Creationism Refuted - 40,000-Year-Old Woolly Mammoth RNA

One of Yuka’s legs, illustrating the exceptional preservation of the lower part of the leg after the skin had been removed, which enabled recovery of ancient RNA molecules.

Photo: Valeri Plotnikov.

The world’s oldest RNA extracted from woolly mammoth - Stockholm University

Scientists led by researchers from Stockholm University, Denmark, have just announced that they have successfully extracted RNA from 40,000-year-old mammoth remains — the oldest RNA ever obtained. This shows that not only DNA but also RNA can persist for extraordinary lengths of time under the right conditions, adding yet more to the mountain of evidence that undermines creationist claims. With preserved RNA, researchers can even reconstruct the DNA that originally served as its template, effectively giving scientists two independent avenues for recovering genetic information.

One of the joys of debunking creationism — a childish superstition when set beside the rigour of evolutionary biology — is the sheer abundance of evidence. Almost every peer-reviewed paper in biology, geology, palaeontology, cosmology, and the other natural sciences demonstrates, in one way or another, the reality of evolution and the age of the Earth, and presents verifiable results that creationism simply cannot accommodate.

Even psychology lends its weight. Not only does it support an evolutionary account of human cognition and intelligence, but it also helps explain why creationists cling so tightly to demonstrably false beliefs. For many, rejecting evidence becomes a test of loyalty or personal strength, with scientific data treated as part of a supposed conspiracy designed to shake their faith. If they can cling to their faith despite the overwhelming contrary evidence, then they must really believe it.

Adding this new discovery to the existing evidence is rather like tossing a pebble onto Mount Everest and expecting creationists to accept the mountain’s existence because a pebble lies on it. Such acceptance is impossible for the committed creationist, since that would mean yielding to the ‘evil conspiracy’ and admitting that their favourite holy book is not a perfect, divinely authored scientific text, but a compilation of Bronze Age and Early Iron Age mythology, created by people doing their best to explain a world they did not yet understand.

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.

Refuting Creationism - LUCA Had Evolved 4.2 Billion Years Ago And Already Suffered From Viral Parasites

A digital representation illustrating how LUCA was already under attack from viruses even at 4.2 billion years ago.

Science Graphic Design

A digital representation illustrating how LUCA was already under attack from viruses even at 4.2 billion years ago.

Science Graphic Design

July: LUCA | News and features | University of Bristol

Contrary to the Bible's laughable model of a 10,000-year-old universe consisting of a small flat planet with a dome over it, containing nothing that was unknown to the Bronze Age hill farmers whose best guess became part of the Hebrew creation myth, scientists at the University of Bristol have shown that the last universal common ancestor of all living organisms (LUCA) had evolved within 400 million years of Earth forming some 4.6 billion years ago.

They have calculated that LUCA was about as complex as a prokaryote, had already evolved an immune system and was engaged in an arms race with viruses.

Unitelligent Design - Using The Theory Of Evolution To Create Better Enzymes

Scientists devise algorithm to engineer improved enzymes - News & Events | Trinity College Dublin

Scientists at Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland have discovered that using the natural algorithm of evolution by natural selection is the best way to improve the efficiency of enzymes in terms of the products of the processes they catalyse.

This begs an embarrassing question for creationists: why can enzymes produced by a perfect designer be improved upon?

The answer of course, is that they weren't designed by a perfect designer; they were designed by a utilitarian evolutionary process in which whatever is better than what went before will be retained and the only reason to improve beyond the sub-optimal that works well enough, is to have some other selectors driving it towards ever greater fitness. There is no 'ideal' nor any process for comparing what is against this idea and trying harder, as there would be if there was an intelligence guiding the process.