The Little 'Hobbit' is a Big Problem for Creationists

An artist's impression of Homo floresiensis based on recent research. Dubbed a human "hobbit", the species of humanoid was about a metre tall and died out about 54,000 years ago.

Photo credit: ANU © 2017 Katrina Kenny (CC-BY 4.0)

Origins of Indonesian hobbits finally revealed:

In its slow, methodical way, science shed a little more light on one of the mysteries of the evolution of the hominid family tree - the origin of the so-called hobbit, Homo floresiensis. The remains of H. floresiensis were found in a cave in Liang Bua in the Indonesian island of Flores in 2003. Initially, they were thought to be about 12,000 years old but later analysis has pushed this back to about 50,000 years.

The mystery isn't so much now how they came to be still living in isolation up to 12,000 years ago or why they are so small, being only about 1 metre tall, but where they fit in the hominid evolutionary tree and how they got to Flores Island.

Now a team from The Australian National University (ANU) has carried out a detailed statistical analysis and

New Book With A Difference

Cover photo:
Some of the children of Fawler about to be given a ride by Fred Able, "The Donkey Man." About 1955-56.

Part of the reason I haven't been blogging quite so much in recent weeks is because I have been writing another books.

No, not another book about my usual subjects - general science, biology, atheism, religion and it's fallacies - but a much more personal book; a book about my childhood in rural Oxfordshire in the 1950s and 60s.

Of course, I cover my realisation that I was an Atheist and how my love of nature and science developed but I also cover life in general in a small agricultural hamlet. I talk about how important the countryside was to us as a playground and in particular how important the River Evenlode was to us children.

We spent the summer swimming, diving or lying half asleep with noses buried in fresh clover on the river bank and generally showing off to the local girls whose bodies were taking on strangely fascinating shapes. Some of the girls even began to wrap themselves in towels when they got changed. It was all very strange!

Give The Designer The Clap it Deserves!

Neisseria gonorrhoeae infection in the human endocervical tissue is visualized by immunofluorescence microscopy. Bacterial (red) colonization causes columnar endocervical epithelial cells to shed and lose the barrier function, which allows bacteria to enter the endocervical tissue. Frozen tissue sections were stained for immunofluorescence with specific antibodies to the apical junctional protein ZO1 (green) and N. gonorrhoeae (red) and the nuclear dye DAPI (blue).

Credit: Liang-Chun Wang,
Department of Cell biology and Molecular Genetics,
University of Maryland, USA

Neisseria gonorrhoeae infects the human endocervix by activating non-muscle myosin II-mediated epithelial exfoliation

The Intelligent (sic) Designer really does deserve a big clap! It has come up with a brilliant solution to the problem it caused by its lack of a plan!

You see, the Intelligent (sic) Designer, that imaginary being so beloved of creationists but definitely not God because that would make it religion, not science, wants to make life unpleasant for humans (for strictly scientific reasons, obviously, and nothing to do with The Fall because that's religion) so it designed nasty little organisms like Neisseria gonorrhoeae to infect them when they had sex because it doesn't like them having sex the way it designed them to.

The trouble was, in a forgetful moment, it had designed humans so they could cope with nasty little organisms like N. gonorrhoeae and not be made sick by them. Now though, it has briiantly redesigned N. gonorrhoeae so it gets around the protection if gave humans.

In an open access paper published in PLOS Pathogens today, a team of scientists led by Liang-Chun Wang of the University of Maryland, College Park, have worked out how it got around the problem it had created. It does it by exploiting the very defence mechanism the Intelligent (sic) designer designed in the first place.

Layers of Evidence Against Creationism

Stratification in Tibet sediment. Climate variations are reflected in color variations with the red sediment typically indicating a wetter climate and the white indicating a drier climate.

Photo credit: Qingquan Meng

Tibet sediments reveal climate patterns from late Miocene, six million years ago

There is science; and there is creationism. They have nothing in common.

Science looks at evidence and bases its opinions on it. When the evidence changes, science changes its mind. How could it be otherwise when the evidence is in charge? Creationism, on the other hand, starts with opinions as dictated by a holy book and then tries to force-fit the evidence around those opinions so they look sort of sciency to the scientifically illiterate and less like irrational superstitions and magical thinking. When that fails even for the gullible credulity of creationists, the fact are simply ignored and the main problem for creationists becomes how to get away with dismissing what can be plainly seen without looking too dishonest and deluded.

Parasites Bug Creationists

Several specimens such as this Cimex latipennis female found in the Paisley Caves in Oregon date nearly 11,000 years ago.

Photo credit: Martin E. Adams

Cimicid Remains Found in Oregon Caves are Oldest Ever Found – Entomology Today

Newly discovered bat-bugs from the floor of a cave in Oregon are the earliest so far found - and it's bad news for creationists, again.

Parasites are a problem for creationists for number of reasons and not just that so many creationists are susceptible to parasitic frauds who sell them spurious confirmation of their superstition for large amounts of money. It's no accident that so many creationist charlatans are multi-millionaires while the people they live off are amongst the poorest of people.

How Evolution Works - Squirrels and Pine Martens

Europen red squirrel, Sciurus vulgaris

Population crash in an invasive species following the recovery of a native predator: the case of the American grey squirrel and the European pine marten in Ireland | SpringerLink

Sometimes, evolution can produce intriguing and unexpected results. At first glance it may be hard to see why introducing a predator can result in an increase in the population of a species. This is especially pleasing when the species benefiting is a charming and endangered species, the European red squirrel and the predator is an almost equally beautiful member of the stoat family, the pine marten.

So, having been away from blogging for a couple of weeks with other distractions, it gives me considerable pleasure to write about this open access paper, albeit from 2014, which reports just that from Ireland.

Observable Evolution Over Nine Generations!

Plants pollinated by bumblebees become more fragrant.

Picture: UZH

Real-time divergent evolution in plants driven by pollinators | Nature Communications.

Until a few years ago, almost all creationists had no doubt at all; evolution simply didn't happen. All living things were created in a couple of days exactly as they are today. There was no debate; evolution didn't happen because it wasn't mentioned in the Bible and that was that.

This is still the position maintained by a large number of creationists who believe the world was created just a few thousand years ago, as we see it today, and nothing has changed since.

Noses Run Counter To Creationism

Image: © iStock Photo kowalska-art

Investigating the case of human nose shape and climate adaptation | PLOS Genetics

Scientists believe they have uncovered evidence that the different human nose types are at least partly or even mostly adaptations to different climates as humans spread out from our ancestral homeland in Africa.

An important function of the nasal cavity and the nasopharynx is to humidify the sir before it reaches the lower respirator tract and the lungs.

Using 3D facial imaging, the team measured the width of the nostrils, the distance between nostrils, the height of the nose, nose ridge length, nose protrusion, external area of the nose and the area of the nostrils. They found the two measures: the width of the nostrils and of the base of the nose differed between different human populations by more than would be expected from genetic drift alone. They found a positive correlation between the width of the nose and the warmth and humidity of the climate in which the populations lived.

Unintelligently Designed Epigenenetics

Creationists, especially those who try to disguise their religious cult as 'Intelligent (sic) Design' and pretend it's science, seem to be getting themselves over-excited by the relatively new science of epigenetics.

It's easy to see why, given the abysmal ignorance which characterises creationism, because it superficially seems to challenge some of the basic principles of Darwinian evolution because it appears to open up the possibility that changes acquired after conception can be passed on. This is, of course Lamarckian, not Darwinian inheritance.

Given the creationist assumption that if they can show any science to be ever so slightly wrong in any way, the entire body of science if proven false and their primitive, evidence-free superstition wins by default, they grasp desperately at epigenetics like a drowning man grasps at straws and wave it in triumph.

How Science Works - Correcting Errors

Monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus)



Tiger butterfly (Danaus genutia)

Monarch miscalculation: Has a scientific error about the butterflies persisted for more than 40 years? | Science | AAAS

How does a possible mistake in what was believed to be the number of chromosomes in the monarch butterfly validate scientific methodology?

Well, firstly, if you're looking for certainty, don't look at science - if you value certainty over truth, that is. Certainty and truth are not the same thing at all. The only certainty in science is that there are no certainties. Science is a human endeavour and as with all human endeavours the humans doing it make mistakes. Doubts, not certainties, are what drives science forward and the reason science continues to grow and develop and take us closer to a better understanding of the way things work.

By contrast, religion, and especially the extreme fundamentalist form we see in Bible-literalist creationism, depend on certainty and a complete absence of doubt. Allow in the slightest doubt; ask a difficult question and the whole thing could come crashing down and to make matters worse, the is no factual basis for those certainties so nothing neutral by which to alloy those fears and satisfy those doubts.

Once the doubts are there or the certainties have become uncertain, there is nothing holding it back. And fundamentalists know this, hence their refusal to acknowledge errors, even the glaring contradictions in the holy books. They can't be contradictions because the holy book is the source of all truth. How can they be contradictions?

How the Intelligent (sic) Designer Hurts Babies.

Differential Responses of Human Fetal Brain Neural Stem Cells to Zika Virus Infection: Stem Cell Reports

Let's play that game creationist frauds like to play with their willing dupes; the game of 'Pretend There Is an Intelligent (sic) Designer', only with slight tweaks to their rules. Let's not ignore inconvenient stuff, and let's play the game as though this designer is really real, then see what we can discover about this designer instead of trying to force-fit the observable evidence into a preconceived notion of it.

Okay? Here we go then.

Fish Evolution Shaped by Intense Rapids

Cichlids Telegramma brichardi

Photo credit: Oliver Lucanus.
Source: American Museum of Natural History.

Congo River Fish Evolution Shaped by Intense Rapids | American Museum of Natural History.

The cichlids are a large group of fish known for their ability to rapidly adapt, diverge and speciate in response to environmental changes as they did in the East African lakes when presented with a new range of potential ecological niches to fill.

In this paper a team led by scientists at the American Museum of Natural History, the City University of New York, and Fordham University, have shown that rock-dwelling cichlids of the genus Teleogramma are diversifying in a very sort stretch near the mouth of the Congo River in Africa. The final 200-mile stretch of the Congo River is exceptional in depth, speed, and turbulence, forming the world’s most extreme rapids.

Nasty Designer?

Parasitic worm may trigger mystery nodding syndrome | Science

Like all parasites, which have a ready explanation in terms of evolutionary biology, parasitic worms which make children sick and die present Intelligent (sic) Design advocates with special problems, not the least of which is one of creationism's own making.

The problem is that creationists presented with these especially nasty inventions of any assumed intelligence invariably fall back on 'The Fall' and say God allowed evil to enter the world because Eve sinned, so it's all our fault really. The problem for Intelligent (sic) Design advocates is that ID was invented as a concept to make creationism look like science so it could be inserted into American school science classes despite the 'Establishment Clause' and taught at tax-payers expense to vulnerable children.

How the Mammalian Ear Evolved!

Monodelphis domestica

A new developmental mechanism for the separation of the mammalian middle ear ossicles from the jaw | Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

Alternative creationist fact:

1. The Theory of Evolution is in disarray because there is no evidence for it. It will be replaced by Intelligent Design any day now.
2. There are no transition forms.

These are of course as true as Donald Trump's alternative facts, i.e. not true at all and made up to mislead people because the truth is too embarrassing. This paper shows the real state of evolutionary biology and shows how a clear evolutionary pathway from the reptilian ear to the mammalian ear may have arisen by a simple, single mutation. A team of animal scientists at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, King’s College London, and the University of Chicago have discovered, hidden in the development of opossums, a plausible evolutionary path that led from the simple ears of reptiles to the more elaborate and sensitive structures of mammals, including humans.

Anglicans Struggling to Adapt

Church of England General Synod votes to reject controversial same sex marriage report | The Independent

In a move which illustrates how the Anglican Church in Britain is struggling to keep up with changing social attitudes, the General Synod has voted to reject a report by the House of Bishops which called for continued opposition to and stigmatisation of same sex marriage.

While fully 73% of British non-believers see nothing wrong with same-sex marriage, only 50% of practising Anglicans share that view. However, this is a huge softening in attitudes as reflected in the same NatCen British Social Attitudes Survey which showed only 17% of Anglicans now believe same-sex marriage is always wrong compared to 53% in 1983.

Evolution of Innate Morality

Monkeys and dogs judge humans by how they treat others | New Scientist

Is your dog capable of moral judgements? Is it watching you and evaluating your trustworthiness?

According to a team of researchers from Kyoto and Hokkaido Universities, Japan, it might well be doing so.

Almost to a man or woman, theists will tell you that if gods provided us with anything, they provided us with morals. Neither Christians, Muslims or Jews seem to be able to understand how we could possibly have got morals from anywhere other than their holy book, revealed, so they claim, to mankind specifically to tell us how to behave and what rewards of punishments we could expect to ensure compliance.

Signals From the Dawn of Time!

The animation shows a computer simulation of an oscillon, a strong localized fluctuation of the inflaton field of the early universe. According to the calculations of Prof. Stefan Antusch and his team, oscillons produced a characteristic peak in the otherwise broad spectrum of gravitational waves.

© Department of Physics, University of Basel

Ancient signals from the early universe | University of Basel News.

The early universe sent out signals with information about its formation. All we need to do is look in the right place and in the right way to find these ancient signals. Scientists working at the University of Basel believe they have at last shown what we should be looking for.

The signals are tiny fluctuations in the gravity wave field. Although Albert Einstein predicted the existence of gravity waves they were only detected at the end of 2015. Already science is moving on to make use of this new technological ability and so to look further back into the formation of the Universe.

Best of Brexit Britain!

Here's a brilliant idea I've just pinched from Answers in Genes who got it from someone on Reddit (Is that still going?).

It solves lots of the historical problems with the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, if only by shortening the ridiculously long name for a country - one of the longest on record and more a short essay than the name of a state. It also solves the problem of lots of people not being particular happy with the present arrangement and having various ambitions to belong or not to belong either to England or to the European Union. Some want in; some want out; some want both at the same time it seems, at whatever level you look at it.

The solution is the Union of Scotland and Ireland (both North and South) and the Kingdom of England and Wales.

Northern Ireland, which has always been a problem, both for Ireland and for England gets the best of both worlds. The Protestants, most of whose ancestors came from Scotland not England and so are mostly Presbyterian rather than Anglican only ever really had

Hypotheses, Experiments, Theories and Laws.

One problem debating science with creationists is that the latter are, almost by definition, scientifically illiterate, unless they are defrauding scientifically illiterate creationists for money by misleading them about the science.

So many debates, even those rare ones where the creationist is interested in learning, founder on some basic misunderstanding and confusion of terms. I'm even engaged with one at the moment who is either feigning scientific ignorance or is genuinely ignorant to the extent that he doesn't understand the difference between a definition, a hypothesis and a theory. I'll not bother to define 'definition' (which should be self-evident anyway) but the following is an attempt to define the terms 'hypothesis', 'experiment', 'theory' and 'law' as they apply to formal science.

Part of the problem is that science uses a slightly different but more precise meanings of ‘hypothesis’ and ‘theory’ to that used in vernacular speech. In the vernacular, hypothesis and theory are pretty much

Cooperative Evolution

Epicephala lanceolaria moth inside the fruit of Glochidion lanceolarium

Credit: Shi-Xiao Luo, et al.

Plant keeps moths captive inside its fruits for almost a year | New Scientist

Who ever imagined that selfish genes inevitably lead to mutually destructive competition? Well, by and large, of course, these are the same people who argue that atheist societies will be lawless hell-holes full of rapists and cutthroat murderers with no-one having any reason to be anything other than utterly selfish. Reality was never their strong point.

The rebuttal is of course the same: no such system could evolve because mutual destruction and selfishness produce fewer, not more, descendants. The fact that we observe neither of these outcomes in reality is evidence for the evolutionary process.