “hellish” conditions, study suggests - University of Birmingham

Contrary to the child-like naivety and carefully cultivated ignorance of creationists, Earth is not — and never has been — a paradise perfectly designed for life, let alone tailor-made for humans. In reality, the vast majority of Earth's history — around 99.9975% of it — took place long before creationists believe the planet even existed, during which time the environment has frequently become so hostile that mass extinctions wiped out the majority of living species. Life as we know it today descends from the lucky few that managed to survive and adapt to radically altered conditions.

One of the most devastating of these extinction events was the end-Permian climate catastrophe, during which one group of reptiles — the archosauromorphs — managed to endure. From this resilient lineage emerged the dinosaurs, who would go on to dominate the planet until they too were annihilated by a cataclysmic meteor impact 66 million years ago.

While palaeontologists have long known about the survival and evolutionary significance of archosauromorphs, a lingering mystery remained: how did they manage to disperse across vast "dead zones" of the tropics, where temperatures were thought to be lethally high? A new study by researchers from the University of Birmingham and the University of Bristol has now shed light on this question. Their findings have been published, open access, in Nature Ecology & Evolution.

Malevolent Designer - Creationism's Putative Desiger Designed A Way to Prevent Cancer Spreading - And Gave It To Sea Cucumbers!

A sugar compound found in sea cucumbers could hold the key to stopping the spread of cancer, according to a recent UM-led study published in Glycobiology.

Graphic by Stefanie Goodwiller
University Marketing and Communications

Sea Cucumbers Could Hold Key to Stopping Cancer Spread | Ole Miss

Imagine you're a designer, and you've created a species — humans — for whom you have a particular fondness. Only, something keeps going dreadfully wrong with your blueprint. A large number of them keep dying because their cells become cancerous when they fail to replicate properly, and these cancers then spread to other organs, which ultimately give up the ghost.

Now, you can’t quite work out why these cancers start. For some reason, you've included substances called glycans on the surfaces of cells, and — just to complicate things — you’ve made cancer cells produce an enzyme called Sulf-2, which alters these glycans to help the cancer spread. Your solution? A stroke of genius: create another enzyme that inhibits Sulf-2. And lo! It works.

So, who do you give this life-saving enzyme to?

If you're creationism’s supposedly super-intelligent designer, you don’t give it to your favourite species — the one made in your own image, no less. No, instead you bestow this miracle molecule upon… sea cucumbers. A species that, incidentally, doesn’t even have a problem with cancer.

This, if they actually understood the subject properly, is what Intelligent Design creationists consider compelling evidence of a supremely intelligent designer.

The discovery that sea cucumbers possess this enzyme was made by researchers at the University of Mississippi and Georgetown University in Washington, DC. Their findings are published in the journal Glycobiology and can be read here.

It’s also neatly summarised in a University of Mississippi news article:

Refuting Creationism - How One Of Our Ancestral Species Travelled Across Eurasia

Simulations show Neanderthals likely traveled over 2,000 miles in just 2,000 years using natural corridors like rivers.

Credit: Shutterstock

Computer simulated paths of Neanderthal dispersals demonstrate they could have reached the Altai Mountains in Siberia within 2,000 years during warm climatic conditions in one of two ancient time periods—MIS 5e (approximately 125,000 years ago) or MIS 3 (approximately 60,000 years ago)—as demonstrated by the three different possible paths shown here. These paths follow a northern route through the Ural Mountains and southern Siberia, often intersecting with known archaeological sites from the same time periods.

Image: Emily Coco and Radu Iovita.

Anthropologists Map Neanderthals’ Long and Winding Roads Across Europe and Eurasia

One of the ancestral species of all non-African Homo sapiens, the Neanderthals, migrated across Eurasia from Central Europe to Central Asia between 120,000 and 60,000 years ago. In the Altai Mountains of Siberia, they encountered the Denisovans and interbred with them—just as they would later interbreed with Homo sapiens migrating northwards out of Africa some 20,000 years later.

This is the fascinating history of our cousin species, now being brought to light by researchers at New York University’s Centre for the Study of Human Origins.

It almost goes without saying that this, along with the very existence of Neanderthals and their interbreeding with Eurasian Homo sapiens, is entirely incompatible with basic creationist beliefs and a literal reading of the Bible. Like all scientific discoveries, however, it fits seamlessly with what we already know and further enriches our understanding of both Neanderthal life and our own evolutionary history.

The discovery also addresses one of the long-standing mysteries surrounding Neanderthal dispersal during the Ice Age—namely, how they migrated from their central European ‘homelands’ to the Altai Mountains in Central Asia, where they interbred with Denisovans in what was likely the northern limit of the Denisovans’ range. Until now, their migration route had remained unclear due to a lack of archaeological evidence.

The breakthrough comes from computer simulations, which reveal a network of habitable valleys that connected Central Europe to Central Asia during a warmer period lasting some 2,000 years—long enough for Neanderthals to have reached within 600 kilometres of the Altai Mountains. The New York anthropologists have recently published their findings in the journal PLOS One.

Refuting Creationism - Yes, It's Another Of Those 'Non-Exitent' Transitional Fossils!

Reconstruction of the Burgess Shale concilitergan Helmetia expansa.

Artwork by Marianne Collins.

Holotype of Helmetia expansa USNM 83952, dorsal view. Cross polarized light.

Losso, S. R., Caron, J. B., & Ortega-Hernández, J. (2025).

Ancient fossil sheds big light on evolution mystery: solving a 100-year arthropod mystery | Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology

A fundamental problem with creationism is that it depends on wilfully ignoring the vast and ever-growing body of contrary evidence. The intellectual dishonesty required to sustain this belief system makes its adherents the subject of ridicule—not just among scientists, but even among many fellow theists. Its prominent proponents, often elevated to near-prophetic status by their followers, are notorious for misrepresenting or outright lying about scientific findings. Unsurprisingly, they are treated with contempt by the scientific community.

One of the more blatantly counterfactual claims in the creationist repertoire is the assertion that there are no transitional fossils, and no evidence supporting the evolution of species from common ancestors. This denialism is essential to preserve belief in the spontaneous, magical creation of all species a few thousand years ago, without any ancestral lineage.

Accordingly, the creationist industry will need to deploy its usual strategies of misdirection and denial in response to a fascinating Cambrian stem arthropod, first discovered in 1918 in the Burgess Shale of Canada. Initially described from a single specimen, this enigmatic fossil has now been thoroughly reclassified thanks to the work of a team of Harvard researchers led by Dr Sarah Losso, a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology. Their analysis, based on 36 newly examined specimens, sheds significant light on early arthropod evolution.

Their findings are detailed in an open-access paper published in the Journal of Systematic Palaeontology, and summarised in a Harvard University news article.

Creationism Refuted - Something From Nothing - Let There Be Light!

Normalised ellipticity across the transverse plane for the Gaussian scenario.

Illustration of photon-photon scattering in the laboratory. Two green petawatt lasers beams collide at the focus with a third red beam to polarise the quantum vacuum. This allows a fourth blue laser beam to be generated, with a unique direction and colour, which conserves momentum and energy.

Credit: Zixin (Lily) Zhang

Oxford physicists recreate extreme quantum vacuum effects | University of Oxford Department of Physics

As Sam Harris once remarked, “When religions are right, they are right by accident.” His point highlights the lack of empirical grounding in religious claims, which are typically non-falsifiable and therefore beyond the scope of scientific validation.

Ironically, this may mean that the authors of Genesis were accidentally correct in one of their most iconic assertions: that the universe began with the creation of light (Genesis 1:3). While the biblical writers lacked any scientific understanding, modern physics now suggests that under extreme quantum conditions, something akin to this could indeed occur — light arising from an apparent vacuum.

This is an area where creationists normally tie themselves up in knots, claiming on the one hand that you can't get something out of nothing because it contravenes the laws of thermodynamics and on the other hand that a god made of nothing created the universe out of nothing with some magic words.

The truth, of course, is rather more rational and subject to scientific analysis and testing.

Researchers at the Department of Physics at the University of Oxford have successfully simulated a remarkable prediction of quantum electrodynamics: the spontaneous emergence of photons from empty space. Their work, published in Communications Physics, demonstrates how light can be generated from the quantum vacuum — a phenomenon that, until now, had only existed as a theoretical possibility.

Refuting Creationism - A Technologically Advanced Civilisation in the Philippines - 25,000 Years Before 'Creation Week'

A map of Island Southeast Asia (ISEA) and the Sunda region as it appeared roughly 25,000 years ago at the height of the last Ice Age, with locations of archaeological sites surveyed by the Mindoro Archaeology Project.

Base Map: www.gebco.net, 2014

A map of Island Southeast Asia (ISEA) and the Sunda region as it appeared roughly 25,000 years ago at the height of the last Ice Age, with locations of archaeological sites surveyed by the Mindoro Archaeology Project. The sites yielded artifacts with remarkably similar characteristics despite separation by thousands of kilometers and deep waters that are almost impossible to cross without sufficiently advanced seafaring knowledge and technology.

Base Map: www.gebco.net, 2014.

Philippine islands had technologically advanced maritime culture 35,000 years ago | News | Ateneo de Manila University

It’s shaping up to be another difficult week for creationists. Hot on the heels of news that humans were fighting and killing in northern Italy 7,000 years before the alleged ‘Creation Week’ and ‘The Fall’—events which biblical literalists claim introduced death into the world—comes fresh evidence of a sophisticated maritime culture flourishing in what is now the Philippines 18,000 years before that.

Another significant challenge for the creationist narrative is that, like the skeletal remains found in Italy, this archaeological evidence in the Philippines was not obliterated by the supposed global flood—an essential element of young Earth creationism for which there is no credible supporting evidence.

The discoveries in the Philippines were made by scientists from Ateneo de Manila University, in collaboration with international experts and institutions. Their research reveals early human migration, technological innovation, and long-distance intercultural connections dating back more than 35,000 years. The findings have been published in Archaeological Research in Asia, and are also explained in a news release from Ateneo de Manila University.

Refuting Creationism - Human Conflict And Death - 7,000 Years Before 'Creation Week'

Illustration depicting intergroup violence and conflict during the Stone Age.
Shanxi Provincial Museum, Taiyuan.

Gary Todd/Public domain

Three projectile impact marks found on Tagliente 1’s left femur.

Credit: Sparacello VS et al., Scientific Reports (2025)

17,000-year-old skeleton reveals earliest evidence of Stone Age ambush and human conflict | Archaeology News Online Magazine

Towards the end of that immensely long pre-Creation Week period of Earth’s history — when 99.9975% of everything had already happened before creationists believe their god made a small, flat Earth with a dome over it in the Middle East, as described in the Bible — humans were already fighting battles in what is now northern Italy. To be precise, this occurred around 7,000 years before 'Creation Week'.

This conclusion comes from the analysis of a 17,000-year-old skeleton belonging to a man aged between 22 and 30, bearing unmistakable injuries caused by flint-tipped projectiles—likely arrows or spears. The skeleton, discovered in 1973 at the Riparo Tagliente rock shelter in the Lessini Mountains of northeastern Italy, only recently revealed its violent past thanks to modern forensic techniques.

The findings, led by bioarchaeologist Vitale Sparacello of the University of Cagliari, were published in the journal Scientific Reports.

I Hate To Say It But - I Told You So!

Why the Musk and Trump relationship is breaking down – a psychologist explains

I'm not a psychologist, but over the past couple of years I've written several articles such as this one, examining how Donald J. Trump exhibits all the hallmarks of narcissistic personality disorder — a serious psychological condition that arguably should have disqualified him from holding public office. This, in addition to his recent felony conviction, raises profound concerns about his suitability for leadership. In fact, it may well have been his personality disorder that led him to commit that felony in the first place, in a desperate attempt to preserve his laughably absurd image as a moral exemplar.

I warned then that Trump’s obsession with self-aggrandisement and his pathological need for uncritical adoration would ultimately define his presidency. The interests of the United States—and indeed the wider world—were always going to be reduced to mere stage props in the theatre of his ego, should they register with him at all.

Now he finds himself in conflict with another figure who exhibits strikingly similar traits: Elon Musk. The result is as predictable as it is absurd. Neither man can tolerate the faintest dissent or the slightest deviation from sycophantic admiration. Any such lapse is interpreted as disloyalty and is met with unrestrained vitriol in a bid to rally others to their cause—and reaffirm their sense of dominance and adoration.

This dynamic has now been compellingly unpacked in an article published in The Conversation by Professor Geoff Beattie, a psychologist at Edge Hill University in Lancashire, UK. His expert analysis of the psychological forces driving the Trump–Musk feud adds academic weight to what many of us have already observed. It’s a thoroughly entertaining spectacle — unless, of course, you’re concerned about the damage it’s doing to America’s already battered global image.