Malevolent Design - A Paradox Creationists Pretend Not to See

The ancient city of Jerash, Jordan, epicentre of the Justinian Plague

Progress of the Black Death in Europe

By Flappiefh - Own work from:Natural Earth  Cesana, D.; Benedictow O.J., Bianucci R. (2017). "The origin and early spread of the Black Death in Italy: first evidence of plague victims from 14th-century Liguria (northern Italy)". Anthropological Science 125 (1): 15–24. DOI:10.1537/ase.161011. ISSN: 0918-7960. (page 17),
CC BY-SA 4.0, Link

USF, FAU researchers solve 1,500-year-old mystery: The bacterium behind the first pandemic

The notion of intelligent design — the current flagship of creationism’s attempt to replace scientific realism with magical superstitions and Bible literalism dressed up as “alternative science” — contains a blatant paradox its advocates must ignore: the very same “logic” used to argue that the God of the Bible created living organisms can just as easily be used to argue that any such designer is a malevolent sadist who deliberately increases suffering in the world while ignoring countless ways to reduce it.

The theological problems this raises are never discussed in polite creationist circles, except for the lazy fallback of blaming everything on “The Fall.” But this move exposes intelligent design for what it really is — Bible-literalist religion in disguise. And that sits awkwardly against over half a century of insistence by the Discovery Institute that ID is not a religious idea, but rather a scientific one that should be taught in American public schools at taxpayer expense — a direct violation of the Establishment Clause and the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Edwards v. Aguillard (1987).

The paradox lies in the fact that the very same so-called evidence — Michael J. Behe’s “irreducible complexity” and William A. Dembski’s “complex specified genetic information” — can be found in the genomes, structures, and processes of parasites and pathogens, making them devastatingly effective at exploiting and destroying their hosts. In fact, Behe himself has, probably without realising it, used precisely such examples. The bacterial flagellum he highlights enables E. coli to move efficiently through our gut, causing sometimes fatal food poisoning. And his example of resistance to anti-malarial drugs in Plasmodium parasites illustrate how evolution equips them to continue killing hundreds of thousands of children every year while condemning millions more to cycles of malarial fever.

Now, new research has highlighted another gruesome example. The bacterium Yersinia pestis — responsible for multiple waves of plague throughout the Middle Ages — has been shown to have evolved into its highly lethal form only in relatively recent human history. Beginning with the “Plague of Justinian” about 1,500 years ago, Y. pestis unleashed pandemics that killed between 30% and 50% of Europe’s population.

An interdisciplinary team at the University of South Florida (USF) and Florida Atlantic University (FAU), with collaborators in India and Australia, has now confirmed genomically that the Justinian plague was indeed caused by Y. pestis, as long assumed. Analysing DNA from plague victims buried in a mass grave at the ancient city of Jerash, Jordan — the epicentre of that pandemic — one group identified the culprit, while another team traced the bacterium’s evolutionary changes that made it one of history’s most notorious killers.

Malevolent Designer - How Creationism's Divine Malevolence Is Actively Killing Children With Malaria - If You Belive ID Creationists

Novel Maneuver Helps Malaria Parasite Dodge the Immune System | Newsroom | Weill Cornell Medicine

Here’s one of those discoveries in biological science that should have ID creationists jumping up and down yelling, "Told you so!". It’s news that the parasite that causes malaria shows both what they call 'irreducible complexity' and 'complex specified genetic information'. According to Discovery Institute fellows Michael J. Behe and William A. Dembski, that would mean it is intelligently designed and, by implication, designed to do exactly what it does — by the Christian God.

But, for reasons which can only be guessed at — and probably not a million miles from the fact that this conclusion would mean the Christian god is actively designing ways to kill people, particularly children, and especially in Africa — creationists tend to ignore it. After all, that’s the very antithesis of the compassionate, benevolent, loving god of the Bible.

Instead, they quietly sidestep the inconvenient reality that examples of their supposed 'proof of intelligent design' are found just as often in parasites and pathogens as in their hosts. This is precisely what evolutionary biology predicts: a host–parasite relationship invariably leads to an evolutionary arms race, producing sophisticated and complex systems that equip the parasite to survive in the host and to infect new victims.

And, true to form, we now have another such example in the major cause of malaria, Plasmodium falciparum, which killed some 569,000 people in Africa in 2023:

Key Facts:

• Globally in 2023, there were an estimated 263 million malaria cases and 597,000 malaria deaths in 83 countries.
• The WHO African Region carries a disproportionately high share of the global malaria burden.
• In 2023, the WHO African Region was home to 94% of malaria cases (246 million) and 95% (569,000) of malaria deaths (432,400 children under 5).
• Children under 5 accounted for about 76% of all malaria deaths in the Region.

Malevolent Design - How 'Intelligent Design' Exposes Divine Malevolence

Schistosoma mansoni

Schistosoma mansoni

Parasitic Worms Evolved to Suppress Neurons in Skin - AAI News

It gets tedious repeating this point so often, but so long as creationists keep using what they claim is irreducible complexity and/or complex specified genetic information as evidence for intelligent design, they need to be reminded that the same argument can also be used as evidence of their putative designer’s malevolence.

Creationists, of course, ignore the fact that parasites are no less “designed” than humans and have structures and processes that are “irreducibly complex” and depend on “complex specified information” in order to succeed in their environments. Yet their existence, and how they interact with and even manipulate their hosts, inevitably increases suffering in the world – a theological problem that creationist disinformation organisations such as the Discovery Institute avoid like the plague.

Parasite–host relationships also inevitably involve evolutionary arms races – the antithesis of intelligence if both “sides” are supposedly designed by the same designer.

So, to keep reminding them: if their justification for designating their god as the designer of living systems holds true, then it is also justification for designating the same god as the cause of suffering. Here is another example of a parasite that falls within their definition of an organism “designed” to do what it does and to participate in an arms race with its host in order to do so. This concerns the discovery that the parasitic worm Schistosoma mansoni, which causes schistosomiasis, is able to suppress neurons in the skin to evade detection as it burrows into its victim’s body (usually the leg).

Creationism Refuted - Complex Specified Information in 'Spanish Flu' Virus Makes ID Creationists Sick

Emergency hospital in Zurich’s Tonhalle during the so-called “Spanish flu” in November 1918

Image: Schweizerisches Nationalmuseum, Inventarnummer LM-102737.46

Swiss Genome of the 1918 Influenza Virus Reconstructed | UZH

A major stumbling block that non-biologist Christian fundamentalist theologian William A. Dembski has blundered into is that his so-called ‘proof of intelligent design’ (i.e., the Christian god) also, by the same reasoning, constitutes evidence for malevolent design — something found in virtually every genome of every parasite and pathogen. This presents CDesign proponentsists with a fatal paradox: either their ‘proof of intelligent design’ also proves the existence of an evil designer, or ‘complex specified information’ is not the definitive evidence for design they like to claim it is.

A classic example — and another blow to creationist reasoning—has just been described in a study by researchers from the Swiss universities of Basel and Zurich. They have recovered and analysed the genome of the virus responsible for the 1918–1920 ‘Spanish flu’ pandemic, which killed more people than were killed in the First World War. In fact, the term ‘Spanish flu’ is a misnomer; the virus is now believed to have originated in a U.S. military base in Kansas and was brought to Europe by American soldiers.

The Swiss team discovered that from the outset, the virus appears to have been pre-adapted for infectivity and immune evasion. They identified three key mutations that remained unchanged as the virus evolved over the course of the pandemic. Two of these mutations made the virus resistant to an antiviral component of the human immune system, while the third enabled it to bind more effectively to receptors on the surface of human cells, allowing it to enter and infect them more readily. These mutations were so effective that victims frequently died within hours of the onset of symptoms.

Malevolent Design - What A Benevolent Designer Could Have Given Us, But Chose Not To, Apparently.

Coquerel's sifaka,Propithecus coquereli.

Ring-tailed Lemur, Lemur catta.

Study Suggests Lemurs Age Differently Than Humans | Duke Today

According to creationist superstition, humans were specially created by a perfect, anthropophilic, omnibenevolent creator god. If that were true, it would be reasonable to expect humans to be perfectly designed—free from defects or anything likely to cause long-term suffering.

However, the facts do not support this view. For example, as humans age, they increasingly suffer from a condition known as inflammaging — low-grade, chronic inflammation that contributes to a range of health problems, including heart disease, strokes, diabetes, cancer, and osteoarthritis.

Properly understood, this should give creationists cause for concern. The same designer god apparently gave some other primates—most notably, certain species of lemur—the ability to avoid this consequence of ageing. In fact, these lemurs even show a reduced tendency toward inflammatory conditions as they grow older.

This raises a serious question for Intelligent Design creationists: if the same designer god was capable of creating such a mechanism for lemurs, why did it not see fit to bestow the same gift upon its supposed favourite creation—humans? Or are these inflammatory conditions intended to cause suffering and disease as we age?

The discovery that some lemurs appear to have been specially favoured by a creator god—if we accept the ID creationist premise for the sake of argument—was made by a team of researchers led by Elaine Elizabeth Gomez Guevara, a biological anthropologist in the Department of Evolutionary Anthropology at Duke University, Durham, USA. As a scientist and biologist, however, she attributes the differences between lemurs and humans to evolution — not to indifference or malevolence on the part of a designer god.

The team has just published their findings in the Journal of Comparative Physiology B.

Creationism Refuted - How Evolving COVID-19 Is Making Creationism Sick

Simplified SARS-CoV-2 Evolutionary Tree

AI Generated image (ChatGPT4o)

News, in The Conversation that the latest variant of the Sars-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19, XFG, could soon become the dominant variant worldwide, prompted me to ask ChatGPT to construct a family tree for the known variants of the virus, to illustrate the basic principles of evolution that creationists continue to deny.

Construct a family tree of known SARS-CoV-2 variants and explain how this illustrates evolution in progress. Explanation: Evolution in Progress

This tree diagram represents a simplified phylogenetic tree of SARS-CoV-2, showing how the virus has evolved since it first emerged in Wuhan in late 2019.

Malevolent Design - How Having a Bigger Brain Made Humans More Vulnerable To Cancer Than Our Chimpanzee Cousins

A Single Genetic Mutation May Have Made Humans More Vulnerable to Cancer Than Chimpanzees | Newswise

According to creationists, humans are the designer’s special creation, and the Universe, Earth, and all life upon it were created solely for our benefit.

If that were the case, one might reasonably expect human design to be uniquely perfect—free from disease and physical defects. Yet, paradoxically, we are more prone to cancer than our closest evolutionary relatives, the other great apes. Recent research from the UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center suggests that this heightened cancer susceptibility may be linked to the very mutation that enabled us to develop our comparatively large brains.

It’s almost as though the 'designer' either deliberately endowed humans with a cancer-promoting mutation or failed to anticipate the consequences of the so-called "complex specified genetic information" (© William A. Dembski / Discovery Institute) introduced to facilitate brain growth—and then neglected to revise the design when the flaw became evident. But, of course, being omniscient, we have to assume, if we accept creationists dogma for the sake of argument, it knew full well what the consequences of its design would be and designed them with that consequence in mind.

The theory of evolution, of course, precisely predicts these kinds of suboptimal trade-offs and their consequences. As an undirected, uncaring process, evolution is concerned solely with reproductive success—not with long-term health, perfection, or ideal design.

Malevolent Designer - How A Common Virus Sneaks Past Our Immune System And Causes Birth Defects

Scientists Uncover How a Common Herpes Virus Outsmarts the Immune System | School of Medicine | University of Pittsburgh.

Intelligent (sic) Design creationists have painted themselves into a corner.

Two of their most prominent arguments—irreducible complexity (Michael J. Behe) and complex specified information (William A. Dembski)—are intended to demonstrate the involvement of an intelligent designer in the natural world. But when these same criteria are applied to harmful parasitic organisms, such as the common herpesvirus (cytomegalovirus), which is the leading infectious cause of birth defects in the United States, the implication is that this virus too is the product of intentional design by the same creator that ID proponents insist is responsible for all life.

Within the framework of Intelligent Design creationism, the conclusion is inescapable: their designer deity—typically equated with the omniscient, omnibenevolent god of the Christian Bible—knowingly and deliberately created a pathogen that causes immense suffering. If ID logic is followed consistently, their deity is not a benevolent creator but a malevolent force that engineers disease and deformity with full foreknowledge of the consequences.

The only escape from this theological and philosophical bind is for ID creationists to refute their own criteria—to claim that irreducible complexity and complex specified information are compelling proof of design when found in beneficial biological systems, but somehow irrelevant or invalid when found in destructive pathogens. In doing so, they are forced to hold two mutually exclusive beliefs simultaneously.

In reality, these hallmarks of design touted by ID advocates are common outcomes of natural evolutionary processes — especially arms races between host defences and parasitic invaders. These processes are inherently unguided and wasteful, which in itself refutes the idea of intelligent planning.

Another striking example of this evolutionary struggle has just been published in Nature Microbiology by researchers from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and the La Jolla Institute for Immunology. Their study sheds light on how the herpesvirus has evolved sophisticated strategies to evade the immune system — a feature that ID logic would classify as evidence of "design."

Malevolent Designer News - How Cold Sores Are Cleverly Designed To Maximise Suffering.

The human genome compacted inside cells
eight hours after infection.

Credit: Esther González Almela
and Álvaro Castells García

(Top) Cropped representative STORM-PAINT images of EdC-AF647 labeled hDNA (magenta), immunolabeled H3 (green), and their merge in mock and HSV-1 infected A549 cells. Scale bar: 2 µm. (Bottom) Zoomed-in regions are shown inside yellow boxes. Scale bar: 200 nm.

González-Almela, E., Castells-Garcia, A., Le Dily, F. et al. (2025)

Centre for Genomic Regulation Website

One of the many problems with Intelligent Design (ID) creationism is its complete failure to account for evolutionary arms races.

According to leading ID proponents like William A. Dembski and Michael J. Behe, living organisms and their parasites — including viruses — must have been intelligently designed because they are supposedly “irreducibly complex” and exhibit “complex specified information”. But if that were true, it would mean the same designer is deliberately crafting both parasites and the defence mechanisms their hosts use to fend them off — hardly the mark of a supremely intelligent creator.

A further problem, and one that creationists prefer to ignore, is theological: designing pathogens like viruses is fundamentally incompatible with the notion of a benevolent creator. In fact, it suggests a malevolent intelligence — one more concerned with maximising suffering than promoting life and maximising happiness. So, when science uncovers yet another example of a virus behaving with surgical precision and apparent ingenuity, ID creationists find themselves in a bind. Is irreducible complexity and complex specified genetic information not evidence of intelligent design after all? Or must they admit that the designer is, at best, morally indifferent — or worse, actively malevolent?

The latest headache for the ID camp comes courtesy of the Herpes simplex virus — the one responsible for cold sores. Researchers at the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG) in Barcelona, Catalunya, Spain, with colleagues in Guangdong Provincial People’s Hospital, Guangdong, China, have discovered that the virus can radically reorganise a host cell’s genetic architecture — and it does so using the host's own cellular machinery. Their findings have just been published open access in Nature Communications.

Unintelligent Designer News - Designed a Cure For COVID-19; Gave It To LLamas - Or Is It Malevolence?

How the single domain antibody locks onto the spike protein’s base

Researchers identify new antibodies against current and future coronaviruses | VIB.BE - Home

Hot on the heels of the news that the putative intelligent designer behind creationism apparently devised a method to prevent the spread of cancer cells through the body—then handed it to the sea cucumber, a group of species not especially prone to cancer—comes another remarkable revelation.

It now appears that this same designer, if we accept the claims of ID creationists, has also developed a highly effective mechanism for disabling the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19. And once again, rather than bestowing this gift upon humans, the species most affected by the virus, the designer gave it to llamas — creatures not exactly known for their vulnerability to coronaviruses.

The mechanism in question involves relatively simple molecules known as single-domain antibodies, or VHHs—also referred to as nanobodies. These are much smaller than the conventional antibodies produced by most animals, including humans. They work by binding tightly to the virus’s spike proteins, effectively neutralising it by preventing it from prising open host cells and initiating infection. Even more impressively, these nanobodies appear to be broadly effective against a wide range of SARS-related coronaviruses.

While creationists might marvel at the ingenuity of such a designer, they would be hard-pressed to explain — or more likely, would simply ignore — why this supposedly anthropophilic intelligence chose not to equip humans with such a defence. Instead, it stood idly by as millions suffered and economies collapsed, despite having the ‘cure’ readily available.

This unique llama-specific mechanism was discovered by a team of researchers led by Prof. Xavier Saelens and Dr. Bert Schepens at the Flemish Institute for Biotechnology (Vlaams Instituut voor Biotechnologie) – University of Ghent (VIB-UGent) Center for Medical Biotechnology.

Malevolent Designer - Creationism's Putative Desiger Designed A Way to Prevent Cancer Spreading - And Gave It To Sea Cucumbers!

A sugar compound found in sea cucumbers could hold the key to stopping the spread of cancer, according to a recent UM-led study published in Glycobiology.

Graphic by Stefanie Goodwiller
University Marketing and Communications

Sea Cucumbers Could Hold Key to Stopping Cancer Spread | Ole Miss

Imagine you're a designer, and you've created a species — humans — for whom you have a particular fondness. Only, something keeps going dreadfully wrong with your blueprint. A large number of them keep dying because their cells become cancerous when they fail to replicate properly, and these cancers then spread to other organs, which ultimately give up the ghost.

Now, you can’t quite work out why these cancers start. For some reason, you've included substances called glycans on the surfaces of cells, and — just to complicate things — you’ve made cancer cells produce an enzyme called Sulf-2, which alters these glycans to help the cancer spread. Your solution? A stroke of genius: create another enzyme that inhibits Sulf-2. And lo! It works.

So, who do you give this life-saving enzyme to?

If you're creationism’s supposedly super-intelligent designer, you don’t give it to your favourite species — the one made in your own image, no less. No, instead you bestow this miracle molecule upon… sea cucumbers. A species that, incidentally, doesn’t even have a problem with cancer.

This, if they actually understood the subject properly, is what Intelligent Design creationists consider compelling evidence of a supremely intelligent designer.

The discovery that sea cucumbers possess this enzyme was made by researchers at the University of Mississippi and Georgetown University in Washington, DC. Their findings are published in the journal Glycobiology and can be read here.

It’s also neatly summarised in a University of Mississippi news article:

Malevolent Designer News - How an Intelligent Designer COULD Have Made us all Immune to HIV but Chose not to

Researchers map 7,000-year-old genetic mutation that protects against HIV – University of Copenhagen

Let’s step into the mindset of an Intelligent Design (ID) creationist for a moment, as we examine a recent scientific study investigating why a small minority of people are immune to the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), while the vast majority are not.

A research team from the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Basic Metabolic Research (CBMR) at the University of Copenhagen, led by Professor Simon Rasmussen, has discovered that this immunity is conferred by a genetic mutation. This mutation originated in a single individual who lived near the Black Sea between 6,700 and 9,000 years ago.

According to Discovery Institute Fellow William A. Dembski, this mutation would represent what he calls “complex specified information”, a concept he attributes to an intelligent designer. Dembski argues that only such a designer could create the necessary genetic information, as mutation and natural selection alone are not goal-directed and therefore cannot produce the desired specificity. However, Dembski is notably vague about how we can objectively determine what genetic information is “specified” and what is not. He appears to rely on subjective judgement, essentially deeming any beneficial mutation as “specified”, while dismissing deleterious mutations as irrelevant.

Even granting Dembski his biased subjectivity, we are left with the implication that the mutation which conferred HIV immunity to this individual's descendants must have been “specified” by his proposed intelligent designer.

This raises an obvious question: if the intelligent designer of humans could have provided our species with immunity to HIV, why did it choose not to do so from the outset? Why rely on what appears to be a slow, natural evolutionary process to spread this mutation through the population—one that depends on people dying of HIV while those with the mutation survive and reproduce, creating the selection pressure for its spread? A process so gradual that, to this day, it remains a rare trait in the human gene pool, with only 18-25% of Danes carrying the mutated gene.

It also raised a couple of theological question for creationists: why would an omnibenevolent creator create HIV with its 'designed' ability to bypass our immune system the same designer allegedly designed to protect us and how is that an intelligent act by an omnibenevolent deity?

Malevolent Designer - How The Influenza Virus Appears To Be Intelligently Designed to Make Us Sick

Confocal microscopy of a cell (magenta, cell nucleus in blue) of the A549 cell line on immobilized influenza viruses (green).

© HZI / Broich

Influenza virus. 3D illustration showing surface glycoprotein spikes hemagglutinin purple and neuraminidase orange.

Image Credit: Kateryna Kon / Shutterstock.

HZI | How influenza viruses communicate with cells

In their attempts to pass creationism off as legitimate science, Discovery Institute fellows William A. Dembski and Michael J. Behe have unwittingly undermined their own case. Their arguments—largely based on a classic god-of-the-gaps fallacy and a false dichotomy—can just as easily be turned against the very idea that their supposed intelligent designer is the God of the Christian Bible.

While they stop short of making that claim explicitly, the infamous Wedge Document [1.1], which outlines the political aims and strategy of the Discovery Institute, leaves no doubt: their ultimate goal is a fundamentalist Christian theocracy governed by so-called "Christian principles" and that selling the idea that 'Intelligent Design' creationism is real science, is a fundamental aspect of that strategy because it would enable them to teach creationism to children at taxpayers' expense, under the guise of real science.

And yet, even within their own paradigm, the evidence points not to a benevolent deity but to something far more disturbing.

Take, for example, recent research from the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research, which offers a striking illustration of what Dembski might call "complex specified information" and what Behe might regard as "irreducible complexity". The study reveals how the influenza virus is 'designed'—if one accepts their terminology—with remarkable sophistication to circumvent our defences and invade human cells. Ironically, these very defences are what the same creationists insist were intelligently designed to protect us—against, among other things, intelligently designed viruses. We are left, according to this worldview, with the absurd spectacle of a designer who engineers both the pathogens and the immune system meant to defend us from them—a system that, demonstrably, does not always work.

And this is held up as evidence of a supreme intelligence!

Far from supporting creationist claims, these findings align far more convincingly with what we would expect from a blind, indifferent process of evolution—one that requires no designer at all. Once again, creationists are faced with an uncomfortable dilemma: either accept the notion of a malevolent and inept designer or acknowledge the explanatory power of natural selection and evolutionary biology.

Bearing False Witness - Why the American Religious Right Are Lying Again.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr

The MMR vaccine doesn’t contain ‘aborted fetus debris’, as RFK Jr has claimed. Here’s the science

In recent years, vaccine misinformation has become an all-too-familiar feature of public discourse, often amplified by prominent figures with political or ideological agendas. One of the more persistent myths involves the claim that the MMR (measles, mumps, and rubella) vaccine contains material derived from aborted foetuses—a claim most recently repeated by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a leading voice in the anti-vaccine movement.

In the article below, reproduced with permission under a Creative Commons licence, Professor Hassan Vally—a public health expert and epidemiologist—carefully and comprehensively dismantles this falsehood. Writing for *The Conversation*, he draws on decades of scientific research and vaccine development history to explain precisely why this claim is misleading, how vaccines are actually made, and why they remain one of the safest and most effective tools in modern medicine.

This piece is a timely and important correction to the misinformation circulating in some circles, particularly those aligned with religious or ideological opposition to vaccination. For readers unfamiliar with the scientific details, Professor Vally’s article offers a clear and accessible summary grounded in evidence and public health best practice.

First, an AI analysis of the reasons Kennedy and his far-right religious allies are deliberately misleading the American public and casually risking the lives of American children with a characteristic callous disregard for the children who will inevitably and predictably die as a result of this disinformation:

Malevolent Design News - How An 'Irreducibly Complex' Jumping Gene Survives To Cause Cancer

Credit: Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.

Study Reveals Details of Process Driving Evolution & Major Diseases | NYU Langone News

A recent study by researchers at NYU Langone Health and Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München has shed new light on how certain genetic elements, known as "jumping genes," contribute to both human evolution and the development of disease [1.1].

Intelligent Design (ID) proponents, such as Discovery Institute fellow William A. Dembski, claim that any genetic information which is both complex and specific can only originate from an intelligent designer. Similarly, Michael J. Behe argues that any complex biological structure or process requiring all its parts to function could not have evolved gradually and therefore must have been deliberately designed.

These arguments rest on little more than the fallacies of argument from incredulity and the God-of-the-gaps. Worse still, they inevitably raise troubling theological implications: if such "complex specified information" leads to harmful outcomes—such as diseases, congenital disorders, or parasitism—then their supposed designer must be incompetent, indifferent, or malevolent. In the case at hand, the study focuses on a type of "jumping gene," or retrotransposon, which is known to cause genetic diseases including cancers.

Proponents of ID consistently sidestep these issues, as they conflict with their effort to portray the Bible as a scientifically accurate text describing a benevolent, human-centred creator.

Trump's Chickens May Be Coming Home to Roost - Carrying H5N1 Bird Flu

AI-generated image (ChatGPT 4o)

Americans don’t think bird flu is a threat, study suggests - CUNY Graduate School of Public Health & Health Policy

Elephant seals, killed by H5N1 'bird flu' on an Argentine beach.

Ralph Vanstreels, (UC Davis).

In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, President Donald Trump panicked when he realised that, in his eagerness to undo everything associated with Barack Obama, he had dismantled critical contingency plans for dealing with pandemics and allowed the national stockpile of personal protective equipment (PPE) to fall into disrepair. These actions left the United States ill-prepared for a public health crisis of such magnitude. Trump and his cronies promptly went into damage-limitation mode, i.e., blame everyone else (the buck stops over there!)

Rather than accepting responsibility, Trump—seemingly incapable of admitting error—chose to downplay the severity of the virus, which he referred to as the "Chaynees Vayrus". He repeatedly told Americans that COVID-19 was a mild illness that would "disappear" with the arrival of warmer weather in April (New York Times, 2020; Washington Post, 2020.1), ignoring both scientific advice and the obvious fact that seasonal changes vary globally, and that high temperatures do not neutralise the SARS-CoV-2 virus (WHO, 2020.2).

Having politicised the pandemic from the outset, Trump targeted public health officials such as Dr Anthony Fauci, whose science-based guidance often contradicted the president’s misleading statements (Science, 2020.3). Trump further encouraged scepticism toward basic mitigation measures such as social distancing, avoiding large gatherings, and wearing face masks. As a result, the wearing of masks was quickly stigmatised by many on the political right in the United States as a symbol of liberal or left-wing allegiance (Nature Human Behaviour, 2021). The consequences were stark: the White House itself became a hotspot for infections (BBC, 2020.4), and Trump’s campaign rallies became notorious super-spreader events (CDC Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, 2021.1).
And the death toll in the USA was the highest by far of any developed nation, and higher than almost all under-developed economies with rudimentary health services¹.

This cultivated scepticism was eagerly adopted and amplified by conspiracy theorists within the Trump-supporting QAnon movement. A flood of increasingly absurd claims followed, including that the pandemic was a hoax, that vaccines contained nanotechnology to allow government tracking via Bill Gates, and even that the vaccines could alter DNA to change an individual’s sexual orientation (MIT Technology Review, 2021.2; Pew Research Center, 2020.5).

Underlying this environment of mistrust was a population that had, for decades, been influenced by creationist front groups such as the Discovery Institute. These organisations have consistently worked to undermine public confidence in science, promoting the narrative that science is a conspiracy by a secretive elite seeking to destroy spiritual values and replace "Christian America" with a secular, left-leaning "Darwinist" society (Forrest & Gross, Creationism's Trojan Horse, 2004; Branch & Scott, National Center for Science Education, 2009).

Unintelligent Design - The Design Defect That Can Cause a Cleft Palate - Incompetence, Malevolence or Evolution?

Medical science corrects a design defect.

Source

New study reveals how cleft lip and cleft palate can arise | MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology

In my book, The Body of Evidence: How the Human Body Refutes Intelligent Design, I present numerous examples demonstrating that the human body is not the product of intelligent design, but rather the outcome of an evolutionary process characterised by compromises and suboptimal solutions. Evolution is constrained by what it has to work with and must continually balance competing demands—for instance, short-term reproductive success versus long-term health and well-being, which often contribute little or nothing to the long-term propagation of genes.

The result is an error-prone and overly complex system built upon earlier suboptimal compromises. This complexity gives rise to the many defects and medical problems to which humans are prone—problems that would not exist if the human body were the creation of an intelligent and benevolent designer, such as the deity posited by creationist belief systems. Such a deity would surely have designed a body so robust that there would be little need for a medical profession, save perhaps for treating accidental trauma. The very existence of hospitals and medical science stands as a testament to the failure of the human body's design to approach anything resembling the perfection many creationists claim.

Now, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have identified yet another example of this flawed complexity: a defect in transfer RNA (tRNA) linked to babies being born with a cleft lip and palate. The defect lies in the DDX1 gene, which is essential for proper tRNA function. Without it, tRNA cannot deliver amino acids to ribosomes to synthesise proteins. In the absence of this crucial process, the cells that form the upper lip and the roof of the mouth cannot fuse correctly during development.

The findings, by a team led by Michaela Bartusel, are published in The American Journal of Human Genetics.

Malevolent Design - Why Did Bats Get a Better Immune System Than We Did?

A Carollia perspicillata bat from a colony that had been maintained at WSU Vancouver.

Photo: WSU

Seba's short-tailed bat, Carollia perspicillata

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

Bat cells could aid in fighting humans’ most deadly diseases | WSU Insider | Washington State University

Creationists assert that humans are the special creation of their designer god, placing humanity at the pinnacle of 'creation'. Even those theists who accept the Theory of Evolution but believe it was guided by God with humans as the intended ultimate outcome, regard humanity as their deity's supreme achievement.

If this claim were accurate, it would be reasonable to expect humans to possess the optimal anatomical and physiological characteristics across all biological systems. In reality, numerous species exhibit superior traits and abilities compared to humans—traits which, had they been bestowed upon humans, would have significantly improved our wellbeing and survival capabilities.

For instance, birds have a respiratory system far superior to mammals, including humans, enabling efficient oxygen exchange during flight. Raptors possess remarkable eyesight, allowing them precise vision at speeds that would render nearby objects a mere blur to human vision. Elephants, sharks, and naked mole rats exhibit extraordinary resistance to cancer. Furthermore, many mammals experience lower perinatal mortality rates than humans even with modern medical intervention.

As highlighted in a recent study published in PLOS Biology, bats tolerate viral infections that are often fatal to humans, so they can harbour evolving viruses that, when they find their way into humans, can result in serious pandemics such as the recent COVID-19 pandemic.

If we entertain the creationist argument, their purported intelligent designer had already perfected these advantageous traits in other species. Yet, paradoxically, humans were deprived of these beneficial adaptations. This scenario suggests a designer whose decisions could only be interpreted as either incompetent or malevolent. It is the equivalent of a car manufacturer having designed a super-efficient, low-emission and cheap engine in one of its models, continuing to fit an old, expensive, wasteful and polluting engine to its top of the range model.

However, the evolutionary explanation — that different species evolved distinct traits adapted specifically to their environmental pressures — fully clarifies why humans possess adequate but not necessarily optimal traits. Unfortunately for creationists, adherence to their dogma forces them to dismiss this rational explanation, instead endorsing a narrative that inadvertently portrays their intelligent designer as either incompetent, malevolent, or potentially both.

That bats have superior immune system to humans has long been known, but why that is in terms of their cell physiology is still something of a mystery. Now, however, a team of researchers led by Washington State University molecular virologist Michael Letko has developed two lines of bat cell cultures which can be used to study how their immune system responds to different viruses, for example, the ebola virus, with a view to utilising that information to treat infections in humans.

Their findings are the subject of a research paper in PLOS Biology and are explained in a Washington State University (WSU) news item:

Malevolent Design - How Dembski's 'Complex Specified Information' Causes Acute Myeloid Leukemia

Rapid growth of blood cancer driven by a single genetic ‘hit’

William A. Dembski’s concept of complex specified information (CSI) remains ambiguous—arguably by design. His use of the word specified is particularly opaque: is he referring to information that produces outcomes he wishes his readers to believe are purposeful and intelligently designed by a particular deity, or is the term intended to encompass any genetic information that results in any outcome—beneficial, neutral, or harmful?

Taken at face value, and in the absence of a clear, testable definition, there appears to be no reason Dembski’s concept could not apply to information that is ultimately detrimental, either to the organism itself, or to another organism in the case of parasites or cancer. Why, for instance, should we conclude that the complex information in a gene enabling the expansion of the human brain and the enhancement of cognitive function was specified, but that the equally complex genetic information enabling a cell to become a malignant cancer, or allowing the Plasmodium falciparum parasite to evade anti-malarial drugs, was not also specified by the same intelligent designer?

Given that Dembski is a senior fellow of the Discovery Institute — an organisation notorious for its Wedge Strategy, which seeks to undermine public trust in science through disinformation and misrepresentation while promoting creationism under the guise of scientific legitimacy — it is unsurprising that complex specified information remains a nebulous and ill-defined term. The strategy’s aim has never been to engage in genuine scientific discourse or subject its claims to critical scrutiny, but rather to advance a religious agenda while avoiding the accountability that comes with reasoned analysis and empirical testing. A cynic might conclude that the leading ID advocates know their claim has no scientific basis but want their target audience to believe otherwise.

So, I invite Intelligent Design creationists to explain why the recent discovery of a gene that promotes the rapid early development of acute myeloid leukaemia should not be an example of Dembski's 'complex specified information' and so evidence that Dembski's intelligent designer designed acute myeloid leukaemia, or whether Dembski's term is deliberately vague so as to appeal to people looking for confirmation of existing bias.

Unintelligent Design - If Scientists Can Do It, Why Can't an Intelligent, Omnipotent Designer - If It Wanted To?

Treatment for mitochondrial diseases within reach | University of Gothenburg

If the human body had truly been intelligently designed by an omnibenevolent, omniscient deity, it would operate flawlessly under all conditions, free from the compromises and constraints inherent in evolutionary history.

Were this the case, much of modern medicine would be unnecessary, limited perhaps to the management and repair of traumatic injuries. Parasites, should they exist at all, would be effortlessly repelled by a perfect immune system. Genetic and structural defects, such as hernias, atherosclerosis, autoimmune disorders, blindness, deafness, neurodegenerative diseases, and complications in childbirth would simply not occur.

However, as I showed in my book, The Body of Evidence: How the Human Body Refutes Intelligent Design, the human body is not the product of intelligent design; it has evolved through a process marked by trial and error, adaptation to existing structures, and the utilitarian pressures of survival and reproduction. This explains the vast array of medical conditions that keep healthcare systems busy, often stretched to their limits. It also drives the extensive scientific research dedicated to discovering the causes and developing cures for various illnesses—achievements that an omnipotent and omnibenevolent creator, if one existed, presumably would have provided already.

Recent news highlights this contrast starkly. Scientists may have discovered a groundbreaking cure for a rare mitochondrial disease caused by mutations in the POLG gene, a condition that leads to severe disability or even early death. This advancement prompts a critical question for creationists: If human scientists can find solutions to such devastating genetic problems, why can't—or won't—your purported intelligent designer? And perhaps, more to the point, why was this defect designed in the first place?