Refuting Creationism - A Mass Extinction 252 Million Years Before 'Creation Week' - And Why Some Survived It

The End-Permian Mass Extinction

Ai-Generated Image (ChatGPT4)

Mastodonsaurus

Image: Mark P. Witton

March: Amphibians bounce-back from Earth’s greatest mass extinction | News and features | University of Bristol

The thing about mass extinctions, apart from the fact that they occurred so long before creationists dogma says there was even a universe, is that they refute any notions of a planet fine-tuned for life, or any notions of a perfect creator creating all life as it is today. In fact, it was the growing interest in palaeontology and the growing realisation that the fossil record contained so many extinct species, which caused people to start to question the notion of divine creation by a perfect god.

It was also the existence of so many intermediate fossils and series showing progressive change over time that fostered the idea of evolutionary change, although, until Darwin and Wallace thought of evolution by natural selection, how it worked was a matter of speculation.

The end-Permian mass extinction was one of the most significant events in the history of life on Earth - a history, 99.9975% of which occurred before creationists think their little god created the small flat planet with a dome over it in the Middle East, that creationists like to imagine was the entire universe.

However, fortunately for subsequent life on the planet, and without whom it is unlikely that humans would exist, a handful of species survived, most notably some amphibians.

New Book - The Evolution of Creationism: How Creationism Has Adapted To Survive

AI Generated image (ChatGPT4)

Creationism should have faded into obsolescence long ago, having been thoroughly disproven by the overwhelming scientific evidence for evolution, in stark contrast to the total absence of evidence for a creator or any plausible explanation of how an unproven entity could create anything. Its continued persistence is primarily due to the efforts of a small group of vocal advocates who, in their pursuit of preserving their stake in the creationist movement, have abandoned any semblance of intellectual or personal integrity. These individuals have launched a concerted campaign of deliberate misrepresentation of science, while intentionally fostering profound ignorance among their audience to protect their interests.

The irony is that the creationist organisations such as the Deception Institute are having to adapt their tactics and make subtle changes to how they sell creationism in view of the (mostly) hostile changes in the legislative, educational and scientific environment in which they compete with science in the market place of ideas in exact mimicry of the natural evolutionary process they try to deny and misrepresent.

My latest book, written with the assistance of the AI client, ChatGPT4, the eighth in the series on Intelligent Design, describes how creationism has been adapted to try to compete with science in the struggle for the resource of public and scientific opinion on which it depends.

I use AI to research the subject and provide detailed descriptions of events and how the creationist movement has responded. AI can, in minutes, research and fact-check, then synthesise its findings into a few well-written paragraphs, something that would take weeks to do manually.

From the book's introduction:

Creationism has never been a static ideology. While the core belief in a divine creator remains unchanged, the arguments and strategies used to oppose evolution have continuously adapted. From early biblical literalism to modern Intelligent Design, the Anti-evolution movement has undergone significant transformations in response to scientific discoveries, legal challenges, and cultural shifts.

Refuting Creationism - A Giant Scorpion from 125 million years Before 'Creation Week'

Fossilized scorpions are extremely rare. J. longchengi is only the fourth terrestrial species found in China.

Image credit: NIGPAS

Jiangsu researchers discover 125-mln-year-old scorpion fossil | ENGLISH.JSCHINA.COM.CN

Some years ago, on holiday in Northern Greece, myself my eldest two children were exploring an old quarry which had been used as a local rubbish dump. I had come across it the day before and had told my children that this was just the sort of place to find scorpions. True to my prediction, as I turned over a flat piece of plywood, there in all their glory were two pale yellow scorpions! I gently pressed one down with a stick so my children could watch it sting the stick with a series of rapid jabs with its tail.

Fortunately, they were relatively small compared to the scorpions that lived in what is now China in the Mesozoic in that long period of history from before creationism's little god created a small flat planet with a dome over it, when 99.9975% of Earth's history happened, giant venomous scorpions lived in what is now China, 125 million years ago. Jeholia longchengi was around 4 inches (10 cm) long and was a key species within the food chain of the Cretaceous ecosystem.

Describe the evolutionary history of scorpions, please. Scorpions have a long and fascinating evolutionary history, stretching back over 435 million years to the Silurian period. They are among the earliest known terrestrial arthropods and have undergone relatively little morphological change over time, demonstrating a remarkable case of evolutionary stability.

Origins: Aquatic Ancestry

The earliest scorpions, such as Parioscorpio venator (dating to around 437 million years ago), show evidence of an aquatic or semi-aquatic lifestyle. These early scorpions likely lived in shallow marine or freshwater environments, resembling their eurypterid (sea scorpion) relatives. Their anatomy suggests they had book gills, similar to modern horseshoe crabs.

Transition to Land: The Devonian Shift

By the Late Silurian to Early Devonian (about 420–400 million years ago), scorpions began to transition to a terrestrial lifestyle. Fossil evidence suggests that some scorpions developed book lungs, an adaptation that allowed them to extract oxygen from air rather than water. This transition is crucial because it marks one of the earliest instances of arthropods colonizing land.

Carboniferous Period (359–299 million years ago): Giant Scorpions

During the Carboniferous, scorpions diversified significantly and some reached impressive sizes. Some species, like Pulmonoscorpius, grew up to 70 cm (27 inches) long. This period was characterized by high atmospheric oxygen levels, which may have supported the evolution of large arthropods.

Mesozoic Era (252–66 million years ago): Early Modern Scorpions

By the Mesozoic, scorpions had evolved into more recognizable forms, with many modern features already in place. Fossils from this time indicate that scorpions had adapted to various terrestrial habitats, from deserts to tropical forests.

Cenozoic Era (66 million years ago–present): Stability and Radiation

Scorpions have changed relatively little over the past hundred million years, suggesting that their general body plan was already highly successful. Today, over 2,500 species of scorpions exist, inhabiting diverse environments worldwide, from rainforests to deserts.

Key Evolutionary Trends

1. Transition from aquatic to terrestrial habitats
2. Development of book lungs for respiration on land
3. Early gigantism during the Carboniferous
4. Stabilization of body morphology since the Mesozoic
5. Diversification into modern ecological niches

Scorpions are an example of evolutionary success, persisting through multiple mass extinctions while maintaining a body plan that remains effective in predation and survival.

A fossil of one of them has just been described in the journal Science Bulletin and announced in a news item from Jiangsu:

Jiangsu researchers discover 125-mln-year-old scorpion fossil

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A team led by researcher Huang Diying from the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology under the Chinese Academy of Sciences has found an ancient scorpion fossil dating back approximately 125 million years.

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The fossil, named Jeholia longchengi after its discovery site in the Jehol Biota of Longcheng District in Chaoyang City, Northeast China’s Liaoning Province, is the first Mesozoic scorpion fossil unearthed in the country.

Huang explained that the scorpion lived during the Early Cretaceous period and the Jehol Biota preserved numerous fossils, including feathered dinosaurs, early birds and plant fossils, and is regarded as one of the most important paleontological discoveries of the 20th century.

Measuring around 10 centimeters in length, the species is believed to have been a secondary or tertiary consumer in the Jehol Biota food web and features long legs and an elongated venomous stinger.

Only three scorpion fossils have previously been found in China. This discovery will contribute to the understanding of biodiversity of the Mesozoic era, and will help reconstruct the ecosystem of that time.

Huang Diying, lead author
State Key Laboratory of Palaeobiology and Stratigraphy
Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology,
and Center for Excellence in Life and Paleoenvironment,
Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing, China.

Graphic Abstract

Xuan, Qiang; Cai, Chenyang; Huang, Yuangeng; Huang, Diying
First Mesozoic scorpion from China and its ecological implications
Science Bulletin (2025) DOI: 10.1016/j.scib.2025.01.035

© 2025 Elsevier.
Reprinted under the terms of s60 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

As an added extra, just to allay creationists suspicions that the date of this fossil may have been faked:

What information do you have on the Jehol Biota, especially how its age was determined? The Jehol Biota: An Overview

The Jehol Biota is an exceptionally well-preserved fossil assemblage from the Early Cretaceous (about 133–120 million years ago) of northeastern China, particularly in Liaoning, Hebei, and Inner Mongolia. It is famous for its fossilized birds, feathered dinosaurs, early mammals, plants, insects, and aquatic organisms. The preservation is remarkable, often showing soft tissues, feathers, and even stomach contents.

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Age Determination of the Jehol Biota

The age of the Jehol Biota has been determined using multiple methods, primarily:

1. Radiometric Dating (Zircon U-Pb Dating)
   The most reliable way to date volcanic ash layers interbedded with the fossil-bearing sediments is Uranium-Lead (U-Pb) dating on zircon minerals. Zircons form in volcanic eruptions and contain uranium, which decays to lead at a known rate, providing an accurate radiometric clock.
   
   • Yixian Formation (lower part of Jehol Biota): Dated to ~133–125 million years ago (Ma)
   • Jiufotang Formation (upper part of Jehol Biota): Dated to ~120 Ma
   These ages are consistent across multiple studies, confirming the Jehol Biota as Early Cretaceous (Hauterivian–Aptian stages).
   
2. Argon-Argon (⁴⁰Ar/³⁹Ar) Dating
   Another method used is ⁴⁰Ar/³⁹Ar dating on volcanic feldspar minerals, which provides independent confirmation of the zircon-based U-Pb dates. These results have generally aligned with the U-Pb ages, supporting the Early Cretaceous timeframe.
3. Biostratigraphy (Fossil Correlation)
   Fossils from the Jehol Biota, particularly certain fish, molluscs, and index fossils like ostracods and conchostracans have been correlated with well-dated formations elsewhere in China and Mongolia. This cross-referencing with other Early Cretaceous faunas supports the radiometric dating results.
4. Magnetostratigraphy
   Paleomagnetic studies (analyzing Earth's past magnetic field reversals recorded in rock layers) also support the Early Cretaceous age by aligning with the global geomagnetic polarity timescale.

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Conclusion

The age of the Jehol Biota (~133–120 Ma) has been established through a combination of U-Pb zircon dating, ⁴⁰Ar/³⁹Ar dating, biostratigraphy, and magnetostratigraphy making it one of the best-dated fossil Lagerstätten from the Early Cretaceous. This precise dating has been crucial in understanding early avian evolution, feathered dinosaur diversity, and early angiosperm development.

If these dating methods are wrong because radioactive decay rates used to be much higher, this would have meant the forces that hold an atomic nucleus together would have been too weak for atoms to form.

So, it comes down to creationists having to choose between radioactive decay being much faster than today so 6,000 years looks like 125 million years, in which case atoms could not have existed when their putative creator was creating life, or radioactive decay rates are constant and the dating methods that use them are correct, in which case there are 125 million-year-old fossils of giant scorpions that lived millions of years before creationists believe there was a universe.

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Refuting Creationism - How Humans Had Reached All Seven Habitable Continents Thousands of Years Before 'Creation Week'.

A Chukchi reindeer herder.
The Chukchi are an ethnic group native to Siberia.

Image credit: Natalie Fobes via Getty Images.

Most scientists think that humans reached Australia at least 50,000 years ago. Here, an Indigenous man holds traditional weapons during a ceremonial dance at a festival in Cape York, Australia.

Image credit: chameleonseye via Getty Images.

When did modern humans reach each of the 7 continents? | Live Science

Modern humans had dispersed out of Africa and populated every continent except Antarctica, thousands of years before creationism's little god created a small flat planet with a dome over it in the Middle East and claimed it was the entire Universe, according to creationist mythology.

So, what was the timeline of this dispersion?

After our species, Homo sapiens, emerged in Africa at least 300,000 years ago, some eventually ventured out, trekking and voyaging across the world.

Malevolent Design - How Creationism's Divine Malevolence Co-opted A Solutions For It's Own Incompetence, To Ensure Cancers Survive

The Pol-θ enzyme (blue) joins two parts of a broken DNA strand (yellow).
This process is mutagenic and can give rise to cancer.

Credit: Scripps Research

How a crucial DNA repair protein works—and what it means for cancer treatment | Scripps Research

According to creationist mythology, once upon a time a magic creator created animal life complete with DNA which needs to be replicated every time a cell divides for growth and/or repair.

Unfortunately, the process it designed to make this happen wasn't very well designed, so the resulting DNA is often broken or faulty. DNA can be broken in a number of ways, all of which could have been avoided by a more robust design, which should have been within the capabilities of an omniscient deity, capable of creating living organisms ex nihilo:

DNA double-strand breaks can occur in multiple phases of the cell cycle, not just mitosis. While replication stress is a major endogenous source, environmental factors like radiation, chemicals, and viruses can also introduce DSBs. Cells rely on homologous recombination (HR), non-homologous end joining (NHEJ), and alternative end joining (alt-EJ) to repair these breaks, though error-prone pathways like Pol θ-mediated repair contribute to mutagenesis.

Then, in a method typical of creationism's incompetent designer, which in every respect resembles a mindless utilitarian natural process, proceeding without a plan and settling for suboptimal solutions, it added yet another layer of complexity as a work-around for its failure, and designed the enzyme, polymerase θ (Pol-θ), which searches the DNA looking for faults. Unfortunately, due to suboptimal design, this too fails and produces cancers.

Malevolent Designer News - The Clever Way The Herpes Virus Gets Reactivated

UVA IDs Trigger for Those Annoying Cold Sore Flare-ups

The herpes viruses are ingenious designs of creationism's divine malevolence which are highly infectious and, once infected, you have them for life.

Of course, there is no point in designing a virus to just live inside its hosts cells doing nothing to increase the suffering in the world, so they come with a number of responses to various triggers which cause them to proliferate and start infecting other people.

Since these abilities are undoubtedly beneficial to the virus, there is no rational way that this can be presented as 'devolution' from some assumed created perfection - the forlorn attempt by Michael J. Behe to excuse the Christin god from culpability for parasites.

However, William A. Dembski, another Deception Institute Fellow, claims that anything which a gene produces must have been specified by an intelligent designer, so followers of the ID cult are obliged by dogma to give credit to their preferred creator deity for the herpes virus.

Now researchers at the University of Virginia have discovered a surprising way in which herpes can be reactivated, and, true to creationism's divine malevolence's form, it takes advantage of the hosts response to other infections and rides piggy-back on the hosts immune system - an immune system the same alleged designer designed to protect us from the viruses it designed to make us sick (if you believe that childish superstition).

The Herpes virus can respond to a protein produced by cells subject to stress which normally activates the immune system. However, the herpes virus is reactivated and starts producing lots of new virus particles, so the sufferer becomes infectious again and infects lots of other people. Then, job, jobbed, the herpes virus goes back into hiding to wait for the next chance to be reactivated and begin to replicate again, often many years later.

Malevolent Designer News - How Brain Cancer Turns Our Immune System Against Us

The Wistar Institute Discovers a Promising Target in Brain Cancer - The Wistar Institute

It's an old trick often used by creationism's divine malevolence to turn a host's immune system against it and instead work for the parasite.

And, according to a discovery by researchers at the Wistar Institute, this is exactly what one of the most aggressive forms of brain cancer does by reprogramming the white blood cells known as neutrophils, so they supress any further immune response to the cancer.

Of course, whether you accept that or not depends on whether you've fallen for the disinformation promulgated by Deception Institute fellows such as William A Dembski and other leading apologists for the intelligent design cult. Dembski, for example, promotes the notion that genes which produce any given functional protein only do so if they've been given 'complex specified information' to enable them to produce that particular protein.

His presuppositional circular reasoning goes something like, the output from a gene must have been intentional and intent implies sentience, so an intelligent designer must have supplied the information in order to achieve a desired outcome. This of course ignores the fact that mutation and selection occurs in a gene pool consisting of millions of cells and not as a single event in a single cell. In a population of a million cells, the million to one chance mutation arises on average once every cell generation.

A cancer, which is a collection of cells in a hostile environment, can evolve by natural selection to survive and replicate in that environment, so the outcome will depend on the result of an evolutionary arms race.

But, using Dembski's self-referencing logic, believers in intelligent design have to accept that the 'complex specified information' that enables brain tumours to reprogram neutrophils and so supress the immune system, must have been provided by an intelligent designer to achieve exactly that result, because, so he wrongly argues, mutation and natural selection alone can't produce a strategy for survival.

The bad news for supporters of Dembski's divine malevolence is that the discovery by researchers at the Wistar Institute may have tipped the balance in the arms race between human medical science and the malevolent designer in favour of human medical science, in that it suggests a form of treatment for this type of brain cancer.

The Bible's Bad Science - What The Bronze Age Pastoralists Could Never Have Guessed At

Andromeda

By Adam Evans. Uploaded by NotFromUtrecht,CC BY 2.0, Link

Andromeda

By Kanwar Singh - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, Link

NASA's Hubble Provides Bird's-Eye View of Andromeda Galaxy's Ecosystem - NASA Science

Q. How do we know the Bible could not possibly have been written by the god described in it?

A. The Bible describes the god it purports to have been inspired by as all-knowing, yet there is a great deal the Bible gets wrong, and even more that is left out. Clearly, whoever wrote it was ignorant of a great deal and almost all of what little they thought they knew they got hopelessly wrong.

For example, the opening few verses of Genesis make it plain that the authors thought the Universe consisted of a small, flat planet, on which they and everything they knew about lived. This planet had a dome over it from which the sun and moon were hung and in which the stars were embedded. The Bible even described how these stars could be shaken loose during earthquakes whereupon they would fall down to Earth.

This description of the universe bears no resemblance to the real universe and is clearly a description of what someone standing on a hill in Canaan thought his universe consisted of. It could scarcely be further from the truth.

There is simply no reason for an omniscient god to have got it so wrong; it's not even of the category of a 'lie to children', like the planetary model of an atom, designed to foster understanding of some of the properties of atoms without the complication of having to understand some quantum physics. The small, flat planet with a dome over it at the centre of the universe provides nothing by way of a useful model with which we can explain observed phenomena.

It is wrong, plainly and simply, and as such has served throughout the centuries to confuse and mislead, to endarken rather than to enlighten us.

Bible Blunder - How Can Anyone Imagine Tales Like The Tower of Babel Are Real History?

The Tower of Babel as imagined by
Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1526-1569)

Wikipedia - Originally from Google Art Project.
Public Domain, Link

Street children in Accra, Ghana, often speak multiple languages fluently.

How many languages can you learn at the same time? – Ghanaian babies grow up speaking two to six languages - University of Potsdam

Along with nonsense like the Jonah tale and the Exodus myth, the Tower of Babel story must rate as amongst the more ridiculous stories to have been bound up in a single book later declared to be the literal truth as revealed by a creator god.

These nonsense stories refute any notion of omniscient involvement in their telling. They were made up by people with minimal understanding of the subject about which they were writing, so, not surprisingly, they are unravelling as we discover more and see the magnitude of their errors and misunderstanding.

But the nonsense of the Tower of Babel tale should have been apparent to even the Bronze Age mythmakers who made it up as a simplistic attempt to explain the handful of different languages they were aware of, from their limited view of the world which saw everything within a few days walk of the Canaanite Hills as comprising the whole Earth.

That the story was poorly grafted onto other mythologies becomes apparent when you read the immediately preceding chapter, which explained how the descendants of the sons of Noah all spoke different languages, as though that were even remotely likely. Imaging your own family where you and your cousins and your and their children all speak different languages! Apparently, the authors of Genesis had no problem believing that was at all likely.

So, they concocted the following:

Now these are the generations of the sons of Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth: and unto them were sons born after the flood. The sons of Japheth; Gomer, and Magog, and Madai, and Javan, and Tubal, and Meshech, and Tiras.

And the sons of Gomer; Ashkenaz, and Riphath, and Togarmah. And the sons of Javan; Elishah, and Tarshish, Kittim, and Dodanim.

By these were the isles of the Gentiles divided in their lands; every one after his tongue, after their families, in their nations… (Genesis 10:1-5)

These are the sons of Ham, after their families, after their tongues, in their countries, and in their nations… (Genesis 10:20)

These are the sons of Shem, after their families, after their tongues, in their lands, after their nations. These are the families of the sons of Noah, after their generations, in their nations: and by these were the nations divided in the earth after the flood.(Genesis 10:31-32)

So, a whole chapter devoted to why there are so many different languages by constructing an unlikely family tree with each son in each generation speaking different languages. Unlikely though that silly tale is, we turn the page, and what do we see?

And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech. (Genesis 11:1)

After than blunder it then goes into the preposterous tale of building a tower up to 'Heaven' which was obviously believed to be just above the clouds over the small flat planet on which they imagined they lived. In those days, the god of the Bible had not yet acquired omniscience so not only had to 'go down' to find out what they were up to but was a timid little god who was worried that the builders were going to invade his domain.

The point of the tale is then revealed - God 'confounded their tongues' so they couldn't communicate with one another, each of them speaking a different language!

So that explains why there are so many different languages!

But what the authors obviously didn't understand is that people can learn more than one language. In our English-speaking monoglot cultures, we often lose sight of the fact that over much of the world, it is normal to speak two or more languages. For example, my daughter-in-law, who was brought up in Czechia, can speak several Slavic languages, including Russian, Polish, Ukrainian and Slovak, as well as English, switching easily between them.

Now a study by linguists from the University of Potsdam, Germany has shown that, in polyglot continents such as Africa, fluency in several languages is normal, and, in Ghana, children can often speak between two and six languages fluently. Their findings are published, open access, in the journal Cognitive Development. Their research is explained in a Potsdam University press release:

What information do you have on the different languages spoken in Ghana and how they are related? Ghana is a multilingual country with over 80 languages spoken, belonging to various linguistic families. The primary languages belong to the Niger-Congo language family, specifically the Kwa and Gur subgroups. Here’s an overview of the major languages and their relationships:

1. Kwa Languages (Southern Ghana)
   The Kwa languages are predominantly spoken in the southern and coastal regions of Ghana. These languages are part of the Niger-Congo family and share certain phonological and grammatical features.
   
   • Akan (Twi & Fante): The most widely spoken language group in Ghana, Akan consists of dialects such as Asante Twi, Akuapem Twi, and Fante. These are mutually intelligible to varying degrees.
   • Ga: Spoken by the Ga people in and around Accra, it is related to the larger Gbe language group (which includes Ewe).
   • Ewe: Spoken in the Volta Region and closely related to languages in Togo and Benin, such as Fon and Aja.
   • Nzema: Spoken in the Western Region, closely related to Akan but distinct.
   • Guan: A more diverse group of languages spread across different regions, including Anum, Gonja, and Nchumburu.
2. Gur Languages (Northern Ghana)
   The Gur languages are spoken primarily in northern Ghana and are part of a larger grouping that extends into Burkina Faso and northern Ivory Coast.
   
   • Dagbani: Spoken by the Dagombas in the Northern Region, it is part of the larger Oti-Volta branch of Gur languages.
   • Mampruli: Closely related to Dagbani and spoken by the Mamprugu people.
   • Kusaal: Spoken in the Upper East Region and related to languages in Burkina Faso.
   • Dagaare: Spoken by the Dagaaba people in the Upper West Region and also found in Burkina Faso.
3. Mande Languages (Smaller Presence)
   A few languages in Ghana belong to the Mande branch of the Niger-Congo family, spoken mainly in the northwestern regions.
   • Bissa: Spoken by the Bissa people near the Burkina Faso border.
   • Ligbi: Spoken near the border with Côte d'Ivoire.
4. English (Official Language)
   English is the official language of Ghana, used in government, education, and media. It serves as a lingua franca among speakers of different native languages.

Relationships and Mutual Intelligibility

• Akan languages (Twi, Fante, Nzema, etc.) form a continuum where many speakers understand each other.
• Ga and Ewe are separate languages but share some linguistic traits due to historical contact.
• Dagbani, Mampruli, and Kusaal are part of the Gur language family, sharing some similarities.
• Guan languages are more dispersed and less related to each other than the Akan group.

How many languages can you learn at the same time? – Ghanaian babies grow up speaking two to six languages

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Africa is a multilingual continent, and many adults speak several languages fluently. An empirical study by a research team led by the Potsdam psycholinguists Prof. Dr. Natalie Boll-Avetisyan and Paul O. Omane now shows that the roots of this multilingualism can be found in infancy: In Ghana, most babies grow up multilingually, with most of them coming into contact with two to six languages and just as many regular speakers of each language. The researchers also showed that the babies heard some languages primarily indirectly – i.e. via radio, television or background conversations – while other languages were used by their caregivers to directly communicate with them. The results of the study have now been published in the journal “Cognitive Development”.

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The study, which examined 121 babies aged three to twelve months in Accra, the capital of Ghana, demonstrates a remarkable variety of language input in the early months of life. The children are regularly exposed to two to six languages. Strikingly, the number of caregivers the children have also ranges between two and six, and babies who have more adults in their daily lives who regularly take care of them also hear more different languages. In Ghana, families often live in so-called “compound buildings”, where many everyday interactions take place in the courtyard, where family, neighbors and other relatives play an important role in the lives of children.

The idea that a child learns only one particular language from a single caregiver, as is often assumed in Western cultures, does not apply to these communities. Rather, children are surrounded by a rich spectrum of linguistic inputs from the very beginning.

Paul Okyere Omane, first author.
Department of Linguistics
University of Potsdam, Germany.

The majority of studies on children's language acquisition have been conducted in Western industrialized nations, which is why they often focus on a rather narrow conception of multilingualism. Our research shows that other societies show a much more vibrant multilingual environment.

Professor Dr. Natalie Boll-Avetisyan.
Department of Linguistics
University of Potsdam, Germany.

A key finding of the study is the distinction between direct and indirect language input. While English is primarily acquired through indirect channels such as television and official communication, children receive most of the local languages (such as Akan, Ga and Ewe) through direct contact with their caregivers. Accordingly, the proportion of direct input is higher in the local languages than in English, which is predominantly present as indirect input.

It is often emphasized how important direct language contact is for language acquisition. However, our results suggest that indirect input – especially through media and official communication – also plays an essential role in the children’s daily lives, particularly in urban contexts.

Professor Dr. Natalie Boll-Avetisyan.

As a result of their empirical study, the researchers call for a broader view in language research. The common assumptions do not reflect the diversity and complexity found in other cultural contexts such as Ghana. The study makes it clear that it is not only the number of languages a child hears, but also the diversity of people and the different forms of input that have a decisive influence on language acquisition.

Our research shows that for many children, a multilingual environment is a dynamic, vibrant reality from the very beginning. Multilingualism is not just a bonus, but a fundamental part of children's identity and social structure.

Professor Dr. Natalie Boll-Avetisyan.

Publication
Omane, P. O., Benders, T., & Boll-Avetisyan, N. (2025).
Exploring the nature of multilingual input to infants in multiple caregiver families in an African city: The case of Accra (Ghana). Cognitive Development. In press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cogdev.2025.101558

Highlights

• Infant language input was estimated in a highly multilingual environment.
• Tools were a Language Input Estimate interview protocol and a logbook over a day.
• Ghanaian infants are raised multilingually, with between two and six languages.
• Infants with more input providers also hear more different languages.
• Ghanaian infants get more indirect than direct input in Ghanaian English

Abstract
Examining the language input experiences of infants growing up in multilingual African environments is essential to understanding their language acquisition. We explored the language input to 3;0–12;0-month-old infants (N = 121) in Ghana (Sub-Saharan Africa), a non-Western and less-economically rich social context and highly multilingual country. Data collection involved an interview assessment, followed by caregivers completing a 12-hour logbook to indicate the languages their child heard over a day. Results demonstrated consistency of the infant's language exposure across both input measurement tools, suggesting their reliability. Results revealed that Ghanaian infants are raised multilingually, exposed to between two and six languages, and engage with between two and six regular input providers. There was no evidence for associations of age with number of languages or regular input providers. Analyses of the relative amount of input in Ghanaian English, Akan, Ewe, and Ga, revealed that infants receive less direct than indirect input in Ghanaian English, with no such difference observed in Akan, Ewe, Ga, and no evidence of age effects. These findings shed light on the language environment and input to African infants raised in multilingual societies, highlighting the impact of social and cultural contexts on linguistic input. We conclude with reflections on studying infants in non-Western, less-economically Rich social contexts in multilingual Africa.

Omane, P. O., Benders, T., & Boll-Avetisyan, N. (2025).
Exploring the nature of multilingual input to infants in multiple caregiver families in an African city: The case of Accra (Ghana). Cognitive Development. In press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cogdev.2025.101558

Copyright: © 2024 The authors.
Published by Elsevier. Open access.
Reprinted under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0)

It's research such as this that reveals the true depth of ignorance of the Bronze Age pastoralists who made up the tales later written down and bound together in a book declared to be the inerrant word of a creator god by vested interests who wanted ordinary people to imagine they were privy to some secret, God-given knowledge, to justify their unelected, unaccountable control over the population of a failing and fragmenting empire.

Unintelligent Design - Flightless Birds Still Have Feathers for Flight

The extinct "elephant bird" of Madagascar.

Photo: Brian Choo

When birds lose the ability to fly, their bodies change faster than their feathers - Field Museum

As though designing birds with wings that they can't fly with wasn't stupid enough, it seems creationism's idiot designer designed them with flight feathers too. That is, if you believe the childish nonsense of special creation of species without ancestors, which is a central superstition of the creationist cult. And presumably, because it's also central to the cult that species don't evolve, it must be assumed that every extinct species was created without ancestors too, so they can't have evolved from ancestors either.

Which makes it all the more puzzling that a study has shown that as flightless birds became flightless over time, they tended to retain feathers that were characteristic of flying birds, and in particular, those of their flying relatives.

In other words, as flightlessness evolved, the last thing to change were their feathers.

Which begs thew question why creationism’s putative designer gave flightless birds feathers that looked as though they had been inherited from flying ancestors.

Of course, there is a rational explanation for this, and it doesn't involve magic creation by a blundering idiot behaving like a mindless process operating without a plan.

Failing Christianity - Decline in Faith Has Stalled in USA But is Set To Plunge Again

US Christian Decline May Be Stabilizing: 2023-24 Religious Landscape Study | Pew Research Center

It's mixed news from the USA which had looked as though it was following Europe, albeit a generation behind, in rejecting religion and becoming a substantially secular society with non-believers and non-affiliated 'spiritual' people in the clear majority. Even formerly strongly Catholic countries such as Spain and Ireland have experienced a massive haemorrhage of members since the clerical child sexual abuse scandals of recent decades broke.