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 Design - The Sneaky Way TB Keeps On Making Us Sick

Credit: Md Ariful Islam

Study discovers DNA switch that controls TB growth – and could help unlock its antibiotic resistance secrets | University of Surrey

If you're an omniscient, omnipotent, malevolent designer of parasites — such as the bacterium that causes tuberculosis in humans — then you're hardly going to let a little thing like the immune system (which you supposedly also designed to protect them) or even the development of medical science and antibiotics spoil your fun in causing random suffering, are you? Naturally, you'd equip your creation with mechanisms to overcome these obstacles.

Within the framework of Intelligent Design creationism, that's precisely what this recent discovery should look like — at least to those creationists who don't simply ignore the obvious and pretend it isn't there. Scientists from the Universities of Surrey and Oxford have discovered that Mycobacterium tuberculosis uses a reversible process known as ADP-ribosylation to modify its DNA, controlling both replication and gene expression. This allows the bacterium to remain dormant for extended periods and reactivate when environmental threats, such as immune responses or antibiotics, have passed.

This presents a problem for creationists who insist on believing in a benevolent creator deity and simultaneously hold that features such as irreducible complexity and complex specified information are sure signs of intelligent design—claims promoted by Discovery Institute fellows Michael J. Behe and William A. Dembski. Since Mycobacterium tuberculosis displays these very characteristics, so either it was designed specifically to cause suffering, or those characteristics are not the reliable indicators of divine design that Behe and Dembski claim, and their entire argument collapses.

This discovery was recently published open access in The EMBO Journal, and further details are available in the University of Surrey press release:

Malevolent Design - How Creationism's Divine Malevolence is Helping Cholera Win An Arms Race Against A Virus

How cholera bacteria outsmart viruses - EPFL

Time-course microscopy snapshots comparing cell morphology and cellular DNA content, as monitored using HU–mNeonGreen fusion (mNG), in WT and ΔWASA-1 backgrounds, following infection with ICP1-2006 at MOI 5.

Adams, D.W., Jaskólska, M., Lemopoulos, A. et al. (2025).

Biological arms races represent one of those problematic areas in biology that Intelligent Design (ID) creationists tend to avoid — precisely because they undermine the notion of a single, supreme intelligence orchestrating the design of all living organisms. These arms races typically occur in predator–prey or parasite–host relationships, where the survival of one party depends on improving its ability to evade, resist, or defend against the other — while the other evolves countermeasures to overcome those defences. From the standpoint of a single, omniscient designer, this results in a paradox: today’s ‘solution’ to a problem becomes tomorrow’s new problem to be solved. Where, exactly, is the intelligence in that?

A striking example of such an evolutionary arms race has just been uncovered by a team from École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), who found that a notorious strain of cholera possesses a suite of sophisticated immune systems to fend off viral attack. According to ID proponents like William A. Dembski, both this cholera strain and the viruses that infect it should qualify as products of ‘complex, specified information’. Likewise, under Michael J. Behe’s definition, both would be considered ‘irreducibly complex’. By their logic, this makes them the result of intelligent design by a supernatural creator.

In other words, creationism’s designer god has supposedly created viruses that infect the cholera bacterium—then equipped the bacterium with complex machinery to defend itself.

To make matters worse for creationists, this virus-resistant cholera strain was behind a devastating epidemic across Latin America. That is, the designer god not only enabled the bacterium to resist viruses, but in doing so gave it a better chance of surviving to infect and harm humans—using its ‘intelligently designed’, ‘irreducibly complex’ viral defences.

The research is published open access in Nature Microbiology.

Unintelligent Design - Why Your Toothache Has Ancient Origins - In Your Ancestral Fish

Artistic rendering of the sensory exoskeletons of the early jawless vertebrate Astraspis being attacked by the sea-scorpion Megalograptus in dark shallow waters.

Brian Engh

CT scan of the front of a skate, showing the hard, tooth-like denticles on its skin (shown in orange).

Yara Haridy

Toothache from eating something cold? Blame these ancient fish | Biological Sciences Division | The University of Chicago

Have you ever taken a mouthful of ice cream or cold water, only to be rewarded with a sudden, stabbing pain in your teeth? It vanishes in a few seconds, but for that brief moment, it’s excruciating.

You might wonder what kind of intelligent designer would produce such a feature—one that serves no apparent purpose other than to make you suffer. The answer, of course, is that it wasn’t designed at all.

Like so much else about the human body, the sensitivity of our teeth is the product of evolution—a long, meandering process shaped not by foresight or intent, but by whatever natural selection happened to favour at the time. That over-sensitive layer of dentine beneath the enamel traces its origins back to ancient jawless fish, whose bony body armour included sensory structures capable of detecting changes in their environment. These structures were crucial for survival and heavily favoured by selection.

As evolution repurposed this structure over millions of years—eventually becoming part of our teeth—there was no strong selection pressure to reduce its sensitivity. In the aquatic world of those primitive fish, a keen sensory system might have meant the difference between life and death. In modern humans, however, it serves no meaningful function. A momentary sting when we drink something cold doesn’t affect our survival or reproductive success, so we’re left with a redundant sensory feature that occasionally causes pain.

If ever there were a perfect illustration of how evolution works—and why no intelligence is required—this is it. Unless, of course, you believe the designer in question is a malevolent deity with a particular interest in toothaches.

The discovery of this direct connection with our remote ancestral past was made by researchers at the University of Chicago who have just published their findings, open access in Science.

Unintelligent Design - Bizarre Heath-Robinson Reproduction In A Marine Worm

[Body]

Close-up of female stolen – one of the independent reproductive units – from the worm Ramisyllis kingghidorahi. It has already sprouted eyes and is swimming free to find a stolon of the opposite sex with which to reproduce.

Information for the Media - Georg-August-Universität Göttingen

As a supposed product of intelligent design, the reproductive process of the branching marine worm Ramisyllis kingghidorahi is nothing short of bizarre—especially when one considers that many of its marine worm relatives manage perfectly well with far more straightforward, functional reproductive strategies, free from the Heath-Robinson complexity seen in R. kingghidorahi.

This remarkable worm comprises a branching network of segments, the ends of which can transform into free-living reproductive units known as stolons. These stolons firstly grow a pair of eyes then detach from the main body and swim off in search of a partner—another stolon of the opposite sex.

Yet the most pressing question for biologists isn’t why such a labyrinthine reproductive system evolved, but how it is controlled and coordinated across the worm’s sprawling body. This is precisely the mystery tackled by a team of researchers from Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, Germany.

Their research has just been published, open access, in the journal BMC Genomics.

Malevolent Or Incompetent Design? - Or Just Mindless Evolution?

Chikungunya virus has become a disease of global concern due to its potentially disabling consequences and its efficient transmission.

The Aedes mosquito is the primary vector for the Chikungunya virus

LJI scientists uncover clues to how a viral infection can lead to arthritis-like disease – lji.org

Scientists believe they have uncovered a mechanism by which a viral infection can trigger a persistent autoimmune response, leading to chronic and often severe pain.

If fully understood, this discovery poses a significant challenge to Intelligent Design (ID) creationism. Under the ID paradigm, such an outcome leaves us with two unpalatable options: either the designer is incompetent, having failed to foresee the consequences of a poorly calibrated immune system, or the suffering inflicted on random individuals is intentional—engineered by design.

This finding also reignites a long-standing issue for creationism: the existence of parasites, particularly viruses. According to criteria promoted by Discovery Institute fellows William A. Dembski ("complex specified information") and Michael J. Behe ("irreducible complexity"), viruses must be regarded as the product of intelligent design. Yet these same entities are responsible for making us ill—seemingly by the same designer who supposedly crafted our immune system to protect us from them. The contradiction is striking.

The explanation stems from recent work by a research team at the La Jolla Institute for Immunology and is published in Cell Reports Medicine.

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.

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.

Unintelligent Design - Stupidly Doing The Same Thing In Two Different Ways

A green stick insect (Timema cristinae) blends in on a
California lilac, Ceanothus spinosus.

Photo Credit: Aaron Comeault.

Timema cristinae (striped morph)

Credit: Bart Zijlstra www.bartzijlstra.com

USU Evolutionary Biologist Says Study Reveals Complex Chromosomal Rearrangements in a Stick Insect

The wingless, plant-feeding stick insect, Timema cristinae, occurs in two different cryptic colour morphs. One has longitudinal white stripes along its back on an otherwise green body, while the second is a uniform plain green.

The striped morph is found on Adenostoma fasciculatum, a plant with long, needle-like leaves, where the stripes help break up the outline of the insect’s body, making it resemble a cluster of green needles. In contrast, the plain green morph is found on Ceanothus spinosus, which has broader, more tree-like leaves on which conspicuous white stripes would be maladaptive.

This seems entirely sensible and, from the perspective of an intelligent designer, a perfectly reasonable way to protect stick insects from predation — setting aside, for the sake of argument, the questionable logic of designing predators to eat stick insects and then designing stick insects to avoid being eaten.

However, the means by which this cryptic colouration was achieved in populations of Timema cristinae on two different mountains, where the respective host plants grow, is more typical of the behaviour of creationism’s putative designer. In each case, the same camouflage was achieved through entirely different genetic mechanisms. This tendency to reinvent the metaphorical wheel appears to be a hallmark of creationism’s “intelligent” designer — seen, for example, in the development of different wing structures in birds and bats, different forms of insulation in mammalian fur and bird feathers, and several distinct designs for eyes.

Of course, there is no reason to expect a mindless natural process such as evolution by natural selection to respond to identical environmental pressures in precisely the same way in two geographically isolated populations. All that matters is whether the eventual adaptation — in this case, effective camouflage — is functionally comparable.

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:

Unintelligent Design - The Extreme Lengths To Which a Shrew Goes To Survive

Masked shrew
Sorex cinereus

By rpoort - https://www.inaturalist.org/photos/12617120,
CC BY 4.0, Link

Masked Shrew, Sorex cinereus

Photo © P. Myers,
Mammal Images Library of the American Society of Mammalogists.

New UNCG Research Shows Southern Shrews Shrink in Winter | College of Arts & Sciences

The already peculiar beliefs that creationists must entertain about their supposed creator deity have become even stranger with the discovery that North America's masked shrew actually shrinks as part of its winter survival strategy.

Imagine you're designing a small mammal intended to survive in an environment where food becomes scarce, and temperatures fall too low for typical warm-blooded activity during winter. You've already solved this issue effectively with hibernation — a successful strategy employed by numerous animals, even large ones like bears. Yet, apparently deeming hibernation alone insufficiently complex for the masked shrew, your design involves the creature further reducing its energy needs by physically shrinking, despite the fact that its small size was already a significant part of the survival challenge.

Nevertheless, this is precisely the type of scenario a creationist must accept if they reject evolution as an explanation. Evolution, as a blind, pragmatic process working without foresight, readily generates such unlikely and counterintuitive adaptations through trial and error.

Yet prominent creationist advocates continue to assert that their supposed intelligent designer deliberately creates these seemingly nonsensical adaptations—ironically claiming these designs are beyond the capability of natural evolutionary processes.

This example of Dehnel's phenomenon is the subject of a recent research paper in The American Naturalist by researchers based at the University of North Caroline Greensboro (UNC Greensboro). It is described in a UNC Greensboro press release:

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?

Unintelligent Design - Another Failure By Creationism's Blundering Designer

Machine for repairing broken mtDNA.

AI-Generated image
(with apologies to William Heath Robinson)

The graphic shows images of a cell under mtDNA replication stress made using so-called Correlative Light and Electron Microscopy (for short: CLEM). The mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA, green) is ejected from the mitochondria (magenta) and taken up by a lysosome, which contains the retromer (cyan). The highlighted section was also analysed using 3D-CLEM to obtain volumetric information.

Fig.: HHU/David Pla-Martín.

Medicine: Publication in Science Advances

Yet Another Workaround for a Flawed Design.

Researchers led by Professor Dr David Pla-Martín of Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, alongside colleagues from the University of Cologne, have uncovered yet another complex but error-prone workaround—this time, to fix a problem that stems from an earlier design flaw.

They have identified a mechanism used to repair mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) when it breaks. From an intelligent design perspective, mitochondria — once free-living bacteria—were supposedly the 'quick fix' to give eukaryotic cells the ability to efficiently convert glucose into adenosine triphosphate (ATP) using oxygen. ATP is the primary energy currency used in metabolic reactions, formed from adenosine diphosphate (ADP) and phosphate.

A truly intelligent designer, however, could have simply endowed cells with this biochemical machinery from the start—no need to incorporate foreign bacteria complete with their own DNA. But apparently, that would have been too simple.

This convoluted solution, predictably, comes with problems. Mitochondria often replicate their DNA imperfectly, or the DNA becomes damaged, leading to mitochondrial failure and a range of diseases. So, yet another layer of biological complexity has evolved to patch up the broken mtDNA. And, in classic Heath Robinson fashion, this repair mechanism is itself error-prone.

Unintelligent Design - Why Humans Are Not Intelligently Designed for Modern life

"Now look what you've done! The place is not fit to live in anymore!"

Humanity's Real Problem: Accelerating Evolutionary Mismatch | Psychology Today

A sure sign of unintelligent design is one that completely fails to anticipate the future. Biologically speaking, poor design occurs when an organism is adapted to an environment at a specific moment but becomes increasingly maladapted as the environment evolves. This happens either because the organism fails to adapt quickly enough or because it was never designed with future changes in mind in the first place.

A good, intelligent designer, especially one equipped with the power of foresight, would not just design for today but for tomorrow, next year and for the foreseeable future. Failure to do so is incompetence, indolence or sheer malevolence in putting its design on course for ultimate disaster.

In my book, The Body of Evidence: How the Human Body Refutes Creationism, I highlight numerous examples where the human body evolved for past environments — previous diets, predators, and social pressures — leaving us today with various vulnerabilities and compromises.

Human evolution moves at a glacial pace, barely noticeable even over many generations, while our environment has dramatically transformed within just a few decades.

Consider the technology available to our parents and grandparents compared to what we now take for granted—steam trains, landline telephones, no internet or colour TV, no central heating or air conditioning beyond an open fire or window, no satellite navigation, and no instant global communication. Further back, major societal shifts arose from mechanised farming, factory work, innovations in textile manufacturing, and even improvements in wheat milling for bread. Later still came automobiles and mass transit.

Yet, genetically speaking, our recent ancestors who navigated these revolutionary changes remain nearly identical to us today.

Now, we stand on the threshold of another seismic shift: artificial intelligence. Just a decade ago, writing this introduction would have involved considerable time researching, fact-checking, and carefully drafting paragraphs that still might not have fully conveyed my intended message. Today, I can draft my thoughts, then leverage the vast processing power of AI (like ChatGPT-4.5) to refine and clarify my ideas effortlessly. These introductory paragraphs are precisely the outcome of such a collaboration.

The core issue, however, remains that human culture is evolving at a rate several orders of magnitude faster than our biological capacity to adapt, creating an ever-widening gap between how we need to respond to new challenges and how we're inherently equipped to do so.

The consequences of this accelerating mismatch are thoughtfully explored in an article by Mike Brooks, Ph.D., in Psychology Today, Humanity's Real Problem: Accelerating Evolutionary Mismatch.

Unintelligent Design - How The Badly-Designed Immune System Destroys Lungs

Scientists Discover Immune Cell Networks Driving Deadly Lung Disease | Rutgers University

Autoimmune conditions and allergies provide strong evidence for evolution over intelligent design by highlighting the imperfections and trade-offs inherent in the immune system. These disorders demonstrate how a system shaped by natural selection can prioritize short-term survival at the expense of long-term health, leading to vulnerabilities that are difficult to reconcile with the concept of a perfect designer.

Autoimmune diseases occur when the immune system mistakenly attacks the body’s own tissues. Examples include rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, multiple sclerosis, and type 1 diabetes.

The immune system must strike a delicate balance: it must be reactive enough to fight infections but tolerant enough to avoid attacking the body’s own cells. Evolution has shaped this balance, but it is imperfect. A hyperactive immune system, while better at combating infections, increases the risk of autoimmune diseases.

The Body of Evidence: How the Human Body Refutes Intelligent Design pp. 129-130

Now it's beginning to look like we must include the fatal lung disease known as idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) to the long list of autoimmune conditions that stem directly from the facts that the immune system evolved and was not intelligently designed.

The very existence of the immune system should prompt creationists to reconsider several basic beliefs and especially claims made by leading proponents, such as Michael J. Behe. Behe suggests that pathogens and the diseases they cause result from 'genetic entropy', a degradation enabled by biblical 'Sin', which supposedly causes genomes to 'devolve', thus creating parasites and pathogens. Other creationists suggest an alternative viewpoint, attributing the existence of parasites and diseases to an evil designer, such as Satan - a claim which is regarded as blasphemous by fundamentalists for whom it is doctrine that there is only one creative entity - God.

In contrast, William A. Dembski argues that any 'complex specified information' (CSI) within the genome must originate from an intelligent designer, typically inferred — though seldom explicitly acknowledged by prominent creationists — as the God described in the Bible or the Qur'an. The genes that enable parasites to evade our immune defences are clear examples of what Dembski would term CSI, whereas Behe regards these genes as 'devolved' from an initially perfect creation.

However, neither Behe nor Dembski adequately addresses the question of who or what designed the immune system itself. Was it the same designer responsible for Dembski's complex specified information, or was it Behe's designer of an initial, perfect creation? If we consider Dembski's argument, it raises a critical question: where is the intelligence in designing an immune system to protect organisms against pathogens created by the very same designer? Regarding Behe's perspective, if the immune system were part of the initial perfect design, why would the designer anticipate 'The Fall' and its consequences unless it was intentionally planned? Alternatively, did all organisms possessing immune defences receive an upgrade after 'The Fall', indicating a supposedly omniscient deity initially failed to foresee the need for such protection? This then raises the question, is the designer either not omniscient or not competent, or did it plan for the 'Fall' and the suffering caused by parasites all along?

Not only are there these gaping flaws in creationism's attempts to account for the immune system within their own theology, including its failure to protect us and its propensity to attack us because the delicate balance referred to above is not robust enough or sensitive enough. The fact is that a perfectly designed immune system should make much of medical science redundant. However, the evidence continues to accumulate that the immune system, like the rest of biology is not the result of intelligent design but of an evolutionary process with all its inherent faults, constraints and inevitable suboptimal compromises.

Evidence strongly supporting the theory that IPF is the result of an autoimmune response by an over-sensitive immune system has been provided by a team of researchers led by Rutgers University, New Jersey, USA. Their findings are being published in the European Respiratory Journal and are described in Rutgers Today:

Refuting Creationism - Students Discover How The Mammalian Immune System Evolved.

Nebraska undergrads uncover ancient secrets of human immunity | Nebraska Today

(C–F) Expanded views of the interaction interface between STAT2 CCD and IRF9 IAD for mouse (C), human (D), Hypanus sabinus (E), and Stegostoma tigrinum (F). The interactions are observed in the crystal structure of the mouse STAT2-IRF9 complex (PDB ID: 5OEN) [19.1]. For humans and the two cartilaginous fishes, the interactions are based on the modeled structures of the STAT2-IRF9 complex. The key residues involved in the interface are labeled. The phenylalanine (F) on the STAT2 protein is colored in green. The four residues forming the cleft on the IRF9 protein are colored in magenta. The corresponding sequences of the interface area and other details are found in Supporting Information S1: Figure S3.

Recent research conducted by undergraduate students at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln has provided compelling insights into the evolutionary development of the human immune system. Under the guidance of Professor Luwen Zhang, students Vanessa Hubing, Avery Marquis, and Chanasei Ziemann co-authored two significant studies published in the Journal of Medical Virology. Their work elucidates the progression of immune regulatory mechanisms in vertebrates, highlighting the transition to more complex systems with the evolution of jaws. Additionally, they explored how a pseudogene, potentially introduced into primate DNA via a retrovirus approximately 60 million years ago, may have enhanced ancestral immune responses.

These findings offer robust evidence supporting the theory of evolution by demonstrating the gradual and adaptive changes in genetic material that have led to sophisticated immune functions in humans. The identification of a pseudogene's integration into primate DNA and its subsequent role in immunity exemplifies natural selection's influence on genetic composition over millions of years. Such evidence challenges creationist perspectives by providing concrete examples of evolutionary processes shaping complex biological systems, underscoring the dynamic nature of genetic evolution in response to environmental pressures.

During the course of evolution, these factors have evolved as additional layers of complexity to improve and refine a system which, as the product of an unplanned, utilitarian evolutionary process was a suboptimal compromise between the tendencies to over-react to some infections and fail to respond to others. An intelligently-designed sytem would need no such regulatory mechanisms. This is how we can tell that such overly-complex systems were not intelligently designed.