Creationism Refuted - Exquisite Fossils From 226 Million Years Before 'Creation Week'

The Karoo Basin is a rich source of fossils for the Permian Period of life.

Image © WOLF AVNI/Shutterstock

Other life of this time included the lizard-like ancestors of tortoises, large amphibians that lurked like crocodiles just below the water surface, and forests dominated by a tree called Glossopteris with an understorey of spore-producing plants such as mosses, ferns and horsetails.

Photo: PEXELS

Exquisite new fossils from South Africa offer a glimpse into a thriving ecosystem 266 million years ago

In the realm of palaeontology, few discoveries are as illuminating as those that offer a window into ecosystems long vanished. A recent study published in The Conversation by palaeontologist Rosemary Prevec of Rhodes University, South Africa, unveils such a discovery: an exquisitely preserved fossil site in South Africa's Northern Cape province, dating back 266 million years to the middle Permian period. This site reveals a thriving ecosystem teeming with diverse plant life and a myriad of insect species, providing an unprecedented glimpse into pre-dinosaur terrestrial life.[1]

The significance of this find extends beyond its immediate scientific value; it directly challenges fundamental creationist assertions. By presenting concrete evidence of complex ecosystems existing millions of years before the advent of humans, it undermines the young-Earth creationist timeline that posits a 6,000 to 10,000-year-old Earth. The detailed stratigraphy and radiometric dating techniques employed corroborate the Earth's ancient history, aligning with the broader scientific consensus on geological and biological evolution.

Moreover, the discovery underscores the continuity and gradual progression of life forms, countering the notion of sudden creation. The intricate details preserved in these fossils—ranging from delicate insect wings to diverse plant structures—highlight the complexity and diversity of life well before the emergence of humans. Such findings reinforce the evolutionary narrative of life's development over hundreds of millions of years, offering tangible evidence against creationist models that reject evolutionary theory.

Rosemary Prevec's article in The Conversation is reprinted here under a Creative Commons licence, reformatted for stylistic consistency:

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.

Creationism Refuted - Evolution By Advantageous Mutation

This gene variant contributed to the dietary and physiological evolution of modern humans | ScienceDaily

One of the enduring claims in creationist circles is that mutations are invariably harmful—deleterious at best, fatal at worst—and thus incapable of driving evolutionary progress. This notion underpins Michael J. Behe's concept of "devolution," which posits that genetic changes represent a decline from an assumed state of original perfection. Yet, this perspective fails to account for how such "inferior" mutations could supplant their "perfect" predecessors in a population. Moreover, if a genome were truly perfect, it would replicate without error, precluding any mutations—and, by extension, any evolutionary change.

A recent study published in Cell Genomics challenges this dogma by identifying a regulatory variant of the ACSF3 gene that appears to have played a significant role in human evolution . This variant, known as rs34590044-A, enhances the expression of ACSF3 in the liver, influencing both stature and basal metabolic rate (BMR). Notably, the effects of this mutation are amplified in individuals consuming meat-rich diets, suggesting a link between genetic adaptation and dietary shifts in human history.[1.1,2.1]

The ACSF3 gene encodes an enzyme involved in mitochondrial fatty acid synthesis, a critical process for energy metabolism. Increased expression of ACSF3 has been associated with improved mitochondrial function and bone formation, potentially contributing to greater height and higher BMR in modern humans. These findings underscore the role of beneficial mutations in human adaptation and evolution, directly contradicting the creationist assertion that mutations cannot produce advantageous traits.[3.1,4.1]

This discovery not only provides insight into the genetic factors influencing human physiology but also exemplifies how mutations can facilitate evolutionary advancements, thereby challenging the notion that all genetic changes are inherently detrimental.

The team from Human Phenome Institute, Zhongshan Hospital and School of Life Sciences, Fudan University, Shanghai, China with Mark Stoneking, Department of Evolutionary Genetics, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany, have recently published their findings in the open access Cell Press journal, Cell Genomics.

Creationism Refuted - How Mammalian Cold Adaptation Evolved - Starting 2.6 Million Years Before 'Creation Week'

Musk Ox, Ovibos moschatus

Arctic fox, Vulpes lagopus

Study reveals different phases of evolution during ice age | Bournemouth University

Creationists have yet another inconvenient science paper to ignore, misrepresent, or distort. A new study led by Professor John Stewart of Bournemouth University, UK, and published in Trends in Ecology & Evolution, presents compelling evidence that environmental change—specifically the climatic fluctuations of the Ice Age—has been a major driver of evolution.

By examining both fossil and palaeogenetic data in the context of glaciation records, the research team has shown that adaptations to cold climates began emerging around 2.6 million years ago. This evolutionary process significantly accelerated about 700,000 years ago, when glacial cycles shifted and cold periods began lasting twice as long. During warmer interglacial phases, cold-adapted species appear to have retreated into climatic refugia, only to expand again as the ice returned.

The main, but not the only, cause of these periods of alternating glaciation and warmer climate were the Milankovitch cycles. For details, see the AI information panel.

Reindeer, Rangifer tarandus

This study aligns closely with Darwinian evolutionary theory, and, contrary to claims by creationists that biologists are abandoning Darwinian evolution in favour of creationism, not with the metaphysical claims of intelligent design. Unsurprisingly, the researchers make no appeal to supernatural forces or pseudo-scientific conjecture. Instead, their work builds on and reinforces the evolutionary framework that has repeatedly proven its explanatory and predictive power.

Perhaps most damning to creationist dogma, the evolutionary events described took place hundreds of thousands—if not millions—of years before young-Earth creationists claim the planet was even formed. Depending on which apologetic is in play, creationists must now choose between proposing ludicrously accelerated post-Flood evolution or invoking the second law of thermodynamics in ways physicists and biologists would find baffling, using it to try to argue that events which can be observed could not have happened due to a fundamental law of physics.

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.

Abiogenesis News - Closing Creationism's Favourite God-Shaped Gap - Still No God(s) Found

Diagram of an early cell membrane.

AI Generated image (ChatGPT4o)

How membranes may have brought about the chemistry of life on Earth | Department of Biology

Another hefty spadeful of science has just been shovelled into one of creationism’s favourite god-shaped gaps: the ever-shrinking mystery of abiogenesis. This is the gap that, through the intellectually dishonest tactic of the false dichotomy, creationists claim as evidence for their chosen deity.

Not only is this approach scientifically bankrupt, it also conveniently spares them the bother of providing any evidence or a testable mechanism of their own. For a target audience conditioned to see science as an attempt to disprove their god, the logic goes: if science is wrong—or even just incomplete—then “God did it!” wins by default.

But that dreaded moment for creationists, when science finally closes the gap and, like every other gap in history, finds no need for gods or magic in the explanation, draws ever nearer. The latest discovery bringing us closer comes in the form of new research into the origin and function of membranes—an essential step on the path from chemistry to life.

This particular piece of gap-filling comes from a paper published in PLOS Biology, authored by a team led by Professor Thomas Richards, Professor of Evolutionary Genomics in the Department of Biology at the University of Oxford. The researchers demonstrate that early cell membranes could not only have formed through natural processes, but also had the crucial ability to control what passed through them.

In doing so, they explain what had been something of a mystery and a favourite claim of ID creationists - the chirality of 'living' molecules where all amino acids have the same chirality. Creationists claim this shows the hand of an intelligent designer. This work shows it has a natural explanation.

How Can We Tell The Bible Was Written By Ignorant People? - Compare It To Reality!

A Brightest Group Galaxy (BGG) seen as it was 3 billion years ago, located about 2.7 billion light-years away

How the Bible's authors saw the Universe.

Astronomers observe largest ever sample of galaxies up to over 12 billion light years away | Aalto University

More stunning images of deep space have been released, once again highlighting the vast and awe-inspiring reality of the universe—one that stands in stark contrast to the ancient cosmology described in the Book of Genesis.

According to that account, the universe was a small, flat Earth covered by a solid dome, fixed and immobile at the centre of creation. The sun, moon, and stars were imagined as small lights affixed to the underside of this dome. Surrounding it all, above and below, were the primordial waters—and somewhere within or beyond this structure lay a magical, supernatural realm inhabited by divine beings bearing a striking resemblance to capricious, tribal warlords, and winged men (Genesis 1:1–18).

And, according to the Bible narrative, it has only existed for 6-10,000 years!

Since the invention of the telescope, and as our instruments have grown ever more sophisticated, our understanding of the universe has revealed a reality far removed from the one imagined by the authors of Genesis. The cosmos is not only vastly older than they could have conceived, but also incomprehensibly immense. Earth itself is far larger and older than they believed, a spherical planet orbiting the Sun—which is just one of perhaps half a trillion stars in our own galaxy. And that galaxy is, in turn, just one among perhaps a trillion others. Altogether, this vast universe is nearly 14 billion years old.

The most recent images are from the James Webb Space Telescope, of a region of deep space, between twelve billion and one billion lightyears away, so showing how the universe has evolved since it was about one billion years old - younger than Earth is now.

Creationism Refuted - Now It's an Australian Tree Frog From 55 Million Years Before 'Creation Week'.

Artist’s reconstruction of the new species Litoria tylerantiqua (right) and previously described species Platyplectrum casca (left) from Murgon, south-eastern Queensland

Samantha Yabsley
https://www.instagram.com/s.h.y_art.

Clockwise from bottom: An artist’s reconstruction of a turtle Murgonemys braithwaitei, a bird Murgonornis archeri, a mammal Thylacotinga bartholomaii, a bat Australonycteris clarkae and a frog Platyplectrum casca from Murgon, south-eastern Queensland.

Peter Schouten

Australia’s oldest prehistoric tree frog hops 22 million years back in time

In addition to the recent discovery of early reptile tracks in Australia—dated to 350 million years before 'Creation Week'—creationists have just been given another reason to resent Australia: a 55-million-year-old fossil tree frog.

The discovery was made by three palaeontologists at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, NSW, Australia. Their findings have just been published, open access, in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. It will no doubt take some of creationism's sharpest minds to devise excuses for dismissing this evidence, while continuing to cling to the childish fantasy that Earth was conjured into existence by a magical, immaterial deity just 6,000 to 10,000 years ago—along with all life, fully formed and without ancestors.

The first line of attack will likely involve misrepresenting the dating methods used, in an attempt to cast doubt on their reliability, followed by accusations that the scientists falsified their data to conform to evolutionary 'dogma' and secure publication.

What creationists must never do, however, is admit that the fossil really does date to 55 million years ago. To do so would be to concede that a literalist interpretation of the Genesis creation story is false—thereby undermining the entire premise that the Bible was written by, or inspired by, an all-knowing creator god.

Creationism Refuted - New Finding Shows That Reptiles Were Around At Least 350 million Years Before 'Creation Week'

Early amniote reconstruction.

Martin Ambrozik.

Fossil tracks revise march of early life on Earth – News

In a paper that creationists will no doubt feel compelled to ignore, misrepresent, or dismiss, scientists report the discovery of reptile tracks in 350-million-year-old Australian rocks. This remarkable find pushes back the earliest known trace of reptiles by some 40 million years.

For mainstream science, this discovery provides further clarification of the timeline for the evolution of terrestrial tetrapods. However, for creationists—who continue to compress Earth's 3.8-billion-year history into a mere 6,000 to 10,000 years in order to preserve a literal interpretation of Genesis—it presents yet another challenge to their beliefs.

It is the kind of evidence that science routinely uncovers, forcing creationists into ever more creative contortions to avoid confronting the reality of evolution.

The discovery was made by Professor John Long of Flinders University and colleagues, who have detailed their findings and their significance in a Flinders University press release. Additionally, Professor Long, together with Grzegorz Niedzwiedzki and Professor Per Ahlberg of Uppsala University, Sweden, has published an open-access article discussing the research in The Conversation.

Their article in The Conversation is reproduced here under a Creative Commons license, reformatted for stylistic consistency:

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?

Refuting CReationism - A Transitional Salmon Ancestor from 73 Million Years Before 'Creation Week'

Horseshoeichthys armaserratus from the Prince Creek Formation (PCF) and Dinosaur Park Formation compared.

See caption below

New ancient fish species earliest known salmon ancestor | UAF news and information

Cypriniform abdominal centrum from the Prince Creek Formation (A, UAMES 54154) compared with an extant cypriniform abdominal centrum (B, Catostomus Catostomus, TMP 1990.0007.303) in (from left to right): anterior, left lateral, posterior, dorsal and ventral view. Images in A are digital reconstructions from computed tomography scans; images in B are photographs of specimens dusted with ammonium chloride. Scale bars represent 1 mm.

Contrary to the childish fairy tales believed by creationists which tell tales of magic creation ex nihilo just a few thousand years ago, real grown-up science repeatedly shows that 99.9975% of Earth's history happened before then and living species are the result of an evolutionary process.

It’s no surprise then that this is just another such paper. It reports on the discovery of fossil ancestors of modern salmon which lived in Alaskan rivers, 70 million years ago, pushing back the earliest ancestral salmon so far discovered by 20 million years.

The discovery was made by palaeontologists from the University of Alaska, Fairbanks led by Patrick Druckenmiller, director of the University of Alaska Museum of the North. They have just published their findings, open access, in the journal, Papers in Palaeontology. Their work is also explained in a University of Alaska, Fairbanks, news item:

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.

Refuting Creationism - What T. Rex's Ancestors Were Doing More Than 70 Million Years Before 'Creation Week'.

T. rex’s direct ancestor crossed from Asia to North America | UCL News - UCL – University College London

This artwork illustrates the disparity of the northern and southern hemisphere’s evolution of terrestrial Cretaceous faunas after the Cretaceous Thermal Maximum. On the left, End Cretaceous Southern Hemisphere (Western Gondwana) became dominated by megaraptorid theropods and titanosaur sauropods. The centre of the piece summarises the extinction event of terrestrial fauna at the Cretaceous Thermal Maximum, where the apex predators the carcharodontosaurids and allosaurs went extinct and tyrannosauroids (including megaraptoran and the ancestors of Tyrannosaurus rex) were small. On the right, the end Cretaceous northern hemisphere fauna dominated by tyrannosaurids (such as Tyrannosaurus rex), hadrosaurs and ceratopsian ornithischian dinosaurs. The environment also became more mesic compared to the more semi-arid seasonal environment earlier in the Cretaceous.

Credit: Pedro Salas and Sergey Krasovskiy.

One of the major challenges for creationism is how to ignore the overwhelming volume of evidence that contradicts it—especially from the vast span of Earth’s pre-'Creation Week' history, during which 99.9975% of geological time unfolded. Even allowing for their standard claim that scientists fake their dates and Earth is really only a few thousand years old, there is a vast amount of history to compress into so short a timeline.

During that immense period, something remarkable was happening: a distant ancestor of Tyrannosaurus rex, destined to become one of the most formidable land predators the planet has ever seen, was making its way across a land bridge from Asia into North America.

That’s the conclusion of a new study led by researchers at University College London (UCL), recently published in Royal Society Open Science. The team found that this transcontinental migration—via the Beringian land bridge over 70 million years ago—marked a key moment in the evolution of tyrannosaurids. They also noted a rapid increase in body size that appears to have coincided with a global cooling event following a climatic peak around 92 million years ago. The study was a collaboration between scientists from UCL and the universities of Oxford, Pittsburgh, Aberdeen, Arizona, Anglia Ruskin, Oklahoma, and Wyoming.

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

Robert F. Kennedy Jr

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

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

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

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

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

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

Credit: Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.

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

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

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

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

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

Refuting Creationism - Why Gaps In The Fossil Record Are To Be Expected, Naturally

Cretaceous fossil shrimp from Jbel Oum Tkout, Morocco
registered at the Museum d’histoire naturelle de Marrakech.

© Sinéad Lynch - UNIL

Why did some ancient animals fossilize while others vanished?

One of creationism’s favourite fallacies is the claim that gaps in the fossil record disprove evolution, based on a misrepresentation of something Charles Darwin wrote. According to this argument, Darwin supposedly insisted there should be a complete and continuous series of transitional fossils and admitted that any gaps would be fatal to his theory.

As with many creationist arguments, this is a distortion of both Darwin’s actual words and how science works. It reflects a peculiar misunderstanding of science as a belief system centred on the writings of historical figures — Darwin, in this case, cast as the ‘prophet’ of ‘evolutionism’. The implication is that by discrediting Darwin personally, or selectively quoting his early uncertainties, one can somehow bring down an entire field of modern science built on nearly two centuries of accumulating evidence.

The tactic ignores the fact that Darwin's style was to introduce the reader to a seemingly unaswerable problem, or potential difficulty for his theory, before explaining how his theory of evolution by natural selection provided an answer.

But why would any reasonable person expect the fossil record to preserve every generation of every species, in every habitat, across hundreds of millions of years—and for those remains to be conveniently accessible to palaeontologists today? The idea that scientists expect such completeness betrays a deep scientific illiteracy. Fossilisation is an exceptionally rare process requiring very specific conditions. There are many reasons why an organism is unlikely to fossilise, and relatively few that make fossilisation even possible.

Refuting Creationism - More Pterrible News For Creationists As Scientists Track The Evolution of Terrestrial Pterosaurs

Quetzalcoatlus northropi (artist's impression)

Witton MP, Naish D (2008),
CC BY 3.0, Link

Ptero Firma: footprints pinpoint when ancient flying reptiles conquered the ground | News | University of Leicester

False-colour depth map revealing the shape and pressure of each step, showing that these creatures bore more weight on their hands while walking.

Most people—apart, perhaps, from creationists who deny such creatures ever existed—are aware that a group of reptiles evolved the ability to fly and took to the skies long before birds and bats emerged to exploit this medium.

What many people don’t know, however, is that some members of this group, including larger species, later returned to land and adopted a coastal wading lifestyle. We know this because their fossilised tracks have been found preserved in what was once coastal mud.

Young Earth creationists routinely point to geological formations derived from coastal or estuarine mud as 'evidence' of a supposed global flood, yet they consistently fail to explain how such a flood could have preserved so many footprints—left by waders such as ducks, geese, redshanks, and sandpipers—as well as delicate raindrop impressions. Even harder to explain is the evidence showing that these footprints were made at different times, spanning several million years, up until the mass extinction caused by an asteroid impact 66 million years ago.

And disconcertingly for creationists, a team of palaeontologists led by Robert Smyth, a doctoral researcher in the Centre for Palaeobiology and Biosphere Evolution (School of Geography, Geology and the Environment) at the University of Leicester, has demonstrated that these fossil footprints can be used to trace the evolutionary history of the pterosaurs that made them.

Refuting Creationism - Homing In On Consciousness - No Gods Involved

Landmark experiment sheds new light on the origins of consciousness - Allen Institute

Consciousness, like the Big Bang and abiogenesis, represents a gap in scientific understanding that creationists eagerly exploit as a place to insert their evidence-free deity — the classic “God of the gaps” fallacy. This false dichotomy is the lifeblood of creationism, which appeals to the scientifically illiterate and culturally chauvinistic creationists who view science as a rival to their preferred local religion. According to this view, if science cannot yet explain something, or if it has ever been wrong, then “God did it” wins by default.

However, a major new study suggests that science is closing in on a natural explanation for consciousness. The findings support the idea that consciousness is an emergent property of neurophysiology, leaving no room — or need — for supernatural explanations. In a landmark 2019 collaborative experiment involving human subjects, researchers from the Allen Institute tested two competing theories of consciousness against one another. They published their findings today in Nature, claiming the study marks a pivotal moment in the quest to understand this elusive phenomenon. Further details are available in an Allen Institute news article.

Refuting Creationism - Giant Fast-Running Croccodiles In the Caribbean - 11 Million Years Before 'Creation Week'

Sebecids dominated South American landscapes for millions of years, but scientists were perplexed when their fossils started appearing in the Caribbean, too.

Florida Museum image by Jorge Machuky.

Giant croclike carnivore fossils found in the Caribbean – Research News

Six million years before biblical literalist creationists assert Earth and all living creatures were created ex nihilo, giant long-legged, crocodile-like predators known as sebecids were hunting their prey on Caribbean islands. Remarkably, these creatures persisted long after similar species had vanished from South America, where sebecids had become apex predators following the extinction of the dinosaurs 66 million years ago.

Although sebecids went extinct on mainland South America about 11 million years ago, new evidence from Caribbean fossil records shows they survived considerably longer on islands, continuing as apex predators. This finding comes from recent research conducted by a team of palaeontologists from the Florida Museum, who have been compiling evidence over the past three decades. The team's detailed findings have now been published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B. Further insights and context are available in an accompanying Florida Museum news article.

Refuting Creationism - A 'Hell Ant' For The Science Deniers

Vulcanidris cratensis (Scale bar, 2 mm.)

Figure 2 Photographs depicting details of Vulcanidris cratensis gen. et sp. nov. Holotype (MZSP-CRA-0002).

• (A) Head and anterior portion of mesosoma. Scale bar, 1 mm.
• (B) Mesosoma. Scale bar, 1 mm.
• (C) Left forewing. Scale bar, 1 mm.
• (D) Right forewing. Scale bar, 1 mm.
• (E) Detail of head. Scale bar, 0.5 mm.
• (F) Detail of petiole. Scale bar, 0.5 mm.
• (G) Metasoma. Scale bar, 1 mm. Arrowheads indicate key characters mentioned in the text.

Ancient ‘Hell Ant’ Discovery Is Also The Oldest Ant Fossil Ever Unearthed | StudyFinds

Most dedicated creationist advocates will already be familiar with the mental gymnastics required to assert that a coelacanth allegedly remaining unchanged for tens of millions of years somehow disproves evolution, therefore life must have been magically created ex nihilo just a few thousand years ago.

Now they have a new specimen to test their contortions even further: a beautifully preserved 113-million-year-old ant fossil from Brazil—the oldest ant fossil discovered to date. Remarkably, by 113 million years ago, this now-extinct species was already highly specialised as a predator, equipped with distinctive scythe-like mandibles. These formidable features have earned it the informal nickname "hell ant."

The exquisitely preserved limestone fossil clearly reveals detailed wings and wing veins, characteristic of the insect order Hymenoptera, confirming ants' close evolutionary relationship with wasps and bees. Since wings are typically absent in worker ants, the presence of fully developed wings strongly suggests that this specimen represents a reproductive female—likely a queen.

This remarkable ant fossil was identified within a collection originating from the Crato Formation in northern Brazil, housed in the Museu de Zoologia da Universidade de São Paulo. The Crato limestone was deposited in a shallow lake environment approximately 113 million years ago during the Early Cretaceous period, at a time when the ancient southern supercontinent Gondwana had not yet fully separated into what would become modern-day Africa and South America.

Refuting Creationism - How Plate Tectonics Allowed The Interchange of Species, Including Human Ancestors, Between Africa and Asia

How Activity in Earth’s Mantle Led the Ancient Ancestors of Elephants, Giraffes, and Humans into Asia and Africa | Jackson School of Geosciences | The University of Texas at Austin

An international team of geophysicists has uncovered compelling evidence that tectonic activity approximately 20 million years ago created a land bridge between Eurasia and Africa via the Arabian Peninsula. This geological event facilitated the migration of various animal species, including the ancestors of modern elephants, giraffes, and hominins, from Eurasia into Africa, which had been relatively isolated since the breakup of the supercontinent Gondwana.

The formation of this land bridge resulted from the collision between the Arabian and Eurasian tectonic plates. This collision led to the uplift of the Arabian Peninsula and the closure of the Tethys Seaway, effectively splitting it into what are now the Mediterranean and Arabian Seas. The closure of the Tethys Seaway had significant climatic and ecological consequences, including alterations in ocean circulation patterns and the aridification of regions such as the Sahara Desert.

The newly formed land connection enabled a significant faunal exchange between Eurasia and Africa, known as the Proboscidean Datum Event. This event is marked by the migration of proboscideans (elephant ancestors) and other species into Africa, as well as the dispersal of African species into Eurasia . This biogeographical interchange had profound implications for the evolutionary trajectories of numerous species, including primates.

Refutiing Creationism - How Environmental Variability in Africa Produced Co-operative, Intelligent Humans

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Between 300,000 and 30,000 years ago, Africa experienced intense, local environmental variation.

Environmental Variability Promotes the Evolution of Cooperation Among Humans: A Simulation-Based Analysis | Research News - University of Tsukuba

In a compelling example of how environmental change can drive evolutionary development, two researchers, Masaaki Inaba and Eizo Akiyama, of the University of Tsukuba, Japan, have used computer simulations grounded in evolutionary game theory to demonstrate how intensified environmental variability in Africa during the Middle Stone Age may have promoted the evolution of cooperative behaviour and enhanced cognitive abilities in archaic hominins.

Fundamental to this research is the scientific consensus that Darwinian evolution is the only credible framework for explaining the patterns observed in the fossil record and the genomic evidence for natural selection.

The study also directly challenges a common creationist misrepresentation: that Richard Dawkins’ metaphor of the “selfish gene” implies that evolution inherently favours selfishness and therefore cannot account for altruism or cooperation. This flawed interpretation ignores the fact that evolutionary processes often favour cooperative strategies—especially in complex, fluctuating environments—without invoking supernatural causes.

Severe environmental change can fragment populations into small, isolated groups, where genetic drift plays a significant role in evolution. In such settings, beneficial mutations can rapidly drift to fixation, potentially giving the group a competitive advantage over neighbouring populations when contact is re-established. This process can produce a pattern in the fossil record that resembles 'punctuated equilibrium', with the apparent 'sudden' appearance of a major innovation.

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.

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

AI-generated image (ChatGPT 4o)

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

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

Ralph Vanstreels, (UC Davis).

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

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

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

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

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

Creationism Refuted - Isolated Evolution of a Curious Butterfly

The Curiously Isolated Hairstreak, Satyrium curiosolus.

A freshly eclosed S. curiosolus on silvery lupine (Lupinus argenteus).

Curious isolation: new butterfly species discovered | Blog

If creationists had even a basic understanding of scientific evidence, they could hardly fail to recognise how thoroughly it refutes creationism. This may help explain why creationist advocates work so hard to ensure their followers remain ignorant of that evidence—or only encounter a distorted version of it. It's also why many creationists willingly participate in their own deception by avoiding fact-checking and reading genuine scientific literature, preferring instead to consume misinformation circulated within their echo chambers.

Foremost among the misconceptions is the claim that mainstream biologists are increasingly finding evolutionary theory inadequate and are therefore turning to Intelligent Design (ID) creationism as a superior alternative.

A close second is the notion that there is no evidence to support the scientific view that species have diverged from common ancestors through evolutionary processes. These processes include environmental selection acting on genetic variation—differentially favouring some alleles while eliminating others—thereby shifting the gene pool over time towards greater reproductive fitness in a given environment.

If they were able to comprehend this, and if they had the intellectual honesty to accept it, creationists would realise that recent findings—such as the discovery of a new butterfly species that appears to have been isolated in a small region of the Canadian Rockies for around 40,000 years—completely undermine these two core dogmas.