Refuting Creationism - Microbes That Create Life From Non-Life

Mud volcano

Fig. 9: Schematic of microbial succession and biogeochemical processes in serpentinite mud at the Mariana forearc.
This schematic depicts lipid biomarker transitions from pelagic sediment communities to extremophiles adapted to high pH and redox conditions in serpentinite mud. The Mariana forearc biosphere is fueled by alkaline serpentinization fluids enriched in H₂, CH₄, DIC, and organic acids, sustaining specialized microbial communities. Lipid and stable carbon isotope data reveal a shift from relict methanogenic archaea, likely engaged in hydrogenotrophic methanogenesis, to a later ANME-SRB community mediating anaerobic oxidation of methane (AOM). Changes in substrate availability likely drove this transition. Distinct lipid signatures, including unsaturated diethers, acyclic GDGTs, and ether-based glycolipids, highlight adaptations to pH stress, phosphate limitation, and fluctuating redox conditions. The presence of in-situ branched GDGTs suggests previously uncharacterized bacterial communities persisting in these ultra-oligotrophic conditions. The Mariana forearc serpentinite biosphere, shaped by episodic fluid flow and substrate shifts, provides insights into deep-sea subsurface habitability. DIC = dissolved inorganic carbon, ANME anaerobic methanotrophic archaea, SRB sulfate-reducing bacteria, AOM anaerobic oxidation of methane, GDGT glycerol dialkyl glycerol tetraether.

Kumawat, P., Albers, E., Bach, W. et al. (2025).

Fats provide clues to life at its limits in the deep sea

Researchers at MARUM – Bremen University’s Centre for Marine Environmental Sciences – have made a discovery, just published open access in the journal Communications Earth & Environment, which, properly understood, should make depressing reading for creationists.

They have found living organisms both on and within the ocean floor, surviving in conditions where normal life would be impossible. These microorganisms inhabit mud volcanoes with a pH of 14, metabolising hydrogen and carbon to form methane by drawing energy from minerals in the surrounding rock. In other words, they live entirely without oxygen and with almost no organic matter, synthesising all they need from inorganic sources.

Informed creationists will recognise that these organisms directly refute their frequent assertion that life cannot arise from non-life — because producing life from non-life is precisely what these microorganisms are doing.

This also contradicts the biblical claim that all living things were created for the benefit of humans, since there is no conceivable way these organisms could serve any human purpose. Of course, to be fair, the authors of the Bible were completely ignorant of microorganisms, deep-ocean mud volcanoes, and chemosynthetic metabolism. They could only attempt to explain the larger creatures that lived in the limited region around their homes in the Canaanite hills.

And, as any informed creationist should also understand, these are exactly the sort of extreme conditions that biologists believe may have fostered the emergence of the earliest living organisms during the origin of life on Earth — once again undermining any claim that abiogenesis is impossible.

Background^ Chemosynthetic Extremophiles. Chemosynthetic extremophiles are microorganisms that survive in environments too hostile for most known life. Instead of relying on sunlight for energy (as photosynthetic organisms do), they extract energy from chemical reactions involving inorganic compounds such as hydrogen, methane, ammonia, or sulphides.

These organisms thrive in extreme conditions — high pressure, intense heat or cold, high salinity, or extreme acidity or alkalinity — where oxygen and organic nutrients are scarce or absent. They are commonly found around deep-sea hydrothermal vents, cold seeps, and mud volcanoes, as well as in acidic mines and alkaline lakes.

Chemosynthesis typically involves oxidising inorganic molecules (e.g. hydrogen sulphide, hydrogen, or iron) to obtain energy, which is then used to convert carbon dioxide or methane into organic compounds. This allows entire ecosystems — such as those around black smokers on the ocean floor — to exist entirely independent of sunlight.

These extremophiles are of major interest to biologists and astrobiologists because they demonstrate that life can originate and persist in conditions once thought uninhabitable. Their existence supports hypotheses that early life on Earth, and potentially elsewhere in the universe, may have begun in similar environments where energy was derived chemically rather than from sunlight.

The research is explained in a Universität Bremen news item.

Fats provide clues to life at its limits in the deep sea

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Researchers use lipid biomarkers to reveal survival strategies in extreme ecosystems

Diverse life forms exist on and within the ocean floor. These primarily consist of microbes, tiny organisms that can cope with extreme environmental conditions. These include high pressures and salinities, as well as extreme pH values and a limited supply of nutrients. A team of researchers has now been able to detect microbial life in two newly discovered mud volcanoes with very high pH values. Their findings have been published in the professional journal Communications Earth & Environment.

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Blue serpentinite mud from a newly discovered mud volcano in a gravity core. The samples have been studied by a team in order to decipher the survival strategies of microorganisms.

Photo: SO292/2 Expedition Science Party

In their study, first author Palash Kumawat of the Geosciences Department at the University of Bremen and his colleagues used lipid biomarker analyses to decipher the survival strategies of the microbes in this harsh ecosystem. The high pH value of 12 here is especially challenging for deep-sea life; This is one of the highest known value so far in ecosystems. In order to detect life at all, the researchers had to resort to special methods of trace analysis. In this situation, the detection of DNA can be ineffectual where there is a low number of living cells.

But we were able to detect fats. With the help of these biomarkers we were able to obtain insights into the survival strategies of methane- and sulfate-metabolizing microbes in this extreme environment.

Palash Kumawat, first author
Faculty of Geosciences
University of Bremen
Bremen, Germany.

Microbial communities metabolize carbon in the deep sea and thereby contribute to the global carbon cycle. However, the communities that the team describe in the publication draws its energy from minerals within rocks and gases such as carbon dioxide and hydrogen to produce methane, for example, an important greenhouse gas. These processes initially take place independently of the ocean above. The lipids also provide clues to the age of the microorganisms. If the cellular biomolecules are intact, they represent a living or recently dead community. If they are not intact, they are geomolecules, which means that they are fossil communities from the past. According to Kumawat, the combination of isotopes and the lipid biomarkers indicates that multiple microbial communities now live in this inhospitable habitat and have lived there in the past.

This distinction helps us when working in areas with extremely low biomass and nutrient deficiency.

Palash Kumawat.

Dr. Florence Schubotz, organic geochemist at MARUM – Center for Marine Environmental Sciences at the University of Bremen and co-author of the study, adds:

What is fascinating about these findings is that life under these extreme conditions, such as high pH and low organic carbon concentrations is even possible. Until now, the presence of methane-producing microorganisms in this system has been presumed, but could not be directly confirmed. Furthermore, it is simply exciting to obtain insights into such a microbial habitat because we suspect that primordial life could have originated at precisely such sites.

Dr. Florence Schubotz, co-author
MARUM – Center for Marine Environmental Sciences
University of Bremen
Bremen, Germany.

The samples for the study come from a sediment core that was retrieved by the Research Vessel Sonne in 2022 during Expedition SO 292/2. Not only were the scientists able to discover the previously unknown mud volcanoes of the Mariana forearc during this cruise, but also to sample them.
The samples were obtained as part of the Cluster of Excellence “The Ocean Floor – Earth's Uncharted Interface.” Palash Kumawat and his colleagues are now planning to cultivate organisms in an incubator to find out more about their nutrient preferences in inhospitable environments.

Publication:

Kumawat, P., Albers, E., Bach, W. et al.
Biomarker evidence of a serpentinite chemosynthetic biosphere at the Mariana forearc. Commun Earth Environ 6, 659 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-025-02667-6

Abstract
Present-day serpentinization systems, such as that at the Mariana forearc, are prominent sources of reduced volatiles, including molecular hydrogen (H₂) and methane (CH₄), and are considered analogs for chemosynthetic ecosystems on early Earth. However, seepage of serpentinization fluids through mud volcanoes at the Mariana forearc seafloor is defined by high pH, and nutrient scarcity, creating challenging conditions for microbial life. We present geochemical and lipid biomarker evidence for a subsurface biosphere shaped by episodic substrate availability, highlighting microbial persistence across steep geochemical gradients within serpentinite mud. Light stable carbon isotope compositions from diagnostic lipids reveal a temporal shift from hydrogenotrophic methanogenesis to sulfate-dependent anaerobic methane oxidation. Membrane adaptations, including unsaturated diether, acyclic and branched tetraether, and ether-based isoprenoidal and non-isoprenoidal glycosidic lipids, reflect microbial strategies for coping with this extreme environment. Our findings establish the Mariana forearc as a unique serpentinite-hosted biosphere, where life operates at the fringes of habitability.

Introduction
The subseafloor biosphere is estimated to harbor up to 15% of the global biomass¹. Recent advances in deep biosphere research have improved our understanding of the distribution and diversity of microbial life in the rocky oceanic crust, especially around hydrothermal vents^2,3. This subseafloor biosphere has to adapt to limited carbon and nutrient availability, accompanied by harsh environmental conditions such as high temperature and pressure, elevated salinity, and/or extreme pH levels⁴. Serpentinization of mantle rocks by seawater can generate high levels of H₂^5,6 that, in turn, drives the abiotic reduction of carbon to form CH₄ and other organic compounds⁷, which can be oxidized by chemosynthetic organisms^8,9,10, forming the foundation for a serpentinite biosphere¹¹. The type locality for such a serpentinite biosphere is the Lost City hydrothermal vent field near the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, where hydrothermal fluids fuel microbial communities in active and inactive vent structures¹². Methanogenic archaea there are found in active brucite-calcite vents, whereas older carbonate chimneys host a syntropic consortium of anaerobic methanotrophic archaea (ANME) and sulfate-reducing bacteria (SRB) that perform the anaerobic oxidation of methane (AOM)^13,14.

The process of serpentinization takes place in a range of geotectonic settings, including rifted continental margins, mid-oceanic ridges, transform faults, and convergent margins. Among the latter, the forearc of the Mariana subduction system is of particular interest because it provides access to serpentinization products from within an active subduction zone. There, dewatering of the subducting Pacific Plate leads to serpentinization of the mantle wedge of the overriding Philippine Sea Plate. Faults reaching 10–25 km deep into the forearc allow serpentinite, together with fluids derived from the subducting slab, to buoyantly rise and form large ‘serpentinite mud volcanoes’ on the seafloor^15,16 (Fig. 1a, c). Fluids venting from the mud volcanoes are cold (<3.5 °C), hyperalkaline (pH up to 12.6), and enriched in H₂ and CH₄ (both up to ~1 mM)^17,18 and slab-derived sulfate (SO₄²⁻; up to 28 mM)¹⁹. These fluids are also enriched in short-chain organic acids like acetate (0.04 mM) and formate (0.1 mM), contributing ~20–30% of the dissolved organic carbon (DOC)²⁰, and in methanol (0.03 mM)^20,21. The δ¹³C of CH₄ (−37‰ to 2‰), acetate (−8‰), formate (4.8‰) and methanol (2.3‰) point to their abiotic formation^17,21. While these serpentinization fluids sustain chemosynthetic life at the seafloor^22,23, the functioning and extent of the chemosynthetic microbial biosphere below the seafloor remains largely unknown. Cell counts in the serpentinite mud are variable, but overall low (101 to 106 cells cm−3)^20,24, presumably because of the high pH and intermittent fluid seepage^13,16. Extremophilic archaea are believed to perform AOM as inferred from the detection of phospholipid-derived diphytanyl diethers and reduced sulfur species in the formation fluids18. Metabolic transcripts for denitrification and AOM were interpreted as evidence for nitrate-dependent AOM within the serpentinite mud volcanoes²⁴. Although AOM is considered thermodynamically favorable here^19,25, direct evidence for AOM and its associated microorganisms is still lacking. Methanogenesis is a common metabolic strategy in serpentinization systems¹³, but since CH₄ formation at the Mariana forearc is dominantly abiotic, the extent of microbial methanogenesis remains uncharacterized.

Fig. 1: Study area and geological context of serpentinite mud volcanism in the Mariana subduction system.

a Bathymetry map of the Mariana subduction system showing the incoming Pacific Plate, the overriding Philippine Sea Plate, the Mariana Trench, and a subset of the known serpentinite mud volcanoes on the forearc seafloor. Stars mark the locations of the Pacman and Subetbia mud volcanoes investigated in this study. Bathymetry from GEBCO Compilation Group¹²⁵. b Bathymetry map showing the Pacman mud volcano and the location of gravity core GeoB24917-1 retrieved during expedition SO292/2. Bathymetric data collected during expedition SO292/2²⁶. c Schematic of serpentinite mud volcano formation, following serpentinization of the mantle wedge by slab-derived fluids, formation of H₂ and CH₄, and the rise of serpentinite mud and fluids through deep-seated faults towards the seafloor.

This study documents AOM coupled to sulfate reduction as a key metabolic process in the Mariana forearc, indicating the importance of methane cycling for the indigenous microbial community. Our findings also provide evidence of relict methanogenesis in the serpentinite mud, where its temporal distribution is possibly controlled by variable substrate availability. We present a comprehensive lipid biomarker and isotopic record from the Pacman and Subetbia mud volcanoes, providing insights into the habitability and survival strategies of extremophilic chemosynthetic life in this serpentinite biosphere.

Kumawat, P., Albers, E., Bach, W. et al.
Biomarker evidence of a serpentinite chemosynthetic biosphere at the Mariana forearc. Commun Earth Environ 6, 659 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-025-02667-6

Copyright: © 2025 The authors.
Published by Springer Nature Ltd. Open access.
Reprinted under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0)

Creationists often insist that “life cannot come from non-life,” claiming that the origin of life through natural processes — abiogenesis — is impossible. Yet these microorganisms thriving deep beneath the ocean floor undermine that argument completely. They demonstrate that life does not require sunlight, oxygen, or organic nutrients. Instead, it can sustain itself entirely through chemical reactions involving inorganic matter, precisely the kind of chemistry that would have been available on the early Earth long before photosynthesis or complex ecosystems evolved.

These microbes survive by harnessing energy from the oxidation of minerals and gases such as hydrogen and carbon, producing methane as a by-product. In doing so, they show that biological systems can indeed emerge and persist using nothing more than inorganic chemistry and environmental energy sources. If life can continue this way today — in conditions strikingly similar to those thought to exist on the early Earth — then it is perfectly reasonable to infer that the same processes could once have given rise to life itself.

Creationists’ claim that life from non-life violates natural law is based on a false analogy with modern life, which relies on pre-existing organic systems. But these extremophiles illustrate that the boundary between “non-living” chemistry and “living” biochemistry is not a rigid wall — it is a continuum. The metabolic reactions that sustain these organisms are direct chemical extensions of the mineral and geochemical reactions occurring in their surroundings. Life in such places does not appear magically; it emerges naturally from the physical and chemical conditions of its environment.

Far from being a problem for evolutionary science, discoveries like this one strengthen the case for a natural origin of life. They show that even today, the chemistry of life and the chemistry of rocks remain intimately connected. To deny that such chemistry could, under the right conditions, cross the threshold into life is to deny the very evidence creationists claim to seek — evidence that life can, and demonstrably does, arise from the non-living world through the workings of natural law.

Sadly, the same creationists who continue to parrot the 'no life from non-life' fallacy won't have understood a word of that and will continue to make proven false claims.

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What Were the Chances of Abiogenesis? - Prempting Creationist Misrepresentations

What Were the Chances of Abiogenesis? - Universe Today

One of the oldest and most persistent tactics in creationist and intelligent design (ID) rhetoric is to invoke vast “improbabilities” to suggest that life could not have arisen naturally. The argument usually goes something like this: the odds of complex life emerging by chance are astronomically low, therefore it must have been designed. This is a textbook example of a false dichotomy — and it often rests on simplistic, outdated models of how abiogenesis is understood. A recent preprint by Robert G. Endres, reported by Universe Today, has already begun to circulate in ID circles as supposed “evidence” of just such improbability. But when read carefully, the paper does something very different: it provides a mathematical framework for understanding how life could arise, where the real constraints lie, and why the old “pure chance” caricature of abiogenesis is scientifically untenable.

In the abstract to his paper in arXiv, Enders says:

Abstract
The origin of life on Earth via the spontaneous emergence of a protocell prior to Darwinian evolution remains a fundamental open question in physics and chemistry. Here, we develop a conceptual framework based on information theory and algorithmic complexity. Using estimates grounded in modern computational models, we evaluate the difficulty of assembling structured biological information under plausible prebiotic conditions. Our results highlight the formidable entropic and informational barriers to forming a viable protocell within the available window of Earth’s early history. While the idea of Earth being terraformed by advanced extraterrestrials might violate Occam’s razor from within mainstream science, directed panspermia—originally proposed by Francis Crick and Leslie Orgel—remains a speculative but logically open alternative. Ultimately, uncovering physical principles for life’s spontaneous emergence remains a grand challenge for biological physics.

Because we can guarantee that this article will be misrepresented by creationists who will make claims not supported by the paper, I asked ChatGPT for an objective evaluation of the article in Universe Today and Endres arXiv paper:

The following article looks suspiciously like a creationist argument based on notional improbabilities* Can you produce an objective evaluation of it, please.
https://www.universetoday.com/articles/what-were-the-chances-of-abiogenesis

Here is an objective evaluation of the article “What Were the Chances of Abiogenesis?” (by Mark Thompson, published on Universe Today) and the underlying pre-print paper by Robert G. Endres (arXiv:2507.18545). I’ll identify what the article does well, where it is weaker, and how one might interpret it in light of your interest (refuting creationism / intelligent-design arguments).

Abiogenesis News - Scientists Create Geothermal Vents In A Lab - And they Make Precursors For Life

A venting black smoker emits jets of particle-laden fluids. The particles are predominantly very fine-grained sulfide minerals formed when the hot hydrothermal fluids mix with near-freezing seawater. These minerals solidify as they cool, forming chimney-like structures. “Black smokers” are chimneys formed from deposits of iron sulfide, which is black. “White smokers” are chimneys formed from deposits of barium, calcium, and silicon, which are white.

Source: National Ocean Service.

Underwater thermal vents may have given rise to the first molecular precursors of life

A favourite disingenuous creationist tactic is to keep challenging science to achieve something that seems impossible—such as replicating the conditions of a deep ocean thermal vent to demonstrate that this could have been where life began. The trap is then to either gloat over science’s failure or to shift the goalposts and proclaim that any success merely proves that intelligence is required to create life.

So, we can almost guarantee that the news that a team of scientists at Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP) in São Paulo, Brazil, have replicated not the thermal vents themselves but the chemical reactions believed to have occurred within them—and shown that these reactions do indeed produce the precursors of living systems—will be presented by creationists as supposed proof of the role of intelligence in the process.

The fallacy, of course, is that a laboratory experiment merely establishes the conditions under which natural forces can operate. By contrast, intelligent design advocates insist that an intelligent entity, working to a plan, must actively direct those natural forces to make chemistry and physics do something they supposedly couldn’t do on their own. Such is the intellectual dishonesty of many creationists that this distinction is either too subtle for them to grasp—or they deliberately ignore it.

Refuting Creationism - Clues to Abiogenesis In Japan's Hot Springs

A panoramic picture of one of five hot springs during winter, showing the source water and CO₂ bubbles.

Credit: Fatima Li-Hau, ELSI

Hot springs in Japan give insight into ancient microbial life on Earth – ELSI｜EARTH-LIFE SCIENCE INSTITUTE

It’s been a dreadful week for creationists as yet another published paper undermines one of their favourite claims and further reduces the god-shaped gap on which they increasingly depend — the so-called abiogenesis gap. This argument rests on the delusional assumption that if science has not yet fully explained something, then it never will — and therefore creationism wins by default. The history of science, of course, shows the opposite: today’s mysteries are tomorrow’s discoveries.

This time, the blow comes from a publication in the journal Microbes and Environments, which describes how five hot springs in Japan provide natural analogues of the conditions in which the first living organisms could have evolved. These springs are rich in diverse chemical and thermal gradients, making them excellent testbeds for exploring how life can thrive in extreme conditions and use non-traditional energy sources.

The study was conducted by a team led by Fatima Li-Hau, then a graduate student at the Earth-Life Science Institute (ELSI), Tokyo Institute of Science, with Associate Professor Shawn McGlynn as her supervisor. Their work focused on the microbial communities found in these hot springs, which range from moderately warm to boiling.

Refuting Creationism - Scarey Days For Creationists As More Signs of Life on Other Bodies Are Found

Artist's impression of Saturn's icy moon Enceladus. With a frozen surface covering a deep ocean, Enceladus is a fascinating target to search for signs of habitability elsewhere in our Solar System.

Graphic composition: ESA; Surface: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute/Lunar and Planetary Institute
(CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO)

An artist's depiction of water erupting from the "tiger stripe" fractures in the surface of Enceladus's south pole

© ESA.

ESA - Cassini proves complex chemistry in Enceladus ocean

In a soccer manager’s jargon, this is squeaky bum time for creationists who cling to the notion that science will never demonstrate that abiogenesis is even possible, let alone explain how it happened.

Squeaky bum time for a football manager is when the team’s league position — and with it qualification for European tournaments, and often the manager’s job — hangs on a single unpredictable result.

So it is with creationism. One single piece of definitive evidence that life has arisen independently on another world in the Solar System, or on an exoplanet orbiting a distant sun, would comprehensively consign creationism to the dustbin of history where it has been struggling to avoid ending up since 1859. Such a discovery would refute the claim that ‘life from non-life’ is impossible. Instead, it would show that under the right conditions, life is simply a natural product of chemistry and physics.

And the signs are as dire for creationism as for the embattled football team that finds itself 2–0 down in stoppage time. Scientists at the European Space Agency have just announced the detection of possible signs of life in the ocean beneath the icy crust of one of Saturn’s moons, Enceladus, as revealed by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft. This follows close on the heels of strong evidence that life once existed on Mars.

The tentative evidence from Enceladus points to processes in its subsurface ocean producing organic precursors to amino acids — the basic building blocks of proteins and a fundamental requirement for prebiotic chemistry that could eventually lead to organised cells. Researchers also report the detection of previously unknown molecules, including aliphatic and (hetero)cyclic compounds, esters, alkenes, ethers, and tentatively nitrogen- and oxygen-bearing compounds.

These organics were detected by Cassini’s Cosmic Dust Analyzer (CDA) in ice crystals ejected in plumes through cracks in Enceladus’ ice covering. These plumes are thought to form when water seeps into the moon’s rocky core, is heated, and then forced back up to the ocean floor as hydrothermal vents — much like those found in Earth’s oceans. The hot water increases the pressure in the subsurface ocean until the ice cracks and jets of vapour and ice crystals erupt. Most fall back to the surface, but some escape Enceladus’ weak gravity and contribute to one of Saturn’s rings, within which the moon orbits.

'Refuting Creationism - Scientists Have Found Strong Evidence of Life On Mars!

The Jezero Crater as it may have looked billions of years ago, when it was a lake.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

'Potential biosignatures' found in ancient Mars lake | Imperial News | Imperial College London

Scientists analysing data from NASA’s Perseverance rover have reported a tantalising discovery from Jezero Crater on Mars: rocks rich in minerals and chemical patterns that could represent potential biosignatures — the traces left behind by ancient life. The findings, published by an international team led from Imperial College London, point to the remains of an ancient lake where conditions may once have been favourable for microbial life to take hold.

The evidence comes from mudstones, clays, silica, iron-phosphate and iron-sulphide nodules, along with carbon compounds that appear to have undergone redox reactions. On Earth, such processes are often associated with biology, though the researchers are careful to stress that non-biological explanations are still possible. It will take the return of rock samples to Earth, with far more powerful laboratory techniques, before firm conclusions can be reached.

Abiogenesis News - UCL Scientists Show How LUCA Arose - No God(s) Required

Liquid brine veins, where RNA molecules can replicate, surround solid ice crystals in water ice, as seen with an electron microscope.

Credit: Philipp Holliger, MRC LMB

Graphic abstract

Attwater, J., Augustin, T.L., Curran, J.F. et al.(2025)

Chemists recreate how RNA might have reproduced for first time | UCL News - UCL – University College London

The day creationists dread — the final closure of their favourite god-shaped abiogenesis gap — moved a little closer last May, when scientists at University College London (UCL) announced that they had shown how the first RNA could have reproduced. In a selective environment with competition for resources, this would have led inevitably to ever-increasing efficiency in replication, kick-starting the whole evolutionary process and the emergence of self-organising systems (or “life”) from prebiotic precursors (or “non-life”). This is, of course, the very process that creationists insist is “impossible”, clinging to the idea that “life” is some magical essence that must be granted by a supernatural deity.

When this God-shaped gap is finally and conclusively closed — as all the others have been — creationists will need to scramble once again to reframe their beliefs and cling to whatever shrinking space remains for their god. Just as their old claim that evolution was “impossible” collapsed, to be replaced with notions of a short burst of warp-speed evolution “within kinds” after “The Flood” (and supposedly still happening today, but conveniently “guided” by God), so too will abiogenesis inevitably be rebranded as yet another process directed by divine intention — naturally, with the eventual production of (American) humans as the goal.

Refuting Creationism - The Real Universe is Nothing Like the One in the Bible

An optical image view of the Butterfly Nebula, NGC 6302, captured by the Hubble space telescope.

Credit: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, K. Noll, J. Kastner, M. Zamani (ESA/Webb)

This image, which combines infrared data from the James Webb Space Telescope with submillimetre observations from the Atacama Large Millimetre/submillimetre Array (ALMA), shows the doughnut-shaped torus and interconnected bubbles of dusty gas that surround the Butterfly Nebula’s central star. The torus is oriented vertically and nearly edge-on from our perspective, and it intersects with bubbles of gas enclosing the star. The bubbles appear bright red in this image, illuminated by the light from helium and neon gas. Outside the bubbles, jets traced by emission from ionised iron shoot off in opposite directions.

ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, M. Matsuura, ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO), N. Hirano, M. Zamani (ESA/Webb) (CC BY 4.0).

An optical image view of the Butterfly Nebula, NGC 6302, captured by the Hubble space telescope.

Credit: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, K. Noll, J. Kastner, M. Zamani (ESA/Webb).

JWST observations of Butterfly Nebula reveal how cosmic dust is made in space - News - Cardiff University

There’s a double whammy for creationists in this new paper. Not only does it expose the Bible’s description of the Universe as laughably naïve, but it also shows how organic molecules — in the form of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) — that may have formed the basis of life on the prebiotic Earth, could have been created in deep space and later incorporated into our planet either at its formation or via impacts from space debris.

The paper, by a team of scientists led by Cardiff University, has just been published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. Using data from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), the researchers reveal how stars generate space dust, organic material, and the fundamental building blocks from which rocky planets like Earth are formed. Their study focuses on the Butterfly Nebula (NGC 6302), a spectacular stellar remnant.

What Are PAHs?

Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are complex organic molecules made of fused benzene rings — essentially arrangements of carbon and hydrogen in hexagonal patterns. On Earth, they are often associated with combustion (for example, in car exhaust fumes, cigarette smoke, or charred food). In space, however, they form naturally in the outflows of dying stars and in the dense molecular clouds that give rise to new stars and planetary systems.

PAHs are of great interest to astrobiologists because they are thought to be among the earliest organic compounds to have existed in the Universe. They can undergo chemical transformations to form more complex molecules, including amino acids and nucleotides, which are the essential components of life. Their presence in meteorites and interstellar dust suggests that the seeds of life were widespread long before Earth even formed.

Abiogenesis News - Fully Synthetic 'Life' Evolving in a Laboratory

Illustration showing the formation of new vesicles from the reorganization through self-reproduction of amphiphiles expelled into the bulk

S.K. Katla,C. Lin, & J. Pérez-Mercader (2025).

A step toward solving central mystery of life on Earth — Harvard Gazette

(A) Illustration showing the different stages of polymer vesicle growth leading to the action of expulsion of amphiphiles. (B) Illustration showing the formation of new vesicles from the reorganization through self-reproduction of amphiphiles expelled into the bulk.

S.K. Katla,C. Lin, & J. Pérez-Mercader (2025).

The frequent creationist assertion that abiogenesis is impossible without invoking supernatural intervention has taken another significant blow with the recent open‑access publication in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). The study, Self‑reproduction as an autonomous process of growth and reorganization in fully abiotic, artificial and synthetic cells, demonstrates, for the first time, the successful laboratory creation of simple, non‑biochemical self‑reproducing vesicle‑like systems exhibiting Darwinian evolution: each generation varies slightly in traits that influence their ability to replicate.

This breakthrough indicates that such self‑sustaining systems could plausibly arise through natural processes, and gradually—through Darwinian mechanisms—evolve into the first simple biological life forms, from which all life subsequently diversified. It also lends empirical support to the principle that when self‑replication with small variation occurs in a selective environment, evolution in the direction of increased fitness is inevitable.

Abiogenesis News - Organic Precursors to Life Detected In Deep Space.

Planet-forming disc around V883 Orionis. This star is currently in outburst. The dark ring midway through the disc is the point where the temperature and pressure dip low enough for water ice to form.
Orbits of the planet Neptune and dwarf planet Pluto in our Solar System are shown for scale.

Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)/L. Cieza

This article is best read on a laptop, desktop, or tablet

This artist’s impression shows the planet-forming disc around the star V883 Orionis. In the outermost part of the disc volatile gases are frozen out as ice, which contains complex organic molecules. An outburst of energy from the star heats the inner disc to a temperature that evaporates the ice and releases the complex molecules, enabling astronomers to detect it. The inset image shows the chemical structure of complex organic molecules detected and presumed in the protoplanetary disc (from left to right): propionitrile (ethyl cyanide), glycolonitrile, alanine, glycine, ethylene glycol, acetonitrile (methyl cyanide).

© Credit: ESO/L. Calçada/T. Müller (MPIA/HdA) (CC BY 4.0)

The evolution of life may have its origins in outer space

If you listen to creationists, you might be persuaded to believe that the formation of inorganic chemicals—often deliberately conflated with 'life' to evoke an emotional reaction—is, for all practical purposes, impossible without the intervention of a supernatural intelligence. This is, of course, nothing more than the familiar creationist fallback: the god of the gaps argument, coupled with a false dichotomy, and dressed up with a spurious veneer of mathematical ‘proof’.

But this tactic suffered yet another fatal blow recently with the publication of a study led by Abubakar Fadul of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (MPIA), which reported the discovery of organic molecules in the protoplanetary disc surrounding the young star V883 Orionis. This finding provides compelling evidence that the formation of prebiotic molecules can begin even before planets form—suggesting that Earth may have developed with a complement of organic compounds already present in the accretion disc from which it emerged.

An alternative, but equally plausible, hypothesis is that these molecules could have been delivered by meteorites or other interplanetary bodies.

Refuting Creationism - The 'Abiogenesis Gap' Just Got a Little Bit Smaller

Image generated with Adobe Stock by Josef Kuster / ETH Zürich)

How urea forms spontaneously | ETH Zürich

Graphical representation of urea formation in a droplet.

Figure: Luis Quintero / ETH Zürich.

Creationism's ever-shrinking, gap-shaped creator god has just lost a little more ground. New research suggests that the formation of basic organic molecules may have been far easier under early Earth conditions than previously thought. Remarkably, scientists have found that urea—a key organic compound—can form spontaneously from ammonia and carbon dioxide on the surface of water droplets. This process requires no catalysts, no high pressure or heat, and consumes minimal energy.

Although vitalism was refuted as early as 1828 — decades before Darwin — creationists still claim that life cannot arise from non-living matter. Yet they quickly retreat when asked how dead food becomes living tissue, or what exactly they mean by ‘life’: a substance, a process, or some kind of magical force. In reality, life is a set of chemical processes, and at its core, it’s about managing entropy—using energy to maintain order against the natural drift toward disorder.

The discovery was made by researchers at Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule (ETH) Zürich in collaboration with colleagues from Auburn University in Alabama, USA. Their findings have just been published in Science.

Refuting Creationism - That Ever-Shrinking Little Creationist God Just Got Even Smaller

Liquid brine veins, where RNA molecules can replicate, surround solid ice crystals in water ice, as seen with an electron microscope.

Credit: Philipp Holliger, MRC LMB

Chemists recreate how RNA might have reproduced for first time | UCL News - UCL – University College London

The problem with having a god who exists merely to fill gaps in human knowledge and understanding — as the god of creationism does — is that science has been steadily shrinking those gaps ever since the scientific method emerged and the Church lost its power to persecute scientists for discovering inconvenient truths. Today, only a few small gaps remain, scattered throughout the body of scientific knowledge —particularly in biology, which holds special interest for creationists.

Creationism persists because there are still people with such a poor understanding of science that they believe the authors of ancient religious texts — written during the Bronze Age, when humanity's knowledge gaps encompassed nearly everything in their small world — had access to some deeper, divine insight. Although what they wrote is often naively simplistic and demonstrably wrong in almost every respect, creationists insist that it somehow surpasses anything modern science has produced in terms of accuracy and reliability.

One of the few remaining gaps where creationists attempt to place their god — the abiogenesis gap — has just shrunk further. Predictably, this will be ignored, dismissed, or misrepresented by creationist frauds who exploit carefully maintained ignorance to preserve their cult followings and income streams.

This discovery by chemists at University College London and the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology reveals how a simple RNA molecule can self-replicate under conditions thought to have existed on prebiotic Earth. Many scientists believe this marks the origin of RNA-based life, which eventually gave rise to the more complex protein- and DNA-based life we see today. A self-replicating RNA molecule, competing for limited resources, will naturally evolve to become more efficient — leaving more copies of itself than rival variants. This is classic Darwinian evolution, operating in a context Darwin himself could scarcely have imagined, knowing nothing of RNA or DNA.

The new research is published open access in Nature Chemistry.