Creationism Refuted - Only Scientifically Illiterate People Could Have Got the Bible So Badly Wrong

UHZ1, a record breaking galaxy 13.2 billion light-years away, seen when the universe was only 3% of its current age. UHZ1 is puzzling in view of it harboring a supermassive black hole that could not have possibly been seeded even by regular stars, in view of its mass and very little time for the BH to grow. As such, UHZ1 is believed to be evidence for supermassive stars that, upon collapse, generate the supermassive black hole powering the quasar at its center. In this study, the authors show how UHZ1 could harbor a supermassive black hole seeded by the collapse of a dark star. The mechanisms identified by the authors are not restricted to UHZ1 — it provides a pathway for explaining over massive black hole galaxies, of which UHZ1 is a prominent example.

Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO/Ákos Bogdán; Infrared: NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI;
Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/L. Frattare & K. Arcand

Dark stars could help solve three pressing puzzles of the high-redshift universe | EurekAlert!

A recent study by scientists from Colgate University, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Texas at Austin, led by Assistant Professor Cosmin Ilie, has provided answers to three long-standing puzzles concerning the earliest stages in the formation of the Universe. The picture now emerging stands in stark contrast to the account of cosmic origins found in the Bible.

Quite apart from the hopelessly inaccurate Biblical description of the Universe as consisting of a small, flat Earth capped by a solid dome to which the Sun, Moon, and stars were attached, we are also presented with an equally implausible account of how the Universe supposedly came into being. Far from reflecting divine insight, the narrative reads as the best guess of Bronze Age storytellers attempting to make sense of the world from a position of near-total ignorance of physics and chemistry.

The sequence begins with the creation of light, which at least has the merit of vaguely echoing the fact that, from the earliest moments after the Big Bang, the Universe was dominated by electromagnetic radiation. But matters rapidly unravel. The Biblical account then invokes the separation of land and water—both of which would require atoms and molecules of specific elements. None of these elements could have existed at that time, as they were only forged much later inside stars formed from primordial clouds of hydrogen and helium. Elements such as oxygen, silicon, iron, and aluminium—essential constituents of water and rock—simply did not yet exist.

Even after heavy elements had been created, land could only arise through the formation of planetary systems from the accretion discs of second- or third-generation stars. Yet the Bible places land and water in existence immediately after the creation of light, with no explanation of their origin. The authors clearly assumed these features had always been present because they were part of the familiar world they inhabited. Unaware of atoms, molecules, or stellar nucleosynthesis, they simply imagined their creator working with pre-existing materials.

The result is a confused and self-contradictory narrative: a creator god who allegedly made everything, yet inexplicably relied on materials that must either have existed eternally or have been created earlier, with no account of how or when this occurred. Far from being profound, the story collapses into paradox and incoherence under even minimal scientific scrutiny.

By contrast with this naïve and internally inconsistent creation myth, modern cosmology—supported by sophisticated observational tools such as the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST)—is steadily assembling a coherent, evidence-based account of how the Universe actually formed and evolved.

Refuting Creationism - How U-Pb Dating Proves Humans Not Glaciers Transported the Stonehenge Stones

Grains of sand prove people – not glaciers – transported Stonehenge rocks

Stonehenge in Wiltshire, southern England, is a mysterious place that speaks of a culture and political–religious authority of which we know almost nothing, probably motivated by belief in long-dead gods whose supposed presence was, at the time, undoubtedly considered to be “all around”. This is much as theists of all religions assert of their god or gods today. Who these people were, remains one of the great mysteries, as does how they moved such massive stones into place to build a stone circle with extraordinary precision, and how they transported them over long distances long before the domestication of the horse.

We know they were not the later Welsh-speaking Celts, who did not arrive in Britain until around 1,000 BCE — some two millennia after construction of Stonehenge began. Those Celts replaced the Beaker culture, which itself had replaced the Neolithic farming communities who first built the monument. Construction began around 3,000 BCE, initially as a bank-and-ditch enclosure with a circle of wooden posts. This was later replaced, around 2,500 BCE, by a circle of massive sarsen stones sourced locally from the nearby Salisbury Plain, with the smaller bluestones brought from the Preseli Hills in south-west Wales. The so-called “altar stone” was added last. Its precise origin remains unresolved, with conflicting evidence suggesting either north-west Scotland or west Wales as its source.

While the question of where most of the stones came from has largely been resolved, what remains is the long-standing puzzle of how they were transported using only human labour. The motivation was clearly strong enough to justify the immense effort and manpower involved, and the fact that it was human effort that moved them has now been established beyond reasonable doubt by the falsification of an alternative hypothesis — namely, that the stones were carried to Salisbury Plain by a passing glacier during the last Ice Age.

The refutation of this idea provides a neat example of how science tests and falsifies hypotheses, though it will no doubt unsettle creationists who cling to the absurd belief that the entire history of the Earth can be compressed into a timescale of just 6,000–10,000 years. The work was carried out by two researchers from Curtin University in Perth, Western Australia, and relied on dating zircon crystals — a highly accurate method for determining the age of rock formations, as regular readers of this blog will know — along with apatite grains, which similarly exploit the radioactive decay of uranium isotopes into stable lead isotopes.

Refuting Creationism - How Camellias Evolved As The Japanese Islands Formed

Camellia japonica

Camellia Rusticana

How Camellias evolved with the formation of the Japanese archipelago? | News | NIIGATA UNIVERSITY

It's a basic principle of evolution that environmental changes drive evolution by isolating populations which are then free to evolve on their own trajectory, and by creating new ecological niches into which species can diversify.

An almost perfect example of this in progress can be seen in the Camellia group of plants, of which one, tea, Camellia cinensis is perhaps the most important economically, But several others are also important cultivated garden plants with bright red, pink or white flowers.

Another phenomenon of evolution that this group of plants displays is that evolution is not a sudden event but a slow process over time, during which hybridization and gene flow between related species occurs until barriers to hybridization have evolved.

This tendency to form hybrids and the general similar morphologies has made accurate classification of the different species, and subspecies difficult and a matter of debate among taxonomists and botanists.

Now work by a team led by Dr. Harue Abe of Niigata University, Sado, Niiagata, Japan have shown how the evolution and distribution of this genus was strongly influenced by the formation of the Japanese archipelago.

Malevolent Design - How The Toxoplasma Parasite Looks Intelligently Designed - To A Creationist

Toxoplasma gondii cyst in brain cell.

A) Toxoplasma gondii tachyzoites, the rapidly multiplying form of the parasite. B) A bradyzoite cyst containing Toxoplasma gondii within a muscle fiber, showing the cyst wall and individual bradyzoites. C) Histological section of tissue with Toxoplasma gondii cysts. D) Microscopic image of a Toxoplasma gondii oocyst, responsible for environmental transmission.

source.

Scientists find hidden diversity inside common brain parasite | UCR News | UC Riverside

Another example of a nasty little parasite that bears all the hallmarks of the Discovery Institute’s supposed *“proof”* of intelligent design was unveiled today, when scientists from the University of California, Riverside published the results of their investigation into the common brain parasite, Toxoplasma gondii, which infects up to a third of the global population. Their paper was published open access in Nature Communications. It has been released unedited to provide early access to the findings.

Ask Discovery Institute (DI) fellow Michael J. Behe for proof of intelligent design and he will produce multiple examples of what he terms “irreducible complexity”, claiming that such systems could not have evolved step by step and therefore must have been designed by a supernatural intelligent designer. Similarly, ask another DI fellow, William A. Dembski, for proof of intelligent design and he will produce examples of what he calls “complex specified genetic information”, which he claims likewise could not have evolved naturally and therefore must have been provided by a supernatural designer.

Curiously, however, when biologists point to examples of “irreducible complexity” or “complex specified genetic information” in pathogens or parasites — organisms whose sole apparent purpose is to make us ill or kill us, or at the very least to increase suffering in the world - as evidence that, if the ID creationists’ argument were granted, it would imply malevolent intent on the part of the intelligent designer, the response is either silence or retreat into theology. More often than not, the blame is shifted to “the Fall”, while the insistence remains that intelligent design is a genuine scientific alternative to “Darwinism”, and not merely Bible-literalist Christian fundamentalism under another name.

At this point, their supposed “proof” of intelligent design quietly evaporates. Behe will even attempt to argue that the random process he calls “genetic entropy” is responsible, thereby conceding that random processes can generate what Dembski describes as complex specified genetic information — while simultaneously insisting that such information cannot have evolved through random processes at all.

The UC Riverside team have now shown that Toxoplasma gondii is even more complex than previously thought. It was already known that the parasite invades the brain and other tissues, where it forms dormant cysts that can later be reactivated. Its preferred hosts are members of the cat family, and humans are most commonly infected via cats. In some secondary hosts, it has been shown to manipulate behaviour in ways that make them more likely to be eaten by a cat, thereby completing its life cycle. Infected mice, for example, actively seek out the presence of domestic cats, while chimpanzees develop a fascination with the scent of leopard urine. It is possible that effects observed in humans are an echo of this behaviour-modifying mechanism inherited from our evolutionary past.

The new research shows that these cysts are far more complex than simple dormant copies of the parasite. Instead, they are intricate assemblages of multiple sub-types, each with distinct biological functions. In this respect, the cyst exhibits some of the characteristics of a multicellular organism, including a degree of cellular specialisation.

Creationism Refuted - You Can Tell The Ignorance Of The Bible's Authors By What They Left Out

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

Top: The GLEAM/GLEAM-X view of the Milky Way galaxy. Credit: S. Mantovanini & the GLEAM-X team
Bottom: The same area of the Milky Way in visible light.

Credit: Axel Mellinger, milkywaysky.com

A new, expansive view of the Milky Way reveals our Galaxy in unprecedented radio colour - ICRAR

A paper published yesterday in Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia presents a stunning new view of the Milky Way galaxy. It was produced by astronomers from the International Centre of Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) and shows the Milky Way in low-frequency colour images. It is a useful reminder of the stark difference between the Bible’s description of the universe and the real thing.

The Bronze Age authors of the Bible could only write about what they knew — and, manifestly, that wasn’t very much — but then they could never have guessed that some charlatan at some point in the future was going to put their childish tales into a book and declare it to be the word of a creator god. If anything was ever destined to be a self-falsifying claim, it was that.

But if it had been the word of an omnibenevolent supernatural deity with a vital message for humankind, not only would it have been so perfectly written that it could not possibly be misunderstood or misinterpreted, it would also have contained information not then available to its scribes, so there could be no doubt about its authenticity.

Yet there is nothing in the Bible that was not already known in the Bronze Age, and a great deal of what was believed in those days which has since turned out to be badly wrong. In fact, it is true to say that if the Bible were discovered today for the first time, any competent historian could date it and probably place its authorship geographically by the scientific ignorance it contains.

For example, there is nothing about micro-organisms, atoms, electricity, plate tectonics, galaxies, the vastness of space, or the fact that some of those little points of light the authors thought were stuck to a dome over the small, flat Earth were actually galaxies containing half a trillion or more suns. Nothing. Not a single thing that we could point to and say, “Wow! Only a creator god could have known that in the Bronze Age!” Instead, we have a god who supposedly designed and created the human body but believes we think with our hearts and that a clone made from a man will produce a woman.

Imagine if the first chapter of Genesis had been written like Eric Idle’s Galaxy Song from Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life:

How Do We know The Bible Is Wrong? - We Look At The Real-World Evidence, Of Course!

An example of a binary star system

Hubble uncovers the secret of stars that defy ageing | ESA/Hubble

A paper in Nature Communications by an international research team of astronomers led by Professor Francesco R. Ferraro of the Dipartimento di Fisica e Astronomia “Augusto Righi”, Alma Mater Studiorum Università di Bologna, Italy, reveals a universe utterly at odds with the description of it in the Bible. It should be a simple matter to compare this real universe with the one described in the Bible and draw the obvious conclusion from the glaring differences — but not, it seems, for creationists.

The connection between opinion and evidence appears to be lost on creationists who are determined to cling to patently wrong beliefs, despite the evidence, as though evidence has no right to intrude on their thought processes. In this worldview, truth is unrelated to real-world evidence and must comply with a creationist’s beliefs.

Let’s take a couple of simple examples and apply creationist “logic”.

Firstly: you need to cross a road. How do you know it’s safe before you step off the kerb?

You look at the evidence — how busy is the road? Are there any vehicles approaching, especially on your side? If there are, the evidence tells you that you can’t safely cross and need to wait.

Applying creationist “logic”: you ignore the evidence as unwanted and unwelcome and conclude that the road is safe to cross because you want it to be, and reality is obliged to comply.

What do you think your chances of surviving for long would be using that methodology?

Secondly: you’re waiting at a bus stop to catch a bus. How do you know the bus has arrived?

You can see the bus, of course. It has stopped in front of you and the doors have opened. Other passengers may be getting on or off, so you get on the bus and take your seat.

Applying creationist “logic”: you ignore the evidence and assume the bus must have arrived because you want it to have done so, so you step off the pavement and imagine you’re getting on a bus.

You now look pretty foolish and might even step into the path of the real bus you’ve been waiting for. What you almost certainly won’t do is get on the bus — because it isn’t there.

In both examples, only evidence reveals the real world, and creationist faith may let you down very badly, simply because creationist faith has no relationship to the real world. It reflects only blind imagination and wishful thinking, coupled with the absurd belief that the real world is obliged to comply with personal preferences. Evidence, on the other hand, is the real world, and a rational person allows evidence to determine their beliefs.

So now a third example: how do you know you can rely on the information in the Bible? You compare it with real-world evidence, of course, just as you would when crossing the road or catching a bus.

And if you do that, what do you find?

You find a description of the universe that bears no resemblance to the real universe — just as your faith in a safe and empty road bears no relationship to a real road, or your imaginary bus bears no relationship to a real bus. In other words, the real-world evidence is so far removed from the description in the Bible that the Bible is plainly, obviously, and irrefutably wrong. As such, it is utterly unreliable as a source of factual information about the universe.

What we see in the Bible is a description of a universe consisting of a small flat planet with a dome over it. We see a demon-haunted world that is just a few thousand years old and runs on magic. It has talking snakes and donkeys; it endorses slavery and misogyny, autocratic government and peremptory justice with no right of appeal, and a draconian penal system in which the penalty of choice is death for even minor transgressions. It describes virgin birth and promotes blood sacrifice as absolving people of responsibility for their wrongs.

And doubt itself is treated as a crime carrying the death penalty, as though the worst thing the authors could imagine was people questioning their claims.

With that in mind, let’s look at the real-world evidence as revealed by the European Space Agency (ESA) in conjunction with NASA and the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), and compare it with the Bible’s description of the universe:

Creationism Refuted - How The Mammalian Ear Evolved - 250 Million Years Before 'Creation Week'

Fossil study rewrites timeline of evolution of hearing in mammals | University of Chicago News

A recent paper in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA (PNAS) reports the discovery that an ancestor of mammals, a cynodont called Thrinaxodon liorhinus, had ear structures derived from redundant jaw bones that probably gave it an acute sense of hearing some 250 million years ago — around 50 million years earlier than previously believed. As nocturnal animals, a well-developed sense of hearing would have been hugely advantageous.

The research, by palaeontologists from the University of Chicago, used CT scans of the skull and jawbones of Thrinaxodon to simulate the effects of different sound pressures and frequencies on its anatomy.

Transitional fossils such as this are a major source of embarrassment to creationists because their Bronze Age mythology insists that all species were created fully formed, without ancestry, so there should never be any examples of species evolving or of existing structures being exapted over time for new functions.

Sadly for creationists, the fossil evidence paints an entirely different picture. It is a record of everything creationism predicts should not be there and everything evolution predicts will be. To most normal people, that sort of evidence should strongly suggest that creationism is wrong and that the Theory of Evolution is right.

It is rather like someone who does not believe in gravity stating that if you throw a stone into the air it will stay there and never fall back to Earth. A simple demonstration will establish the falsehood of that claim, just as the fossil record establishes the falsehood of creationist claims.

Background^ Cynodonts and the Evolution of the Mammalian Middle Ear. Cynodonts were a group of synapsid reptiles that lived from the Late Permian to the Early Jurassic and include the direct ancestors of mammals. Unlike true reptiles, cynodonts already showed many mammal-like features, including differentiated teeth, a more upright posture, a secondary palate, and increasingly complex jaw and skull anatomy. Fossils such as Thrinaxodon, Cynognathus, and later forms like Morganucodon document a clear, step-by-step transition from reptile-like synapsids to early mammals.

One of the most striking evolutionary changes recorded in this lineage is the origin of the mammalian middle ear. In reptiles, several small bones at the back of the lower jaw — notably the articular and quadrate — form part of the jaw joint. In mammals, these same bones are repurposed as the malleus and incus of the middle ear, joining the stapes to form the familiar three-bone hearing apparatus. This transformation did not occur suddenly; it unfolded gradually over tens of millions of years.

Fossil cynodonts preserve intermediate stages in which these jaw bones became progressively smaller, less involved in chewing, and increasingly specialised for sound transmission. Some transitional species even show a “double jaw joint,” with both the old reptilian joint and the new mammalian joint functioning simultaneously. This provides direct, physical evidence for exaptation — the evolutionary process in which structures originally evolved for one function are co-opted for a new one.

The result of this long transition was the highly sensitive mammalian middle ear, capable of detecting higher-frequency sounds far better than that of reptiles. This would have been particularly advantageous for small, nocturnal early mammals, allowing them to detect predators and prey in low-light conditions. Far from being a problem for evolutionary theory, the cynodont fossil record is one of its clearest and most elegant confirmations — and one of the most awkward facts for creationism to explain away.

Creationist Claim vs Reality: The Mammalian Middle Ear

Claim:
The mammalian middle ear is “irreducibly complex” and could not have evolved because all three bones — the malleus, incus, and stapes — must be present and perfectly arranged for hearing to work.

Reality:
The fossil record preserves multiple transitional stages showing exactly how the mammalian middle ear evolved from reptile-like jaw bones. In early synapsids and cynodonts, the articular and quadrate bones formed part of the jaw joint. Over time, these bones became progressively smaller and less involved in chewing, while increasingly specialised for transmitting sound.

Claim:
There are no transitional fossils showing this transformation.

Reality:
There are many. Fossils such as Thrinaxodon, Cynognathus, Diarthrognathus, and Morganucodon preserve intermediate anatomies, including species with a functioning “double jaw joint” — one reptilian and one mammalian — operating at the same time. This is exactly what gradual evolution predicts.

Claim:
Repurposing jaw bones for hearing would destroy their original function.

Reality:
It did not. For millions of years, both functions co-existed. As the new mammalian jaw joint (between the dentary and squamosal bones) took over the role of chewing, the old jaw joint bones were freed to specialise for sound transmission. This is a textbook example of exaptation, not a paradox.

Claim:
Complex biological structures appear suddenly.

Reality:
They do not. The step-by-step transformation of jaw bones into middle ear bones is one of the best-documented transitions in the entire fossil record. It is exactly the opposite of what creationism predicts — and exactly what evolutionary theory predicts.

The research is explained in an article in UChicago News by Matt Wood.

Fossil study rewrites timeline of evolution of hearing in mammals

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UChicago paleontologists use CT scanning and simulations to show how a 250-million-year-old mammal predecessor could hear like us

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One of the most important steps in the evolution of modern mammals was the development of highly sensitive hearing.

The middle ear of mammals, with an eardrum and several small bones, allows us to hear a broad range of frequencies and volumes, which was a big help to early, mostly nocturnal mammal ancestors as they tried to survive alongside dinosaurs.

New research by paleontologists from the University of Chicago shows that this modern mode of hearing evolved much earlier than previously thought. Working with detailed CT scans of the skull and jawbones of Thrinaxodon liorhinus, a 250-million-year-old mammal predecessor, they used engineering methods to simulate the effects of different sound pressures and frequencies on its anatomy.

Their models show the creature likely had an eardrum large enough to hear airborne sound effectively, nearly 50 million years before scientists previously thought this evolved in early mammals.

For almost a century, scientists have been trying to figure out how these animals could hear. These ideas have captivated the imagination of paleontologists who work in mammal evolution, but until now we haven’t had very strong biomechanical tests. Now, with our advances in computational biomechanics, we can start to say smart things about what the anatomy means for how this animal could hear.

Alec T. Wilken, lead author
Department of Organismal Biology and Anatomy
The University of Chicago
Chicago, IL, USA.

Fossil specimen of the Thrinaxodon skull and jaw used for the study.

Photo by Matt Wood.

Testing a 50-year-old hypothesis

Thrinaxodon was a cynodont, a group of animals from the early Triassic period with features beginning to transition from reptiles to mammals. They had specialized teeth, changes to the palate and diaphragm to improve breathing and metabolism, and probably warm-bloodedness and fur.

In early cynodonts, including Thrinaxodon, the ear bones—malleus, incus, stapes—were attached to their jawbones. Later, these bones separated from the jaw to form a distinct middle ear, considered a key development in the evolution of modern mammals.

Simulations showed that sound waves applied to the eardrum of "Thrinaxodon" (top) would have enabled it to hear much more effectively than through bone conduction alone (bottom).

Infographic courtesy of April I. Neander, Alec Wilken

Fifty years ago, Edgar Allin, a paleontologist at the University of Illinois Chicago, first speculated that cynodonts like Thrinaxodon had a membrane suspended across a hooked structure on the jawbone that was a precursor to the modern eardrum. Until then, scientists who studied mammal evolution mostly believed that early cynodonts heard through bone conduction, or via so-called “jaw listening” where they set their mandibles on the ground to pick up vibrations.

While the eardrum idea was fascinating, there was no way to definitively test if such a structure could work to hear airborne sounds.

Turning fossils into an engineering problem

Modern imaging tools like CT scanning have revolutionized the field of paleontology, allowing scientists to unlock a wealth of information that wouldn’t have been possible through studying physical specimens alone.

Wilken and his advisors, Zhe-Xi Luo and Callum Ross, both professors of organismal biology and anatomy, took a well-known Thrinaxodon specimen from the Museum of Paleontology at the University of California, Berkeley, and scanned it in UChicago’s PaleoCT Laboratory. The resulting 3D model gave them a highly detailed reconstruction of its skull and jawbones, with all the dimensions, shapes, angles and curves they needed to determine how a potential eardrum might function.

Next, they used a software tool called Strand7 to perform finite element analysis, an approach that breaks down a system into smaller parts with different physical characteristics. Such tools are usually used for complex engineering problems, like predicting stresses on bridges, aircraft and buildings, or analyzing heat distribution in engines. The team used the software to simulate how the anatomy of Thrinaxodon would respond to different sound pressures and frequencies, using a library of known properties about the thickness, density and flexibility of bones, ligaments, muscles and skin from living animals.

The results were loud and clear: Thrinaxodon, with an eardrum tucked into a crook on its jawbone, could definitely hear that way much more effectively than through bone conduction. The size and shape of its eardrum would have produced the right vibrations to move the ear bones and generate enough pressure to stimulate its auditory nerves and detect sound frequencies. While it still would have relied on some jaw listening, the eardrum was already responsible for most of its hearing.

Once we have the CT model from the fossil, we can take material properties from extant animals and make it as if our Thrinaxodon came alive. That hasn’t been possible before, and this software simulation showed us that vibration through sound is essentially the way this animal could hear.

Professor Zhe-Xi Luo, corresponding author.
Department of Organismal Biology and Anatomy
The University of Chicago
Chicago, IL, USA.

Wilken said the new technology allowed them to answer an old question by turning it into an engineering problem.

That’s why this is such a cool problem to study. We took a high concept problem—that is, ‘how do ear bones wiggle in a 250-million-year-old fossil?’—and tested a simple hypothesis using these sophisticated tools. And it turns out in Thrinaxodon, the eardrum does just fine all by itself.

Alec T. Wilken.

Publication:

A.T. Wilken, C.C.G. Snipes, C.F. Ross, & Z. Luo.
Biomechanics of the mandibular middle ear of the cynodont Thrinaxodon and the evolution of mammal hearing
Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 122 (51) e2516082122, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2516082122 (2025).

Significance
The middle ear of modern mammals is detached from the mandible and has a soft-tissue eardrum, which allows airborne sound to be heard across a wide range of frequencies. A rich fossil record shows that the middle ear bones of mammals evolved from the jaw bones of their synapsid predecessors, but how this transformation was associated with changes in hearing function is unknown. Our finite element analysis (FEA) of the harmonic response of the mandibular ear bones and soft-tissue eardrum of the synapsid Thrinaxodon suggests that this 250-Mya-old mammal precursor was already capable of tympanic hearing similar to extant mammals and provides evidence that this functional transition occurred very early in mammal evolutionary history.

Abstract
The middle ear of mammals is a major functional innovation, distinctive in that it is detached from the mandible and has a tympanic membrane supported by a ring-like ectotympanic. These novelties of the middle ear have enabled modern mammals to develop more sensitive hearing than all other tetrapods, especially at higher frequencies. Fossils from recent decades have clarified the evolution of the detached middle ear from the jaw bones of Paleozoic therapsids and Mesozoic cynodonts, and the evolution of the tympanum. These discoveries make it possible to answer important questions about the functional significance of these features. Here, we evaluate the relative hearing efficacy of a well-known cynodont precursor to mammals, Thrinaxodon liorhinus. Using finite element analysis (FEA), we calculated the harmonic response of the Thrinaxodon ear to bone-conducted and airborne sound and estimated the sound pressure level (SPL) at the stapedial footplate across a broad range of frequencies. We provide evidence that airborne sound received at the tympanum was the most effective mode of sound reception in Thrinaxodon. In contrast, bone conducted sound through the mandibular bones barely met our estimated hearing threshold. Our findings suggest that, like modern mammals, cynodonts were already reliant on a soft tissue tympanum to receive airborne sound, albeit with limited sensitivity to high frequencies. This is a detailed biomechanical evaluation of tympanum function in the cynodont predecessors of mammals and yields insight into the sequence of functional innovations during the evolution of mammal hearing.

A.T. Wilken, C.C.G. Snipes, C.F. Ross, & Z. Luo.
Biomechanics of the mandibular middle ear of the cynodont Thrinaxodon and the evolution of mammal hearing
Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 122 (51) e2516082122, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2516082122 (2025).

© 2026 National Academy of Sciences of the USA.
Reprinted under the terms of s60 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

For creationists, this discovery is yet another reminder of how badly their Bronze Age mythology fails when confronted with real-world evidence. The evolutionary origin of the mammalian middle ear is no longer a theoretical reconstruction inferred from comparative anatomy; it is a physical, fossil-documented transition preserved in stone. The fact that Thrinaxodon already shows mammal-like hearing structures 250 million years ago simply pushes that transition even further back in time and fills in yet another gap that creationists like to pretend does not exist.

It also underlines a point that creationists have been trying to evade for decades: evolution does not require sudden leaps or the magical appearance of fully formed organs. What it requires is exactly what the fossil record shows — incremental modifications of existing structures, shaped by selection, and repurposed for new functions as circumstances change. Jaw bones that once transmitted bite forces gradually became exquisitely tuned instruments for transmitting sound. That is not a problem for evolutionary theory; it is one of its strongest empirical confirmations.

Worse still for Intelligent Design advocates, the researchers show no hesitation whatsoever in interpreting what they found within the framework of evolutionary biology. There is no hint of mystery, no appeal to unknown designers, and no suggestion that natural processes are inadequate to explain what is observed. Instead, the anatomy of Thrinaxodon fits neatly into a well-established evolutionary sequence that has been mapped out for decades and is now being refined in ever greater detail as new fossils and new technologies come to light.

So once again, we are left with a familiar contrast. Evolutionary biology makes clear, testable predictions about what we should find in the fossil record — and those predictions keep being confirmed. Creationism, by contrast, predicts that none of this should exist at all. When one worldview consistently matches the evidence and the other consistently fails, there is no honest ambiguity about which one is right.

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How We Know The Bible is Wrong - Cosmology

NGC 2566, a spiral galaxy located in the constellation Puppis

potm2412a

These two galaxies are named NGC 4490 and NGC 4485, and they’re located about 24 million light-years away in the constellation Canes Venatici (The Hunting Dogs). Aside from the Milky Way’s own dwarf companions (the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds), this is the closest known interacting dwarf-dwarf system where astronomers have directly observed both a gas bridge and resolved stellar populations. Together NGC 4490 and NGC 4485 form the system Arp 269, which is featured in the Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies. At such a close distance (and with Webb’s impressive ability to peer through dusty cosmic clouds) these galaxies allow astronomers to witness up close the kinds of galaxy interactions that were common billions of years ago.

Source: potm2511a

Just a gentle reminder, if any were needed, that we can tell the Bible is wrong by comparing its descriptions with what we can observe. To take a silly-simple example that even a creationists should be able to understand: supposing I told you that the Bible had 7 chapters in three sections, the Old, Middle And New Testaments, and was just 50 pages long, you could simply look in the Bible and see that I was wrong. It would be no use me trying to claim that I was right really because my statement was an allegory or a metaphor, because you could see that it was neither; it was simply wrong, unequivocally and irrefutably so.

Well, it's the same with the description of the Universe in the Bible. We can look at the Universe now, using technology the Bronze Age authors of the Bible could never dream of, and see that it is nothing like the description in the Bible.

So, just as my whimsical description of the Bible was not even close, so we can see that the Bronze age authors of the Bible were not even close. The difference of course is that while my mistakes were deliberate, theirs were the result of ignorance.

So, let's see again how the Bible describes a small, flat universe consisting of a single planet with a sun and moon hanging over it, and the whole covered by a dome to keep the water out.

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)

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 1.16-18)

How the Bible's authors saw the Universe.

And now let's look at what some tiny fragments of the Universe are really like, as shown by the James Webb Space Telescope and published by the European Space Agency (ESA):

Refuting Creationism - Two Ancient Eurasians Carried Human Papillomavirus (HPV16) - Long Before 'Creation Week' and 'The Fall'

A facial reconstruction of Ötzi the Iceman.

Image credit: Reconstruction by Kennis © South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology, Foto Ochsenreiter

Ötzi the Iceman mummy carried a high-risk strain of HPV, research finds | Live Science

Palaeontologists at the Federal University of São Paulo, Brazil have analysed the DNA recovered from two ancient humans and discovered that they were both carriers of the Human Papillomavirus HPV16, a virus implicated in several cancers. They have presented their evidence, ahead of peer-reviewed publication in the pre-print server, bioRxiv.

The interesting thing from the point of view of virology is that this discovery shed considerable light on when HPV entered the human virome and commenced co-evolving with us, with one theory being that we acquired them from Neanderthals. From the point of view of creationists however, the news could scarcely be worse.

The first sample, obtained from the famous 'Ötzi the Iceman', the 5,300 year-old mummified body recovered from a glacier on the Italian-Austrian border, is probably not too much of a problem for creationists as it just about falls within the timeline of the Bible mythology, apart from the little problem of it being from before they believe the was a general reset of Earth's biosphere in a genocidal flood which would have destroyed the glacier and everything in it, so Ötzi should not have been there.

But, the second is a massive problem, since it was recovered from a leg of a man, Ust'-Ishim man, recovered from western Siberia and dated to 45,000 years BP - way before creationists believe Earth existed, and tens of thousands of years before the mythical 'Fall', when creationists believe viruses didn't exist. This specimen provided the oldest complete human genome so far recovered and the DNA contains the unmistakable genome of HPV16. Creationist mythology just keeps getting further and further from reality as exposed by science using real-world evidence.

Traditionally, creationists claim Earth is 6,000 - 10,000 years old and was created perfect in every way, with no deaths or diseases, so no viruses, parasites or pathogens, bodies that always functioned perfectly and genomes that never failed to replicate perfectly. Then, along came 'sin' which, by some mysterious process, was able to thwart the omnipotent creator god's perfect plan and create viruses and other pathogens and make perfect physiology begin to malfunction and genomes to fail to replicate perfectly, causing variations and genetic weaknesses, etc.

Why a reputedly omnipotent creator failed to anticipate the effects of 'sin' and make its creation robust enough to resist them is never explained, although, apparently, it provided immune systems in preparation for something that, although omniscient, and even claimed to have created 'evil' (Isiah 45:7), it then failed to anticipate. But, as though those myths aren't too ridiculous for any adult with even a basic education to believe, creationists have to continually think of ways to ignore the evidence and continue holding plainly absurd beliefs, under the child-like delusion that their ability to do so is a sign of strength.

The paper itself sets out to address a long-standing question in human virology: how long oncogenic human papillomaviruses have been associated with our species, and whether their origins lie in relatively recent cultural changes or deep evolutionary history.

Refuting Creationism - Why The Theory of Gravity is Incomplete, Unlike The Theory of Evolution

It may come as a surprise to some that scientists at the Center of Applied Space Technology and Microgravity (ZARM) at the University of Bremen, Germany, together with colleagues from the Transylvanian University of Brașov, Romania, have proposed a new theory of gravity, which they recently published in the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics.

Even flat-earthers do not attempt to deny gravity. No one who does not require medication doubts that gravity is the force that prevents us from floating off into space and causes objects to fall when dropped. No one seriously believes they can step off a tall building and come to no harm because gravity is “just a theory”.

And yet, despite its obvious and universal effects, gravity remains incompletely understood. Unlike evolution—which can be directly observed and whose underlying mechanisms have been well established for decades—we still lack a complete explanation of how gravity works. Newton described it mathematically as an attractive force between masses, proportional to those masses and obeying an inverse-square law, but he did not explain why masses attract one another. Einstein later recast gravity as the curvature of spacetime caused by mass and energy, with objects following the shortest paths through that curved geometry. However, gravity has never been successfully reconciled with quantum mechanics and appears to be a phenomenon that belongs to the macroscopic domain of relativity. Although most physicists assume that relativity and quantum mechanics must ultimately be unified, a quantum theory of gravity remains elusive.

In other words, as with evolution, we know that gravity is real, and we understand its effects extremely well. But unlike evolution—where we possess a comprehensive and coherent explanatory framework—we currently have only incomplete and sometimes conflicting theories for gravity’s underlying cause.

Despite this, creationists never dispute the theory of gravity on the grounds of these gaps. The reason is obvious: their sacred collection of Bronze Age myths makes no claims about gravity at all. Its authors took gravity for granted, seeing no need to explain it, and therefore left no theological foothold for modern denial. There are no angels holding planets in orbit or magical forces suspending objects in mid-air, and so gravity is quietly accepted.

Creationism Refuted - Earth - A Planet Fine-Tuned For Extinction

© Kaori Serakaki (OIST)

Illustrations of Ordovician, jawless vertebrates. Left is a Promissum conodont, ranging from 5 to 50 cm in length and named after unusual, cone-like teeth fossils, which are hypothesized to be ancestors of modern lampreys and hagfishes. On the right is a pair of Sacabambaspis, around 35 cm in length, which had distinct, forward-facing eyes and an armored head. Very few conodont species survived the Late Ordovician Extinction Event, and no fossils of animals like Sacabambaspis from after the event have been discovered.

© Nobu Tamura (CC BY-SA)

The Age of Fishes began with mass death | Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology OIST

A recent paper published in Science Advances by Wahei Hagiwara and Professor Lauren Sallan of the Macroevolution Unit at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology, Japan, closes a long-standing gap in our understanding of the early radiation of vertebrates into jawed and jawless fishes following the Late Ordovician mass extinction, around ~445–443 million years ago. Their analysis shows that this radiation arose from a small number of fortunate survivors clinging on in ecological refugia. From those few lineages, of course, all modern marine and terrestrial vertebrates ultimately evolved.

This study neatly dismantles one of creationism’s favourite rhetorical fallbacks: the claim that Earth was deliberately “fine-tuned” to support complex life, and ultimately humans. The evolutionary pattern revealed here—near-annihilation followed by recovery from a few scattered refugia—is not the signature of foresight or optimisation, but of contingency and survival against the odds. Life does not flourish because conditions are perfectly arranged for it; rather, whatever happens to survive is forced to adapt to whatever conditions remain. The history of vertebrates, like that of life more generally, is therefore not one of careful planning, but of repeated catastrophe followed by opportunistic evolutionary radiation.

Creationists are notable for clinging to demonstrably false beliefs in the face of overwhelming evidence, childishly mistaking stubbornness for intellectual strength, rather like a spoilt toddler refusing to accept that they have just lost a game of Snap!. Alongside the patently absurd claim that Earth is only 6,000–10,000 years old sits the almost equally untenable belief that the planet was created exactly as it is, perfectly suited for human life. This notion is maintained despite abundant evidence for repeated mass extinctions driven by cosmic impacts, large-scale geological processes such as plate tectonics and associated seismic activity, major reorganisations of ocean circulation, and delicately balanced biogeochemical feedback systems involving oxygenation and carbon cycling that periodically spiral out of control, triggering catastrophic climate change.

What the evidence actually reveals is not a cosy, well-regulated world resembling some tranquil small town in Kansas, but a planet that is frequently so hostile to life that much of it is wiped out entirely. Most species go extinct, leaving only a handful of survivors to inherit the aftermath and radiate into new forms adapted to altered conditions—until they too are eliminated by some future catastrophe. The conclusion is unavoidable: Earth is not fine-tuned for human life, or for life in general. Instead, today’s species are the fortunate descendants of a few lucky survivors, shaped by natural selection to fit available ecological niches as neatly as a hand fits a glove.