Refuting Creationism - A Mass Extinction 252 Million Years Before 'Creation Week' - And Why Some Survived It

The End-Permian Mass Extinction

Ai-Generated Image (ChatGPT4)

Mastodonsaurus

Image: Mark P. Witton

March: Amphibians bounce-back from Earth’s greatest mass extinction | News and features | University of Bristol

The thing about mass extinctions, apart from the fact that they occurred so long before creationists dogma says there was even a universe, is that they refute any notions of a planet fine-tuned for life, or any notions of a perfect creator creating all life as it is today. In fact, it was the growing interest in palaeontology and the growing realisation that the fossil record contained so many extinct species, which caused people to start to question the notion of divine creation by a perfect god.

It was also the existence of so many intermediate fossils and series showing progressive change over time that fostered the idea of evolutionary change, although, until Darwin and Wallace thought of evolution by natural selection, how it worked was a matter of speculation.

The end-Permian mass extinction was one of the most significant events in the history of life on Earth - a history, 99.9975% of which occurred before creationists think their little god created the small flat planet with a dome over it in the Middle East, that creationists like to imagine was the entire universe.

However, fortunately for subsequent life on the planet, and without whom it is unlikely that humans would exist, a handful of species survived, most notably some amphibians.

New Book - The Evolution of Creationism: How Creationism Has Adapted To Survive

AI Generated image (ChatGPT4)

Creationism should have faded into obsolescence long ago, having been thoroughly disproven by the overwhelming scientific evidence for evolution, in stark contrast to the total absence of evidence for a creator or any plausible explanation of how an unproven entity could create anything. Its continued persistence is primarily due to the efforts of a small group of vocal advocates who, in their pursuit of preserving their stake in the creationist movement, have abandoned any semblance of intellectual or personal integrity. These individuals have launched a concerted campaign of deliberate misrepresentation of science, while intentionally fostering profound ignorance among their audience to protect their interests.

The irony is that the creationist organisations such as the Deception Institute are having to adapt their tactics and make subtle changes to how they sell creationism in view of the (mostly) hostile changes in the legislative, educational and scientific environment in which they compete with science in the market place of ideas in exact mimicry of the natural evolutionary process they try to deny and misrepresent.

My latest book, written with the assistance of the AI client, ChatGPT4, the eighth in the series on Intelligent Design, describes how creationism has been adapted to try to compete with science in the struggle for the resource of public and scientific opinion on which it depends.

I use AI to research the subject and provide detailed descriptions of events and how the creationist movement has responded. AI can, in minutes, research and fact-check, then synthesise its findings into a few well-written paragraphs, something that would take weeks to do manually.

From the book's introduction:

Creationism has never been a static ideology. While the core belief in a divine creator remains unchanged, the arguments and strategies used to oppose evolution have continuously adapted. From early biblical literalism to modern Intelligent Design, the Anti-evolution movement has undergone significant transformations in response to scientific discoveries, legal challenges, and cultural shifts.

Refuting Creationism - A Giant Scorpion from 125 million years Before 'Creation Week'

Fossilized scorpions are extremely rare. J. longchengi is only the fourth terrestrial species found in China.

Image credit: NIGPAS

Jiangsu researchers discover 125-mln-year-old scorpion fossil | ENGLISH.JSCHINA.COM.CN

Some years ago, on holiday in Northern Greece, myself my eldest two children were exploring an old quarry which had been used as a local rubbish dump. I had come across it the day before and had told my children that this was just the sort of place to find scorpions. True to my prediction, as I turned over a flat piece of plywood, there in all their glory were two pale yellow scorpions! I gently pressed one down with a stick so my children could watch it sting the stick with a series of rapid jabs with its tail.

Fortunately, they were relatively small compared to the scorpions that lived in what is now China in the Mesozoic in that long period of history from before creationism's little god created a small flat planet with a dome over it, when 99.9975% of Earth's history happened, giant venomous scorpions lived in what is now China, 125 million years ago. Jeholia longchengi was around 4 inches (10 cm) long and was a key species within the food chain of the Cretaceous ecosystem.

Describe the evolutionary history of scorpions, please. Scorpions have a long and fascinating evolutionary history, stretching back over 435 million years to the Silurian period. They are among the earliest known terrestrial arthropods and have undergone relatively little morphological change over time, demonstrating a remarkable case of evolutionary stability.

Origins: Aquatic Ancestry

The earliest scorpions, such as Parioscorpio venator (dating to around 437 million years ago), show evidence of an aquatic or semi-aquatic lifestyle. These early scorpions likely lived in shallow marine or freshwater environments, resembling their eurypterid (sea scorpion) relatives. Their anatomy suggests they had book gills, similar to modern horseshoe crabs.

Transition to Land: The Devonian Shift

By the Late Silurian to Early Devonian (about 420–400 million years ago), scorpions began to transition to a terrestrial lifestyle. Fossil evidence suggests that some scorpions developed book lungs, an adaptation that allowed them to extract oxygen from air rather than water. This transition is crucial because it marks one of the earliest instances of arthropods colonizing land.

Carboniferous Period (359–299 million years ago): Giant Scorpions

During the Carboniferous, scorpions diversified significantly and some reached impressive sizes. Some species, like Pulmonoscorpius, grew up to 70 cm (27 inches) long. This period was characterized by high atmospheric oxygen levels, which may have supported the evolution of large arthropods.

Mesozoic Era (252–66 million years ago): Early Modern Scorpions

By the Mesozoic, scorpions had evolved into more recognizable forms, with many modern features already in place. Fossils from this time indicate that scorpions had adapted to various terrestrial habitats, from deserts to tropical forests.

Cenozoic Era (66 million years ago–present): Stability and Radiation

Scorpions have changed relatively little over the past hundred million years, suggesting that their general body plan was already highly successful. Today, over 2,500 species of scorpions exist, inhabiting diverse environments worldwide, from rainforests to deserts.

Key Evolutionary Trends

1. Transition from aquatic to terrestrial habitats
2. Development of book lungs for respiration on land
3. Early gigantism during the Carboniferous
4. Stabilization of body morphology since the Mesozoic
5. Diversification into modern ecological niches

Scorpions are an example of evolutionary success, persisting through multiple mass extinctions while maintaining a body plan that remains effective in predation and survival.

A fossil of one of them has just been described in the journal Science Bulletin and announced in a news item from Jiangsu:

Jiangsu researchers discover 125-mln-year-old scorpion fossil

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A team led by researcher Huang Diying from the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology under the Chinese Academy of Sciences has found an ancient scorpion fossil dating back approximately 125 million years.

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The fossil, named Jeholia longchengi after its discovery site in the Jehol Biota of Longcheng District in Chaoyang City, Northeast China’s Liaoning Province, is the first Mesozoic scorpion fossil unearthed in the country.

Huang explained that the scorpion lived during the Early Cretaceous period and the Jehol Biota preserved numerous fossils, including feathered dinosaurs, early birds and plant fossils, and is regarded as one of the most important paleontological discoveries of the 20th century.

Measuring around 10 centimeters in length, the species is believed to have been a secondary or tertiary consumer in the Jehol Biota food web and features long legs and an elongated venomous stinger.

Only three scorpion fossils have previously been found in China. This discovery will contribute to the understanding of biodiversity of the Mesozoic era, and will help reconstruct the ecosystem of that time.

Huang Diying, lead author
State Key Laboratory of Palaeobiology and Stratigraphy
Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology,
and Center for Excellence in Life and Paleoenvironment,
Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing, China.

Graphic Abstract

Xuan, Qiang; Cai, Chenyang; Huang, Yuangeng; Huang, Diying
First Mesozoic scorpion from China and its ecological implications
Science Bulletin (2025) DOI: 10.1016/j.scib.2025.01.035

© 2025 Elsevier.
Reprinted under the terms of s60 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

As an added extra, just to allay creationists suspicions that the date of this fossil may have been faked:

What information do you have on the Jehol Biota, especially how its age was determined? The Jehol Biota: An Overview

The Jehol Biota is an exceptionally well-preserved fossil assemblage from the Early Cretaceous (about 133–120 million years ago) of northeastern China, particularly in Liaoning, Hebei, and Inner Mongolia. It is famous for its fossilized birds, feathered dinosaurs, early mammals, plants, insects, and aquatic organisms. The preservation is remarkable, often showing soft tissues, feathers, and even stomach contents.

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Age Determination of the Jehol Biota

The age of the Jehol Biota has been determined using multiple methods, primarily:

1. Radiometric Dating (Zircon U-Pb Dating)
   The most reliable way to date volcanic ash layers interbedded with the fossil-bearing sediments is Uranium-Lead (U-Pb) dating on zircon minerals. Zircons form in volcanic eruptions and contain uranium, which decays to lead at a known rate, providing an accurate radiometric clock.
   
   • Yixian Formation (lower part of Jehol Biota): Dated to ~133–125 million years ago (Ma)
   • Jiufotang Formation (upper part of Jehol Biota): Dated to ~120 Ma
   These ages are consistent across multiple studies, confirming the Jehol Biota as Early Cretaceous (Hauterivian–Aptian stages).
   
2. Argon-Argon (⁴⁰Ar/³⁹Ar) Dating
   Another method used is ⁴⁰Ar/³⁹Ar dating on volcanic feldspar minerals, which provides independent confirmation of the zircon-based U-Pb dates. These results have generally aligned with the U-Pb ages, supporting the Early Cretaceous timeframe.
3. Biostratigraphy (Fossil Correlation)
   Fossils from the Jehol Biota, particularly certain fish, molluscs, and index fossils like ostracods and conchostracans have been correlated with well-dated formations elsewhere in China and Mongolia. This cross-referencing with other Early Cretaceous faunas supports the radiometric dating results.
4. Magnetostratigraphy
   Paleomagnetic studies (analyzing Earth's past magnetic field reversals recorded in rock layers) also support the Early Cretaceous age by aligning with the global geomagnetic polarity timescale.

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Conclusion

The age of the Jehol Biota (~133–120 Ma) has been established through a combination of U-Pb zircon dating, ⁴⁰Ar/³⁹Ar dating, biostratigraphy, and magnetostratigraphy making it one of the best-dated fossil Lagerstätten from the Early Cretaceous. This precise dating has been crucial in understanding early avian evolution, feathered dinosaur diversity, and early angiosperm development.

If these dating methods are wrong because radioactive decay rates used to be much higher, this would have meant the forces that hold an atomic nucleus together would have been too weak for atoms to form.

So, it comes down to creationists having to choose between radioactive decay being much faster than today so 6,000 years looks like 125 million years, in which case atoms could not have existed when their putative creator was creating life, or radioactive decay rates are constant and the dating methods that use them are correct, in which case there are 125 million-year-old fossils of giant scorpions that lived millions of years before creationists believe there was a universe.

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Refuting Creationism - How Humans Had Reached All Seven Habitable Continents Thousands of Years Before 'Creation Week'.

A Chukchi reindeer herder.
The Chukchi are an ethnic group native to Siberia.

Image credit: Natalie Fobes via Getty Images.

Most scientists think that humans reached Australia at least 50,000 years ago. Here, an Indigenous man holds traditional weapons during a ceremonial dance at a festival in Cape York, Australia.

Image credit: chameleonseye via Getty Images.

When did modern humans reach each of the 7 continents? | Live Science

Modern humans had dispersed out of Africa and populated every continent except Antarctica, thousands of years before creationism's little god created a small flat planet with a dome over it in the Middle East and claimed it was the entire Universe, according to creationist mythology.

So, what was the timeline of this dispersion?

After our species, Homo sapiens, emerged in Africa at least 300,000 years ago, some eventually ventured out, trekking and voyaging across the world.

Unintelligent Design - Flightless Birds Still Have Feathers for Flight

The extinct "elephant bird" of Madagascar.

Photo: Brian Choo

When birds lose the ability to fly, their bodies change faster than their feathers - Field Museum

As though designing birds with wings that they can't fly with wasn't stupid enough, it seems creationism's idiot designer designed them with flight feathers too. That is, if you believe the childish nonsense of special creation of species without ancestors, which is a central superstition of the creationist cult. And presumably, because it's also central to the cult that species don't evolve, it must be assumed that every extinct species was created without ancestors too, so they can't have evolved from ancestors either.

Which makes it all the more puzzling that a study has shown that as flightless birds became flightless over time, they tended to retain feathers that were characteristic of flying birds, and in particular, those of their flying relatives.

In other words, as flightlessness evolved, the last thing to change were their feathers.

Which begs thew question why creationism’s putative designer gave flightless birds feathers that looked as though they had been inherited from flying ancestors.

Of course, there is a rational explanation for this, and it doesn't involve magic creation by a blundering idiot behaving like a mindless process operating without a plan.

Refuting Creationism - How The Ice Giants Created Complex Life In The Oceans

Glacial grooves stemming from the Wisconsin glaciation at Kelleys Island, Ohio

By Rmhermen, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link

Giant ice bulldozers: how ancient glaciers helped life evolve - News at Curtin | Curtin University, Perth, Australia

It's generally recognised that complex, multicellular life began in the oceans from colonies of single-celled organisms, but what isn't known is what environmental triggers promoted the evolution of this complexity.

Now researchers from Curtin University, Perth, Australia, in collaboration with the University of Portsmouth and St. Francis Xavier University, Canada, believe they have shown a correlation between this event, or series of events and the melting of vast ice sheets which covered Earth in a period known as snowball Earth. The trigger was not so much the melt-water and rise in sea levels as the minerals this melt-water brought with it. This sudden abundance of minerals was the result of the slow grinding of Earth's surface by giant glaciers as they gouged their way across the planet.

Refuting Creationism - Neanderthals Evolved By Loss of Genetic Information

Life appearance reconstruction of a Neanderthal male at the Natural History Museum of London.

Photo: Allan Henderson under CC BY 2.0.

Fig. 1: Summary of individuals included in the analyses.

a The geographical and chronological range of the Neanderthal clade individuals and modern humans included in the analysis. The symbols correspond to the n of individuals from each site and are colored as follows: blue = Sima de los Huesos; purple = Krapina; green = late Neanderthals; orange = modern humans. Orange ellipses correspond to the approximated geographical range of the extant modern human assemblage. Age estimates of fossil specimens are provided in Table 1. Background satellite image was downloaded from © Mapbox, © OpenStreetMap, © Maxar and rescaled to fit to figure panel size. b–e Three-dimensional models of the left semicircular canal and vestibule of selected individuals for the four groups considered in the present study.

The inner ear of Neanderthals reveals clues about their enigmatic origin

Creationists will confidently tell you that a loss of genetic information is invariably fatal so can play no part in evolution. They believe this because the frauds at the Discovery Institute have misled them into believing that every piece if DNA and therefore every piece of genetic information has a purpose.

And yet researchers have shown that it was a loss of genetic information following a population bottleneck that gave rise to the classic Neanderthals as a distinct species from their pre-Neanderthal ancestors.

This was the conclusion from a study led by Alessandro Urciuoli (Institut Català de Paleontologia Miquel Crusafont, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona) and Mercedes Conde-Valverde (Cátedra de Otoacústica Evolutiva de HM Hospitales y la Universidad de Alcalá), researchers measured the morphological diversity in the structure of the inner ear responsible for our sense of balance: the semicircular canals.

Refuting Creationism - A Simple Mutation Could Have Given Us the Power of Speech.

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Expression pattern of NOVA1 in the brain of a mouse. NOVA1 in green, nuclei (DAPI) in blue.

Darnell lab.

Model of the evolutionary timing for the 197th amino acid change in the NOVA1 gene, noting the Nova1^hu/hu mice generated in this study. Nova1^hu/hu mice express the modern human-specific amino acid in the NOVA1 protein. The bottom panel shows the corresponding position within the KH2 domain of the NOVA1 protein. Amino acids structurally proximal (<5 Å) to the 197th amino acid, as predicted by AlphaFold2, are highlighted in pink.

Tajima, Y., Vargas, C.D.M., Ito, K. et al (2024) (CC BY 4.0)

The Rockefeller University » A single protein may have helped shape the emergence of spoken language

In the simplistic creationist parody of evolution, intelligently designed to make cult members feel superior to real scientists, the evolution of something like speech in humans must have involved complex, specified, information, that humans alone have that other, lesser, species don't have. Of course, this could only be the result of intelligent design by a supreme intelligence who favours humans, its special creation, who can be whichever your favourite deity is, although it’s not religion because it doesn’t mention God or the Bible. Got it!

The surprising thing is that neither William A. Dembski, nor Michael J. Behe, leading Deception Institute fellows, have written a widely acclaimed (in creationist circles and in selected magazine and newspaper articles emanating from the Deception Institute, for its brilliant conclusive proof of the failure of 'Darwinism') book, detailing the sheer astounding complexity of the genetic basis for human speech, and how this proves we don't share a common ancestor with the African apes.

Perhaps they were aware already of the fact that the genetic basis for human speech involves, no such complexity, but just a single point mutation in a gene we share with the other apes and many other mammals.

Rather than proof of human exceptionalism, our ability to speak turns out to be evidence for common ancestry.

The mutation was discovered by researchers from The Rockefeller University and is a simple substitution of the amino acid isoleucine for valine, in the protein NOVA1 which resulted from the substitution of guanine (G) in the first position in the codon for isoleucine for adenine (A). So, the simplest of all mutations - a single point substitution of one nucleotide for another in a gene, may have enabled humans to speak.

Malevolent Designer News - How a Fungus Makes Its Host Destroy Its Own Brain

Beauveria bassiana on unidentified insect.

© Lisa Bennett (CC-BY 4.0)

Fungus ‘hacks’ natural immune system causing neurodegeneration in fruit flies - University of Birmingham

If we are to believe creationists, their god created insects such as fruit flies, Colorado beetles, etc., and then set about devising ways to kill them with, amongst other pathogens, fungi that infect them and destroy them from inside.

One of the problems this supposedly intelligent designer had to overcome was the immune system it had given the insects in order to protect them from the pathogens it was designing to kill them.

According to an open access paper just published in PLOS Biology by a team led by Professor Alicia Hidalgo from School of Biosciences, The University of Birmingham, one species of parasitic fungus, Beauveria bassiana, cleverly turns its host's immune system against its host, making it destroy its own brain. Although this fungus does not affect mammals, so poses no threat to humans, the team warns that it is possible that another fungus could use a similar technique against mammals, including humans.

Creationism in Crisis - Scientists Are Questioning Human Evolution - But Not In The Way Creationists Had Hoped

Ai-Generated Image (ChatGPT4o)

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A new model upends the decades-old “hard steps” theory that intelligent life was an incredibly improbable event and suggests that maybe it wasn't all that hard or improbable. The team of researchers said the new interpretation of humanity’s origin increases the probability of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe.

Credit: NASA. All Rights Reserved.

Does planetary evolution favor human-like life? Study ups odds we’re not alone | Penn State University

An interdisciplinary team of astrophysicists and geoscientists has questioned the evolution of a human-like intelligent species. But the question is not about whether, as creationists have been predicting for 50 plus years, but just how easy or difficult was it? That we evolved was never in any doubt.

The relevance of the easy/difficult question is that it affects our calculation of the probability of similar intelligent life evolving on other planets. If each step in its evolution was hard (the 'hard step' model), then we may be alone in the Universe; if easy, then the Universe could be teeming with life.

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.

Refuting Creationism - Where Europeans' Ancestors Came From - Thousands of Years Before 'Creation Week'

Reconstruction of Yamnayan life in the Pontic Area, 5000 years ago

AI-generated image (ChatGPT4o)

Reconstruction of Yamnayan life in the Pontic Area, 5000 years ago.

AI-generated image (ChatGPT4o).

New research based on an analysis of the genomes of 435 individuals has revealed the rich history of the ancestors of modern Europeans, especially the mixing of multiple ethnic groups in the Pontic Area - modern Ukraine - between 8,400 and 4,000 year ago which eventually gave rise to the Yamnaya people who get their name from the Russian for 'pit burial' (Yamna in Ukrainian).

Before the Yamnaya spread into Europe, they were preceded by two earlier waves of migration: firstly, hunter-gatherers who arrived about 45,000 years ago having interbred with and replaced the Neanderthals who had lived there for the previous 250,000 years. These were followed by farmers who came from the Middle East, starting about 9,000 years ago.

The Yamnaya, having formed a stable linguistic and cultural group, and either invented or copied ox-drawn carts and skilled horsemanship, which gave them great mobility, began to expand their range, probably under population pressure beginning about 5,300 years ago and lasting for some 1,800 years, eventually reaching all parts of Western Europe including the Iberian Peninsula and the British Isles.

Malevolent Designer News - How Cancer is Cleverly Designed to Trick Our Immune System

Mitochondrial transfer and metabolic reprogramming of the tumor microenvironment aid cancer immune evasion

Mitochondrial transfer and metabolic reprogramming of the tumor microenvironment aid cancer immune evasion.

How Cancer Cells Trick the Immune System by Altering Mitochondria - Okayama University

There is an ongoing arms race between medical science and cancer - and guess whose side creationism's intelligent designer appears to be on.

Yep, it's the same intelligent designer who designed cancers in the first place by creating an error-prone DNA replication mechanism that goes wrong, as does the error-correction mechanism it designed to try to rectify its faulty design with an added layer of complexity. And one of the results of it going wrong is cancer.

One of the more hopeful treatments for cancer was a tailor-made immunotherapy in which specific antibodies to the cancer cells were used to attack the cancer and treat it like a parasitic pathogen, by training the immune system to recognise the cancer and attack and destroy it.

But, true to form, creationism's divine malevolence has hit back by designing a response by cancer cells to attack by cells of the immune system.

We can be sure this is the work of creationism's intelligent designer because William A Dembski, the Discovery Institute's flunky and pseudoscientist in residence, tells us that any genetic sequence that produces a function must have been given 'specified information' in the form of the DNA that codes for that specific protein because, so he claims, specified information is too complex to have evolved.

Refuting Creationism - Human Cannibalism In Europe - 8,000 Before Creation Week

The entrance to the Maszycka Cave in southern Poland

Photo: Darek Bobak

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The 18,000-year-old discoveries from the Maszycka Cave include decorated hunting tools made of bone and antler.

Photo: Darek Bobak.

Information for the Media - Georg-August-Universität Göttingen

A good 8,000 years before creationism's little god created the small flat planet with a dome over it as described in Genesis, modern humans were painting wonderful paintings in caves in France and Spain, and cannibalising other humans in what is now southern Poland.

These people were the Magdalenian, a pan-European culture that existed during the Last Glacial Maximum, who are widely regarded as having a form of religion and belief in an afterlife, or at least a spiritual connection to the animals they hunted and depicted on cave walls. However, judging by their cannibalism and casual disposal of human remains along with the bones of the species they hunted for food, and the fact that they decorated and used human bones as utilities such a drinking cups made from human skull caps, they may not have had much regard for the dead.

Creationism Refuted - The Real Universe Shows Us The Bible's Authors Just Make Stuff Up -

Euclid image of a bright Einstein ring around galaxy NGC 6505

Close-up of the Einstein ring around galaxy NGC 6505

ESA - Euclid discovers a stunning Einstein ring

No matter how much you insist that words meant something different in those days, or the description is a poetic allegory or a metaphor the meaning of which is beyond us, the early verses of the Bible clearly and unambiguously describe a universe consisting of a small flat planet with a dome over it with the sun, moon and stars stuck to the underside of the dome.

This, of course, is a childlike description of what the authors saw as they looked up into the sky and saw what looked like a dome, and Earth was more or less flat, give or take a few low hills, so that is what, in their child-like naivety, they described:

How the Bible's authors saw the Universe.

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

Genesis 1.6-10

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And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years: And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so. And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also. And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth, And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good.

Genesis 1.14-18

Now, as we learn more about the Universe as we develop increasingly sophisticated scientific instruments for examining it, we discover just how childishly naïve the Bible's authors were and so show to anyone interested in truth that the Bible could not possibly have been written or inspired by the creator god described in it, unless that god wanted to mislead us so that it would take humanity another three thousand years or more to discover its lies - and what would have been the point of that?

Mind you, the same creator god could have told us about germs, atoms or electricity or how to make a steam engine or a motor car, but either chose not to or didn't know about those things, because the people who invented it didn't know about those things either. What 'science' there is in the Bible is no better than the primitive understanding of Bronze Age pastoralists.

Abiogenesis News - Closing Another of Creationism's God-Shaped Gaps - Still No God Found

Formation of polyester protocells under early Earth-like conditions Polyester microdroplets, possible precursors to life, were formed from alpha-hydroxy acids (αHAs) in early Earth-like conditions even at low reaction volume, low reactant concentrations, and/or high NaCl or KCl concentrations.

Credit: Associate Professor Tony Z. Jia

How life’s building blocks took shape on early Earth: the limits of membraneless polyester protocell formation – ELSI｜EARTH-LIFE SCIENCE INSTITUTE

Creationism’ ever-shrinking little god that sits in the abiogenesis gap, just got smaller with the news that researchers led by PhD student Mahendran Sithamparam of the Space Science Center (ANGKASA), Institute of Climate Change, National University of Malaysia, working at the Earth-Life Science Institute (ELSI) in the Institute of Science, Tokyo, Japan, have shown how primitive protocells could have formed under a wide range of realistic probiotic Earth conditions. The research team included scientists from Taiwan and China.

The research showed that membraneless protocells could have formed by polymerization of alpha-hydroxy acids (αHAs) to form polyester microdroplets, not to be confused with the modern plastic polyester. These polymers were polymers of esters - simple organic compounds which are chemically similar to the monomers that make modern polyester fibres.

Unintelligent Design - How Creationism's Heath-Robinson Designer Muddles Through But Still Messes Up.

spB^d-II complex at average resolutions of 3.2 and 3.1 Å.

Quality control during splicing: When an error in the precursor mRNA is detected, the spliceosome is blocked, the recruited control factors interrupt the “normal” cycle, and a molecular short circuit causes the spliceosome to disassemble.

© K. Wild, K. Soni, I. Sinning.

Spliceosome: How Cells Avoid Errors When Manufacturing mRNA

Q. How can you tell when something is designed by a supreme intelligence with the inerrant ability of foresight?

A. It works perfectly, without errors and does exactly what it was intended to do, nothing more and nothing less.

Q. How can you tell when something is 'designed' by a natural, utilitarian process like evolution by natural selection?

A. It works most of the time, even if not very efficiently, is over-complex and so prone to errors and doesn't anticipate change. It also frequently requires additional layers of complexity to compensate for its errors and inefficiency.

Sadly for intelligent design advocates, structures and processes found in nature are almost never perfect and free from errors and, when examined closely, are seen to be error-prone, suboptimal and requiring additional complexity to compensate for the errors and inefficiencies. And these error-correction mechanisms are themselves error-prone and prone to failure.

One such mechanism, the details of which have just been worked out by researchers at the Heidelberg University Biochemistry Center (BZH) in collaboration with colleagues from the Australian National University, is the system of spliceosomes found in eukaryote cells, that correct the errors in messenger RNA (mRNA) before they are transcribed into functional proteins.

The reason these large nuclear proteins are required is because the DNA the mRNA is transcribed from is contains 'introns' - small sequences that are not part of the gene being coded for. Imagine a computer database of words, which, when a retrieved, inserts random letters in the middle of the word.

Refuting Creationism - 183-Million-Year-Old Fossilised Soft Tissue - Stand By For Creationist Lies

The tip of the right flipper with two scales along the trailing edge.

Image: Klaus Nilkens/Urwelt-Museum Hauff

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Soft tissue from a 183 Million-Year-Old Jurassic Plesiosaur analysed | Lund University

Some palaeontology finds must seem like a god-send to creationist cult leaders looking for something to misrepresent to their dupes, but it has been a few years since Dr. Mary Higby Schweitzer's team reported finding 'soft' tissue in a fossilised dinosaur bone.

Creationists routinely misrepresent this discovery, particularly the discovery of soft-tissue structures in fossilised dinosaur bones. Schweitzer and her team found microscopic structures resembling blood vessels, cells, and proteins in well-preserved fossils, which creationists have seized upon as supposed evidence that dinosaurs lived only a few thousand years ago, rather than tens of millions. However, their claims are based on a fundamental misunderstanding—or deliberate misrepresentation—of both the science and Schweitzer’s own conclusions.

Far from supporting a young Earth, Schweitzer’s findings actually highlight the remarkable durability of biological molecules under specific conditions. Her research suggests that iron particles from haemoglobin help preserve proteins by acting as a natural fixative, similar to formaldehyde. This explains how soft-tissue structures can persist for millions of years without requiring the fossils to be "recent," as creationists falsely claim. Despite Schweitzer’s repeated clarifications that her discoveries do not challenge the vast timescales of evolutionary history, creationists continue to misquote her work to fit their pre-existing religious narratives.

This distortion is part of a broader pattern in which creationists cherry-pick scientific findings, strip them of context, and twist them to manufacture doubt about evolutionary theory. Rather than engaging with the scientific explanations provided by Schweitzer and other researchers, they rely on misleading rhetoric to persuade those unfamiliar with the complexities of molecular preservation. In doing so, they not only misrepresent the science but also the integrity of the scientists behind it. Some creationists even claim the tissue was carbon dated to just a few thousand years old. This is a lie since no such dating was performed because carbon dating is only accurate on specimens less than about 50,000 years old and is never used to date fossils because the original carbon from the living animal is lost in the mineralisation process.

And now we have something else for the frauds to fool their dupes with and win new ignorant simpletons into the creationist cult.

It comes in the form of a report by researchers at Lund University in Sweden which concerns 'soft' tissue found in a fossilised plesiosaur. However, and this is something that creationists will ignore in their eagerness to misrepresent the find - the fossilised tissue is fossilised hard parts of skin, such as scales. There is no question of the fossils being soft tissue. Creationists will also dismiss the fact that the fossil is 183 million years old and will claim the presence of soft tissue 'proves' the dating method is flawed because it must only be a few thousand years old.

Malevolent Design - How Sudan Virus is Cleverly Designed to Kill 50% of Its Victims

Cryo-EM structure of Sudan ebolavirus glycoprotein complexed with its human endosomal receptor NPC1

New Study Reveals How Sudan Virus Binds to Human Cells | Midwest Antiviral Drug Discovery (AViDD) Center

It's shaping up to be a thrilling month for devotees of creationism's divine malevolence as science finds out just how brilliantly its nasty little parasites are designed to make us sick and increase the suffering in the world, although quite why any normal person would worship a hate-filled sadistic psychopath is even more of a mystery than the mechanism by which it designs and creates organisms.

The latest is the details of how the Sudan virus (a variant of Ebola with a 50% 'success' rate in terms of deaths of its victims) has an improved method of binding to our cells to gain entry and start the killing process. Like Ebola, it binds to receptors on the cell surface, but because it has just 4 different amino acids in its coat proteins, it binds much more efficiently - a factor which probably contributes to its high kill rate.

Refuting Creationism - How Bonobos Help Us Find Something When They Know We Don't Know Where It Is

Kanzi

Image: Ape Initiative

Nyota

Image: Ape Initiative

Don't know something? Apes can tell | Hub

The thing about Creationists is that, whilst they can't make testable predictions and their claims are non-falsifiable, they nevertheless make claims, based not on what the evidence shows, but on what they would like to be true to be as important as they like to imagine they are.

For example, they claim that there are certain features of humans that distinguish us from all the other species (ignoring that all species have unique features, which is what makes them distinct species). Most of these claims will be about our intelligence, social interactions and ethics and our artistic and aesthetic abilities.

Curiously, because they reject the idea that our ability to empathise is the basis of our social ethics, preferring to claim they get their morals from their god because that makes them feel superior to people with a different religion or none, they nevertheless will assert that compassion is one of those uniquely human characteristics that sets us apart from the other animals, so is evidence of our special creation by a magic creator who created everything just for us.

But like so many of their claims, this one turns out to be not only not unique to humans but evidence of common ancestry with the other apes - in this case bonobos, our closest relative. Bonobos have the ability to realise when there is something we don't know and to understand when we need to be educated - something that psychologists beleved was a uniquely human ability.