Refuting Creationism - Beyond The Comprehension Of The Bible's Authors

The 'Cigar Galaxy' (Messier 82). A close-in view of the centre of galaxy M82. Bright, bluish light radiating from the centre is due to stars actively forming there. A thick lane of gas, black in the centre and red around the edges, crosses the centre and blocks much of the light. Thinner strands and clumps of reddish dust cover much of the rest of the view.

The smouldering heart of a celestial cigar | ESA/Hubble

Location of the Cigar Nebula (M82).

Here we have yet another image taken by the Hubble Space Telescope and released by the European Space Agency—not to belittle the Bible’s account of creation in Genesis, though that happens automatically. The biblical description reflects the view of a pre-scientific people who imagined a flat Earth under a solid dome, with stars as tiny lights stuck to it and the Sun and Moon moving across the sky like lamps hung for our benefit. It reads exactly like the report of someone told to look up and describe what they see without any understanding of what lies beyond.

Modern astronomy shows us something utterly different. The universe is not a small stage with a few lights above it, but a vast, dynamic cosmos shaped by natural processes. Stars are born, live, and die in titanic cycles of creation and destruction; galaxies collide and merge; black holes sculpt their surroundings with unimaginable power.

This particular image, ESA’s Picture of the Week, captures the so-called Cigar Galaxy (Messier 82), a starburst galaxy just 12 million light-years away in the constellation Ursa Major (the Great Bear). Here we see the turbulent heart of a galaxy where new stars are forming in great swathes, driving winds of gas and dust thousands of light-years into space.

The contrast could not be greater: a childlike tale of a sky-dome with a few lights versus the grandeur of a living universe billions of years old and on a scale our ancestors could never have imagined. Contrast the Bible's description with that of ESA's description of the image:

Refuting Creationism - A Picture of Reality Far Removed From The Childish Tale In The Bible

LMC N44C

ESA/Hubble & NASA, C. Murray, J. Maíz Apellániz

LMC N44C
Stars in a star cluster shine brightly blue, with four-pointed spikes radiating from them. The centre shows a small, crowded group of stars while a larger group lies out of view on the left. The nebula is mostly thick, smoky clouds of gas, lit up in blue tones by the stars. Clumps of dust hover before and around the stars; they are mostly dark, but lit around their edges where the starlight erodes them.

ESA/Hubble & NASA, C. Murray, J. Maíz Apellániz

Cloudy cluster | ESA/Hubble

This week’s NASA/European Space Agency (ESA) Hubble picture of the week is a stunning cloudy starscape from an impressive star cluster. The scene lies within the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a dwarf galaxy about 160,000 light-years away in the southern constellations Dorado and Mensa. With a mass equal to 10–20% of that of the Milky Way, the LMC is the largest of the dozens of small galaxies orbiting our own.

The light captured in this image began its journey 160,000 years ago, when early Homo sapiens were making their first tentative steps beyond Africa, following in the paths of Homo erectus and encountering Neanderthals, who had already lived in Eurasia for some 100,000 years.

That very distance — 160,000 light-years — alone undermines the biblical timeline. The contrast between this breathtaking glimpse of just a tiny fragment of the universe and the childishly naïve picture painted in Genesis is a near-superfluous refutation of the idea that its description came from an all-knowing creator.

'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.

Creationism Refuted - Scientists See A Planet Being Born - No God(s) Involved

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A growing baby planet photographed for first time in a ring of darkness | University of Arizona News

Astronomers led by University of Arizona’s Laird Close, alongside Leiden Observatory graduate student Richelle van Capelleveen, have directly observed a planet in the making — WISPIT 2b — nested within the rings of a protoplanetary disk around a young Sun-like star in the constellation Aquila, about 430 light-years away. The planet is confirmed to be about five times Jupiter’s mass, actively accreting gas, and clearing a prominent gap in the disk. This observation aligns almost perfectly with the long-standing scientific model of planet formation—and stands in stark contrast to the biblical narrative of instant land-mass creation, involving no orbit, disk, or extended evolutionary process.

This discovery will be depressing news for creationists, especially when contrasted with the biblical account of Earth’s creation — where magic words allegedly call a small, flat land mass into existence consisting of a few square miles of land around the Canaanite Hills, with no hint of orbiting a star or forming within a protoplanetary disk. The stark mismatch extends beyond metaphor — the actual physical process astronomers observe has no room for magic, and more importantly, aligns precisely with predictions from scientific theories of planetary formation.

The Universe Is Nothing Like The Description of it in The Bible 5

A planetary accretion disk forming around a star.

AI-generated (ChatGPT 5)

Unusual carbon dioxide-rich disk detected around young star challenges planet formation models - Stockholm University

This, the last in this series - at least for a while - is on the discovery made by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) of a disk rich in carbon dioxide around a young star. Apart from again highlighting the yawning gap between the Bible's child-like description of the universe and the real thing, it also showcases how, contrary to creationist conspiracy theorists’ claims that scientists are not allowed to publish anything which challenges “scientific orthodoxy,” a discovery that challenges the current consensus is openly flagged to the scientific community in peer-reviewed publications.

The problem this raises for cosmology is that, in the standard model of planetary formation, icy grains from the colder outer regions of a disk drift inward. As they cross the so-called snow lines, the ice sublimates into gas: first carbon dioxide, then closer in, water vapour. Because both species are expected to follow this process, astronomers normally expect water vapour to be at least as abundant as, if not more abundant than, carbon dioxide in the warmer inner regions. Yet in the disk surrounding a young star in the star-forming region NGC 6357, JWST found the reverse of what models predict — little or no water, but a striking abundance of carbon dioxide.

Intriguingly, the observation may also help explain another puzzle: the unusual isotopic fingerprint found in meteorites and comets. The imbalance of gases could be linked to intense radiation altering chemical pathways in the disk.

For Bible literalists, however, such details have no bearing on their imagined universe of a small, flat Earth with a dome overhead and fixed, immovable stars. There is no recognition in their text of star formation, accretion disks, or the vastness and dynamism of a changing cosmos. The Bible’s universe doesn’t even contain planetary systems.

The Universe Is Nothing Like The Description of it in The Bible 4

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Figure 1. Image stamps of example very bright dropouts in F090W, F115W, F150W, and F200W, arranged from top to bottom. Two example objects are shown for each group. The stamps are 2″×2″ in size and are oriented with north being up and east being left. The images are from the HST ACS, JWST NIRCam, and JWST MIRI, with the passbands as noted. Most of the very bright dropouts are either disk-like (∼40%) or compact (∼45%) in morphology in F356W, and one each is shown for the F090W, F150W and F200W dropouts. The example F115W dropouts include a disk-like object and an irregular object. Only ∼15% of the very bright dropouts have irregular morphologies. The color stamps in the last column are constructed based on the NIRCam images, using F090W + F115W + F150W as blue, F200W + F277W as green, and F356W + F410M + F444W as red.

Sun, Bangzheng & Yan, Haojing (2025).(CC BY 4.0)

Early galaxies — or something else? Mizzou scientists uncover mysterious objects in the universe

In this fourth article in the series contrasting the real universe with the one described in the Bible, I look at the announcement that two cosmologists from the University of Missouri have discovered about 300 objects that are brighter than they should be if they are what researchers think they are – some of the first galaxies in the early universe. If that's what they turn out to be, it will require a reassessment of what cosmologists thought they knew about the formation of galaxies.

This highlights a frequently repeated contradiction in creationist claims: on the one hand, they insist scientists are only allowed to publish papers that conform to existing consensus, so "creationist science" never gets published; on the other hand, they complain that scientists keep changing their minds and rewriting the science books, unlike the Bible which never changes. They claim this means science is unreliable and not to be trusted. Obviously, both can't be right, but that doesn't stop creationists from claiming both simultaneously.

The other problem this paper highlights is the sheer scale of the universe and the timeline involved, which make the Bible's account look laughably naïve, even childish in its simplicity.

These mystery objects, discovered by the James Webb Space Telescope, are in the order of 13–14 billion light-years in look-back time, meaning we are seeing the light that left them when the universe was only a few hundred million years old. Because the universe has been expanding ever since, their actual present-day distance is much greater — probably 25–30 billion light-years away.

This doesn’t contradict the 13.8-billion-year age of the universe: the light has only been travelling for 13 billion years, but in that time the fabric of space itself has stretched. It’s a bit like two ants on a rubber band: one ant flashes a signal when it is 13 cm away, but by the time the other ant sees it, the band has stretched so much that they are now 30 cm apart. The signal only travelled 13 cm, but the current separation is larger because of the stretching. To suggest, as creationists must, that the well-established methods of cosmological distance measurement are so wrong that they confuse a universe a few thousand years old with one tens of billions of light-years across, is to cling to absurdity.

In fact, this paper shows science at its best. The researchers are effectively saying to their colleagues: “Look, we may have found a fundamental problem that could mean we were wrong all along. Let’s investigate further and be prepared to change our minds if the evidence demands it.” Now imagine a creationist announcing that they had discovered a contradiction in the Bible that forced them to question its divine authorship, or a Discovery Institute fellow admitting to evidence that could only be explained by Darwinian evolution. Such an admission would simply never happen — and certainly never be published in a creationist outlet.

Science is reasonable uncertainty; religion is unreasonable certainty.

The Universe Is Nothing Like The Description of it in The Bible 3

"The Hand of God" Nebula

AI-generated image

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Labeled Version of the Image

Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Univ. of Hong Kong/S. Zhang et al.; Radio: ATNF/CSIRO/ATCA; H-alpha: UK STFC/Royal Observatory Edinburgh; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/N. Wolk

Chandra :: Photo Album :: MSH 15-52 :: August 20, 2025

In this, the third entry in the series, we turn to an extraordinary image of a nebula popularly known as “The Hand of God.” Like the famous Horsehead Nebula, its nickname arises simply because it happens to resemble something faintly recognisable—in this case, the outline of a human hand. Some creationists may take comfort in that name, imagining it to mean that scientists literally see the hand of God at work in the creation of the universe.

Few things could be further from the truth. The more we learn, the clearer it becomes that the universe is not the product of spells cast by a supernatural magician, as described in the Bible, but the result of natural forces acting on a scale so vast the authors of Genesis could never have conceived it.

Without modern science—and without the stunning images produced by instruments such as the James Webb Space Telescope and the Chandra X-Ray Observatory which created this composite — we too would struggle to imagine the universe as it really is. Expecting Bronze Age pastoralists to have described it accurately would be like asking a five-year-old today to look up at the night sky and provide a scientific account of the cosmos.

What we see here is just a tiny fraction of the heavens — the area covered by a single grain of rice held at arm’s length — yet, by combining electromagnetic images at different wavelengths, scientists have rendered the nebula visible in all its grandeur.

The Universe Is Nothing Like The Description of it in The Bible 2

A scientist and a preacher investigate the Universe

Using exoplanets to study dark matter | UCR News | UC Riverside

The second of five blog posts that comprehensively refute any lingering notion that Genesis is the inerrant word of a creator god, rather than the best guesses of primitive Bronze Age pastoralists, who imagined Earth as a small, flat plane beneath a solid dome. This time, the focus is on news from a University of California Riverside (UCR) team, who are using the more than 5,000 exoplanets discovered to date to investigate the mysterious phenomenon of dark matter.

Dark matter poses a challenge for science—not because its existence is in doubt, but because its nature and relationship to the standard model of particle physics remain unknown. We know it exists because it exerts gravitational effects on galaxies and other cosmic structures, yet it does not appear to interact with ordinary matter in any detectable way. What we can infer, however, is that dark matter makes up a substantial fraction of the universe’s total mass.

For science, this is a puzzle to be investigated head-on. For creationists, however, both the confirmed existence of thousands of exoplanets and the reality of dark matter are insurmountable contradictions to their Bible-based cosmology. The Genesis account insists on a tiny, flat Earth, immovably fixed at the centre, covered with a dome, with waters above and below — a description so far removed from reality that it cannot honestly be excused as metaphor, allegory, or poetic licence. It is simply wrong.

Unlike science, which welcomes such problems as opportunities to investigate and refine our understanding, religion turns a blind eye and ploughs on, muttering about “mysterious ways,” “beyond human comprehension,” or simply, “God did it!” — all while smugly pretending the issue has been solved “by faith.”

The Universe Is Nothing Like The Description of it in The Bible 1

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Illustration of an accreting supermassive black hole shrouded by dust in
CAPERS-LRD-z9.

NASA/JPL-Caltech.

Artist representation of CAPERS-LRD-z9, home to the earliest confirmed black hole. The supermassive black hole at its center is believed to be surrounded by a thick cloud of gas, giving the galaxy a distinctive red color.

Image credit: Erik Zumalt, The University of Texas at Austin.

Meet the Universe’s Earliest Confirmed Black Hole: A Monster at the Dawn of Time - UT Austin News - The University of Texas at Austin

Creationists normally assume that scientists are all out to destroy their faith because they hate God and/or worship Satan, so to add to that paranoid delusion, this is the first of five blog posts about very recent discoveries in the fields of Astronomy and cosmology that illustrate the glaring contrast between the real universe and the universe described in Genesis. The Bible describes a small, flat planet fixed and immobile at the centre, covered by a solid dome, with water above and below and stars, sun and moon fixed to the dome as lamps and tiny lights that can shake lose and fall to Earth during earthquakes; the whole thing created just 6,000 - 10,000 years ago from nothing.

The first of these papers is by an international team of astronomers, led by The University of Texas at Austin’s Cosmic Frontier Center who have discovered the most distant black hole ever confirmed. It is in the galaxy CAPERS-LRD-z9 which formed 500 million years after the Big Bang. That places it 13.3 billion years into the past, when our universe was just 3% of its current age. A time line and distance completely off the Bible's scale.

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.

Refuting Creationism - The Difference Between The Bible And Reality - ESA's Picture Of The Week

NGC 2835

Noteworthy nearby spiral | ESA/Hubble

Everywhere science looks, it exposes the widening gulf between the way the Bronze Age authors of the Bible imagined their tiny fragment of the cosmos and the reality we now know. Astronomy, no less than biology, geology, or palaeontology, makes clear just how limited and naïve that worldview was.

Today’s reminder of that contrast comes from the European Space Agency’s “Picture of the Week”: the so-called “nearby” spiral galaxy NGC 2835, lying a mere 35 million light-years away in the constellation Hydra, the Water Snake. In other words, the light now reaching our eyes began its journey 35 million years before the Bible’s writers imagined the universe springing into existence at the command of a magic incantation — יְהִי אוֹר (yehi or! — “Let there be light”), curiously spoken in a language there was no-one else alive to understand.

And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so. And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day. And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so. And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good. (Genesis 1.6-10)

And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also. And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth, And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good.(Genesis 1.16-18)

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Today’s NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope Picture of the Week offers a closeup of a nearby spiral galaxy. The subject is NGC 2835, which lies 35 million light-years away in the constellation Hydra (The Water Snake).

A previous Hubble image of this galaxy was released in 2020, and the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope turned its gaze toward NGC 2835 in recent years as well. Do you see anything different between today’s image of NGC 2835 and the previously released versions? Overall, NGC 2835 looks quite similar in all of these images, with spiral arms dotted with young blue stars sweeping around an oval-shaped centre, where older stars reside.

This image differs from previously released images because it incorporates new data from Hubble that captures a specific wavelength of red light called H-alpha. The regions that are bright in H-alpha emission can be seen along NGC 2835’s spiral arms, where dozens of bright pink nebulae appear like flowers in bloom. Astronomers are interested in H-alpha light because it signals the presence of several different types of nebulae that arise during different stages of a star’s life. Newborn massive stars create nebulae called H II regions that are particularly brilliant sources of H-alpha light, while dying stars can leave behind supernova remnants or planetary nebulae that can also be identified by their H-alpha emission.

By using Hubble’s sensitive instruments to survey 19 nearby galaxies, researchers aim to identify more than 50 000 nebulae. These observations will help to explain how stars affect their birth neighbourhoods through intense starlight and winds.

[Image Description: A spiral galaxy seen face-on. Its centre is a bright glowing yellow. The galaxy’s spiral arms contain sparkling blue stars, pink spots of star formation, and dark threads of dust that follow the arms.]

Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, R. Chandar, J. Lee and the PHANGS-HST team

Refuting Creationism - More On What The Bible's Authors Got Badly Wrong

A sea monster and a Tarantula ESA/Hubble

The enduring mystery is why, when they can read the first few verses of the Bible and compare it to what science reveals about the universe, or planet and the life on it, do so many people still insist it is inerrant historical and scientific truths reveal by an inerrant, omniscience creator god?

There must be some deep psychological need to believe that absurdity to perform the necessary mental gymnastics required to dismiss the science and stick with the evidence free superstitions that the science overthrows, which can only be guessed at? A personal stake, as with the priests and grifters who wring a living out of their credulous followers, maybe? A justification for holding otherwise unacceptable prejudices for which an excuse can be found in the Bible, with careful scrutiny and maybe changing the meanings of a few words here and there, or by applying the brutal tribal social norms that the Bible prescribes? Whatever the cause, the self-delusion needed to retain belief against the deluge of counter-evidence, often caries kudos in religious societies such as in America's 'Bible Belt' states and inner city ghettos where admitting to doubt or even hinting at accepting the science can carry a heavy social penalty.

So, the tidal wave of scientific evidence keeps breaking on the rocks of ignorant stupidity reinforced by sea wall of social coercive control and psychological fear akin to an acute anxiety disorder or theophobic psychosis.

A scene from a star-forming factory shines in this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope Picture of the Week. This Hubble picture captures incredible details in the dusty clouds in a star-forming region called the Tarantula Nebula. What’s possibly the most amazing aspect of this detailed image is that this nebula isn’t even in our galaxy. Instead, it’s in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a dwarf galaxy that is located about 160 000 light-years away in the constellations Dorado and Mensa.

The Large Magellanic Cloud is the largest of the dozens of small satellite galaxies that orbit the Milky Way. The Tarantula Nebula is the largest and brightest star-forming region not just in the Large Magellanic Cloud, but in the entire group of nearby galaxies to which the Milky Way belongs.

The Tarantula Nebula is home to the most massive stars known, some of which are roughly 200 times as massive as our Sun. The scene pictured here is located away from the centre of the nebula, where there is a super star cluster called R136, but very close to a rare type of star called a Wolf–Rayet star. Wolf–Rayet stars are massive stars that have lost their outer shell of hydrogen and are extremely hot and luminous, powering dense and furious stellar winds.

This nebula is a frequent target for Hubble, whose multiwavelength capabilities are critical for capturing sculptural details in the nebula’s dusty clouds. The data used to create this image come from an observing programme called Scylla, named for a multi-headed sea monster from the Greek myth of Ulysses. The Scylla programme was designed to complement another Hubble observing programme called ULLYSSES (Ultraviolet Legacy Library of Young Stars as Essential Standards). ULLYSSES targets massive young stars in the Small and Large Magellanic Clouds, while Scylla investigates the structures of gas and dust that surround these stars.

Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, C. Murray, N. Bartmann (ESA/Hubble)
Music: Stellardrone - Ascent.

So, here is another wave of facts that might just dislodge a tenacious limpet of ignorance:

Creationism Refuted - Don't Laugh At the Bible's Authors, They Were Only Doing Their Best!

NGC 3285B (137 million lightyears from Earth)

NGC 3285B

A spiral galaxy with a disc made up of several swirling arms. Patchy blue clouds of gas are speckled over the disc, where stars are forming and lighting up the gas around them. The core of the galaxy is large and shines brightly gold, while the spiral arms are a paler and faint reddish colour. Neighbouring galaxies - from small, elongated spots to larger swirling spirals - can be seen across the black background.

Swirling spiral in Hydra | ESA/Hubble

Take a grain of rice and hold it between your thumb and forefinger at arm’s length while looking up at the night sky. The patch of sky hidden behind that tiny grain of rice probably contains thousands of galaxies—each with around half a trillion stars. Some of these stars are ancient, nearing the end of their tens-of-millions-of-years lifespans; others are just beginning to form from clouds of gas and debris left behind by older stars that exploded as supernovae.

What lies behind that grain of rice is a tiny fragment of a dynamic, evolving, ever-changing, and expanding universe. A universe of which our ancient prophets were completely unaware as they crafted imaginative descriptions of its origins—descriptions written just a few thousand years ago that portrayed it as a small, unchanging cosmos, with a flat Earth at the centre covered by a dome.

But let’s not be too hard on them. As they stood in their Canaanite pastures, the Earth must indeed have looked flat and small, and the sky would have seemed like the roof of a great tent, adorned with tiny lights and with the sun and moon suspended from it. To them, the Earth appeared fixed and immobile while the dome overhead turned slowly, or perhaps invisible spirits moved the lights across the heavens each night. They didn’t know where the sun went after sunset and imagined the moon might hide in a deep valley during the day.

Creationism Refuted - A Planet Is Born - And The Bible Tale Looks Even More Absurd

This image, taken with ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), shows a spiral disc around the young star HD 135344B.

ESO/F. Maio et al.

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This image, captured with ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), shows a spiral disc around the young star HD 135344B. The image, which was released in 2016, was obtained with the Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet Research (SPHERE) instrument.

Astronomers witness newborn planet sculpting the dust around it | ESO

It takes a special form of self-deluding immunity to facts and reason for creationists to cling to the absurd belief that the Bible’s description of a small universe formed *ex nihilo* in a few days — by nothing more than a few magic words spoken in a language no one was alive to understand — could possibly reflect reality.

Meanwhile, science continues to produce evidence for a very old, immense universe that is constantly changing and evolving, where new stars and planetary systems are being observed as they form. Many of these systems lie so far away that the light from them has taken billions of years to reach us — in stark contrast to the few thousand years allowed by the Biblical narrative.

As I’ve previously explained on this blog, modern astronomy and the wealth of evidence it provides shows that the Biblical account is not merely inaccurate — it is irredeemably wrong. It can’t even be salvaged as metaphor or allegory. It is exactly as wrong as one would expect from people who believed the Earth was a small, flat disc with a dome over it, and that life was created out of soil, fully formed, just a few thousand years ago.

Today, we have yet more evidence that utterly refutes the Bible’s creation myth — and this time, it doesn’t come from events billions of years ago, but from a mere 440 light-years away. That means the light we’re seeing now set off on its journey in 1585 — the same year Sir Walter Raleigh attempted to found the ill-fated Roanoke Colony in North America, and the Anglo-Spanish War broke out.

Astronomers at the European Southern Observatory (ESO), using the Very Large Telescope (VLT), have observed a giant planet forming within the accretion disk of a young star — exactly as the modern theory of planetary formation predicts. In other words, the universe is still forming and evolving, in complete contradiction to the static, one-time-only creation described in Genesis.

Creationism Refuted - Astonomers Witness The Birth Of An Earth-Like Planet

HOPS-315, a baby star where astronomers have observed evidence for the earliest stages of planet formation.

This image shows jets of silicon monoxide (SiO) blowing away from the baby star HOPS-315. The image was obtained with the with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), in which ESO is a partner.

For the first time, astronomers witness the dawn of a new solar system | ESO

One of the more dishonest tactics employed by creationist grifter Ken Ham is his infamous question: "Were you there?" As though the only valid form of evidence is eye-witness testimony. The implication is clear—if you didn’t personally observe a species evolving, then you have no grounds to claim that evolution occurred. And by extension, Ham suggests that his own creationist claims are equally valid and deserve the same consideration as scientific explanations, despite the fact that he wasn't there either.

Of course, this deliberately ignores the many well-documented instances of observed evolution and the overwhelming fossil evidence showing gradual transitions over time.

He applies the same fallacious reasoning to cosmology, dismissing scientific accounts of Earth’s and the solar system’s origins on the grounds that no one was there to witness them. As though this somehow makes the biblical Bronze Age myth—a magical spontaneous assembly in response to divine incantation—equally plausible.

In a typically cynical move, Ham teaches children to parrot this question as a way to shut down scientific discussion. Rather than encouraging curiosity with the far more constructive question, "How do you know that?" — a gateway to learning about observation, extrapolation, and logical reasoning — he arms them with a slogan designed to obstruct inquiry and preserve ignorance, while making them feel smugly superior to the scientists having exposed the 'flaw' in their reasoning.

But now, thanks to cutting-edge astronomical research, science has delivered something akin to “being there” at the birth of a planet.

An international team of researchers, using the ALMA telescope (operated in part by the European Southern Observatory) and the James Webb Space Telescope, have observed what appears to be the formation of an Earth-like planet in the accretion disk of a young star. This is direct evidence supporting the scientific model of planetary formation — the very process that explains the origins of Earth and the solar system.

Predictably, this discovery will require some creative misrepresentation from creationists to dismiss it. No doubt we’ll hear claims that it’s not really the same process that formed Earth, or that it doesn’t disprove Genesis — because defending ancient mythology apparently requires ignoring any modern evidence that makes it look absurdly naive.

Refuting Creationism - What a Tiny Part Of The Universe Looked Like 150,000 Before 'Creation Week' - Hubble Space Telescope

NGC 1786

Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, M. Monelli
Acknowledgement: M. H. Özsaraç

A cluster of stars in space. It’s bright in the centre, where the stars are densely packed together in the cluster’s core, and grows dimmer and more diffuse out to the edges, as the stars give way to the dark background of space. A few orange stars are spread across the cluster, but most are pale, bluish-white points of light. Three large stars with cross-shaped spikes around them lie between us and the cluster

Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, M. Monelli
Acknowledgement: M. H. Özsaraç

Digging up a galactic time capsule | ESA/Hubble

The ESA/Hubble photograph of the week offers a glimpse into a vast and ancient universe—one that starkly contrasts with the primitive cosmology described in the Bible. The image captures a globular cluster in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a small satellite galaxy of the Milky Way, located some 160,000 light-years from Earth. What we’re seeing, then, is a snapshot of this cluster as it was 160,000 years ago—long before the writers of the Bible imagined their god creating a small, flat Earth with a dome over it, to which the sun, moon, and stars were affixed, somewhere in the vicinity of the Canaanite hills.

At the time, the light we’re now seeing began its journey across space, early humans in Africa were evolving the skills and traits that would eventually allow them to leave the continent and colonise new territories. According to [a recent study](https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adi1768), there had been earlier migration attempts northward, but these failed to establish lasting populations for reasons still debated by researchers.

What this photograph shows us—quite literally—is a universe that predates the biblical account of creation by well over 150,000 years, and a cosmos that bears no resemblance to the geocentric, dome-covered world described in Genesis. While we can’t know exactly how our early ancestors viewed the night sky, their understanding was likely not very different from that of the later Bronze Age storytellers who wrote the biblical texts. Both were constrained by limited technology, and neither had any inkling of galaxies, light-years, or cosmic timescales.

Creationism Refuted - Science Has Found Evidence of Life On A Planet Outside the Solar System

Artist's impression of the exoplanet K2-18b.

Credit: A. Smith/N. Mandhusudhan

Artists light-hearted impression of life on K2-18b.

AI-generated image

Strongest hints yet of biological activity outside the solar system

The day long anticipated by those who understand both science and theology may finally have arrived. Scientists have detected—with a 99.7% probability—the unmistakable signs of life on the distant exoplanet K2-18b.

Although this degree of certainty doesn't yet satisfy the rigorous standards of science, which typically require a confidence level of greater than 99.99994%, researchers anticipate surpassing that threshold within the next 16 to 24 hours (as of this article's publication).

The theological implications of this discovery are profound. If confirmed, as now seems highly likely, it would indicate that Earth is not unique as a cradle of life, directly challenging biblical narratives which position Earth exclusively as the divinely chosen habitat for humanity. The Bible remains thoroughly anthropocentric and geocentric, offering no indication that life or divine creation occurred elsewhere in the comparatively small and flat universe it describes.

For creationists, this finding significantly undermines their long-standing argument—summarised by the simplistic slogan, "You can't get life from non-life"—which claims life could only arise through divine intervention. The presence of life on K2-18b demonstrates that life can indeed emerge naturally under the right conditions, suggesting such events may be far more common across the universe than creationist arguments would allow. Indeed, with potentially trillions of planets sharing Earth-like conditions, life may not only be possible but prevalent.

This discovery also challenges creationist claims about Earth's position in the so-called 'Goldilocks zone'. Creationists frequently argue that Earth's precise placement around the Sun proves divine intent. However, the existence of life-supporting conditions on K2-18b shows that such habitable zones are not rare, singular phenomena but commonplace, existing around countless other stars across the cosmos.

The discovery, by astronomers, led by the University of Cambridge, using data from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), is the subject of an open access paper in The Astrophysical Journal Letters and is described in a Cambridge University press release by Sarah Collins:

Refuting Creationism - Scientists Confirm A Simple Model Of The Universe's First 380,000 Years

Credit: ACT Collaboration; ESA/Planck Collaboration.

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Analysing the cosmic microwave background in high definition has enabled researchers to confirm a simple model of the universe, ruling out many competing alternatives.

Credit: ACT Collaboration; ESA/Planck Collaboration.

Telescope observations reveal universe’s hours-old baby pictures, scientists say - News - Cardiff University

Creationists today face a distinct challenge compared to their predecessors from one or two centuries ago. They must continually devise ways to ignore or dismiss the relentless flow of scientific evidence disproving their beliefs, while simultaneously rationalizing the complete lack of evidence supporting claims of a young Earth, special creation through supernatural means, or the existence of a creator capable of producing a universe from nothing.

Individuals with a normal degree of intellectual honesty, when confronted with overwhelming evidence against their beliefs and a lack of supportive evidence, would naturally see this as grounds for doubt and reassessment. Creationists, however, appear undeterred, convinced that their personal beliefs override scientific evidence without the necessity for evidential justification.

Compounding their difficulties, scientists recently announced a significant advancement: they have mapped the cosmic microwave background radiation—the residual echo of the Big Bang—in unprecedented detail. Utilizing data from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) collaboration, this new research reveals conditions in the universe as they existed only 380,000 years after the Big Bang, roughly 13.8 billion years ago.

On the scale of a human lifetime, this is the equivalent of a photograph of a now middle-aged person, taken one hour after they were born, and, in a confirmation of the principle of Occam's Razor, the simplest model is conformed as the correct model.

What Our Prophets Never Told Us - Because Our Prophets Hadn't Got A Clue

Euclid’s view of the Cat’s Eye Nebula

ESA - Euclid opens data treasure trove, offers glimpse of deep fields

A point I never tire of making because it contrasts so vividly what the authors of the Bible thought the Universe was like and what science is showing us it is really like, is the ludicrously naive description of a small, flat planet with a dome over it, with the moon, sun and starts attached to the dome.

Don't take my word for it. Open your Bible and read the first few pages:

And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so. And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day. And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so. And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good. (Genesis 1.6-10)

And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also. And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth, And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good.(Genesis 1.16-18)

How the Bible's authors saw the Universe.

Now compare that with the view of just a small fragment of the universe that the European Space Agency's space telescope, Euclid, has revealed today:

Refuting Creationism - Looking Into The Past - To 14 Billion Years Before 'Creation Week'

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F770W–F277W–F115W shown as an RGB false-colour mosaic
at redshift \(z=14.3{2}_{-0.20}^{+0.08}\)¹¹

Helton, J.M., Rieke, G.H., Alberts, S. et al. (2025)

James Webb Space Telescope reveals unexpected complex chemistry in primordial galaxy | University of Arizona News

It's one thing for creationists to dismiss evidence of life on Earth hundreds of millions, or even a billion or two years before the so-called 'Creation Week' by misrepresenting dating methods and making the absurd claim that the Universe is so finely tuned for life that altering just one parameter slightly would render life impossible, while also claiming that radioactive decay rates were much higher during 'Creation Week', making radiometric dating inaccurate by orders of magnitude.

However, it's quite another to argue that the speed of light was much slower in the past, which would mean that objects appearing to be billions of light-years away are actually much younger than we observe them today.

But a ludicrous and false argument which is not easy to spot by the scientifically illiterate fools that creationists target, was seen by creationists as any reason not to try to get away with it on a different audience.

So, if they don't simply ignore this discovery, it will be interesting to see which lies the creation cult uses to dismiss it. It is the discovery of a galaxy, designated JADES-GS-z14-0) from just 300 million years post Big Bang, discovered by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).

This discovery, along with the fact that it is chemically complex, challenges the standard model for galaxy formation as well as the synthesis of 'heavy' elements (i.e., heavier that hydrogen, helium and lithium) because JADES-GS-z14-0 shows evidence of substantial quantities of oxygen. The standard model explains that heavier elements are formed in the end-stages of the life of a sun when its hydrogen supply has all been used up and it collapses under its own gravity. This high gravity forces helium nuclei together to form the heavier elements. When the sun finally explodes in a supernova these elements are thrown into space supplying the next generation os stars with these higher elements.