Refuting Creationism - Balanophora And Why Creationists Pretend Not To Notice Them

Balanophora laxiflora

A selection of the sampled Balanophora plants. (a) B. japonica (left and center: Kyushu, Japan; right: Taiwan), (b) B. mutinoides (Taiwan), (c) B. tobiracola (from left: Okinawa, Japan; Taiwan), (d) B. subcupularis (Kyushu, Japan), (e) B. fungosa ssp. fungosa (from left: Okinawa, Japan; Taiwan), (f) B. yakushimensis (from left: Kyushu, Japan; Taiwan), (g) B. nipponica (Honshu, Japan).

Credit: Svetlikova et al., 2025 (CC BY)

Among flowering plants, few groups look as alien as Balanophora. These strange, tuberous parasites lack leaves, lack roots in any conventional sense, and contain no chlorophyll. They spend almost their entire lives embedded within the roots of other plants, emerging only briefly to flower. To a casual observer, they barely resemble plants at all — and that superficial oddity has sometimes been exploited by creationists as evidence that they represent a fundamentally distinct “kind”.

In reality, Balanophora are not evolutionary outliers. They are a textbook example of what happens when natural selection acts over long periods on a parasitic lineage.

Where Balanophora fit in the plant kingdom

Molecular phylogenetics places Balanophora firmly within the angiosperms, in the order Santalales. This is the same order that includes mistletoes, sandalwood, and a range of hemi- and holoparasitic plants. Their closest relatives are photosynthetic or partially parasitic species, providing a clear evolutionary gradient from free-living autotrophs to obligate parasites.

This placement is not controversial. It is supported by nuclear, mitochondrial, and plastid gene sequences, as well as by reproductive and developmental traits. Balanophora are deeply nested within the flowering plant family tree, not perched mysteriously at its base.

Angiosperms
│
├── Basal angiosperms (Amborella, water lilies, etc.)
│
├── Monocots
│
└── Eudicots
    │
    ├── Rosids
    │
    ├── Asterids
    │
    └── Santalales
        │
        ├── Photosynthetic lineages (e.g. Santalum – sandalwood)
        ├── Hemiparasites (e.g. Viscum – mistletoe)
        └── Holoparasites
            ├── Balanophoraceae (Balanophora)
            └── Other parasitic families

Why this placement matters

1. Balanophora are deeply nested, not basal.
   
   They are not an early-diverging angiosperm lineage. They sit well within the eudicots, inside an order dominated by parasitism. This is exactly what evolution predicts for a lineage that became parasitic rather than being created as such.
   
   Creationism would expect either:
   • A distinct, isolated “kind”, or
   • No consistent phylogenetic signal at all
   
   Instead, Balanophora fall precisely where descent with modification says they should.
   
2. Transitional relatives exist
   
   Within Santalales you can trace a graded series:
   • Fully photosynthetic plants
   Root parasites that still photosynthesise
   • Plants with reduced photosynthesis
   Fully holoparasitic forms like Balanophora
   
   This gradient is phylogenetic, not just ecological. It maps cleanly onto the tree.
   
3. Plastid phylogeny seals the case
   
   Even though Balanophora plastids are massively reduced, the genes that remain:
   • Cluster with chloroplast genes of Santalales
   • Show derived mutations consistent with long-term loss of photosynthesis
   • Cannot be explained as independently created organelles
   
   In other words, the plastids themselves remember their ancestry.

Creationism, which insists on fixed, separately created categories, has no principled way to explain why these plants fall exactly where evolution predicts they should.

Creationism Refuted - Evolution of Parasitic Plants by LOSS of Complexity

Balanophora

Photo credit: Ze Wei, Plant Photo Bank of China

Species of Balanophora are parasitic plants that live underground and emerge above ground only during the flowering season — and some species even reproduce exclusively asexually. This collage shows species studied to establish how the plants of that group relate to each other, how they modified their plastids and how their reproduction fits into their ecology.

© Kobe University (CC BY)

How parasitic, asexual plants evolve and live | Kobe University News site

A recently published paper in New Phytologist on the biology of the parasitic plants *Balanophora*, by three botanists from the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology, Japan, together with Kenji Suetsugu of Kobe University, should cause consternation in creationist circles — if only they were not so practised at dismissing any evidence that contradicts their superstition.

Not only does the study highlight the well-known problem of parasitism, which creationists typically attempt to wave aside by invoking “The Fall” — thereby exposing any claim that creationism is a genuine science rather than a form of Christian fundamentalism as a lie — it also reveals that the evolution of this group of plants has involved a loss of complexity, coupled with the repurposing of redundant structures. The result is what creationists themselves would describe as irreducible complexity, accompanied by precisely the kind of “complex specified genetic information” that William A. Dembski insists should be regarded as evidence for intelligent design.

Then there is the problem of an overly complex solution, in that, instead of simply giving the plants the genes they need, some essential genes have been included in cell organelles These are clearly repurposed chloroplasts that no longer perform photosynthesis, produced by an evolutionary process that creationists deny - leaving them to explain why an intelligent designer opted for such an overly complex solution.

Finally, the findings rely entirely on the Theory of Evolution to explain and make sense of the observations, with no hint of any need to invoke the supernatural magic upon which creationism depends — despite repeated assurances from creationist cult leaders to their followers that such a moment is imminent, a promise they have been making for over half a century.

Unintelligent Design - Something Any Intelligent Designer Could Have Done, If It Was Real

The figure depicts the NFR5 kinase structure and juxtamembrane motif

Discovery of a Key Protein Motif Essential for Root Nodule Symbiosis

Scientists at Aarhus University, Denmark, have discovered that barley can be induced to form a symbiotic relationship with nitrogen-fixing bacteria through a simple substitution of two amino acids in a single protein. This tweak enables barley to initiate the same sort of symbiosis that legumes use to “self-fertilise”. They have published their findings in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA.

This is yet another case where we can legitimately ask: if scientists can do it, why didn’t creationism’s supposed intelligent designer do it, if its intent were truly to create a world optimised for human existence? The question remains unanswered, often provoking threats and hysteria on social media, as creationists scramble to cover their confusion with guesses rooted in Christian fundamentalism and Biblical tales of “The Fall”. It’s a core theological patch, while the forlorn Discovery Institute and its fellows remain as silent on this issue as they are on parasites and pathogens—still struggling to sustain the pretence that ID creationism is real science rather than Bible-literalist creationism dressed in a grubby lab coat.

The Aarhus researchers found that a highly conserved protein, present across plant species, plays a crucial role in plant–microbe interactions—presumably as part of the plant’s defence against pathogens. However, in legumes the same protein must be suppressed, because its normal activity prevents formation of the root nodules that act as low-oxygen refuges for the nitrogen-fixing bacteria on which legumes depend. A simple mutation in this protein allows nodule formation in barley, enabling the crop to produce its own nitrogen fertiliser, increasing yields without the expense of artificial fertilisers and without the ecological harm they cause when they leach into waterways.

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”?

Refuting Evolution - Allopatric Evolution, Just as The Theory of Evolution Predicts

(a) Chamaecyparis obtusa in Japan

(b) C. obtusa var. formosana in Taiwan

Map of the South China Sea showing the Ryuku Arc between Taiwan and Kyushu

Google Maps

Natural Japanese and Taiwanese Hinoki Cypresses Genetically Differentiated 1 Million Years Ago | Research News - University of Tsukuba

Japanese plant geneticists, led by scientists from University of Tsukuba, have shown that the Japanese and Taiwanese Hinoki cypresses began to diverge around one million years ago, following the destruction of a land bridge that once connected Taiwan to the Japanese archipelago.

This is a textbook example of allopatric speciation, in which an isolated population diverges from its parent population through a combination of founder effects, genetic drift, and natural selection in response to different environmental pressures.

The now-vanished land bridge once linked Taiwan to the southern Japanese island of Kyushu. Its remnants form the Ryukyu Arc — a chain of small islands marking the south-eastern boundary of the South China Sea.

Faced with such clear evidence of speciation, creationists typically resort to a familiar tactic: redefining evolution into a straw man. They insist that “evolution” means one species turning in a single event into something utterly unrelated — for instance, that these cypresses should transform into daisies, cabbages, mammals, or birds. If such an absurd event ever occurred, it would in fact falsify evolutionary theory and throw the entire fields of biology and taxonomy into chaos. This is the standard creationist tactic on social media: misrepresent science, then demand that science defend the misrepresentation, and claim victory when it doesn’t.

The reality remains, however, that the divergence of these related species of cypress — and the fact that this divergence can be correlated precisely with geological change — stands as powerful evidence for Darwinian evolution. Charles Darwin knew nothing of genes, alleles, or genetic drift, yet his description of descent with modification through inherited traits is elegantly confirmed here by modern genetics and biogeography. The genus Chamaecyparis — commonly known as the false cypresses — is an evolutionarily interesting group of conifers in the cypress family Cupressaceae. Their distribution and divergence provide a good illustration of how geological change, climate oscillations, and geographic isolation have shaped the evolution of temperate conifers.

Unintelligent Design - How Wheat Could Have Been Designed To Give Tripple The Yield

A spike of wheat showing three grains clustered within each spikelet, where there is ordinarily just one.

Credit: Vijay Tiwary,
University of Maryland

Wheat monoculture - but it could have been better designed!

Scientists Discover a Gene that Could Triple Wheat Production | College of Agriculture & Natural Resources at UMD

News that a single mutant gene could triple wheat yields raises some uncomfortable questions for Bible-literalist creationists, and indeed for anyone who believes their god created the Earth and all life on it exclusively for humans — its supposed favoured species, for whom “all of creation” was made.

This belief has profoundly shaped Western attitudes towards the planet and its resources. One consequence of this selfish worldview has been the destruction of vast areas of the Earth, its ecosystems, and the countless species that depend on them. In the relentless search for mineral wealth, cropland, and grazing land, humans have transformed immense regions into effective monocultures which, to anything not adapted to those particular crops, might as well be deserts. Moreover, the same belief — coupled with the idea that brown and black people were inferior to whites and therefore “created” to serve Europeans — helped justify imperialism and the transatlantic slave trade.

One question that creationists, in my experience, consistently shy away from is this: if an omniscient god truly created our domestic animals for our use, why have we almost always had to modify them through selective breeding to make them more useful? It’s as though this god didn’t actually know what we would need or how we would use these animals. Which leads to the obvious follow-up question: why didn’t this supposedly omniscient being create ideal domestic plants and crops in the first place?

How Science Works - Revising Our Knowledge Of Plant Dispersal

Plants colonising volcanic tepha on Surtsey

Credit: Pawel Wasowicz (CC BY)

Plants colonising lava field on Surtsey island.

Credit: Pawel Wasowicz (CC BY)

New study overturns long-held assumptions about how plants spread to islands | EurekAlert!

Plants that successfully leave more offspring are those with traits that allow their seeds to spread widely. That usually involves two key factors: tolerance or adaptability to new environments, and an effective way of reaching them. Over time, evolution has produced a variety of dispersal strategies—seeds can float on the wind, stick to animals, or pass through birds and end up deposited somewhere new.

Crossing the sea, though, adds another layer of difficulty. Seeds must survive what amounts to a small ocean voyage. For a long time, scientists assumed birds were the main way plants made these crossings. The idea was straightforward: birds eat fruit, fly to new islands, and excrete the seeds.

But new evidence has challenged that view. A recent open-access paper in Ecology Letters examines how plants have colonised Surtsey, the volcanic island that emerged off Iceland in 1963. This unique setting has allowed researchers to watch ecological colonisation unfold in real time.

Their findings were unexpected: most of the 78 vascular plant species that established themselves on the island weren’t fruit-bearing plants spread by birds, but grasses. While birds like geese and gulls did contribute to dispersal, most of the colonising species lacked the traits typically linked with long-distance dispersal.

Unintelligent Design - The Needless Complexity That Produces Orchids

Cremastra variabilis

Cremastra variabilis

Deadwood brings wild orchids to life | Kobe University News site

An interesting open-access paper, recently published in the journal, Functional Ecology, by two researchers from Kobe University, Japan, explains the complex, symbiotic relationship between an orchid and a wood-decomposing fungus, not only between the fungi and the adult plants that depend on the fungi to provide the orchid with nutrients, but also for the orchid seed to germinate.

This complex relationship appears to benefit the orchid because it can live in otherwise nutrient-poor conditions. However, from an intelligent design perspective, it makes no sense at all because an omnipotent, omniscient designer could have endowed the orchid with the genetic machinery to do what the fungus does.

The relationship between the seeds and the fungus is even more bizarre. The seeds, unlike those of other plants, are devoid of nutrients and therefore need the fungus to supply some. Orchid seeds are notoriously small, being almost invisible to the naked eye. Contrary to Jesus’s bizarre reputed claim in the Bible that the mustard seed is the smallest seed, orchid seeds are orders of magnitude smaller.

Another parable put he forth unto them, saying, The kingdom of heaven is like to a grain of mustard seed, which a man took, and sowed in his field: Which indeed is the least of all seeds: but when it is grown, it is the greatest among herbs, and becometh a tree, so that the birds of the air come and lodge in the branches thereof.

Matthew 13: 31–32

The mustard seed is not only not the smallest of seeds but also doesn’t grow into a tree!

Contrary to what creationists have been conditioned to believe, one of the hallmarks of good, intelligent design is minimal complexity because the simpler a process is, the fewer opportunities there are for it to go wrong.

The converse is true for evolved organisms and processes because there is no plan or foresight in evolution, which can only build on what is already present, and natural selection prioritises utility, based solely on what is better than what preceded it. Consequently, evolved organisms are a collection of suboptimal compromises, and there is selection pressure to minimise failures with another layer of complexity.

This has led to confusion in creationist thinking, which associates complexity with intelligent design as they try to force-fit what can be observed with their need to have a role for their particular deity — especially in their own ‘design’ — giving them a sense of importance that being ‘merely’ the product of evolution doesn’t give them.

Refuting Creationism - The Lengths Plants Will Go To Just To Get Pollinated - No Intelligence Needed

chloropid flies on a Vincetoxicum nakaianum flower.

The grass fly visiting the flowers (A) and kleptoparasiting spider hunting ant (B)

Press Releases - SCHOOL OF SCIENCE THE UNIVERSITY OF TOKYO

The driving force behind evolution is reproductive success, so in a broad sense every adaptation can be seen as a reproductive strategy. Few, however, are as peculiar as that of Vincetoxicum nakaianum, a dogbane species native to Japan. Rather than relying on nectar rewards or visual lures to attract pollinators, this plant enlists the services of kleptoparasitic chloropid flies — insects that usually home in on the scent of injured prey in order to steal a meal.

In a remarkable twist, the flowers of V. nakaianum release chemical signals that closely mimic the odour of ants under attack by predators, especially spiders. Drawn in by what they perceive as the scent of a potential victim to exploit, the flies inadvertently collect and deposit pollen as they move from flower to flower. This unusual strategy has now been documented in detail in a study led by Ko Mochizuki of the University of Tokyo, published in Current Biology, and described in a University of Tokyo School of Science press release.

What makes this particularly striking is how roundabout and intricate the mechanism is. If an intelligent designer had set out to ensure pollination, far simpler methods are available — from bright colours and nectar rewards to direct reliance on wind. Instead, V. nakaianum has evolved a convoluted route, exploiting the specialised behaviour of flies that themselves depend on the predation of ants by spiders. Such elaborate, contingent solutions are precisely what we expect from evolution by natural selection acting over countless generations, not from foresightful design.

Refuting Creationism - Observed Evolution of Plants on A Volcanic Island

P. oleracea on Nishinoshima

Nishinoshima Island

Scientists trace origins of now extinct plant population from volcanically active Nishinoshima | EurekAlert!

Scientisst have a remarkable way to verify one of the fundamental principles of evolutionary biology - the 'founder effect' and how it contributes to allopatric speciation - a process that is hotly disputed by creationists who dogmatically refuse to accept any evidence for evolutionary diversification.

The great thing about science is that its theories can be tested and verified. Even better, they are frequently shown to be correct through evidence. This is in stark contrast to faith as a means of determining truth. Faith is not based on evidence, so it cannot be independently verified; in logical terms, it is unfalsifiable.

That doesn’t mean it can’t be falsified, but rather that there are no tests which, if failed, would demonstrate it false. Take, for example, the creationist claim that “God did it.” How could such a claim ever be tested? With no objective evidence beyond subjective feelings, anecdotes, or alleged personal experiences, there is nothing to examine. And if such a claim were challenged, it could always be shielded with further untestable assertions: “God is untestable,” “God is beyond science,” and so on.

By contrast, evolutionary biology offers theories that are not only testable but also repeatedly confirmed. One such theory is the founder effect. This occurs when a new habitat is colonised by only a small sample of a parent population. Two important factors follow:

1. The new sample is unlikely to perfectly represent the genetic diversity of the parent population, so it will begin with a different allele profile.
2. For the new colony to succeed, the founding individuals must already be somewhat pre-adapted to the environment. Those less well-suited are eliminated, while those better adapted survive and reproduce. Over successive generations, this natural selection creates a population increasingly fit for its new environment. The result is a wave of adaptation and divergence from the parent stock — the essence of allopatric speciation.

The natural “laboratory” for studying this process exists in the form of Nishinoshima, a remote Japanese island subject to frequent volcanic eruptions. Each eruption wipes the island clean of vegetation, effectively resetting the ecosystem and creating opportunities for colonisation by founder populations from elsewhere.

By careful genetic analysis of the, now extinct, Nishinoshima population of Portulaca oleracea, the team were able to show that the parent population was on nearby Chichijima, another volcanic island, however, the Nishinoshima population differed markedly from the parent population, and were derived from a very small founder population. In addition, there was evidence of genetic drift, which is much more significant in a small population than in a larger one - exactly as the Theory of Evolution predicts. Genetic drift is the process where, by chance alone, a neutral allele can increase or decrease in the population. The smaller the population the more quickly an allele can progress to fixation in the population or be eliminated. (for more detail on this, see the Introduction to my book, Twenty Reasons To Reject Creationism: Understanding Evolution (ISBN 13: ISBN-13 : 979-8306548166).

Now, researchers from Tokyo Metropolitan University have reported the results of this natural experiment, and they align precisely with what evolutionary theory predicts.

Creationism Refuted - Complex Evolution Of The Sweet Potato

‘Tanzania’ sweetpotato variety.

Credit: Benard Yada, National Crops Resources Research Institute
(NaCRRI), Uganda.

Decoding Sweetpotato DNA: New Research Reveals Surprising Ancestry - Boyce Thompson Institute

Despite abundant evidence to the contrary, creationists often claim that mutations cannot create new genetic information.

This argument rests on a deliberate misrepresentation of Shannon information theory, developed by Claude Shannon to optimise the transmission of information. Shannon’s theory equates information with entropy (a measure of uncertainty), not with “meaning”, and it draws on mathematical principles that can be related to thermodynamics. In thermodynamics, energy is conserved—neither created nor destroyed.

Creationists then assume, incorrectly, that this means the “information” in a genome cannot be created. They also tend to overlook the fact that, if their analogy with energy held true, it should also be impossible to destroy genetic information—yet they have no difficulty accepting the latter.

How Evolution Works - Co-opting Old Genes For New Functions

Liverworts lacking a gene called RLF have severe deformations in various organs (three plants pictured right and bottom), demonstrating that RLF is involved in organ development in these basic land plants as well.

© FUKAKI Hidehiro (CC BY)

Molecular phylogenetic tree of the REDUCED LATERAL ROOT FORMATION (RLF) protein family. The unrooted molecular phylogenetic tree was constructed based on amino acid sequences of RLF and CB5A, B, C, D, E, and LP from various plant species.

Iwata, K.P., Shimizu, T., Sakai, Y.,et al(2025)

A root development gene that’s older than root development | Kobe University News site

One common way creationist apologists attempt to mislead the scientifically uninformed is by claiming that the Laws of Thermodynamics are somehow relevant to the evolution of information within a species' genome. They argue that any increase in genetic information would violate both the Second and Third Laws of Thermodynamics—asserting that increased biological complexity equates to a decrease in entropy (disorder), and that new information is akin to energy and thus cannot increase due to the Law of Conservation.

This argument is fundamentally flawed on several levels but continues to be repeated despite being repeatedly refuted by both biologists and physicists. First, it completely ignores the fact that Earth is not a closed system. The input of energy from the Sun, for example, allows local decreases in entropy (such as in the formation of complex biological structures) while the total entropy of the universe still increases, fully complying with the Second Law. The Third Law, which relates to the entropy of systems at absolute zero, is entirely irrelevant to biological evolution.

Second, the idea that genetic information is conserved like energy is a misrepresentation. Genetic information can and does change in multiple ways through mutation. A mutation can involve the loss of information (e.g. deletion of a DNA segment), a change in information (e.g. substitution of one or more nucleotides), or an increase in information (e.g. insertion of additional sequences, or the movement of transposable elements—“jumping genes”—to new locations in the genome). None of these processes require a change in the total amount of matter or energy; they simply involve the rearrangement of existing molecular components. Any local increase in biological order is offset by energy expenditure elsewhere, typically via the hydrolysis of ATP to ADP and phosphate within metabolic pathways.

Moreover, these objections rest on the false assumption that evolution is about the quantity of information. In reality, it is the function and meaning of genetic information that drives evolutionary change. A sequence of DNA that once encoded a protein with one function can, through mutation and natural selection, take on a new function entirely—a process known as exaptation.

A well-known example is the evolution of the mammalian middle ear bones. In ancestral fish, certain jawbones played a structural role in the jaw joint. Over time, in early synapsids, these bones were repurposed and miniaturised to become part of the auditory system, transmitting sound vibrations from the eardrum to the cochlea.

Refuting Creationism - Common Ancestry Of Mosses and Algae - 600 Million Years Before 'Creation Week'.

The star-shaped algae Zygnema circumcarinatum shows similar stress reactions to the moss

Photo: Tatyana Darienko

The branching moss Physcomitrium patens, which the researchers used to study stress reactions and compare them to algae.

Photo: Tatyana Darienko.

600 million years of stress: plants retain shared gene hubs - Georg-August-Universität Göttingen

Like animals, plant life originated in the sea and only colonized land once they evolved the necessary adaptations. For animals, this meant developing mechanisms for breathing air and terrestrial locomotion. For plants, the primary challenge was desiccation, creating strong selection pressure for traits that mitigated water loss. This led to the evolution of a highly connected network of genes, known as a 'hub,' that regulates responses to environmental stress.

So fundamental is this genetic hub to plant survival that it has remained highly conserved throughout evolutionary history.

What information do you have on the evidence for the evolution of land plants and their divergence from marine algae? The evolution of land plants from their algal ancestors is one of the most significant transitions in Earth's history. Multiple lines of evidence, including molecular phylogenetics, comparative genomics, palaeobotany, and developmental biology, support the hypothesis that land plants (embryophytes) evolved from a group of green algae, specifically within the Charophyte clade. Below is a summary of the key evidence:

1. Molecular and Phylogenetic Evidence
   • Shared Genetic Markers: Molecular phylogenetic studies show that land plants are most closely related to charophyte algae, such as Chara and Klebsormidium.
   • Chloroplast DNA Similarities: Land plants and charophytes share specific gene arrangements in their chloroplast DNA, supporting common ancestry.
   • Cellulose Synthase Genes: The enzyme responsible for cellulose biosynthesis (CesA) has similar genetic sequences in charophytes and land plants.
   • Regulatory Genes: Some transcription factors crucial for land plant development, such as KNOX and BELL genes, have homologs in charophyte algae.
2. Morphological and Structural Evidence
   • Cell Division Similarities: Charophyte algae and land plants share a phragmoplast-based cell division mechanism, distinct from other algal groups.
   • Sporopollenin Protection: Spores of early land plants and some charophytes are encased in sporopollenin, a tough biopolymer that protects against desiccation.
   • Plasmodesmata: Both groups have plasmodesmata, cell-to-cell communication channels that enable coordinated growth.
   • Branching Growth: Some charophyte algae, such as Coleochaete, show apical growth similar to land plants.
3. Fossil Evidence
   • Ordovician and Silurian Microfossils (470-440 Ma): Fossilized spores with sporopollenin coatings appear before macroscopic land plant fossils, indicating early adaptation to terrestrial environments.
   • Rhynie Chert (Early Devonian, ~407 Ma): Preserves some of the earliest land plants (Rhynia, Aglaophyton), showing vascular tissue development.
   • Cooksonia (Silurian-Devonian Transition, ~430-410 Ma): One of the earliest known vascular plants, showing transition from bryophyte-like ancestors to tracheophytes.
4. Biochemical and Physiological Adaptations
   • Desiccation Tolerance: Early land plants and some charophytes can survive drying out, an adaptation to terrestrial life.
   • Hormonal Pathways: Land plants and charophytes use similar hormones, such as auxin and abscisic acid, for growth and stress response.
   • Symbiosis with Fungi: Fossil evidence and molecular studies suggest that early land plants formed mutualistic associations with mycorrhizal fungi (Glomeromycota) to obtain nutrients.
5. Transitional Forms
   • Zygnematophyceae as a Key Group: Recent genomic studies suggest that the Zygnematophyceae, a subgroup of charophyte algae, are the closest relatives of land plants. These algae lack complex multicellularity but share stress tolerance genes with land plants.
   • From Simple Algae to Complex Embryophytes: Gradual increase in structural complexity, from filamentous and parenchymatous algae to early non-vascular land plants, suggests a stepwise transition to terrestrial life.

Conclusion

The divergence of land plants from marine algae is well-supported by multiple independent lines of evidence. The transition was driven by adaptations to terrestrial challenges such as desiccation, nutrient acquisition, and reproduction. The evolutionary path likely involved early colonization by freshwater charophyte algae, which evolved desiccation tolerance, protective spores, and symbiotic relationships that facilitated the transition to permanent land-based life.

Now a team of researchers from Georg-August-Universität, Göttingen, Germany, led by Professor Jan de Vries, Göttingen University, who led the research, explains: has shown that this same 'hub' is present in both mosses and algae, even though they diverged 600 million years ago, the mosses having evolved out of simple algae.

Refuting Creationism - A Mass Extinction of Plants Due To Climate Change - 5,000 Years Before 'Creation Week'

Flora and fauna in Siberia at the last glacial maximum

AI-generated image (ChatGPT4o)

Image of Lake Ilirney during field work in Chukotka, Russia

Photo: Alfred Wegener Institute / Luise Schulte.

Single view - AWI

10,000 years or so before creationism's little god created the small flat planet with a dome over it, thinking it was a universe, as described in the creation myth in the Bible, there was a mass extinction due to global climate change. In addition to the loss of the Ice Age megafauna, such as the woolly mammoth, woolly rhinoceros, cave lions, etc. over most of Eurasia and North America when temperatures rose at the end of the last glaciation, we also lost a lot of the Ice Age-adapted plants.

But, because plants tend not to fossilise so readily as the bones of large mammals, we didn't know until now, just how extensive this loss was, and more importantly, what a similar rise in temperatures is going to mean for the extant flora.

To redress this gap, a team of researchers from the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI), Germany, have analysed DNA recovered from plant remains in the sediment of lakes in Siberia and Alaska. In doing so, they have discovered how the temperature affects the way plants interact, tending to support one another in cold weather and competing with one another in warm weather. A rise in ambient temperature meant increasing competition and loss of mutual support.

Unintelligent Design - How Evolution Rescued an Unintelligent Heath-Robinson Design Blunder

A WashU researcher hand pollinates Arabidopsis.

Photo: Joe Angeles/WashU

How plants evolved multiple ways to override genetic instructions - The Source - Washington University in St. Louis

The thing about evolution that distinguishes it from intelligent design is that evolution is utilitarian. It settles for something that works better than what preceded it, which is different from designing a perfect solution to a problem. Near enough is good enough because anything which is an improvement gets pushed up the frequency listing in the gene pool. So, organisms over time have accumulated sub-optimal systems that sometimes fail and cause other problems.

One of those systems is the way DNA is replicated - which is so error prone that error correction mechanisms have evolved over time, but they don't always work either, so we have the phenomenon of the 'jumping genes' that get inserted in the wrong place in the genome, sometime in the middle of a functional gene or in a control section adjacent to a functional gene, causing genetic defects.

So, in the best Heath-Robinson approach to design, rather than abandoning that design and starting again, the way any intelligent designer would do, another layer of complexity is needed to try to mitigate the occasion when the system fails.

So, what organisms have evolved over the years is a process for neutralising these 'jumping genes' by attaching methyl groups to one of the bases which prevents it being transcribed. This is a part of the epigenetic system by which the specialised cells of multicellular organisms turn of unwanted genes and only allow the genes for their speciality to be active - a layer of complexity needed because the way cells replicate was inherited from their single-celled ancestors where the whole genome needs to be included in every daughter cell.

Animals, such as mammals have two enzymes which attach this methyl group depending on the DNA 'context', but plants have multiple enzymes for doing the same thing. The question is why do plants need these multiple enzymes?

Refuting Creationism - How A Beetle Evolved To Eat Toxic Plants

Red milkweed beetle, Tetraopes tetrophthalmus

CC BY 2.5, Link

Red milkweed beetle, Tetraopes tetrophthalmus

Red milkweed beetle genome sequence offers plant-insect co-evolutionary insights

We are continually being assurd by gullible cretionists that the Theory of Evolution (TOE) is 'a theory in crisis' becase a growing body of biologisdts have abandonned it in favour of the creationists superstition of intelligent [sic] design.

This has been a creationist fantasy for at least the last 50 years since when it is supposedly about to happen, any day now, real soon (a bit like The Second Coming of Christ - something which, despite regular announcements that it will happen next Wednesday at noon, never happens - but its gunna, you see!)

However, when we read the scientific publications of these biologists who are allegedly abandoning the TOE, we see no signs whatever of any abandonment; quite the opposite. We see the TOE as firmly embedded in biological science as the Laws of Thermodynamics and the Theory of Gravity are embedded in physics, Atomic Theory is embedded in chemistry and Germ Theory is embedded in epidemiology. It forms the bedrock of the science, without which very little makes any sense.

For example, when a bunch of entomologists wanted to understand how a species of herbivorous beetle can eat a toxic plant, they compared it genomically with a related species that doesn't eat the toxic plant to see how the ability to proccess the toxins evolved.

Of course, being scientists, they reject the idea that the beetle was magically created that way by an unproven supernatural entity because none of that can be falsified and the existence of such an entity can't be established, so there is no logical reason to include one in any answer. The fact that their mummies and daddies might have believed in it is irrelevent to their science, because belief doesn't create facts.

Refuting Creationism - Wind Dispersal of Seeds - 370 Million Years Before 'Creation Week'.

A fossil of the winged-seed, Alasemenia, sourced from the Jianchuan mine in Xinhang Town, China.

Image credit: Deming Wang (CC BY 4.0)

Figure 1

Fertile branches and seeds of Alasemenia tria gen. et sp. nov.
(a) Thrice dichotomous branch with a terminal ovule. Arrow indicating boundary between ovule and ultimate axis (PKUB21721a). (b, f, g, i) Once dichotomous branch with a terminal ovule (PKUB21781, PKUB23132, PKUB19338a, PKUB17899). (c) Twice dichotomous branch with a terminal ovule (PKUB19713a). (d, e) Ovule with three integumentary wings (PKUB19321, PKUB19316). (h) Ovule showing two integumentary wings (PKUB19282). (j, k) Ovule terminating short ultimate axis (PKUB23114, PKUB23129). Scale bars, 1 cm (a–c, h), 5 mm (d–g, i–k).

New seed fossil sheds light on wind dispersal in plants | For the press | eLife The problem creationists have is that so much of Earth's history happened before their cult's dogma says it was created by magic just 10,000 years ago.

In fact, 99.9975% of Earth's history occurred during that long pre-'Creation Week' period, that just about any scientific paper dealing with fossils casually refutes creationism.

In fact the entire fossil record refutes creationism because nowhere in it are fossils found without ancestors and the geological column simply doesn't contain the evidence of a whole range of modern species suddenly appearing. It shows exactly the opposite - species evolving and diverging from common ancestors with modern forms having intermediate forms between them and common ancestors with other species in the same clade.

There is a clear progression in the fossil record of plants, for example, from simple single-celled algae, through primitive terrestrial mosses and liverworts followed by ferns, and eventually the angiosperms with their flowers and seeds.

Within the angiosperms there is again a fossil record or two main functions:

1. Ferilisation of seeds, which included co-evolution between flowers and pollinators - bees, moths, birds, etc. - or wind pollination.
2. Dispersal of seeds - wind, birds, mammals, etc.

And each of those fossil records is matched by the co-evolution of the pollinators and the seed dispersers.

Tell me about wind seed dispersal in plants, when it evolved, etc. Wind seed dispersal, also known as anemochory, is a widespread adaptation in plants to ensure the spread of their seeds over large distances, increasing their chances of finding suitable environments for growth. This dispersal mechanism relies on wind to transport seeds that are often lightweight and have specialized structures to aid their movement through the air.

Key Features of Wind-Dispersed Seeds:

1. Lightweight: Wind-dispersed seeds are typically small and light, allowing them to be carried long distances.
2. Structures for Flight: Many of these seeds have adaptations like wings, hairs, or other structures that catch the wind. Examples include:
   • Pappus: In species like dandelions (Taraxacum), the seed has a parachute-like structure called a pappus.
   • Wings: In trees like maples (Acer), seeds have wing-like structures called samaras.
   • Tumbleweeds: Some plants, like Salsola spp., disperse seeds by breaking off entirely and rolling in the wind.

Evolution of Wind Seed Dispersal:
Wind dispersal is a relatively ancient mechanism in plants, evolving as plants colonized terrestrial habitats. The earliest land plants likely relied on wind to disperse spores before the evolution of seeds. Once seeds evolved, various adaptations for wind dispersal followed. This trait has evolved independently across many plant lineages, making it an example of convergent evolution. Some key evolutionary timelines include:

• Early Seed Plants: The gymnosperms, which appeared around 350 million years ago, often use wind for seed dispersal, as seen in conifers with winged seeds.
• Angiosperms: Flowering plants, which diversified during the Cretaceous (about 125 million years ago), also show multiple independent evolutions of wind dispersal traits. Many families of angiosperms, such as Asteraceae (the daisy family) and Poaceae (the grasses), have specialized wind-dispersal mechanisms.

Factors Driving the Evolution of Wind Dispersal:

• Open Habitats: Wind dispersal is particularly advantageous in open, windy environments such as grasslands, deserts, and mountainous regions.
• Resource Efficiency: Wind dispersal doesn't require the plant to invest energy in producing fleshy fruit to attract animals for seed dispersal, making it resource-efficient.
• Competition and Colonization: It allows plants to colonize new areas and reduce competition by spreading seeds far from the parent plant.

In conclusion, wind seed dispersal has evolved multiple times in both ancient and modern plant lineages, driven by the need to disperse seeds efficiently in open or windy environments. Its prevalence in diverse plant families highlights its evolutionary success.

And now a group of researchers have found the second-earliest known record of wind dispersal of seeds from roughly 360–385 million years ago, during the Late Devonian. The fossils were found in the Jianchuan mine in Xinhang Town, Anhui Province, China.

The team were led by Professor Deming Wang of the Key Laboratory of Orogenic Belts and Crustal Evolution, Department of Geology, Peking University, Beijing, China. Their findings are the subject of a paper in the on-line, open access journal, eLife, and are explained in an eLife press release:

New seed fossil sheds light on wind dispersal in plants

---

Scientists have discovered one of the earliest examples of a winged seed, granting insight into the origin and early evolution of wind dispersal strategies in plants.

---

The study, published today as the final Version of Record after previously appearing as a Reviewed Preprint in eLife, details the second-earliest known winged seed – Alasemenia – from the Late Devonian epoch, roughly 360–385 million years ago. The authors use what the editors call solid mathematical analysis to demonstrate that Alasemenia’s three-winged seeds are more adapted to wind dispersal than one, two and four-winged seeds.

Wind dispersal in plant seeds is a natural mechanism that allows plants to spread their seeds through the air to new areas. This helps reduce competition for resources, increasing the plant’s chances of survival. Examples of wind dispersal strategies include tumbleweeds, parachutes such as dandelions and milkweeds, and winged seeds like those of the maple tree, often called ‘helicopter’ seeds.

The earliest-known plant seeds date back to the Late Devonian epoch.

This period marks a significant evolutionary milestone in plant history, as they transitioned from spore-based reproduction, as with ferns and mosses, to seed-based reproduction. However, little is known about wind dispersal in seeds during this time, as most fossils lack wings and are typically surrounded by a protective cupule.

Professor Deming Wang, lead author
Key Laboratory of Orogenic Belts and Crustal Evolution
Department of Geology
Peking University, Beijing, China.

Cupules are cup-shaped structures that partly enclose seeds, much like in acorns or chestnuts (although the Devonian cupules do not share the same origin with these modern ones), and could be associated with other dispersal methods, such as water transport.

To better understand early wind dispersal mechanism, Wang and colleagues studied several seed fossils from the Late Devonian, sourced from the Jianchuan mine in Xinhang Town, Anhui Province, China. From this, they identified a new fossil seed, Alasemenia.

They first described the characteristics of Alasemenia by carefully analysing the fossil samples, including making slices to view the seed’s internal structures. They found that Alasemenia seeds are about 25–33 mm long and clearly lack a cupule, unlike most other seeds of the period. In fact, this is one of the oldest-known records of a seed without a cupule, 40 million years earlier than previously believed. Each seed is covered by a layer of integument, or seed coat, which radiates outwards to form three wing-like lobes. These wings taper toward the tips and curve outward, creating broad, flattened structures that would have helped the seeds catch the wind.

The team then compared Alasemenia to the other known winged seeds from the Late Devonian: Warstenia and Guazia. Both of these seeds have four wings – Guazia’s being broad and flat, and Warstenia’s being short and straight. They performed a quantitative mathematical analysis to determine which seed had the most effective wind dispersal. This revealed that having an odd number of wings, as in Alasemenia, grants a more stable, high spin rate as the seeds descend from their branches, allowing them to catch the wind more effectively and therefore disperse further from the parent plant.

Our discovery of Alasemenia adds to our knowledge of the origins of wind dispersal strategies in early land plants. Combined with our previous knowledge of Guazia and Warsteinia, we conclude that winged seeds as a result of integument outgrowth emerged as the first form of wind dispersal strategy during the Late Devonian, before other methods such as parachutes or plumes.

Pu Huang, senior author
Nanjing Institute of Geology and Paleontology
Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing, China.

The three-winged seeds seen in Alasemenia during the Late Devonian would have subsequently been followed by two-winged seeds during the Carboniferous period, and then single-winged seeds during the Permian.

Professor Deming Wang.

Abstract
The ovules or seeds (fertilized ovules) with wings are widespread and especially important for wind dispersal. However, the earliest ovules in the Famennian of the Late Devonian are rarely known about the dispersal syndrome and usually surrounded by a cupule. From Xinhang, Anhui, China, we now report a new taxon of Famennian ovules, Alasemenia tria gen. et sp. nov. Each ovule of this taxon possesses three integumentary wings evidently extending outwards, folding inwards along abaxial side and enclosing most part of nucellus. The ovule is borne terminally on smooth dichotomous branches and lacks a cupule. Alasemenia suggests that the integuments of the earliest ovules without a cupule evolved functions in probable photosynthetic nutrition and wind dispersal. It indicates that the seed wing originated earlier than other wind dispersal mechanisms such as seed plume and pappus, and that three- or four-winged seeds were followed by seeds with less wings. Mathematical analysis shows that three-winged seeds are more adapted to wind dispersal than seeds with one, two or four wings under the same condition.

eLife assessment This useful study describes the second earliest known winged ovule without a capule in the Famennian of Late Devonian. Using solid mathematical analysis, the authors demonstrate that three-winged seeds are more adapted to wind dispersal than one-, two- and four-winged seeds. The manuscript will help the scientific community to understand the origin and early evolutionary history of wind dispersal strategy of early land plants.

https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.92962.3.sa0

eLife digest
Many plants need seeds to reproduce. Seeds come in all shapes and sizes and often have extra features that help them disperse in the environment. For example, some seeds develop wings from seed coat as an outer layer, similar to fruits of sycamore trees that have two wings to help them glide in the wind.

The first seeds are thought to have evolved around 372-359 million years ago in a period known as the Famennian (belonging to the Late Devonian). Fossil records indicate that almost all these seeds were surrounded by an additional protective structure known as the cupule and did not have wings. To date, only two groups of Famennian seeds have been reported to bear wings or wing-like structures, and one of these groups did not have cupules. These Famennian seeds all had four wings.

Wang et al. examined fossils of seed plants collected in Anhui province, China, which date to the Famennian period. The team identified a new group of seed plants named the Alasemenia genus. The seeds of these plants each had three wings but no cupules. The seeds formed on branches that did not have any leaves, which indicates the seeds may have performed photosynthesis (the process by which plants generate energy from sunlight). Mathematical modelling suggested that these three-winged seeds were better adapted to being dispersed by the wind than other seeds with one, two or four wings. These findings suggest that during the Famennian the outer layer of some seeds that lacked cupules evolved wings to help the seeds disperse in the wind. It also indicates that seeds with four or three wings evolved first, followed by other groups of seed plants with fewer seed wings. Future studies may find more winged seeds and further our understanding of their evolutionary roles in the early history of seed plants.

Introduction
Since plants colonized the land, wind dispersal (anemochory) became common with the seed wing representing a key dispersal strategy through geological history (Taylor et al., 2009; Ma, 2009.1; McLoughlin and Pott, 2019). Winged seeds evolved numerous times in many lineages of extinct and extant seed plants (spermatophytes) (Schenk, 2013; Stevenson et al., 2015). Lacking wings as integumentary outgrowths, the earliest ovules in the Famennian (372–359 million years ago [Ma], Late Devonian) rarely played a role in wind dispersal (Rowe, 1997). Furthermore, nearly all Famennian ovules are cupulate, i.e., borne in a protecting and pollinating cupule (Prestianni et al., 2013.1; Meyer-Berthaud et al., 2018).

Warsteinia was a Famennian ovule with four integumentary wings, but its attachment and cupule remain unknown (Rowe, 1997). Guazia was a Famennian ovule with four wings and it is terminally borne and acupulate (devoid of cupule) (Wang et al., 2022). This paper documents a new Famennian seed plant with ovule, Alasemenia tria gen. et sp. nov. It occurs in Jianchuan mine of China, where Xinhang fossil forest was discovered to comprise in situ lycopsid trees of Guangdedendron (Wang et al., 2019.1). The terminally borne ovules are three-winged and clearly acupulate, thus implying additional or novel functions of integument. Based on current fossil evidence and mathematical analysis, we discuss the evolution of winged seeds and compare the wind dispersal of seeds with different number of wings.

Figure 2

Fertile branches and seeds of Alasemenia tria gen. et sp. nov.
(a–c) Once dichotomous branch with a terminal ovule (PKUB16876a, b, PKUB17767). a, b, Part and counterpart. (d, e) Part and counterpart, arrow showing the third integumentary wing (PKUB19322a, b). (f) Ovule on ultimate axis (PKUB21752). (g, h, k–m) Ovules lacking ultimate axis (PKUB16788, PKUB21631, PKUB16522, PKUB21647, PKUB21656). (i, j) Part and counterpart, showing limit (arrows) between nucellus and integument (PKUB19339a, b). (n) Four detached ovules (arrows 1–4) (PKUB19331). (o) Enlarged ovule in n (arrow 2), showing three integumentary wings (arrows). Scale bars, 1 cm (n), 5 mm (a–h, k–m, o), 2 mm (i, j).

---

Figure 3

Seeds of Alasemenia tria gen. et sp. nov.
(a, b) Part and counterpart, enlarged ovule in Figure 1a (PKUB21721a, b). (c) Enlarged ovule in Figure 1c. (d) Counterpart of ovule in c (PKUB19713b). (e) Dégagement of ovule in d, exposing the base of the third integumentary wing (arrow). (f) Enlarged ovule in Figure 1d. (g, h) Enlarged ovule in Figure 2i and j, respectively. Scale bars, 5 mm (a–e), 2 mm (f–h).

---

Figure 4 with 5 supplements

Transverse sections of seeds of Alasemenia tria gen. et sp. nov.
(a, b) Part and counterpart. (c–e) Sections of seed in a and b (at three lines, in ascending orders). Arrow in d indicating probable nucellar tip (Slide PKUBC17913-12b, 10a, 9b). (f, g) Part and counterpart. (h–k) Sections of seed in f and g (at four lines, in ascending orders) (Slide PKUBC19798-8b, 6b, 4a, 4b). (l, m) Part and counterpart. (n–r) Sections of seed in l and m (at five lines, in ascending orders), showing three wings departing centrifugally (Slide PKUBC17835-5a, 7b, 8b, 9a, 10a). (s, v, A), One seed sectioned. (t, u) Sections of seed in s (at two lines, in ascending orders) (Slide PKUBC18716-8b, 7a). (w–z) Sections of seed in v (at four lines, in ascending orders) (Slide PKUBC20774-7a, 6b, 3a, 3b). (B–E) Sections of seed in A (at four lines, in ascending orders), showing three wings departing centrifugally (Slide PKUB17904-5b, 4a, 4b, 3b). Scale bars, 2 mm (a, b, f, g, l, m, s, v, A), 1 mm (c–e, h–k, n–r, t, u, w–z, B–E).

---

Figure 5

Reconstruction of two acupulate ovules with integumentary wings.
(a) Alasemenia tria with three wings distally extending outwards. (b), A. tria with one of three wings partly removed to show nucellar tip. (c) Guazia dongzhiensis with four wings distally extending inwards (Wang et al., 2022). Scale bars, 5 mm.

Deming Wang, Jiangnan Yang, Le Liu, Yi Zhou, Peng Xu, Min Qin, Pu Huang (2024)
Alasemenia, the earliest ovule with three wings and without cupule
eLife 13: RP92962. https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.92962.3

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

And yet, despite this this daily refutation of creationism, the cult manages to stagger on, albeit shedding members as they reach the age of reason and realize they've neem fooled, and parasitic frauds like Ham and Kovind still cream off millions of dollars from their gullible and scientifically illiterate following in a desperate attempt to prove their inherited superstation gives them a better insight into the workings of the world around them than those clever-dicky, elitists scientists with their big words have.

Who needs facts and evidence, and all that bothersome learning when you have a mummy and daddy, and a preacher in a pulpit to tell you what to believe?

Unintelligent Design - How Creationism's 'Designer' Needs Plan B For When Plan A Fails To Mend Its Previous Design Blunder

Plants like Arabidopsis, seen here, have two options to ensure accurate chromosome division—a molecule called DDM1 and a process known as RNAi. If Arabidopsis loses one of these, it’s fine. But if it loses both, it’s in trouble.

Developmental defects of double, triple and quadruple mutants in RNA-dependent RNA polymerase (rdr1, rdr2, rdr6) and DNA methylation (ddm1) in floral organ identity, leaf shape and fertility (silique length).

Shimada, A., et al (2024)

Plants have a backup plan | Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory

The secret to being a good designer or planner is to always have a Plan B. I say that as a former emergency operations centre manager where the future is unpredictable, so I needed to keep as many options open as possible because, as I used to joke, my Plan B was to tear up Plan A and start again.

Now, you can play the percentages game, for example, I could be fairly sure town centres would be fairly busy around 11 pm, especially on a Friday and Saturday night, when in the UK the pubs close, or as we call it, 'chucking out time', and a lot of inebriated people would be out on the streets, fighting over available taxis, over girl/boyfriends or who had got served at the bar out of turn (queue-jumping is a big no-no in the UK).

I also knew from 17 years operational experience that most of the calls would require little more than smoothing ruffled feathers, running checks to exclude underlying medical problems and sending them on their way, so turnover time would be relatively short, and I would get a crew back fairly quickly.

Another peak would be around 1 am when the nightclubs closed, but with a few exceptions such as those the rest of the week would resemble a system in chaos where medical emergencies, traffic accidents and every other imaginable emergency occurred more or less randomly, with statistical patterns only being noticeable over time with a sufficiently large database.

Later on, I became the data analyst who looked for those patterns and used them to devise deployment plans to minimise average emergency response times, but that's another story.

Juggling acts were the daily routine for an emergency operations centre like mine, as we tried to maintain as much emergency cover as possible while getting help to people who needed it as quickly as possible. And you never knew you had made the right decision until it turned out not to have been the wrong one.

Our major handicap was of course being unable to accurately forecast the future, not just weeks or days ahead but hours and minutes. What we singularly lacked was omniscience for which educated guesses were a poor substitute.

So, to a creationist it might come as something of a shock to learn that their putative designer behaves like a designer/planner who can't foretell the future because, if nothing else, it is allegedly omniscient, and its designs are perfect. As such it shouldn't need a Plan B because Plan A will be perfectly designed for the precise future needs of the species. There should never be an occasion where it needs to tear up Plan A and starts again; it shouldn’t need to consult a large database to look for patterns then work out the probability of that pattern repeating itself and planning its responses accordingly, never knowing if it was the right plan until it turned out not to be.

And yet a team of researchers from Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, New York, USA has found that the plant, Arabidopsis has a Plan B for when Plan A fails. Plan A is all about making the ramshackle, Heath Robinson process for ensuring mistakes in DNA replication get attended to. In a design which seems to be a characteristic of creationism putative intelligent [sic] designer, a shoddy process needs another layer of complexity to try to make it works, but even that fix breaks and the result of growth defects, sterility and, in many cases in animals, cancers or developmental disorders.