Malevolent Designer - How a Hostile Planet Can Kill With Deadly Toxins

Satellite image of Lake Erie.

Image credit: NOAA Great Lakes CoastWatch MODIS Satellite Image
July 6, 2020

Satellite image of Lake Erie.

Image credit: NOAA Great Lakes CoastWatch MODIS Satellite Image – July 6, 2020

Bacterial villain behind Lake Erie’s ‘potent toxin’ unveiled by U-M study | University of Michigan News

You would think that a planet designed specifically for humans would be safe—one with an abundant supply of clean water to drink and wholesome food to eat.

Sadly, that is far from the case. As recent research has shown, on top of the pathogens and parasites that abound in nature—and which seem almost purpose-built to cause suffering, not just to humans but to virtually every other life form—there now exists yet another threat. Wherever you look in the natural world, every species has one or more parasites adapted to live in or on it, and even parasites themselves often fall prey to their own parasites. To this long list we can now add a group of cyanobacteria capable of turning fresh water into a deadly neurotoxin during warm weather. It is almost as though Earth wasn’t designed by an intelligent, benevolent creator after all.

In science, this is what’s known as a falsified hypothesis. You begin with an idea—in this case, that Earth was designed for humans by an omnibenevolent, omniscient deity—then you consider what predictions would logically follow. One such prediction might be that a planet designed for human well-being would contain no natural hazards or harmful organisms that routinely inflict suffering. Then you examine the evidence. If the facts contradict the prediction, the hypothesis is falsified.

And that is precisely what the existence of harmful organisms does. The evidence directly contradicts the creationist claim of an intelligently designed planet optimally crafted for humans. This does not, in itself, disprove the existence of such a deity; rather, it falsifies the specific claim that the deity is all-loving and all-knowing, or that it intentionally designed Earth and its myriad pathogens and parasites. The alternative is that the god described in the Bible and Qur’an is not as advertised—or does not exist and played no role in designing the world. The pathogens and parasites appear to have arisen from entirely different processes while this supposed designer either looked away or was not involved at all. Such outcomes are not the work of a benevolent creator.

In fact, the deity’s reputation would fare better if it didn’t exist, because then it could not be held responsible.

Malevolent Design - How Breast Cancer is 'Designed' to Survive

Cell culture plates in the Roeder lab where scientists recently studied gene expression in breast cancer.

Credit: Lori Chertoff.

The Rockefeller University » This molecular switch helps cancer cells survive harsh conditions

Researchers at The Rockefeller University's Laboratory of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology have uncovered the mechanism that enables breast cancer cells not only to withstand environmental stress, but to turn it to their advantage. They have just published their findings in Nature Chemical Biology.

For ID creationists, these findings pose yet another challenge—one typically ignored or waved away as the consequence of ‘sin’, neatly exposing the Discovery Institute’s attempt to persuade US legislators and educators that ID is a genuine scientific alternative. No real science explains inconvenient evidence by invoking fundamentalist doctrine or unevidenced forces inherited from ancient superstition.

The Rockefeller University team has shown that breast cancer cells can override a regulatory factor that normally controls gene expression. The transcription of DNA into mature messenger RNA involves the enzyme RNA polymerase II (POL II), whose activity depends on around 30 subunits. One of these, MED1, normally carries acetyl groups. Without those acetyl groups, MED1 loses its ability to regulate POL II, allowing the enzyme to transcribe genes that help cancer cells survive. Environmental stress deacetylates MED1. In essence, conditions such as low oxygen or elevated temperature—deadly to normal cells—can instead make cancer cells more resilient.

How Science Work - (And Why Creationism Fails) - Changing Our Minds When the Evidence Changes

Life reconstruction of Wadisuchus kassabi in Late Cretaceous Egypt, depicting an adult seizing a lungfish in a wetland while a juvenile looks on. The scene reflects the rich Quseir Formation ecosystem, complete with turtles and dense vegetation revealed by fossil evidence.

Credit: Nathan Dehaut – Artwork / MUVP – Scientific supervision

A New Global Discovery by Mansoura University's Vertebrate Paleontology Center - Mansoura University, Egypt

When scientists from Mansoura University, Egypt, recently announced in the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society of London the discovery of an 80-million-year-old marine crocodyliform unearthed in Egypt’s Western Desert, the headlines hailed it as “the earliest known member of Dyrosauridae”, a forgotten branch of ancient crocodile-relatives adapted for coastal and marine life.

Found in mid-Campanian deposits of the Quseir Formation, Wadisuchus kassabi is represented by partial skulls and jaws from several individuals — enough to show that by this stage dyrosaurids already possessed the long, narrow snout and needle-sharp teeth suited for grabbing fish or turtles. What makes this find so important is not merely the age — though pushing the dyrosaurid fossil record back by several million years is notable — but the evolutionary implications and what it tells us about the scientific method. The cranial anatomy of Wadisuchus exhibits a transitional mixture of primitive and derived features: reduced premaxillary alveoli, modified jaw-occlusion patterns, and dorsally positioned nostrils for surface-breathing, reflecting a transitional form on the path from earlier crocodyliforms toward specialised marine dyrosaurids. Phylogenetic analyses consistently recover Wadisuchus as the basal (earliest-diverging) dyrosaurid — pushing the origin and early diversification of the family deeper into the Cretaceous.

This discovery underscores a fundamental truth of modern science: claims are not fixed dogma, but provisional explanations always subject to revision in the light of new evidence. Just as Wadisuchus reshapes our view of when and where dyrosaurids emerged, other fossil finds have repeatedly nudged back the origins of major vertebrate lineages, re-drawn phylogenetic trees, or revealed unexpected ancestral forms. In this way the scientific method resembles nothing so much as a continual conversation with Nature — a conversation always open to challenge, refinement, or outright contradiction when the data demand it.

Unlike creationists, whom recent research has shown, believe not changing their mind is a sign of strength of character and commitment to their 'faith', scientists know that the real test of character is a willingness to accept the evidence and the humility to allow it to dictate opinion.

Incidentally, it might come as a shock to creationists that a marine fossil was found in the Sahara Desert and that Earth was not created as it just a few thousand years ago, but has changed significantly over the millions of years, including periods of 'green Sahara'. As someone who has flown in a small plane over the Egyptian desert, I can attest to the existence of dry riverbeds and feeder streams in that desert, even though today rain is almost unknown in the vicinity of Luxor.

Incompetent Design - How Sunlight Turns Off Cancer Protection in Skin

Schematic of the role of YTHDF2 in regulating U6 snRNA decay and interaction with TLR3 to control UVB-induced inflammation and tumorigenesis.

Seungwon Yang, Yan-Hong Cui, Haixia Li, et al.(2025), Fig.7 P

New study reveals how controlling sunburn-triggered inflammation may prevent skin cancer - UChicago Medicine

Researchers at the University of Chicago have uncovered how prolonged exposure to ultraviolet (UV) radiation can lead to skin cancer by disabling a vital protective mechanism in skin cells. They have just published their findings, open access, in Nature Communications.

This protective mechanism relies on a protein called YTHDF2, which plays a key role in regulating RNA metabolism and maintaining cellular health. Sunlight degrades this protein, removing that safeguard and allowing damage to accumulate.

For advocates of Intelligent Design (ID) creationism, this research presents several awkward questions—questions they will either ignore or attribute to ‘sin’.

First, why is this protection needed at all? If life were intentionally and intelligently designed, why would RNA metabolism require an additional, failure-prone layer of regulation to keep cells functioning? Why not design it to be robust in the first place?

Second, why create a system so fragile that sunlight—an unavoidable feature of life on Earth—can disable it? Designing a repair mechanism that breaks down precisely when it is needed most hardly inspires confidence in the designer’s competence.

And then there is the broader problem: ID creationism equates its designer with the supposedly omniscient and omnipotent god of the Bible or Qur’an. If that is true, why design a mechanism that predictably causes cancer? Was this an act of malevolence or oversight?

If YTHDF2 were flawless and impervious to degradation, Discovery Institute fellow William A. Dembski would no doubt present it as an example of “complex specified information,” a supposed indicator of intelligent purpose. But its vulnerability raises uncomfortable possibilities: Is this an unsuccessful attempt to patch over earlier design flaws in RNA metabolism? A sign of competing designers beyond the control of ID’s putative omnipotent creator? Or evidence that the designer is actively introducing harm and suffering?

The answer, of course, is that this problem arises because the human body is not the product of intelligent design at all, but of a long evolutionary process that modifies existing processes and structures to produce workable—though often imperfect—solutions. Evolution favours whatever improves short-term reproductive success, even if it introduces compromises and sub-optimal outcomes that undermine long-term survival and health. These sub-optimal systems then drive the evolution of an additional layers of complexity to minimise the results of failure.

Like other organism's the human body is full of these examples of evolutionary compromises and sub-optimal solutions that cause diseases and health problems that illustrate the difference between an intelligently designed system and an evolved system. Looked at in detail, the human body is evidence against intelligent design and strongly supports the Theory of Evolution, as I show in my book, The Body of Evidence: How the Human Body Refutes Intelligent Design.

Refuting Creationism - How Butterfly Genomes Confirm Darwin's Conclusion

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1,000 butterfly and moth genomes to investigate evolution, climate change resilience, and tackle food security issues

Geneticists at the Wellcome Sanger Institute have just completed the sequencing of 1,000 European butterflies and moths. Their results are already feeding into research papers, such as that by Asia E. Hoile, Peter W. H. Holland & Peter O. Mulhair, in BMC Genomics. The Wellcome Sanger team have published their results in Trends in Ecology & Evolution

In 1858, Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace proposed the theory of evolution by natural selection, or as they described it, the origin of species by the preservation of favoured races. Darwin then elaborated on that central idea and concluded that the ‘tree of life’ would branch in ways consistent with diversification from common origins.

Creationists, on the other hand, claim all species were created by magic in their present form just a few thousand years ago, with no evolution and no common ancestry.

Darwin's Tree of Life sketch

Neither Darwin nor Wallace knew anything about DNA or genomes, or that mutations in DNA would become ‘favoured’ in particular environmental niches, driving diversification. They developed their ideas purely from the observable morphological and behavioural similarities and differences among species.

So, if the creationists are right, what should we see in these 1,000 genome sequences?

Refuting Creationism - Why Would a Creator Create Life Around Hydrothermal Vents?

Discovery in the Deep Sea: Unique Habitat at Hydrothermal Vents

Here is something for creationists to run away from: why would a creator god who supposedly made the entire universe as a place for humans – especially American humans – to live, and arranged everything else for their benefit, create creatures in an environment so hostile that no human could survive there without specialised modern equipment? And how exactly did Noah collect two of each of the countless species that live there in great profusion, only to place them on the Ark and somehow maintain the extreme conditions they require?

The simple answer, as underscored by these discoveries, is that the whole tale is a childish fairy story. The organisms inhabiting the extreme conditions of deep-ocean trenches evolved to live there over millions of years, entirely independent of any usefulness to humans, whose existence is of supreme indifference to them.

The conditions described come from an open-access paper in Scientific Reports by an international team of oceanographers and marine biologists led by the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research in Kiel, Germany. They detail a unique environment 1,300 metres below the surface on a flank of Conical Seamount in the western Pacific, off Lihir Island in Papua New Guinea. What makes it unique is not simply that it is a hydrothermal vent, but that it is coupled with a cold methane seep from deep sediment layers. Hot, mineral-rich water and cold, hydrocarbon-rich methane gas rise along the same pathways, producing vent fluids filled with bubbles of cold methane.

The result is a unique ecosystem comprising dense fields of the mussel Bathymodiolus, along with tube worms, shrimp, amphipods, and striking purple sea cucumbers coating the rocks so completely that the underlying surfaces are entirely concealed.

Before methane-producing sediments accumulated, the hydrothermal fluids were even hotter, leaving behind tell-tale deposits of gold and silver, as well as antimony, mercury, and arsenic. The various lifeforms have adapted to thrive amid these chemicals, some of which are highly toxic.

Hydrothermal vents are among the most extraordinary environments on Earth — geochemical oases on the seafloor where life thrives without sunlight, fuelled instead by chemical energy. They overturn several once-assumed “rules” of biology and offer important clues about evolution, extremophiles, and possibly even the origins of life.~

Unintelligent Design - The Design Blunder That Causes Many Diseases - Malevolence or Incompetence?

Glutathionylated mtDNA

AI-generated image (ChatGPT 5.1)

New type of DNA damage found in our cells’ powerhouses | UCR News | UC Riverside

Scientists led by the University of California, Riverside (UC Riverside) have identified a previously unknown form of DNA damage in mitochondria that may underlie a wide range of disorders linked to mitochondrial dysfunction. Their findings have just been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

Mitochondria contain their own DNA (mtDNA), which is essential for the proper functioning of these organelles that convert glucose into ATP, supplying cells with the energy needed to power metabolic processes.

The culprit is a large molecule, glutathionylate, which attaches to DNA and, if left unrepaired, can cause mutations. Researchers at UC Riverside, working with colleagues at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, found that glutathionylated mtDNA accumulates in mitochondria at levels up to 80 times higher than in the cell nucleus. In short, the nuclear DNA repair system is vastly more efficient than its mitochondrial counterpart.

For advocates of Intelligent Design (ID), this discovery—if they understood it rather than dismissing it as part of an imagined conspiracy to undermine their faith—creates an acute theological problem. If we temporarily grant the core assumption of ID creationism, that a supernatural designer indistinguishable from the allegedly omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent god of the Bible and Qur’an is responsible for the design of mitochondrial DNA and its replication machinery, then only two coherent conclusions follow:

• the designer is incompetent, having failed to produce fault-free mtDNA and an adequate repair mechanism, despite supposedly managing this for nuclear DNA; or
• the designer could have produced fault-free mtDNA but chose instead to create error-prone mtDNA and a weak repair process, thereby intentionally designing disease and suffering—in other words, malevolence.

Moreover, the very need for a repair system betrays the absence of omnipotent, intelligent engineering. It is characteristic instead of the layered complexity produced by cumulative, unplanned evolutionary processes, which inevitably yield sub-optimal compromises.

The notion of an omniscient designer also rules out the excuse that the harmful consequences were unforeseeable. An all-knowing creator would have foreseen them; yet, according to ID logic, the designer implemented them regardless—designing mitochondrial DNA to fail and cause disease.

Thus, a biological phenomenon that fits seamlessly within the framework of evolutionary theory becomes an insurmountable theological obstacle for ID advocates, who must contort the evidence to suit a predetermined conclusion while catering to a scientifically illiterate and credulous audience.

Unintelligent Design - Higher Yielding Wheat - If Humans Can Do it, Why Didn't Creationism's 'Desiger'?

By kallerna - Own work CC BY-SA 4.0, Link

Wheat That Makes Its Own Fertilizer | UC Davis

Scientists at the University of California, Davis (UC Davis) have developed a strain of wheat capable of producing its own nitrate fertiliser, thereby increasing yields and reducing the amount of artificial nitrate that needs to be applied to fields. They achieved this by harnessing the nitrogen-fixing abilities of common soil bacteria that convert atmospheric nitrogen into nitrates in a form plants can absorb. Their research is published, open access, in the Plant Biotechnology Journal.

We seem to have been here before, observing how a food crop or domesticated animal could have been far more productive or better suited to human needs had it been given a more efficient “design” to begin with. In fact, virtually all our cultivated plants and domesticated animals have been profoundly reshaped by human selection, using the same biological principles as natural selection: favouring advantageous genes and eliminating those that are less so.

The new wheat strain produces nutrients that support anaerobic bacteria similar to those found in the root nodules of legumes such as peas and beans. These bacteria thrive in the low-oxygen environment of specialised nodules, where they fix nitrogen for the host plant. Wheat, however, lacks such nodules, and attempts to transfer nodule-forming genes from legumes have so far been unsuccessful. Instead, this new approach encourages nitrogen-fixing bacteria to live in close association with the wheat root system, effectively bypassing the need for nodules altogether.

This raises an awkward question for Intelligent Design creationists who equate their designer deity with the allegedly omnibenevolent, omniscient, omnipotent god of the Bible, Torah, and Qur’an. Why didn’t this deity simply give crops like wheat and other staple foods the genes the bacteria use, or at least give them the genes required to host nitrogen-fixing bacteria directly, rather than devising an unnecessarily complex symbiosis only some plants can use? And if, for some reason, these were impossible, why didn’t it create a system resembling the one now designed by the UC Davis researchers?

As with so much in nature that ID proponents like to cite as evidence of complexity—and therefore design—closer inspection typically reveals solutions that are suboptimal, needlessly intricate, and often wasteful. As I point out in my book, The Unintelligent Designer: Refuting The Intelligent Design Hoax, these are not hallmarks of intelligent engineering, which should aim for minimal complexity and maximal efficiency. Instead, they are entirely consistent with an undirected evolutionary process that tinkers with what already exists, with no foresight and with success measured solely by reproductive output.

The simple fact is that humans, using intelligence, can and do devise more efficient, sensible solutions than those found in nature—as the UC Davis team has demonstrated. Such solutions ought to have been obvious to any genuinely omniscient designer.

This leaves creationists with a stark dilemma: must they conclude that their designer god is incompetent, unable to anticipate future needs, or malevolent in withholding solutions that would benefit humanity? Or is it more plausible that these biological systems arose through the natural evolutionary processes they insist “don’t work”?

Unintelligent Design - The Defect that Causes Alzheimer's - Incompetence or Malevolence?

Exosomes

Researchers discover cell defect linked to the development of Alzheimer’s

Researchers at Aarhus University in Denmark have identified a defect in the production of exosomes within cells, linked to a mutation found in patients with dementia. Their findings are published in the journal of the Alzheimer’s Association, *Alzheimer’s & Dementia*.

Advocates of Intelligent Design argue that all genetic information must originate from an intelligent agent, claiming that anything both complex and specified cannot arise without deliberate design. Their proposed designer is invariably indistinguishable from the god of the Bible and Qur’an: an all-knowing, all-powerful and supposedly benevolent creator.

What they never address is why a system attributed to such a being should fail at all—let alone in ways that cause profound suffering. It is akin to a human engineer producing an aircraft with engines that randomly fail or wings that detach mid-flight. And because this designer is held to be omniscient, the failure cannot be inadvertent. It must have been foreseen and deliberately incorporated, making such mutations part of the intended plan rather than unfortunate accidents.

Following the internal logic of ID creationism, Alzheimer’s dementia would therefore count as an intended outcome—meeting William Dembski’s own criteria for “complex specified genetic information”. This provides yet another instance, alongside the cancer example I discussed recently, of biological processes that appear designed to destroy. It sits comfortably among the many parasites and pathogens explored in The Malevolent Designer: Why Nature’s God is Not Good, all pointing to a distinctly malign pattern in the supposed “design”.

ID proponents typically fall back on blaming “The Fall”, implying the existence of another creative force beyond the control of their designer. This manoeuvre only further undermines their claim that ID is a scientific enterprise rather than creationism thinly disguised, since it relies on biblical literalism to rescue the argument from the conclusion of an incompetent or malevolent designer—an outcome that is theologically awkward and, for many believers, outright heretical.

Malevolent Design - How Some Cancers Are Designed to Win - Incompetence or Malevolence?

Cancer cells dividing

Shapeshifting cancers’ masters, unmasked | Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory

Scientists led by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) Professor Christopher Vakoc have uncovered a mechanism by which certain cancers manage to evade modern medical treatments: they can disguise themselves as ordinary cells from entirely different tissues, such as those of the skin. In two recent papers — one in Nature Communications and another in Cell Reports — Vakoc’s team identify the proteins that determine whether pancreatic cancer cells retain their pancreatic identity or slip into a skin-cell-like state. They also highlight a different set of proteins with a pivotal role in tuft-cell lung cancer.

Proteins, of course, are specified by genetic information, and if that information is altered, so too is the protein’s function. In the language of ID creationists, proteins are products of “complex, specified genetic information”.

This presents intelligent design creationists with a familiar problem — one they usually address, as with parasites and pathogens, by ignoring it and relying on the scientific illiteracy of their followers. If complex, specified information were genuinely evidence of an intelligent designer, then that same designer would be implicated in the origin of the proteins that maintain and diversify cancers. Their “specified information” is neither less complex nor less specific than the proteins involved in cognition, immunity, or embryonic development.

Only by refusing to define “complex specificity” in scientific terms — or to explain how it might be distinguished from information that is supposedly non-complex or non-specified — do ID advocates manage to maintain the fiction that all beneficial traits are the work of their designer, while harmful traits must arise from some other agency. This selective attribution, based entirely on subjective human preference, underscores the religious foundations of intelligent design creationism and its distance from genuine science.

The team’s findings are summarised in a Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory news release by Jen A. Miller.

Refuting Creationism - Kissing Goodbye to Childish Superstitions

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Ape ancestors and Neanderthals likely kissed, new analysis finds | University of Oxford

Researchers have shown that kissing emerged early in the human evolutionary lineage, and that Neanderthals, along with other close relatives in our tangled family tree, almost certainly kissed as well.

Kissing is an intriguing behaviour, widely assumed to serve important social functions that outweigh the obvious drawbacks of exchanging microbes and viruses.

The team, led by Dr Matilda Brindle, an evolutionary biologist in Oxford University’s Department of Biology, based their conclusion on the principle that when two species on separate branches of the primate family tree share a behaviour, it was likely present in their common ancestor. This approach indicates that kissing arose among the ancestors of the great apes between 21.5 and 16.9 million years ago. Their findings were published very recently in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior.

Creationists who insist that evolutionary biologists are abandoning the Theory of Evolution—a framework on which this analysis directly relies—may be alarmed to find no evidence of such a retreat. Quite the opposite: the observation that a trait with both costs and benefits will persist when the benefits outweigh the costs neatly explains the evolutionary retention of kissing across several related species.

Creationism Refuted - Unlike Creationists Chimpanzees Change Their Mind When the Evidence Changes

Ngamba Island Chimpanzees, Uganda

Photo: Sabana Gonzalez, UC Berkeley

New psychology study suggests chimpanzees might be rational thinkers | Letters & Science

A recent study has shown that chimpanzees, unlike creationists, are capable of rationally revising their beliefs when presented with new information – another trait they share with most humans.

Creationists, by contrast, tend to take pride in refusing to change their minds. For them, admitting error would be a sign of weakness: a capitulation to the supposedly corrupting influence of scientific evidence that threatens to lure them away from the ‘truth’. In their circular logic, it must be true because they believe it, and they believe it because it is true - a circular logic designed to make intellectual bankruptcy look like a virtue called 'faith'.

Chimpanzees, unburdened by irrational superstition or egos in need of constant reinforcement, appear far more interested in being right than in demonstrating unwavering devotion to a demonstrably wrong belief system.

Interestingly, the chimpanzees can do something human children do by the age of about 4. The ability to asses evidence and base opinions on it, is, of course, the basis of science - which may be the reason creationists struggle to understand it and reject evidence as the basis of opinion, believing themselves to be capable of simply knowing the truth, like a child below the age of 4. So we have a continuum of increasing intellectual ability and integrity from toddlers and creationists through chimpanzees and 4-year-old humans to human adults. The study, carried out by a large research team that included UC Berkeley Psychology Postdoctoral Researcher Emily Sanford, UC Berkeley Psychology Professor Jan Engelmann, and Utrecht University Psychology Professor Hanna Schleihauf, has just been published in Science and is summarised in a University of California Berkeley news item.

Creationism Refuted - Doggy Dos For Creationists

Dogs 10,000 years ago roamed with bands of humans and came in all shapes and sizes

This is the second article in The Conversation which incidentally refutes creationism and shows us why the Bible must be dismissed as a source book for science and history on the basis that, when compared to reality, it's stories are not just wrong; they're not even close.

This one deals with essentially that same subject as my last past - the evolution of all the different dog varieties since wolves were first domesticated some 11,000 years ago. Together with all the other canids that creationists insist are all dog 'kind', including several foxes, several subspecies of wolf, coyotes, jackals, and African wild dogs, the hundreds of different recognised breeds of dog could not conceivably have arisen from a single pair and the resulting genetic bottleneck just a few thousand years ago. Moreover, we are expected to believe that in that short space of time, all the canids evolved from being vegetarian (with canine teeth, meat-cutting incisors and bone-crushing molars, apparently) to being obligate carnivores.

As well as the paper that was the subject of my last blog post, this The Conversation article mentions another paper, also published in Science by palaeontologists led by Shao-Jie Zhang from the Kunming Institute of Zoology, China. This paper draws on DNA evidence from ancient Eastern Eurasian dogs.

The article by Kylie M. Cairns, a Research Fellow in Canid and Wildlife Genomics, UNSW Sydney, Australia and Professor Melanie Fillios of the Department of Archaeology and Palaeoanthropology, University of New England, USA. Their article is reprinted here under a Creative |Commons licence, reformatted for stylistic consistency.

How We Know The Bible Was Wrong - Creationists Dogged by DNA And Fossil Evidence

Sharma the Wolf

From The Girl and the Wolf,
By Bill Hounslow

Dogs 10,000 years ago roamed with bands of humans and came in all shapes and sizes

This is the first of two articles published in The Conversation concerning the origins of domestic dogs and the myriad different breeds that have been developed under human agency since wolves were first domesticated. Neither of them is good news for creationists for several reason.

Firstly, the DNA evidence points to a history much older that the simple tale origin tale in the Bible allows for - a history stretching back some 11,000 years or more to before creationists believe anything existed.

Secondly, and this is something that I have found creationists will always run away from - if God supposedly created all animals for the benefit of humans, why have we had to modify them to such an extent that in many cases they are scarcely recognisable from their wild ancestors? Did God not know what we would use them for or what designs would be best suited for different purposes?

The answer of course, is that the Bible stories are just that - stories. They were never intended to be written down and bound together in a book later declared, by people with a personal stake who needed a spurious 'God-given' authority to take control of society, to be the inerrant word of a creator god and therefore definitive history and science textbooks. Their complete misalignment with observable reality should be more than a clue that the latter is wrong.

This article by two of the authors involved in the first study - Carly Ameen, a lecturer in Bioarchaeology, University of Exeter and Allowen Evin, CNRS Research Director, Bioarchaeology, Université de Montpellier. Together with a large group of colleagues they have just published their study in Science. Their article in The Conversation is reprinted here under a Creative Commons licence, reformatted for stylistic consistency.

How Science Works - Not Abandonning Evolution - Refining Our Understanding Of It

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

A new theory of molecular evolution | University of Michigan News

A new paper in Nature Ecology & Evolution by a research team at the University of Michigan, led by evolutionary biologist, Professor Jianzhi Zhang, comprehensively, but incidentally, refutes several common creationist claims — such as that mainstream biologists are abandoning evolution because it supposedly cannot explain the evidence, that all mutations are harmful, so cannot underpin evolution, and that scientists are prevented from publishing findings that challenge orthodoxy.

The study examines a key assumption of the Neutral Theory of Molecular Evolution — namely that most amino-acid substitutions are neutral (neither beneficial nor strongly deleterious) and fix by drift rather than selection. The authors report experimental data showing that in mutational-scanning assays of over 12,000 amino-acid-altering mutations across 24 genes, >1 % of mutations were beneficial, implying a far higher beneficial-mutation rate than is conventionally assumed.

To reconcile that finding with the fact that comparative genomic data appear consistent with many substitutions being neutral, Zhang’s team propose a new model — “adaptive tracking with antagonistic pleiotropy” — in which beneficial mutations are frequently environment-specific, and when the environment changes the same mutation may become deleterious, hence failing to fix. In this way, although beneficial mutations are common, they rarely reach fixation when environments shift, and substitution patterns can appear neutral.

The paper operates fully within the framework of evolutionary theory by natural selection: it does not challenge evolution itself, but refines a subsidiary theoretical model about molecular changes. Thus, it strengthens the broader evolutionary paradigm rather than undermines it.

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 - Diverging Sloth Genomes - Just As The TOE Predicts

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Deforested genomes: scientists find signs of environmental degradation in the genomes of the endangered Maned Sloths - Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research

The discovery fits seamlessly within the framework of Darwinian evolution. Two once-connected populations became isolated and exposed to different ecological conditions, followed their own evolutionary paths. Over time, their genomes accumulated distinct mutations reflecting adaptation, genetic drift, and local environmental pressures. The result is two clearly defined species whose divergence can be explained entirely by natural processes acting over generations — a textbook demonstration of evolution in action.

Yet this same process now drives both species along a far more perilous trajectory. As their habitats continue to shrink and fragment, their populations are losing genetic diversity and becoming increasingly inbred. Evolution has no foresight or purpose; it cannot plan for the future or reverse the consequences of environmental destruction. The very mechanism that once diversified life on Earth can, under relentless human pressure, just as readily lead to extinction.

There is no sign of “intelligent design” in this grim reality — only the blind, natural workings of selection, drift, and chance operating within a degraded environment. If a designer were guiding life towards some higher purpose, it would hardly produce a situation where its own creations are being driven to extinction by the ecological collapse of their habitats. The plight of the maned sloths stands as a vivid reminder that life’s diversity, beauty, and tragedy arise not from supernatural intent, but from the impersonal and unyielding logic of evolution.

As world leaders prepare for COP30 in Brazil, the message from the maned sloths’ genomes could not be clearer: conservation must be guided by evolutionary science and ecological understanding, not by comforting myths of divine oversight. Only by recognising the true, natural processes that shape life can we hope to protect what remains of it.

Refuting Creationism - Another of Those 'Living Fossils' For Creationists To Misrepresent

Adult marine shell-boring spionid polychaete.

Vasily Radishevsky/
Far Eastern Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences

Spionid traces on fossilized bivalve shells.

Javier Ortega-Hernandez/Harvard University.

Half-billion-year-old parasite still threatens shellfish | UCR News | UC Riverside

It’s Coelacanth time for creationist disinformers again.

Hilariously, I’ve known creationists claim that the 'fact' that coelacanths haven’t changed for 200 million years somehow proves the “evilutionists” are wrong and that Earth is only 6,000–10,000 years old. How they managed to examine the genome of a 200-million-year-old fossil remains a mystery, but DNA appears to play no part in a creationist’s definition of evolution.

So, for an alternative fallacious argument, here’s an even older fossil that’s still around today, apparently in much the same form as it was almost half a billion years ago. It’s a parasitic worm that attacks oysters. The details have just been published in the journal iScience by scientists led by University of California, Riverside palaeobiologist Karma Nanglu, with colleagues from Harvard.

The parasitic, soft-bodied bristle worm belongs to a group called the spionids. It’s common in today’s oceans and feeds on the shells of mussels and oysters, leaving a characteristic question mark-shaped track in their shells. Their parasitism doesn’t kill the shellfish but probably shortens their lifespan.

Refuting Creationism - 300,000 Years Of Stone Technology In Africa - Over 2 Million Years Before 'Creation Week'

Fig. 1: Map of Turkana Basin with the Namorotukunan Archeological Site and timeline of currently known events in the Plio-Pleistocene.

a Geographical context of the Koobi Fora Formation (red stripes), the paleontological collection area 40 (green square), and the location of the site of Namorotukunan (black dot); [map produced Natural Earth and NOAAA ETOPO 202295]; b Stratigraphic context of the Koobi Fora Formation highlighting members and key volcanic ash marker levels, yellow bars refer to the age of archeological horizons (tephrostratigraphy after McDougall et al.⁹⁶); c A chronology of key Plio-Pleistocene hominins from the East African Rift System (EARS)^11,74,97,98 d A chronology and key localities associated with hominin lithic technology^3,6,12 (images of Nyayanga provided by E. Finestone; images of Lomekwi and BD1 based on 3D models; artifact images are for representation and not to scale) and the investigations at Namorotukunan: red arrows represent the artifact levels in the archeological excavations (photos DRB), and colored circles (lettered A-G) represent geologic sections investigated to develop a synthetic stratigraphic column (presented in Figs. 2 and 3).

Braun, D.R., Palcu Rolier, D.V., Advokaat, E.L. et al (2025)

Stone Tools Through Generations: 300,000 Years of Human Technology | Media Relations | The George Washington University

The story of our origins is written in the ground of Africa. It is real, tangible, and objective — a record that doesn’t rely on belief or interpretation, but on physical evidence left behind by our ancient ancestors. A fresh chapter of that record has just been described in a new open-access paper in Nature Communications, authored by an international team of palaeoanthropologists led by Professor David R. Braun of the Center for the Advanced Study of Human Paleobiology at George Washington University, and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany.

By comparison, the origins narrative found in Genesis reflects the worldview and assumptions of people who believed the Earth was small, flat, and covered by a solid dome. It is astonishing that, even today, some treat that ancient cosmology as a more reliable account of human history than the rich and expanding fossil and archaeological record in Africa. Yet such individuals continue to seek influence over policy, law, morality, and social institutions, grounding their authority not in evidence, but in pre-scientific tradition — a worldview formed long before the wheel, let alone modern science.

Unintelligent Design - Flatworms Can Regenerate Body Parts - So Why Can't Humans?

The planarian Schmidtea mediterranea

Credit: FLI / Anna Schroll

Schmidtea mediterranea

New research shows a tiny, regenerative worm could change our understanding of healing Stowers Institute for Medical Research

Researchers at the Stowers Institute for Medical Research have uncovered new details explaining how the planarian flatworm, Schmidtea mediterranea, can regenerate not just a missing body part, but an entire organism from a tiny tissue fragment. Their findings have just been published in Cell Reports and represent a major advance in our understanding of regeneration at the cellular and genetic level.

This little worm continues to surprise scientists. Remove its head? It grows a new one. Slice it into pieces? Each piece becomes a complete worm. Such astonishing powers naturally prompt two very different kinds of questions – one scientific, one theological.

If one temporarily accepts creationist premises for the sake of argument, we are forced into a series of uncomfortable and contradictory conclusions.

Why would a supposedly omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent designer grant a humble flatworm the ability to regenerate an entire body, yet deny this life-saving ability to humans and virtually all other organisms? If this designer could abolish suffering, disease, and limb loss – and knowingly chose not to – what does that imply about its nature?

Creationists are left defending a worldview in which their designer appears either: unwilling to prevent suffering; unable to create beneficial traits consistently; or deliberately designing suffering into its creation. None of these options are theologically tidy – and they certainly do not align with the claim of a universally benevolent designer. The creationist framework produces contradictions, apologetics acrobatics, and moral dilemmas rather than answers.

By contrast, when we ask the evolutionary question – “How did this ability evolve?” – the picture becomes coherent.

Planarians have followed a unique evolutionary trajectory in which extreme regeneration conferred a significant survival advantage. Natural selection acted on stem-cell behaviour, gene regulation, and patterning networks over deep time, refining a mechanism that happens to be far beyond the needs of most other species.

Other organisms have regenerative abilities too – salamanders, zebrafish, sea stars, even humans to a limited extent – but the selective pressures and biological constraints differed. Regeneration is complex, energetically costly, and evolution works from what already exists. Most lineages simply did not follow that path. To borrow Michael Behe’s favourite term, planarian regeneration may appear “irreducibly complex” – and yet, as usual, complexity proves to be a testament to gradual evolutionary refinement, not evidence for supernatural assembly.