Rosa Rubicondior

Saturday, 13 April 2024

Creationism in Crisis - How Multicellularity Evolved - With New Genetic Information

Green Alaga, Stigeoclonium sp.

Macroalgal deep genomics illuminate multiple paths to aquatic, photosynthetic multicellularity: Molecular Plant

What are the main types of algae and how do they differ? Algae are classified into several main groups based on their characteristics, including pigmentation, cellular structure, and mode of reproduction. The main types of algae include:

Diatoms (Bacillariophyta):

Diatoms are single-celled algae characterized by their unique glass-like silica cell walls called frustules.
They are typically found in freshwater and marine environments.
Diatoms are important primary producers and play a significant role in the global carbon cycle.

Green Algae (Chlorophyta):

Green algae encompass a diverse group of algae that are mostly freshwater but also found in marine and terrestrial environments.
They contain chlorophyll a and b, giving them a green color, similar to land plants.
Green algae can be unicellular, colonial, filamentous, or multicellular, with a wide range of morphologies.

Red Algae (Rhodophyta):

Red algae are predominantly marine algae, although some species can also be found in freshwater.
They contain pigments like chlorophyll a and various accessory pigments, including phycobiliproteins, giving them shades of red, pink, or purple.
Red algae often have complex multicellular structures and are important contributors to coral reef ecosystems.

Brown Algae (Phaeophyta):

Brown algae are primarily marine algae, commonly found in cold-water habitats.
They contain chlorophyll a and c, along with fucoxanthin, which gives them their characteristic brown color.
Brown algae can range from small filamentous forms to large, complex seaweeds like kelps.

Blue-Green Algae (Cyanobacteria or Cyanophyta):

Despite being called algae, cyanobacteria are actually prokaryotic organisms, classified within the domain Bacteria.
They are photosynthetic and often form colonies or filaments.
Cyanobacteria can be found in diverse habitats, including freshwater, marine environments, soil, and even extreme environments like hot springs.
Some cyanobacteria can produce toxins under certain conditions, leading to harmful algal blooms (HABs) and posing risks to aquatic life and human health.

These main types of algae differ in their pigmentation, cellular structure, habitat preferences, and ecological roles. While some are beneficial and essential for ecosystem health, others can become problematic under certain conditions, such as nutrient pollution or climate change. Understanding the characteristics and ecological functions of different types of algae is crucial for managing and conserving aquatic ecosystems.

Today’s refutation of creationists dogma comes in the form of an open access paper just published in the Cell Press journal, Molecular Plant. Research biologists have revealed how multicellularity evolved several times independently in algae, and how many of the new genes were acquired initially by viruses.

This gives the lie to creationist claims that new information can't arise in the genome because of some half-baked confusion of information with energy and a nonsensical assumption that new genetic information would need to come from nothing.

And of course, like about 99.99% of the history of life on Earth, it all happened in that very long period of pre-'Creation Week' history between Earth forming in an accretion disc around the sun and creationism's little god creating a small flat planet with a dome over it in the Middle East out of nothing, according to creationist mythology

In information provided by Cell Press ahead of publication, the scientists at New York Abu Dhabi University and Technology Innovation Institute, United Arab Emirates, said:

A deep dive into macroalgae genetics has uncovered the genetic underpinnings that enabled macroalgae, or "seaweed," to evolve multicellularity. Three lineages of macroalgae developed multicellularity independently and during very different time periods by acquiring genes that enable cell adhesion, extracellular matrix formation, and cell differentiation, researchers report April 12 in the journal Molecular Plant. Surprisingly, many of these multicellular-enabling genes had viral origins. The study, which increased the total number of sequenced macroalgal genomes from 14 to 124, is the first to investigate macroalgal evolution through the lens of genomics.

This is a big genomic resource that will open the door for many more studies. Macroalgae play an important role in global climate regulation and ecosystems, and they have numerous commercial and ecoengineering applications, but until now, there wasn't a lot of information about their genomes.

Alexandra Mystikou, co-first author
Division of Science and Math
New York University Abu Dhabi, Abu Dhabi, UAE.
Macroalgae live in both fresh and seawater and are complex multicellular organisms with distinct organs and tissues, in contrast to microalgae, which are microscopic and unicellular.

There are three main groups of macroalgae -- red (Rhodophyta), green (Chlorophyta), and brown (Ochrophyta) -- that independently evolved multicellularity at very different times and in very different environmental conditions.

Rhodophytes and Chlorophytes both evolved multicellularity over a billion years ago, while Ochrophytes only became multicellular in the past 200,000 years.

To investigate the evolution of macroalgal multicellularity, the researchers sequenced 110 new macroalgal genomes from 105 different species originating from fresh and saltwater habitats in diverse geographies and climates.

The researchers identified several metabolic pathways that distinguish macroalgae from microalgae, some of which may be responsible for the success of invasive macroalgal species.

Many of these metabolic genes appear to have been donated by algae-infecting viruses, and genes with a viral origin were especially prevalent in the more recently evolved brown algae.

They found that macroalgae acquired many new genes that are not present in microalgae on their road to multicellularity.

For all three lineages, key acquisitions included genes involved in cell adhesion (which enables cells to stick together), cell differentiation (which allows different cells to develop specialized functions), cell communication, and inter-cellular transport.

Many brown algal genes associated with multicellular functions had signature motifs that were only otherwise present in the viruses that infect them. It's kind of a wild theory that's only been hinted at in the past, but from our data it looks like these horizontally transferred genes were critical factors for evolving multicellularity in the brown algae.

David Nelson, co-first author
Division of Science and Math
New York University Abu Dhabi, Abu Dhabi, UAE.

Do some mysterious bones belong to gigantic ichthyosaurs? — University of Bonn

The thing about disagreements in science is that they aren't used as an excuse for persecution and schism, based on the notion that the side with the most power or the most followers wins as though truth can be determined by violence or opinion polls. In science, disagreements lead to discovery because in scientific debate the fact are, or should be, neutral, so they can referee the debate. The side with the evidence wins and the losers graciously accept that they were wrong.

This is the case of the long-standing disagreement in palaeontology over the mystery of giant bones which regularly turn up in deposits on Europe, which were first discovered in 1850 by the British naturalist Samuel Stutchbury, who reported finding a large cylindrical bone in Aust Cliff, near Bristol, UK. Similar fossils have also been found at sites around Europe, including Bonenburg in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany and Provence, France. Stutchbury assumed they were from an extinct crocodile-like land animal, labyrinthodontia, but others disagreed. Other candidates were long-necked sauropods and an as yet unidentified, large dinosaur.

Not the mystery may have been solved by two palaeontologists working at the University of Bonn, Germany. They have published their findings, open access, in the journal PeerJ and explain it in a Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms Universität Bonn news release:

Creationism in Crisis - How An Early Jawless Fish Was Feeding - About 400 Million Years Before 'Creation Week'

Fossil of Rhinopteraspis dunensis

Museum für Naturkunde, Berlin, Germany

3D mouth of an ancient jawless fish suggests they were filter-feeders, not scavengers or hunters - University of Birmingham

Today's incidental refutation of creationism comes to us from an international team of palaeontologists led by scientists from the University of Birmingham. They have shown how an early jawless fish was feeding, almost 400 million years before creationism's little pet god decided to create a small flat planet with a dome over it in the Middle East, in what creationists refer to as 'Creation Week'.

The researchers have used CT scanning techniques to construct a 3D image of the mouth-parts of Rhinopteraspis dunensis, an early, heavily-armoured boney fish that lived some 380 million years ago.

Creationism in Crisis - News Structure Evolved in Just 36 Years - 'Macro-Evolution' in Progress

Italian Wall Lizard, Podarcis sicula

Rapid large-scale evolutionary divergence in morphology and performance associated with exploitation of a different dietary resource | PNAS

Because of the regularity with which creationists demand evidence of 'macro-evolution' claiming that it has never been observed, I had decided to repost an expanded version of this article I originally wrote in 1918, to include more of the scientific evidence reported in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS).

It's another one of those 'non-existent' things that creationists must dread being shown.

No. This time it's not yet another of those 'missing' transitional fossils or intermediate forms. This time it's yet another example of something else 'impossible' and 'never observed'. It's yet another example of observed rapid evolution, including the evolution of new structures.

Creationism in Crisis - How A Complex Organ Evolved Naturally

Spotted dolphins, Stenella frontalis

Toothed whale echolocation organs evolved from jaw muscles | Hokkaido University

There is nothing a creationist fraud likes more than an organ or process that can be presented as 'irreducibly complex' because it will only work if all components are present and in the right place. They can sell this to their dupes as an example of something they claim couldn't have evolved gradually because it only works when all components are assembled, with no functional intermediate stages, so it must have been 'intelligently designed' - by the locally-popular god, obviously.

Creationist guru Michael J Behe, used the example of the E. coli flagellum for that purpose, confident that his target dupes would not be aware that almost all the components of the proton motor were present in the Type III secretory system and only needed a few minor changes to function as a hugely advantageous organ of motility. The process of exaptation of redundant structures is quite sufficient to explain how 'irreducibly complex' structures can evolve.

What are the current theories of how the Escherichia coli flagella evolved? The evolution of Escherichia coli flagella is a subject of ongoing research and debate among biologists. While there isn't a single universally accepted theory, there are several hypotheses and models proposed to explain the evolution of bacterial flagella, including:

Co-option Hypothesis: This hypothesis suggests that the flagellum evolved from pre-existing structures that were repurposed for motility. Some researchers propose that the flagellum shares ancestry with the Type III secretion system (T3SS), a needle-like structure used by bacteria to inject toxins or other proteins into host cells. According to this hypothesis, mutations and selective pressures led to the transformation of T3SS components into flagellar components.

Selective Advantage Hypothesis: This hypothesis proposes that the early ancestors of bacteria acquired flagella as a means of enhancing their ability to move towards favorable environments or away from harmful ones. The ability to move towards nutrient-rich areas or away from toxic substances would have provided a significant selective advantage, leading to the evolution and refinement of flagellar structures over time.

Genomic Evidence: Comparative genomics studies have provided insights into the evolution of flagella by examining the genetic sequences of various bacterial species. By analyzing similarities and differences in flagellar genes across different organisms, researchers can infer evolutionary relationships and trace the origins of flagellar components.

Modular Evolution: Some researchers propose that the flagellum evolved through a process of modular evolution, where individual components or substructures of the flagellum evolved independently before being integrated into a functional motility apparatus. This model suggests that the flagellum may have originated from the sequential addition and modification of simpler structures, such as proto-flagella or pili.

Evolutionary Intermediates: Studying the flagella of diverse bacterial species can provide insights into the evolutionary intermediates that may have existed during the transition from non-motile to motile forms. By identifying and characterizing these intermediates, researchers can gain a better understanding of the stepwise process by which flagella evolved.

Overall, while there is still much to learn about the precise evolutionary history of E. coli flagella, ongoing research efforts continue to refine our understanding of how these remarkable structures originated and diversified over time.

Just such an example of exaptation of redundant structures has just been revealed by researchers working Hokkaido University, Japan, who have shown that the complex echolocation system used by the toothed whales such as dolphins and orcas evolved out of the muscles and jaw bones that had previously been used to chew food but were redundant due to evolutionary changes which meant the whales swallowed their food whole.

The team have published their findings in the journal Gene. It is explained in a Hokkaido University news release: Toothed whale echolocation organs evolved from jaw muscles

Genetic analysis finds evidence suggesting that acoustic fat bodies in the heads of toothed whales were once the muscles and bone marrow of the jaw.

Toothed whale echolocation organs evolved from jaw muscles

Genetic analysis finds evidence suggesting that acoustic fat bodies in the heads of toothed whales were once the muscles and bone marrow of the jaw.

Illustration of the body plan of a toothed whale, with a cross section of the head showing the melon (dark yellow) and the extramandibular fat bodies (light yellow) which are key organs for using sound such as echolocation.

Hayate Takeuchi, Takashi Fritz Matsuishi, Takashi Hayakawa. Gene. January 20, 2024
Dolphins and whales use sound to communicate, navigate and hunt. New research suggests that the collections of fatty tissue that enable toothed whales to do so may have evolved from their skull muscles and bone marrow.

Scientists at Hokkaido University determined DNA sequences of genes which were expressed in acoustic fat bodies—collections of fat around the head that toothed whales use for echolocation. They measured gene expression in the harbor porpoise (Phocoena phocoena) and Pacific white-sided dolphin (Lagenorhynchus obliquidens). Their findings were published in the journal Gene.

The evolution of acoustic fat bodies in the head—the melon in the whale forehead, extramandibular fat bodies (EMFB) alongside the jawbone, and intramandibular fat bodies (IMFB) within the jawbone—was essential for sound use such as echolocation. However, little is known about the genetic origins of those fatty tissues.

Marvelous eyes, but you be the judge of this sea critter’s beauty. Vanadis is a byname of the Norse goddess of love, Freya.

Photo: Michael Bok

Mediterranean marine worm has developed eyes "as big as millstones"; – University of Copenhagen

Creationists love to cite the eye as an example of irreducible complexity' which could not have evolved by Darwinian step-wise evolution because anything less than a whole eye can't function as an eye.

They even misquote Darwin who, so they claim, admitted the evolution of the eye could not be explained, as though the entire unifying theory of biology rests on the opinion of one man who wrote his books about 160 years ago. But in their usual intellectually and morally bankrupt way, what they fail to do is to give the whole quote in the context in which Darwin used it to show that his theory of evolution was fully capable of explaining how something as complex as an eye could have evolved. It was typical of his style that he would set out a problem for biology, then show how his theory solved that problem. (see the full quote later).

Borderline Personality Disorder - Or Why Does Donald Trump Fly Into Rages So Often?

The Link Between Borderline Personality Disorder and Anger | Psychology Today

In an article today in Psychology Today, psychologist, Bernard Golden, Ph.D, explains the link between Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) and Anger.

Although he doesn't name him, most of his article reads like a description of Donald Trump and his frequent loss of self-control and bouts of angry shouting, which characterised his term in the White House, when aids would frequently be sacked in a fit of rage because they had had the temerity to question him or hint at disagreement.

To us in Europe it often seems America was being run from the bedroom of an over-privileged, petulant adolescent that someone had given a Twitter account to and told him he runs the world, where the most bizarre things were tweeted in the small hours of the morning and the world would wake up to the latest outburst and half-baked policy announcement.

This behaviour is explained by his borderline personality disorder, as described by Dr Bernard Golden

Reconstruction of Feredocodon chowi (right) and Dianoconodon youngi (left).

New Fossils Change Thinking on Early Mammal Evolution | AMNH

Some 165 million years before their god created the small flat planet with a dome over it that Creationists love hearing about, early mammals were evolving into modern mammals, complete with the tiny bones called ossicles that are essential for hearing. These three small bones transmit sound across the inner ear to the auditory sense organ, the cochlea.

Changes in the mammalian dentition were key to freeing these parts of the jaw joint, according to an analysis of two Jurassic-era mammal fossils which are the subject of articles in Nature. These analyses fill a gap in our understanding of the evolution of mammalian dentition and provide evidence of the transition from part of the jaw to the auditory ossicles - the stapes, malus and incus.

Like almost all of the history of life on earth, this all happened in the very long 'pre-Creation' age when 99.99% of Earth's history happened. The discovery was made by a research team that included Jin Meng of the American Museum of Natural History. Their findings are explained in an American Museum of Natural History press release.

Evolution News - An Atlas Of The Human Ovary Shows Common Ancestry of Mammals

Human ovarian follicle

First atlas of the human ovary with cell-level resolution is a step toward artificial ovary | University of Michigan News

This piece of research caught my eye, not so much because it refutes creationism with its daft notion of the special creation of humans as separate from all the other animals but because it's reminiscent of the research I used to be involved with in my first profession - a research technician in Oxford University's Department of Human Anatomy.

The research our small group was doing involved the hormonal control of reproduction in guinea pigs, which involved preparing light microscope slides of sections of guinea pig ovaries, and later on, transmission electron micrographs of ovarian tissues.

Like humans, guinea pigs have oestrus cycles where they periodically shed eggs from their ovaries regardless of whether they have mated or not. This is unlike some other mammals which ovulate soon after mating, stimulated to do so by the act of mating. Unlike human females, guinea pigs are only receptive for two or three days before and just after they ovulate. Outside that receptive period, they have a closure membrane that makes penetration impossible.

Malevolent Designer News - How Creationism's Divine Malevolence Creates Genetic Defects

UC Irvine-led research team builds first tandem repeat expansions genetic reference maps – UCI News

Creationists assure us that creating new genetic information is impossible without magic performed by the magic creator because they have been sold some half-baked notion that genetic information follows the same laws of physics as energy, so can't be created according to the Third Law of Thermodynamics.

The fact that this is demonstrably wrong since gene duplication is readily observable doesn't stop them trotting out the same refuted claims time after time, but then to a creationist, having a claim refuted is not seen as a reason not to try to get away with it again later. You'll see this repeatedly as an apologist fraud such as William Lane Craig, Ken Ham or Michael J Behe will be comprehensively refuted in a public debate one day, only to try the self-same argument a day or two later on a different opponent in front of a different audience.

Sadly for creationists, however, this tactic leads them down a cul-de-sac where they are left arguing that DNA duplication must have been intelligently designed and, so they will also claim, evidence of intelligent design is evidence that their favourite god (and no other!) exists.

Tiktaalik, (artist's impression)

In the evolution of walking, the hip bone connected to the rib bones | Eberly College of Science

From the day its discovery was announced, Tiktaalik has been a major embarrassment for creationists because not only does it refute the claim that there are no intermediate forms, but it also belies the claim that the Theory of Evolution can't make predictions.

Not only is it intermediate between fully aquatic lobe-finned fish and terrestrial tetrapod, but its discoverers predicted exactly where it would be found in the geological column and promptly went and found it there, exactly were predicted in Canada's Ellesmere Island.

But that embarrassment is about to become even more acute.

Researchers at Penn State's Eberly College have shown that Tiktaalik's ribs were attached to its pelvis and that fact helped in the evolution of walking. The research team, co-led by Tom Stewart, assistant professor of biology in the Eberly College of Science at Penn State and Neil H Shubin, one of the discoverers of Tiktaalik, have published their findings open access in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS). It is also explained in a Penn State Eberly College news release by Sam Sholtis:

The rusty-patched bumblebee, once common in the United States, has declined from about 90% of its former range.

Photo by Jay Watson

Rusty-patched bumblebee’s struggle for survival found in its genes - Warner College of Natural Resources

Evolution, or more precisely change in allele frequency over time, inevitably records selection pressures on a species resulting in a genome which, when correctly read and compared to predecessors, should tell the story of changes in the species environment.

This principle is illustrated by the threatened species of bumblebee, the rusty patch bumblebee, Bombus affinis, which has recently declined by about 90% in the USA and is now considered an endangered species. If this rate of decline continues the species will probably be extinct within 20 years. This level of intense selection pressure has inevitably left its mark on the genome of the species.

On of the problems facing the species is the result of the way bees breed. The queen can normally produce two sorts of egg - a fertilised, diploid egg which will develop into a female and a haploid, unfertilised egg which will develop into a male or drone. The problem arises when there is a high level of inbreeding, due, for example, to a small population - which the bee is now facing. In that situation, the female can produce diploid males because both sets of chromosomes can be identical. Diploid males are normally sterile so reducing the breeding success of the local species.

Creationism in Crisis - A Rainbow On Another Planet! Did God Flood That One Too?

Each glory is unique, depending on the composition of the planet’s atmosphere and the colours of the light from the star that illuminates it. WASP-76 (the «Sun» of WASP-76b) is a yellow and white main sequence star like our Sun, but different stars create glories with different colours and patterns.

CHEOPS detects a "rainbow" on an exoplanet - Medias - UNIGE

Scientists working at the CHEOPS space telescope control centre in the University of Geneva (UNIGE), Switzerland, working in collaboration with the European Space Agency (ESA) and the University of Bern (UNIBE), have discovered something which should ring alarm bells in the minds of Bible literalists.

It is the discovery of a rainbow in the atmosphere of an exoplanet known to science as WASP-76b.

WASP-76b is an exoplanet discovered in 2013 and confirmed in 2016 by a team of astronomers led by Neale P. Gibson using data from the Wide Angle Search for Planets (WASP) project. It belongs to the class of exoplanets known as "hot Jupiters," which are gas giants similar in size to Jupiter but with much higher temperatures due to their close proximity to their parent stars. Here are some key characteristics of WASP-76b:

Discovery: WASP-76b was discovered using the transit method, which involves observing the slight dimming of a star's light as an orbiting planet passes in front of it. This dimming effect is periodic and can be used to infer the presence and characteristics of the planet.

Physical Characteristics: WASP-76b is approximately 1.8 times the size of Jupiter but significantly more massive. It has a high surface temperature, estimated to be around 2,400 degrees Celsius (4,350 degrees Fahrenheit). This extreme heat is due to the planet's close orbit around its host star, WASP-76, which is located about 640 light-years away from Earth in the constellation Pisces.

Atmospheric Composition: One of the most intriguing features of WASP-76b is its atmospheric composition. Observations using the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile revealed the presence of iron and titanium vapor in the planet's atmosphere. This finding is significant because it provides insights into the atmospheric chemistry and physical processes occurring on hot Jupiter exoplanets.

Extreme Conditions: The extreme temperature and atmospheric conditions on WASP-76b make it an inhospitable world, unlikely to support life as we know it. Its atmosphere is thought to be dominated by high-speed winds and extreme atmospheric dynamics, which may lead to unusual weather patterns and atmospheric phenomena.

Importance for Exoplanet Research: WASP-76b is one of many exoplanets discovered in recent years that are helping astronomers better understand the diversity of planetary systems beyond our solar system. Its unique atmospheric composition and extreme conditions make it a valuable target for further study, particularly in the field of exoplanet atmospheres and planetary formation theories.

Overall, WASP-76b represents a fascinating example of the diverse range of exoplanets that exist in our galaxy and provides valuable insights into the atmospheric characteristics and physical processes occurring on these distant worlds.

The reason this should set alarm bells ringing in the minds of Bible literalists, is because they believe that 'the' rainbow was sent by the god of the Bible to show believers that he wouldn't ever inflict another genocide on the planet because, although being omniscient and perfect, he regretted the time he did it in a fit of temper and flooded the planet to a depth that covered the highest mountains.

Or so the tale goes.

Before about 4,000 years ago, obviously, sunlight wouldn't have been diffracted into its component colours by passing through raindrops, or so those who didn't understand how rainbows are formed wrote.

And God spake unto Noah, and to his sons with him, saying, And I, behold, I establish my covenant with you, and with your seed after you; And with every living creature that is with you, of the fowl, of the cattle, and of every beast of the earth with you; from all that go out of the ark, to every beast of the earth.

And I will establish my covenant with you, neither shall all flesh be cut off any more by the waters of a flood; neither shall there any more be a flood to destroy the earth. And God said, This is the token of the covenant which I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for perpetual generations: I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between me and the earth.

And it shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the bow shall be seen in the cloud: And I will remember my covenant, which is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall no more become a flood to destroy all flesh. And the bow shall be in the cloud; and I will look upon it, that I may remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is upon the earth.

Genesis 9: 8-17

Apparently, God is so forgetful that he needs the rainbow to remind him not to lose self-control and commit genocide again.

But the question for creationists is, did God commit genocide on another planet too and put a rainbow there to remind him not to do it again? If not, how do rainbows form on another planet if they only appear on Earth because God puts them there?

If he did commit genocide on another planet, this means there must have been life there too, yet WASP-76b is far too hot to sustain life as we know it, being a 'hot' Jupiter-like gas giant which orbits its sun (WASP-76) closer than mercury orbits ours.

How this discovery was made is the subject of a news release by the University of Geneva:

Christian church service

Why Do People Believe in God? | Psychology Today

From the point of view of an Atheist like me who realised religion was nonsense at the age of 9 and have been an atheist ever since, the fact that grown adults believe in a magic man in the sky who magically makes things happen does seem incredible.

It gets even more incredible that grown adults believe that, although omniscience and having a perfect plan for our individual lives, he needs to be told of bad things that need to be changed because he either doesn't know they're happening or doesn't know they are wrong.

And yet, for most people in the world, the answer seems obvious: Because it’s self-evident that God exists. From the point of view of the believer, the really puzzling question is how anyone could not believe.

Shinto shrine in Kyoto, Japan

So why do so many grown adults believe in at least one god, or if they're Hindu or Shintoist, or one of the other polytheist religions, several gods?

According to a 2018 article in Psychology Today by David Ludden, PhD, professor of psychology at Georgia Gwinnett College, religion is an evolved feature of human culture and there was a time when people didn't believe in gods.

In his article he makes the following key points:

Early in the history of humans, nobody believed in a god of any sort.
Religious belief is considerably lower in developed countries compared with the underdeveloped world.
Believing that God has a plan helps people regain some sense of control, or at least acceptance.

Evolution in Action - New Study Finds Evidence for Evolution Of A New, Nitrogen-Fixing Cell Organelle

Transmission electron micrograph images of the C. parkeae stage of B. bigelowii. Light microscopy images (A,C) and corresponding TEM images are shown (B,D) for strain MK90-06. Usually, one endosymbiont is found per cell in the posterior of the cell (A,B); however, some of the cells had two endosymbionts per cell during cell division (C,D). Scale bars represent 5 μm in (A and C), and 2 μm in (B and D). E, endosymbiont; G, Golgi apparatus; M, mitochondrion; N, nucleus; P, plastid; and Py, pyrenoid.

Suzuki, Shigekatsu, et. al, (2021)

Evolution in action? New study finds possibility of nitrogen-fixing organelles – Rhody Today

Most biologists now accept the Endosymbiosis Theory which explains how simple prokaryote cells became complex eukaryote cells by a single-celled prokaryote such as an archaea incorporating other single-celled prokaryotes inside its cell membrane. This may have been by engulfing them as prey or by being parasitised by them. Whatever the mechanism, a symbiotic relationship ensued which progressed to the extent that the incorporated cell's DNA was transferred to the host genome and the incorporated cell became a cell organelle.

This explains the origin of cell organelles such as the mitochondria which metabolise glucose to turn adenosine diphosphate (ADP) into adenosine triphosphate (ATP) which can then be used to power metabolic processes within the cell. Mitochondria have some similarities with rickettsia bacteria which strongly suggests they have evolved from free-living rickettsia.

Likewise, chloroplasts in plant cells were once free-living, photosynthesising cyanobacteria which became incorporated in what was to become algae, so giving rise eventually to almost all plant life.

And now we have evidence that another incorporation is evolving, in the form of nitrogen-fixing bacteria being incorporated as organelles into a marine alga, which gives the algae the ability to create ammonia and so nitrates directly from atmospheric nitrogen. This was discovered by researchers from the University of Rhode Island, the Institut de Ciències del Mar in Barcelona, the University of California at Santa Cruz and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. They have published their findings, open access, in the journal Cell.

Although nitrogen is abundant, comprising about 79% of Earth's atmosphere, it exists as the diatomic gas dinitrogen (N₂) which is notoriously stable making molecular nitrogen almost an inert substance and requiring a lot of energy to break the N-N bond. However, some bacteria, the nitrogen-fixing bacteria, have evolved the ability to do this using the enzyme nitrogenase:

Malevolent Designer News - New Discovery Unravels Malaria Invasion Mechanism

Plasmodium falciparum in a blood smear.

New Discovery Unravels Malaria Invasion Mechanism

Medical science just took a step forward in the continuing arms race between it and creationism's divine malevolence to try to prevent its parasite, Plasmodium falciparum from killing 600,000 people, mostly children, a year, mostly in Africa.

Creationists who use the traditional excuse that it's not their god who designs parasites but another intelligent designer - Sin - should refresh their memories of Michael J Beh's 'proof' that their god exists by falsely claiming that anti-malarial drug resistance in P. falciparum must have been intelligently designed because the (wrong) mathematical model he used gave the infinitesimally small probability it was intelligently designed to give, so could not have evolved.

So, they can't have it both ways: if evidence of design in parasites, no matter how spurious, is evidence for their god then their god is responsible for the design of those parasites. If not, then Michael J Behe's carefully concocted 'proof' is nothing of the sort.

The alternative is the blasphemous claim that there is another supernatural deity with powers to create living things, over whom their god has no power or authority.

So, while creationists are struggling with trying to hold two mutually exclusive views simultaneously, biomedical scientists are trying to unravel the devilishly clever way this parasite overcomes our defences to do what creationists must believe it was designed to do - make us sick and increase the suffering in the world.

This is the latest breakthrough medical science has just announced.

It was made by researchers from by the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute (Swiss TPH) and Griffith University’s Institute for Glycomics, led by Professor Gerd Pluschke of Swiss TPH. Their discovery concerns the way the parasite gains access to the red blood cells to begin their destruction. It is published, open access, in Cell Reports and is explained in a Swiss PTH news release:

A greater flamingo, Mallorca, Spain.

Credit: Daniel J. Field

We’ve had bird evolution all wrong - News - University of Florida

To a child-like black vs white creationist, science changing its mind is science admitting it was wrong - which means it's probably wrong this time too, so all of science can be dismissed as wrong. Unless of course, it's some pseudo-science purporting to support creationism, then it's absolutely incontrovertible proof of creationism, because there is nothing a creationist craves more than proof of creationism provided by the same science they despise so much when it refutes creationism yet again.

So, news that a team of researchers at Florida University have re-examined the genetic evidence for the evolution of birds and revised the family tree will be music to the ears of any creationist fraud looking for some science to misrepresent. However, this research does nothing of the sort, and merely confirms what we already know - that birds diversified from a common ancestor by an evolutionary process. The debate is never about whether that happened, but how and exactly when.

What misled taxonomists was a chunk of DNA that has remained more or less unchanged for some 60 million years. By a process which is poorly understood, this large chunk of DNA avoids recombination during the process of egg and sperm production. Using this section alone gave one family tree, which put doves and flamingoes as close cousins, but using the whole genome gave a different family tree which makes doves and flamingoes much more distantly related (though of course, still related by common ancestry).

The research team have published their findings, open access, in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS) and explain them in a University of Florida news release:

Creationism in Crisis - Sophisticated Wooden Hunting Tools Were Being Made In Schöningen, Germany - 290,000 Years Before 'Creation Week'

Early humans used wood splitting 300,000 years ago to hunt animals, study shows

290,000 years before creationism's little god decided to create the small flat planet with a dome over it, in the Middle East, and before anatomically-modern humans had left Africa, someone was creating hunting weapons in a 'workshop' in what is now Schöningen, Lower Saxony, Germany.

What information do you have on the archaeological site at Schöningen, Lower Saxony, particularly on how the wooden artifacts were dated? The archaeological site at Schöningen, located in Lower Saxony, Germany, is renowned for its remarkable finds of wooden artifacts, particularly wooden spears. These artifacts have provided valuable insights into the behavior and technology of early humans in Europe.

The Schöningen site has yielded several wooden spears, some of which are remarkably well-preserved. These spears are estimated to be around 300,000 years old, making them some of the oldest known hunting weapons in the archaeological record.

One of the methods used to date the wooden artifacts found at Schöningen is dendrochronology, also known as tree-ring dating. Dendrochronology involves analyzing the growth rings of trees to determine the age of wooden samples. However, in the case of the Schöningen spears, dendrochronology was not applicable because the wood had undergone significant chemical and physical changes over time, making it difficult to identify and count growth rings.

Instead, researchers utilized other dating methods such as radiocarbon dating. Radiocarbon dating involves measuring the amount of radioactive carbon-14 remaining in organic material to estimate its age. However, radiocarbon dating is only effective for materials up to around 50,000 years old. To overcome this limitation, researchers at Schöningen used a method called electron spin resonance (ESR) dating.

ESR dating is a technique used to date materials that contain trapped electrons, such as tooth enamel or certain minerals. By measuring the amount of trapped electrons and their properties, scientists can estimate the age of the material. This method was used to date the sediment layers surrounding the wooden artifacts at Schöningen, providing an estimate of their age.

Through these dating methods, researchers have been able to establish the approximate age of the wooden spears found at Schöningen, shedding light on the hunting practices and technological capabilities of early humans in Europe during the Middle Pleistocene epoch.

Tell me more about electron spin resonance dating.

Electron Spin Resonance (ESR) dating is a scientific technique used to date materials that have been exposed to radiation, such as certain minerals or tooth enamel. It is particularly useful for dating archaeological and geological materials beyond the range of radiocarbon dating.

Here's how ESR dating works:

Principle: When certain materials are exposed to radiation, such as cosmic rays or natural radioactivity in the environment, they can become trapped in defects within the crystal lattice structure of the material. These trapped electrons have an inherent spin, which can be affected by an external magnetic field. ESR dating measures the amount of trapped electrons and their spin properties to estimate the age of the material.

Trapped Electrons: Over time, trapped electrons accumulate in the crystal lattice of the material. The rate of accumulation depends on factors such as the type and amount of radiation to which the material has been exposed, as well as its environment. Trapped electrons are usually produced by ionizing radiation, such as gamma rays or cosmic rays, which knock electrons out of their atomic positions and into trap sites within the crystal lattice.

Measurement: To measure the trapped electrons, the sample is first exposed to a magnetic field, causing the electrons to absorb energy and move to higher energy states. When the magnetic field is removed, the electrons return to their original state, emitting energy in the form of electromagnetic radiation. This emitted energy is detected and analyzed to determine the concentration of trapped electrons and their properties.

Age Calculation: The age of the sample is calculated based on the accumulated dose of radiation it has received over time. This dose is determined by comparing the concentration of trapped electrons in the sample to a standard dose rate calibration curve, which relates the amount of trapped electrons to the known radiation dose received by the material. By extrapolating the accumulated dose from the concentration of trapped electrons, scientists can estimate the age of the sample.

ESR dating has been used to date a variety of materials, including tooth enamel, quartz, and certain types of fossilized shells. It is particularly valuable for dating materials beyond the range of radiocarbon dating, extending the chronological record of archaeological and geological sites back hundreds of thousands to millions of years. However, ESR dating requires careful calibration and consideration of factors such as radiation dose rates and environmental conditions to produce accurate age estimates.

What hominins were in what is now Germany, 300,000 years ago? Around 300,000 years ago, during the Middle Pleistocene epoch, the hominins inhabiting what is now Germany were likely early members of the Homo genus. One of the most well-known and widespread species during this time was Homo heidelbergensis. Fossil evidence suggests that Homo heidelbergensis inhabited parts of Europe, including what is now Germany, during the Middle Pleistocene. These early humans were likely skilled hunters and toolmakers, and they may have been the ancestors of both Neanderthals and Homo sapiens. However, it's important to note that our understanding of ancient hominin populations is continually evolving as new discoveries are made and research progresses.

The main candidate for their creator is Homo heidelbergensis, believed to be the immediate ancestor of Neanderthals, but whoever made them, they are the oldest known complete hunting weapons.

They were found during an archaeological dig at Schöningen in 1994 and have now been examined using modern technology by researchers from the Lower Saxony State Office for Cultural Heritage (NLD) and the Universities of Reading, UK and Göttingen, Germany, who have reported their findings, open access, in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS).

The researchers have shown how these pre-Homo sapiens people resharpened broken points on spears and throwing sticks and made tools by splitting wood - the first time this has been demonstrated for other than Homo sapiens. Some of the tools may have been used for softening and scraping animal skins rather than for hunting.

Feral modern horses, Ogden, Utah, USA.

Kelly Lambright via Getty Images

Horses lived in the Americas for millions of years – new research helps paleontologists understand the fossils we’ve found and those that are missing from the record

Those few creationists who understand the science hate the record of horse evolution found in the fossil record because it runs counter to their dogma. It shows progressive change over millions of years from a small five-toed herbivore the size of a dog, through increasing size and a progressive reduction in toes to give the modern horse which walks on the tips if a single digit on each foot.

It is a fossil record which gives the lie to creationist assertions that there are no transitional fossils since each stage is clearly intermediate between its ancestors and its descendants. Moreover, most of the evolutionary history of the horse takes place in the very long period of Earth's history from before 'Creation Week' when creationists dogma says Earth was magicked out of nothing by a magic man made of nothing who then magicked all the animals out of dirt, exactly as they are today without ancestors.

And there is more embarrassment for those creationists who like to imagine Stephen J Gould and Nilse Eldredge somehow refuted Darwinian evolution with 'punctuated equilibrium' because the evolution of the horse in North America is a perfect illustration of how Darwinian evolution can produce a local fossil record that looks like a period of 'equilibrium' followed by rapid, even sudden, change in form.

Horses originally evolved in North America before crossing over the land bridge between Alaska and Siberia into Asia where they underwent allopatric speciation and then became extinct in North America during the last Ice Age. The domesticated descendants of the Asian horse were then reintroduced to North America by European colonists during the Middle Ages and subsequently became feral. Any examination of the fossil record will now show what appears to have been a sudden change from the Pliocene horse to the modern horse around 800 years ago because the Darwinian evolution occurred not locally but in Asia, where the fossil record will show what appears to have been the sudden appearance of a Pliocene horse without ancestors and no clear relationship to anything in the local fauna.

Creationism in Crisis - A Dinosaur Fossil In The 'Wrong' Place - But Not What Creationists Hoped For

Duckbill dinosaur discovery in Morocco – expert unpacks the mystery of how they got there

Here's something to excite creationists!

It's a fossil out of place!

Sadly though, it's not out of place in the geological column - which would falsify evolution - but out of place geographically. It's the fossil of a duck-billed dinosaur in Morocco, North Africa, but it's closest relatives appear to be from Europe, which was a long sea voyage away at the time and no obvious island chain for them to island hop on.

And to add to the mystery, the European duck-billed dinosaurs didn't evolve in Europe, but in North America, so they must have got to Europe somehow.

When the news from science is relentless in its refutation of creationism, it would have been nice to find something to give the poor beleaguered fools a few crumbs of comfort, but it was not to be. This one is just as relentless s all the others.

Male wood duck, Aix sponsa

After 10 years of work, landmark study reveals new ‘tree of life’ for all birds living today

The results of a ten-year study, published today in Nature will come as a huge disappointment for any creationists who find the courage to read it (and who have the ability to understand what they're reading - which for creationists is probably asking too much.

Those still under the delusion that mainstream biologists are abandoning the TOE in favour of creationism with its magic and a suppositional supernatural entity, will be especially disappointed. Not only does it show birds have been around for very much longer than creationists believe the universe has been it also shows that the team of scientists are firmly committed to the Theory of Evolution as the only scientific explanation for biodiversity.

Two of the biologists who co-authored the paper along with a large international team of biologists, Jacqueline Nguyen, Scientific Officer in Ornithology, Australian Museum, and ARC DECRA Fellow, Flinders University and Simon Ho, Professor of Molecular Evolution, School of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Sydney, have described their findings in an article in The Conversation. Their article is reprinted here under a Creative Commons license, reformatted for stylistic consistency:

Religion News - Those Who Believe Absurdities...

Casting the magic spells - Eastern Orthodox style

A eucharist of sourdough or wafer? What a thousand-year-old religious quarrel tells us about fermentation

As though the idea of pieces of bread and/or wafer literally turning into bits of Jesus so they could be used in a cannibalistic ritual weren't absurd enough, in 1054, the Christian church erupted into a furious row almost amounting to civil war over the question not of whether the idea was too absurd to be believed but over the question of whether the bread should be made from sourdough or be unleavened!

The row widened and cemented the schism in the church over the correct dating of Easter which had arisen because no-one at the time the event it purports to commemorate - the alleged blood sacrifice of Jesus - thought it was significant enough to record. Later stories alluded vaguely to its relationship to the Jewish festival of Passover, with one account putting it on Passover itself on the Shabatt or Saturday at 9 o'clock in the morning (Mark 15:25), which would not have happened under Judaic law, and the other the day before, on the Day of Preparation, i.e., the day before Passover, on Friday at 12 noon. Unless there were two Jesuses, at least one of these dates and time is untrue.

Although that disagreement was the official reason for the schism, the real reason was of course the struggle for control of the church between the capitals of the old Western (Latin) and Eastern (Greek), Rome and Constantinople (or Byzantium) respectively, because Christianity was nothing if not a political front based on the philosophy that to control the people you had to control their religion. The Latin west was never going to accept Greek rule from Constantinople and the Greek east was never going to accept Latin rule from Rome.

So, what was the row about the right type of bread to be magically turned into bits if Jesus all about and why was it elevated to such a high level of importance?

In the following article, reprinted from The conversation under a Creative Commons license, Robert Nelson, Honorary Principal Fellow, The University of Melbourne, Australia explains how it became a matter of the authority of the respective churches. His article has been reformatted for stylistic consistency:

New study shows how the Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever virus enters our cells | Karolinska Institutet

Creationists traditionally have a schizophrenic attitude towards viruses. On the one hand, they blame them all on the biblical myth of 'The Fall', so betraying the fact that creationism is not a science like they claim it to be, but fundamentalist Christianity.

On the other hand, as we saw in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, they declared it to be their god's divine punishment for whatever their hobbyhorse was at the time - abortion, same-sex marriage, New Yorkers electing a Democrat, etc., etc., as though their god would inflict a punishment on the whole world for the actions of politicians in America or the way Americans in New York voted. Creationism is nothing if not parochial and ignorant!

How Science Works - Discovering How Planets Are Really Made - And Why The Bible Myth Is Wrong

Accretion disc

Our survey of the sky is uncovering the secrets of how planets are born

Look in the Bible for a description of how planets are formed, and you can search all day in vain. It simply isn't there. In fact, the very concept of planets and planetary orbits isn't there.

What the Bible myth describes is a childlike guess at the formation of the universe by people who thought the entire universe was the small part of Earth they lived and herded their goats on. So, they described it as a small, flat place, floating in the sea, with a dome over it (because that's what the sky looked like to them).

Stuck to that dome were the sun and moon as lamps, and what we now know are planets, stars and far-off galaxies, they thought were lights stuck to the underside of the dome. They even guessed that there must be pillars holding up the ground and that the stars could be shaken loose from the dome by earthquakes, when they would fall to Earth and could be stamped on by a goat, albeit a big goat!

Don't believe me? Find a Bible and read Genesis 1: 1-18 and Daniel 8:10. Nowhere will you find the words planet, orbit or accretion disc.

What you get is exactly what you might expect if you brought up a child to believe in magic and magic spirits but kept them away from any sources of information about science, geography, geology or cosmology, then, at about the age of 10, asked them to describe the universe and make up a story about how it was made. What you would get is what you get if you use a creationist form of deductive logic - you just look at it and describe what you think you see.

You get the result of ignorant intuition, which is about as far removed from what is really there and how it came to be the way it is as its possible to be.

We know this because we can compare the results of that method in the Bible with the results of scientific investigation and the scientific method used to describe how planets are really formed as part of the process of forming suns and planetary systems within galaxies which are themselves a tiny part of a vast universe consisting of trillions of galaxies, each with trillions of suns and probably several trillion planets in orbits around those suns, almost none of which is visible to someone standing on the surface of Earth and 'just looking'.

The following article by Christian Ginski, a Lecturer of astronomy at the University of Galway, Ireland described what we now know of hos planets are formed and just how many there might well be in the cosmos. His article is reprinted under a Creative Commons license, reformatted for stylistic consistency:

Dark Matter

‘Dark stars’: dark matter may form exploding stars – and observing the damage could help reveal what it’s made of

Dark matter is known to exists, and yet no-one knows what it is.

Creationists, in a desperate attempt to reduce science to the same status as their evidence-free superstition, will claim this shows that science is a religion really. But that childish claim soon disintegrates when we understand how scientists can know that dark matter exists when they don't know what it is.

Unlike religion's god(s), scientists can measure dark matter's effects on stuff they know more about, like the 'normal' matter that you and I are made of - atoms and molecules of which stars, galaxies and super-clusters are made of. They can see the gravitational effects of dark matter, so there must be something with enough mass to produce that gravitational effect.

Theists, on the other hand can never demonstrate any effects of the god(s) they believe in and are reduced to presuppositional claims and assertions, designating their god(s) as the cause of things they don't understand - the god of the gaps false dichotomy fallacy that passes for religious apologetics.

So, what are these effects that dark matter exerts?

The gravity produced by dark matter is what holds spinning galaxies together and prevents the detectable matter in them from flying outwards by the centrifugal force of rotation. It also produces gravitational 'lensing', which is the effect of light being bent by a large mass to act like a giant lens and make distant objects look closer.

So, we know dark matter is out there even though we don't know what it is, so scientists try to work out what it could be composed of and make predictions of what this stuff would do if it existed. This is the testable hypothesis. The trick is to construct experiments to test those hypotheses.

In the following article, Andreea Font, Reader in Theoretical Astrophysics, Liverpool John Moores University, Liverpool, UK, outlines some of the current hypotheses that seek to explain dark matter. Her article is reprinted from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license, reformatted for stylistic consistency.

Malevolent Designer - How Creationism's Putative Designer COULD Have Given Us A Mechanism to Prevent Heart Attacks But Chose Not To

Naked mole rats, Heterocephalus glaber - uniquely able to resist cardiac damage.

FMD - Secrets of the naked mole-rat: new study reveals how their unique metabolism protects them from heart attacks - Queen Mary University of London

Part of creationists mythology is the belief that humans stand at the pinnacle of creation, being the supreme creation of their putative designer. Even those who accept the evidence for evolution, like to imagine that somehow evolution was intended to result in humans being at the apex of it.

As you would expect of creationism, those beliefs are counter-factual and so are not supported by the evidence, and, if they are to be believed, paints their putative creator god in a very poor light, not the least because of the very many examples of where, if it had created humans and all the other species, humans come off at best second best, having inferior versions of organs and processes compared to many other species. I list several of these in my popular, illustrated book, The Malevolent Designer: Why Nature's God is not Good, for example, the superior eye of the peregrine falcon, the superior immune system of bats and the fact that elephants and sharks rarely get cancer.
Now we have the example of naked mole rats which are able to suffer anoxia without sustaining damage to their cardiac muscles, so they rarely have heart attacks.

The damage during a heart attack, i.e., when a cardiac artery is blocked by a blood clot, is cell death due to being deprived of oxygen. But Naked mole rats have a unique cardiac metabolism and unique genes, that enable their cardiac muscle cells to survive a period of anoxia.

The reason for this, and the mechanism creationism's creative god could have given humans if it were real and is as omnibenevolent as creationists like to pretend, was discovered by researchers from London, Pretoria and Cambridge, led by Dr. Dunja Aksentijevic of the Centre for Biochemical Pharmacology, William Harvey Research Institute, Bart’s and the London Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry, Queen Mary University of London, London, UK.

The team have just published their findings, open access, in the journal Nature Communications. It is also explained in a Queen Mary University news release:

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