Refuting Creationism - How Autism May Be The Result Of Compromise In The Evolution Of Human Intelligence

Trump 'fact checking' his autism claim

How evolution explains autism rates in humans | EurekAlert!

If the human genome had been intelligently designed by an omniscient, omnibenevolent, omnipotent supernatural deity, as creationists insist, it should be perfect and free from defects of any sort. In fact, it is difficult to see why there would be any variance in such an intelligently designed genome, let alone variance that causes genetic defects—unless those were intentionally included by the designer, who then cannot reasonably be described as omnibenevolent or omniscient.

If, however, the human genome is the product of hundreds of millions of years of gradual evolutionary processes — processes that prioritise survival and reproduction, with all the sub-optimal compromises that a utilitarian form of ‘design’ entails — then variance and defects are exactly what we would expect.

Creationists traditionally ignore questions about the origin of variance in a supposedly ‘perfect’ intelligently designed genome. The existence of genetic defects is usually explained away by resorting to Bible-literalist mythology about ‘The Fall’ — an abandonment of the Discovery Institute’s Wedge Strategy, which seeks to present creationism as real science rather than a fundamentalist religion dressed in a lab coat. News that autism may in fact be a by-product of the evolution of intelligence in humans will therefore be an even greater problem for creationists, who insist that our high intelligence sets us apart as the special creation of a perfect god.

Ironically, as well as possessing high intelligence, humans — unlike any other primates — also have autism and schizophrenia. It is this correlation that provides a clue to their shared evolutionary origins.

My book, The Body of Evidence: How the Human Body Refutes Intelligent Design, lists lots of examples of how the human body is the result of these sub-optimal evolutionary compromises with all the problems that has produced. This example is just another instance and more evidence of the lack of intelligence in the process.

Refuting Creationism - An Ichthyosaur from 200 Million Years Before 'Creation Week'

Artist’s interpretation of Eurhinosaurus mistelgauensis on 'belemnite battleground'.

Credit: Andrey Atuchin.

Eurhinosaurus mistelgauensis specimen from the Urwelt-Museum Oberfranken on a belemnite battleground. The fossil plate is about 4 m long.

Credit: Spicher et al (2025).

New Jurassic ichthyosaur species discovered in Mistelgau

It's shaping up to be another bad week for creationism, with the evidence for evolution on an old Earth continuing to accumulate, and evidence against any intelligence being involved in its evolution growing unabated. There is even a paper describing how and when Earth was really formed, and the contrast between that reality and the Bible’s version could hardly be greater.

This article looks at just one of these developments (more will follow). From the perspective of evolutionary biology, it is not especially remarkable—simply the description of a new species of extinct ichthyosaur, Eurhinosaurus mistelgauensis, from the Lower Jurassic (around 200 million years ago).

But for creationism, it serves as yet another stark reminder of how wrong the biblical creation story and timeline are. To put it bluntly, this fossil would not exist if the Bible’s story were true. It doesn’t take a genius to see how the fact of its existence bears on debates about the truth or falsity of Genesis—though creationists appear to struggle with this basic deductive logic.

Malevolent Designer News - How Candida Albicans (Thrush) Is Cleverly Designed to Infect Your Mouth - Evolution Or Malevolent Design?

The yeast fungus Candida albicans (blue) breaks out of human immune cells (red) by forming long thread-like cells called hyphae. The part of the hypha that has already left the immune cells is coloured yellow.

© Erik Böhm, Leibniz-HKI

The dose makes the difference - Leibniz-HKI

As has often been pointed out in these blog posts, the "evidence" offered by Discovery Institute fellows William A. Dembski and Michael J. Behe for an intelligent designer can, by the same logic and using the same evidence, be interpreted as pointing to a theologically awkward malevolent designer. This is a line of reasoning routinely ignored by the "Cdesign proponentcists", who prefer to overlook the many examples of parasites and pathogens—and the evolutionary traits that make them so successful at invading and surviving within their hosts.

A fresh example that creationists will either have to ignore or blame on "The Fall" comes from researchers at the Leibniz Institute for Natural Product Research and Infection Biology. They have shown that the fungus Candida albicans, which causes thrush, has evolved a highly sophisticated and "finely tuned" mechanism for infecting the human mouth while evading the immune system.

The stock creationist response is to shift responsibility onto the biblical myth of "The Fall," retreating into Bible literalism. Yet this is precisely the kind of literalism the Discovery Institute has been at pains to insist is not essential to the notion of intelligent design, which it markets as a scientific alternative to evolutionary theory—or "Darwinism," as they prefer to call it. This rhetorical sleight of hand was central to the Institute’s "Wedge Strategy," devised after the 1987 US Supreme Court ruling in Edwards v. Aguillard, which confirmed that teaching creationism in public schools violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.

The new research reveals that C. albicans produces a toxin called candidalysin in carefully regulated doses that allow it to infiltrate the mucous lining of the mouth. Too little candidalysin, and the fungus would fail to establish itself; too much, and it would trigger an immune response strong enough to destroy it. Normally, C. albicans exists in a round, yeast-like form, but under the "right" conditions it can switch into the filamentous hyphal form typical of fungi. This transformation allows it to penetrate host tissues and, in immune-compromised patients, become life-threatening. It is in this invasive hyphal state that C. albicans produces candidalysin.

The production of hyphae, and therefore candidalysin, is controlled by the gene EED1. By any definition, EED1 would qualify as an example of "complex specified information" according to Dembski’s own formulation — evidence, according to the Discovery Institute, of supernatural intelligent design.

Refuting Creationism - Scientists Might Have Got Something Wrong - But Not As Wrong As The Bible's Authors Did.

Cross-section of an egg-shaped iron oxide stone: It holds information about the amount of organic carbon in the sea millions of years ago, much like a time capsule.

Image: Nir Galili /ETH Zurich

Minute witnesses from the primordial sea | ETH Zurich

Scientists at Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule (ETH) Zürich have discovered evidence that may force us to rethink how Ice Ages and complex life began. By studying tiny iron oxide grains called ooides, they found that dissolved carbon dioxide in the oceans between 1000 and 541 million years ago was 90–99 percent lower than today — far too low to have triggered an Ice Age or the rise of multicellular organisms.

For creationists, this creates a dilemma. Whatever did cause these events, it happened hundreds of millions of years earlier than their literal reading of the Bible allows. Science may revise its conclusions when new evidence emerges, but it is nowhere near as wrong as the Bible’s authors—who missed the truth by billions of years.

This difference highlights the contrast between science and religion. Science asks, “What does the evidence show?” and adapts accordingly. Religion demands blind faith, treating doubt as a weakness.

Creationists boast that their “truth” never changes, but the reality is that what doesn't change is the mind of a creationist who is immune to evidence, deductive logic and analytical reasoning. Refusing to change your mind in the light of evidence is intellectual bankruptcy - the hallmark of dogma, not wisdom.

Creationism Refuted - Scientists Revisit Some Old Fossils, Extend Scientific Knowledge - And Casually Refute Creationism Again

296-Million-Year-Old Fossil Unearthed in Brazil Sheds Light on Ancient Plant Mystery Hidden for Over Half a Century - Notícia

In another of those regular events in science, a team of researchers led by the University of Vale do Taquari – Univates, Rio Grande, Brazil, through the Graduate Program in Environment and Development (PPGAD), re-examined material held in the Univates Palaeontological Collection. Using modern equipment that was not available when the fossils were first studied more than 50 years ago, they uncovered new information – and, without intending to, once again demonstrated the weakness of creationist claims. As usual, creationism is refuted by the evidence.

What the team discovered were plant spores preserved in situ in fossils dating to between 298.9 and 252.17 million years ago – long before dinosaurs appeared and well before flowering plants evolved. At that time, the most advanced land plants were spore-bearing, like today’s mosses and ferns. This showed that the original classification as Lycopodites was incorrect. Instead, the fossils belonged to a new genus, which the team named Franscinella, giving the newly described Upper Palaeozoic plant the species name Franscinella riograndensis.

The significance extends further: the spores, now positively linked to this species, are index microfossils found in Permian strata of the Paraná Basin. Yet creationists routinely dismiss the use of index fossils in geochronology as “circular reasoning.” The ability to tie these spores directly to a particular species undermines that objection and strengthens their role in stratigraphy.

The Childish Bible - The Contrast Between The Bible's Description Of The Universe and the Real Thing

A spiral galaxy, NGC 7456. It shines brightly at the centre, and most of its disc also glows in warm colours. Its two spiral arms, which wind outwards from the centre, are made up mostly of large patches of bright blue specks. They also contain thin, reddish clouds of dust, and bright pink bubbles of glowing gas, where stars are forming. Distant galaxies can be seen around the galaxy as small orange spots, on a dark background.

A galaxy with lots to see | ESA/Hubble

For the Bible’s description of the Universe, try doing something creationists rarely seem to do – actually read it (you don’t need to read much!). In the very first chapter we find a story of a universe created from nothing by a few magic words. This universe is described as a small, flat, dome-covered world, with stars portrayed as tiny lights stuck to the dome. The Sun and Moon are described as lamps hanging from it. Later, we read of stars shaking loose and falling to Earth during earthquakes, and of the Moon hiding in a valley during the day (Genesis 1:6-10, Genesis 1:14-17, Joshua 10:12-14).

The contrast with what science has revealed could hardly be more stark. Given what we now know of the cosmos, the Bible’s account reads like the imaginative attempt of a five-year-old child asked to describe the Universe after a glance at the night sky. It can scarcely be regarded as a definitive scientific account of reality, and yet there are adults who still believe it is just that.

What this tells us about the education and credulity of those creationists who insist on believing such absurdities I will leave for readers to decide. Meanwhile, here is the NASA/ESA Hubble Picture of the Week to compare with the biblical version. It shows the spiral galaxy NGC 7456, located more than 51 million light-years away in the constellation Grus (the Crane). The image reveals glowing pink reservoirs of gas where new stars are forming, their light causing the surrounding gas to emit its tell-tale red glow.

Refuting Creationism - The Lengths Plants Will Go To Just To Get Pollinated - No Intelligence Needed

chloropid flies on a Vincetoxicum nakaianum flower.

The grass fly visiting the flowers (A) and kleptoparasiting spider hunting ant (B)

Press Releases - SCHOOL OF SCIENCE THE UNIVERSITY OF TOKYO

The driving force behind evolution is reproductive success, so in a broad sense every adaptation can be seen as a reproductive strategy. Few, however, are as peculiar as that of Vincetoxicum nakaianum, a dogbane species native to Japan. Rather than relying on nectar rewards or visual lures to attract pollinators, this plant enlists the services of kleptoparasitic chloropid flies — insects that usually home in on the scent of injured prey in order to steal a meal.

In a remarkable twist, the flowers of V. nakaianum release chemical signals that closely mimic the odour of ants under attack by predators, especially spiders. Drawn in by what they perceive as the scent of a potential victim to exploit, the flies inadvertently collect and deposit pollen as they move from flower to flower. This unusual strategy has now been documented in detail in a study led by Ko Mochizuki of the University of Tokyo, published in Current Biology, and described in a University of Tokyo School of Science press release.

What makes this particularly striking is how roundabout and intricate the mechanism is. If an intelligent designer had set out to ensure pollination, far simpler methods are available — from bright colours and nectar rewards to direct reliance on wind. Instead, V. nakaianum has evolved a convoluted route, exploiting the specialised behaviour of flies that themselves depend on the predation of ants by spiders. Such elaborate, contingent solutions are precisely what we expect from evolution by natural selection acting over countless generations, not from foresightful design.

Creationism Refuted - How Co-Evolution Gave Us Sleep - Courtesy of Our Gut Microbiome

Key to the riddle of sleep may be linked to bacteria | WSU Insider | Washington State University

For an astonishing example of co-evolution — not just involving two organisms but a whole host that have co-evolved over millions of years — you need look no further than your own body, as a paper in *Frontiers in Neuroscience* by Erika L. English and James M. Krueger of Washington State University (WSU) shows. It reports the finding that sleep may be a co-evolved condition in which gut micro-organisms play a central role.

The researchers showed that, in mice, there is a close relationship between sleep patterns and the cyclical presence in the brain of a substance known as peptidoglycan (PG), normally found in the mesh-like walls of gut bacteria. Although co-evolutionary relationships are a well-established concept in evolutionary biology, this example illustrates just how intimate such relationships can become — to the point where it is difficult to say, in biological terms, which organism is the “product” of the other. To what extent are we the product of our gut bacteria, and to what extent are they the product of us?

Of course, creationism has nothing to say about this kind of co-evolution because the Bible is silent on the matter of micro-organisms or evolution. It contains nothing that wasn’t visible to its Bronze Age authors with the naked eye, or that lived outside the narrow confines of their limited experience. It was written by people with no appreciation of the history of life on Earth or of how it has been shaped by environmental change and ecological balances over deep time.

Refuting Creationism - North American Mammoths Interbred - 30,000 Years Before 'Creation Week'

Columbian Mammoths, Mammuthus colimbi with other Ice Age mammals.

Beth Zaiken

Hybrid mammoths roamed North America following interspecies breeding | Natural History Museum

An open access paper published in Biology Letters by an international team of palaeontologists, led by Marianne Dehasque of the Department of Organismal Biology, Uppsala University, Sweden, will no doubt bring joy to creationists who prefer to see the world in simple black-and-white terms. It shows that one of the usual definitions of species—a group that can reproduce only with one another—needs revising. The paper reports that the two North American species of mammoth—the northern woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius) and the southern Columbian mammoth (M. columbi)—regularly interbred where their ranges overlapped, and that the offspring were fertile.

In the black-and-white, science-vs-creationism world of creationist thinking, this will be taken to mean that if science is wrong, then creationism must be right, by default.

Creationist joy will be short-lived, however, once they realise that this interbreeding took place long before they believe Earth was created, and that the researchers explain the findings in terms of how mammoths evolved and diversified. Indeed, the evidence supports the theory that the Columbian mammoth itself evolved from a hybrid population—one of the mechanisms of evolution that creationist dogma insists does not occur. Not only is there not the slightest hint that biologists are abandoning the Theory of Evolution (ToE) in favour of creationism—as creationist leaders have claimed for at least half a century—but the ToE is used to explain the observable facts, and it does so with consummate ease.

Refuting Creationism - A Jewellery Factory in France, At Least 32,000 Years Before 'Creation Week'

Meticulous excavation work at La Roche-à-Pierrot

Late Neanderthals and early European Homo sapiens may have lived and worked together in southwest France.

AI-generated image (ChatGPT 5)

The oldest shell jewellery workshop in Western Europe | CNRS

The creationism cult took another blow yesterday with the publication of details of the oldest jewellery workshop yet found in Western Europe—dating to at least 32,000 years before the mythical six-day creation of everything from nothing. The site appears to have been used for the organised manufacture of shell ornaments, suggesting a society in which the production and trade of personal adornment already played an important role.

The discovery, made by a team of scientists from the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS), Université de Bordeaux, the ministère de la Culture, and Université Toulouse-Jean Jaurès, is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). It records the excavation of a Palaeolithic site in southwest France, dating from a period when Homo sapiens were spreading into the region and Neanderthals were in decline.

However, the evidence points to a more complex story — one of coexistence and cultural exchange, or even the absorption of Neanderthals into the expanding H. sapiens populations, with traditions and technologies merging. It also raises the possibility that H. sapiens had been established in the area far earlier, perhaps through an earlier migration wave.

Refuting Creationism - Why Consciousness Doesn't Need A God To Explain it

Major theories of consciousness may have been focusing on the wrong part of the brain

Spend a few days in a Creationism vs. Science group on social media and, before long, you’ll be told that science can’t explain consciousness—because, so the argument goes, matter can’t become self-aware, and consciousness can’t arise from nothing.

In other words, you’ll encounter yet another variation on the combined argument from incredulity, the “god of the gaps” fallacy, and the false dichotomy—presented as if they were sound logic against science, and, since only two possibilities are assumed, in favour of the locally popular version of a creator god.

The more fundamentalist creationists will, of course, also try to “prove” that only humans possess real consciousness, since this sets us apart from other animals and grants us the supposedly unique ability to worship their particular god.

But what creationists can never explain is this: if consciousness is not a function of neurophysiology — in other words, the product of chemistry and physics — why can it be abolished with chemicals such as anaesthetics, or by physical injury?

This makes it all the more interesting that a recent paper in Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews by Peter Copple of the Consciousness and Cognition Lab, Department of Psychology, University of Cambridge, UK, reviewing the sufficient conditions for consciousness, makes no suggestion that consciousness is divorced from neurophysiology or that it requires supernatural intervention to explain.

He makes similar points in an article in The Conversation, which is reproduced here under a Creative Commons licence.

Refuting Creationism - A Newly-Identified Dinosaur From About 220 Million Years Before 'Creation Week'

Reconstruction of Newtonsaurus cambrensis in its natural setting

AI-generated (ChatGPT 5)

September: Newtonsaurus identification | News and features | University of Bristol

A newly-identified dinosaur from the Late Triassic of Wales has turned out to be hiding in plain sight. The fossil, discovered in 1899 and displayed for years in the National Museum of Wales, has only now been correctly recognised thanks to modern imaging technology unavailable to earlier researchers.

Originally described by Edwin Tully Newton in 1899 as Zanclodon cambrensis, the specimen has now been reclassified by a team of palaeontologists led by Owain Evans of Bristol University. Since the name Zanclodon is no longer used for early reptiles, the team have given it a new name: Newtonsaurus.

As always, discoveries like this present a problem for creationists. Fossils of species that lived tens or even hundreds of millions of years ago sit uneasily with their narrative that all life was magically created just a few thousand years ago. To preserve that story, they are forced into feats of mental gymnastics — whether by bearing false witness against scientists, rejecting well-established dating techniques, or simply dismissing the evidence outright as “wrong.”

The rocks, however, are not so easily ignored. Unlike ancient manuscripts, said to have been dictated by a god to prophets and accepted only on faith, the fossil record is physical, testable, and open to constant re-examination. Evidence can be checked, rechecked, and reassessed as methods improve — something faith alone cannot provide.

Refuting Creationism - Mummified Humans From 2,000 Years Before 'Creation Week' - Untouched By The Biblical Flood

Examples of Early and Middle Holocene human burials from southern China. This figure shows six human burials from Huiyaotian (A: M14, B: M19, C: M20) in Nanning and Liyupo (D: M23, E: M24, F: M28) in Long’an, both shell-midden sites located in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. All individuals are in flexed positions, with several exhibiting hyper-flexed postures (A and E: male, B–D and F: female).

H. Hung,Z. Deng,Y. (2025).

12,000-year-old smoked mummies reveal world’s earliest evidence of human mummification

They say that when you dig deep enough, the earth always tells a story—one that often clashes with stories written by humans. A recent archaeological discovery in southern China and Southeast Asia is one of those earth’s stories, and it’s a loud one. Scientists have found human remains, deliberately smoke-dried and ritually treated, dating back between 12,000 and 4,000 years ago. These mummified remains, buried in tight, crouched postures, were mummified by being exposed near low-oxygen smoky fires — not cremated, but preserved by ritual smoke-drying techniques.

A point I've made several times in these blog posts, but one which is worth repeating, is that any archaeology which predates the supposed date of the Biblical genocidal flood is irrefutable evidence that no such flood ever happened, because it simply wouldn’t be there—or at best would be buried under a thick, global layer of silt. Similarly, any archaeological evidence that predates the supposed 6-day creation of the universe is irrefutable evidence that no such creation event happened according to the Bible’s timeline.

Lastly, anything which refutes the Bible’s timeline, or contradicts the occurrence of events described in it, is irrefutable evidence that the Bible could not have been written by the omniscient, omnipotent creator god it claims to describe. So, this recent discovery, reported by a team of archaeologists from Australian, Chinese, and Japanese universities, in reported open access in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA (PNAS) is about as conclusive evidence as you could wish for that the Bible was not written by the god described in it. Any claim that it is an inerrant textbook of science and history is undoubtedly false. The lead author of the paper, Hsiao-chun Hung, Senior Research Fellow, School of Culture, History & Language, Australian National University, has explained the research and its significance in an article in The Conversation. Her article is reproduced here under a Creative Commons license, reformatted for stylistic consistency.

Refuting Creationism - A 108-Million-Year-Old Fossil From Mongolia Fills Another Gap.

Reconstruction of a pachycephalosaur

AI-generated image (ChatGPT 5)

Young Zavacephale duel for territory along a lakeshore 108 million years ago.

Image: Masato Hattori

‘Teen’ Pachycephalosaur Butts Into Fossil Record | NC State News

Here we have another of those regular discoveries which, according to the press, supposedly means history will need to be “re-written” — something creationists, always looking for a stick to beat science with, will assume means the whole of history, because science has got everything wrong yet again. Unlike their religion, of course, which — so they claim — has never got anything wrong and is therefore eternally true, including the parts about a six-day creation 6,000–10,000 years ago, a global flood which left no evidence, and a universe consisting of a small, flat planet with a dome over it.

In reality, this is merely journalistic hyperbole designed to draw the reader in — or, in the case of creationists, to be seized upon as ‘scientific’ evidence that science is fatally flawed.

The “re-written” part of history is simply the bit about which we previously had no information. The process is not one of tearing up the past but of filling a gap in our knowledge and thereby arriving at an account closer to reality. In this case, “re-writing the history books” will mean telling a more complete history of a group of dinosaurs. The discovery in question is a 108-million-year-old adolescent pachycephalosaur fossil found in the Gobi Desert, Central Asia. Being both the oldest (by about 15 million years) and the most complete skeleton of this group of dinosaurs yet discovered, it provides crucial information about their origins.

Refuting Creationism - Biblical Ignorance Exposed By Science Again

A spiral galaxy, tilted nearly face-on to us, with a slightly unusual shape. Its spiral arms form an oval-shaped ring around the galaxy’s disc, filled with blue light from stars, as well as pink glowing gas bubbles where new stars are forming. Threads of dark red dust swirl around the brightly glowing core, blocking some of its light. The dust lanes extend into and follow the spiral arms.

Taking a third look | ESA/Hubble

Messier 96

NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope

This week’s exposure of the child-like naivety of the Bible's authors comes again in the form of the NASA/ESA/Hubble Space Telescope image of the week. This week, we have a stunning view of an asymmetric spiral galaxy, Messier 96; a mere 35 million light-years away. Even more amazing is the evidence of baby suns actively forming in this galaxy while it is being stretched by gravity.

Creationism Refuted - Evolutionary Divergence and A Hybrid Jay

A grue jay? Rare hybrid bird identified in Texas

(a) Blue Jay by Travis Maher (ML578309451). Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Macaulay Library.

(b) Hybrid Jay by Brian R. Stokes.

(c) Green Jay by Dan O'Brien (ML390361871). Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Macaulay Library.

An interesting example of hybridisation between two distantly related species of jay has been reported by two biologists at the University of Texas, Austin. The hybrid is a cross between a blue jay (Cyanocitta cristata) and a green jay (Cyanocorax yncas). Although both are jays — members of the crow (Corvid) family — these two belong to different genera that diverged some seven million years ago and, until recently, lived in non-overlapping ranges in North America. Climate change has allowed them to extend their ranges, bringing them into contact only within the past decade.

The reason this is scientifically significant is that it illustrates how divergent evolution proceeds, and why it does not always progress to complete reproductive isolation. Unlike many other vertebrates, the genomic arrangements of birds are remarkably stable. As long as alleles remain in the same chromosomal loci, interbreeding remains possible. This can be disadvantageous if it results in hybrids with reduced fitness. For example, one population may evolve a long, slender bill adapted for one type of seed, while another evolves a short, stout bill for harder seeds. A hybrid might inherit an intermediate bill suited to neither, creating obvious disadvantages. In such cases, natural selection favours the evolution of barriers to hybridisation.

In many organisms, this is achieved by genetic rearrangements that prevent a zygote from developing even when mating occurs—so-called post-zygotic barriers. Where genomes are stable, such rearrangements rarely arise, so species tend instead to evolve pre-zygotic barriers that prevent mating or fertilisation in the first place. Among birds, these often take the form of plumage differences, mating rituals, or song—hence their remarkable diversity.

The Ever-Shrinking Creationists' God - Closing The Genetic Code Origin God-Shaped Gap - No God(s) Found

Professor Gustavo Caetano-Anollés.

Photo illustration by Fred Zwicky.

U of I researchers trace genetic code’s origins to early protein structures | College of Agricultural, Consumer & Environmental Sciences | Illinois

Just published in the Journal of Molecular Biology is a paper by three research scientists at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign that will spread despondency among creationists—at least among those with the courage to read it and the understanding to grasp its significance. Another of their favourite god-shaped gaps has just been slammed shut.

The gap in question is the long-standing mystery of how the genetic code arose through natural processes, without the intervention of a supernatural intelligence. Creationists have long claimed that the genetic code is analogous to a computer program—something they assume must imply a programmer. They bolster this with the usual straw-man arguments and hand-waving about statistical impossibility, declaring that such complexity could not have arisen “by chance alone.”

Of course, that was never more than the familiar argument from ignorant incredulity coupled with the false dichotomy fallacy: because we don’t yet know something, it must have been their particular god. Not any of the other gods, of course—because those aren’t real.

What we do know is that the earliest forms of life appeared on Earth about 3.8 billion years ago, while the genetic code itself did not appear until some 800 million (0.8 billion) years later. Time, therefore, was not a limiting factor: there was no plan, no deadline, and no external programmer. That fact alone should give creationists cause for concern because any decent intelligent designer, especially an omniscient one, would not have taken 0.8 billion years to invent the genetic code.

Now, this team of researchers has produced a plausible explanation (and it only needs to be plausible to refute the claim that no explanation is possible). Their study is based on an analysis of 4.3 billion dipeptide sequences across 1,561 proteomes, representing organisms from all three domains of life: Archaea, Bacteria, and Eukarya. (Proteomes are the complete sets of proteins expressed in an organism.)

To rub salt into creationist wounds, the evidence points to the genetic code having emerged through an evolutionary “bootstrapping” process, in which improvements in the code itself led to improvements in the proteins that controlled the very process of coding — an elegant feedback loop with no need for divine intervention.

Refuting Creationism - How Earth Was Really Made - No God-Magic Needed

High-energy Venus Impacts

An SwRI-led team compared the early impact history of Venus and Earth, determining that Venus experienced higher-energy impacts that created a superheated core. Models show these conditions could create Venus’ extended volcanism and younger surface.

Evolution of Terrestrial Planets
A new SwRI-led paper highlights the scientific progress made in understanding the evolution of terrestrial planets, including the effects of late large impacts on pre-existing modes of tectonics. For instance, the Earth experienced transient subduction, when one tectonic plate slides beneath another. Because Venus’ surface is covered by a single plate, a high-velocity impact led to a superheated core and long-lived volcanism. On Mars, a large, low-velocity impact facilitated variations in its hemispheres. Impacts also modify the atmospheres of terrestrial planets in profound ways, including eliminating or supplementing existing gases.

SwRI-led paper summarizes notable progress in understanding the evolution of the terrestrial planets | Southwest Research Institute

Creationist myths describe Earth as a flat world under a dome at the centre of the Universe, made just a few thousand years ago. The real story is far more extraordinary: a fragile chain of chance events and natural forces that made life possible on this small rocky planet.

Earth orbits an ordinary star on the edge of the Milky Way, one of billions in one of trillions of galaxies. That it exists at all is down to gravity, physics, and luck. Out of this came a beautiful world teeming with life—including one species able to marvel at the Universe and ask how it all began, and in it's fearful, ignorant infancy, make up the myths to explain it that now pass for science in some scientifically backward cultures.

One early collision with a smaller planetoid gave us the Moon, tides, and seasons; this or a later impact may, according to this study, be responsible for tectonic plates, giving us a forever changing, dynamic planet, driving evolutionary divergence. While not required for life to appear, these events shaped the planet into the diverse, life-rich world we know today.

Refuting Creationism - Look How Wrong The Bible's Authors Were!

Fly through Gaia's 3D map of stellar nurseries

So that creationists can rehearse their excuses for dismissing science and retaining their childish delusion that Genesis is an accurate description of the universe, written or inspired by an omniscient creator god, in spite of the evidence to the contrary, here are some recent images and videos from the European Space Agency (ESA).

They were created from the most accurate three-dimensional map of star-formation regions in our Milky Way galaxy, based on data from the European Space Agency’s Gaia space telescope. The star-formation region that is mapped out (contoured by a circle) reaches out to 4000 light-years from our Sun. The Sun is located at the center of this region. The star-formation map is plotted on an artist impression of our Milky Way, based on Gaia data.. Credit: ESA/Gaia/DPAC, S. Payne-Wardenaar, L. McCallum et al (2025)

Unitelligent Design - A Queen Ant Produces Two Different Species of Male Offspring!

Messor ibericus and Messor structor males hatched from eggs laid by the same queen.

Juvé, Y., Lutrat, C., Ha, A. et al (2025).

One queen ant, two species: the discovery that reshapes what ‘family’ means in nature

Creationists use a deliberately fuzzy and flexible definition of “kinds,” shifting its scope whenever it suits their argument. It can be narrowed down to the species level, broadened to a genus or family, or even stretched to encompass an entire order. On occasion, I’ve even seen it expanded to the absurdity of “animal kind,” depending on what the argument requires. This elasticity allows them to maintain the delusion that evolution never happens in the way biologists describe, and to caricature it instead as one species suddenly giving rise to a completely unrelated species in a single step — their parody of so-called “macro-evolution.”

But the case of the Iberian harvester ant (Messor ibericus) presents a real problem for this narrative. Here the definition of “kind” only needs to extend as far as members of a single genus. That still doesn’t rescue creationists, because this ant has evolved a remarkably complex reproductive strategy that undermines any notion of intelligent design and raises awkward questions about what a “kind” even is. Queens of M. ibericus can only reproduce successfully with males of a related species, Messor structor.

Such interspecies dependence is not unknown in either the animal or plant kingdoms, but M. ibericus takes it a step further. When a queen produces male offspring — instead of the usual sterile female workers — those males may be either M. ibericus or M. structor. In other words, she is doing precisely what creationists constantly demand as “evidence for evolution” - one species producing offspring of another species.

Refuting Creationism - Observed Evolution of Plants on A Volcanic Island

P. oleracea on Nishinoshima

Nishinoshima Island

Scientists trace origins of now extinct plant population from volcanically active Nishinoshima | EurekAlert!

Scientisst have a remarkable way to verify one of the fundamental principles of evolutionary biology - the 'founder effect' and how it contributes to allopatric speciation - a process that is hotly disputed by creationists who dogmatically refuse to accept any evidence for evolutionary diversification.

The great thing about science is that its theories can be tested and verified. Even better, they are frequently shown to be correct through evidence. This is in stark contrast to faith as a means of determining truth. Faith is not based on evidence, so it cannot be independently verified; in logical terms, it is unfalsifiable.

That doesn’t mean it can’t be falsified, but rather that there are no tests which, if failed, would demonstrate it false. Take, for example, the creationist claim that “God did it.” How could such a claim ever be tested? With no objective evidence beyond subjective feelings, anecdotes, or alleged personal experiences, there is nothing to examine. And if such a claim were challenged, it could always be shielded with further untestable assertions: “God is untestable,” “God is beyond science,” and so on.

By contrast, evolutionary biology offers theories that are not only testable but also repeatedly confirmed. One such theory is the founder effect. This occurs when a new habitat is colonised by only a small sample of a parent population. Two important factors follow:

1. The new sample is unlikely to perfectly represent the genetic diversity of the parent population, so it will begin with a different allele profile.
2. For the new colony to succeed, the founding individuals must already be somewhat pre-adapted to the environment. Those less well-suited are eliminated, while those better adapted survive and reproduce. Over successive generations, this natural selection creates a population increasingly fit for its new environment. The result is a wave of adaptation and divergence from the parent stock — the essence of allopatric speciation.

The natural “laboratory” for studying this process exists in the form of Nishinoshima, a remote Japanese island subject to frequent volcanic eruptions. Each eruption wipes the island clean of vegetation, effectively resetting the ecosystem and creating opportunities for colonisation by founder populations from elsewhere.

By careful genetic analysis of the, now extinct, Nishinoshima population of Portulaca oleracea, the team were able to show that the parent population was on nearby Chichijima, another volcanic island, however, the Nishinoshima population differed markedly from the parent population, and were derived from a very small founder population. In addition, there was evidence of genetic drift, which is much more significant in a small population than in a larger one - exactly as the Theory of Evolution predicts. Genetic drift is the process where, by chance alone, a neutral allele can increase or decrease in the population. The smaller the population the more quickly an allele can progress to fixation in the population or be eliminated. (for more detail on this, see the Introduction to my book, Twenty Reasons To Reject Creationism: Understanding Evolution (ISBN 13: ISBN-13 : 979-8306548166).

Now, researchers from Tokyo Metropolitan University have reported the results of this natural experiment, and they align precisely with what evolutionary theory predicts.

Refuting Creationism - Beyond The Comprehension Of The Bible's Authors

The 'Cigar Galaxy' (Messier 82). A close-in view of the centre of galaxy M82. Bright, bluish light radiating from the centre is due to stars actively forming there. A thick lane of gas, black in the centre and red around the edges, crosses the centre and blocks much of the light. Thinner strands and clumps of reddish dust cover much of the rest of the view.

The smouldering heart of a celestial cigar | ESA/Hubble

Location of the Cigar Nebula (M82).

Here we have yet another image taken by the Hubble Space Telescope and released by the European Space Agency—not to belittle the Bible’s account of creation in Genesis, though that happens automatically. The biblical description reflects the view of a pre-scientific people who imagined a flat Earth under a solid dome, with stars as tiny lights stuck to it and the Sun and Moon moving across the sky like lamps hung for our benefit. It reads exactly like the report of someone told to look up and describe what they see without any understanding of what lies beyond.

Modern astronomy shows us something utterly different. The universe is not a small stage with a few lights above it, but a vast, dynamic cosmos shaped by natural processes. Stars are born, live, and die in titanic cycles of creation and destruction; galaxies collide and merge; black holes sculpt their surroundings with unimaginable power.

This particular image, ESA’s Picture of the Week, captures the so-called Cigar Galaxy (Messier 82), a starburst galaxy just 12 million light-years away in the constellation Ursa Major (the Great Bear). Here we see the turbulent heart of a galaxy where new stars are forming in great swathes, driving winds of gas and dust thousands of light-years into space.

The contrast could not be greater: a childlike tale of a sky-dome with a few lights versus the grandeur of a living universe billions of years old and on a scale our ancestors could never have imagined. Contrast the Bible's description with that of ESA's description of the image:

Refuting Creationism - Origins of the People of Papua New-Guinea

Male Huli tribe member in Tari area of Papua New Guinea in traditional clothes and face paint.

Image Credit: By Amy Nichole Harris / Shutterstock

New AI Study Clarifies the Origins of Papua New Guineans | University of Tartu

A team of researchers led by Dr. Mayukh Mondal of the Centre for Genomics, Evolution & Medicine, Institute of Genomics, University of Tartu, Estonia, have used AI-powered demographic modelling to estimate the genetic ancestry of the people of Papua New Guinea (PNG), whose origins have long been debated.

Papua New Guineans have physical features that differ noticeably from many Asian populations, and some superficial similarities to sub-Saharan Africans have led to speculation that they might descend from a very early migration out of Africa, predating most other non-African Homo sapiens. This new study strongly challenges that hypothesis: it attributes PNG’s genetic distinctiveness instead to a substantial Denisovan admixture followed by a prolonged period of isolation, a severe population bottleneck, and slower population growth.

According to the creationist mythologies, all human beings alive today descend from Adam and Eve—or, in some versions, from Noah and his family after a global flood. If that were literally true, then all living humans would share a very narrow genetic base: mitochondrial DNA (passed via the maternal line) would be limited to a very small number of variants, and all males would share essentially the same Y-chromosome (barring mutation) tracing back to the same male ancestor.

However, the observable facts are that human genetic diversity is much richer than those narratives predict. The mitochondrial DNA lineages in living people trace back to multiple distinct haplogroups with divergence times of tens to hundreds of thousands of years within Africa and beyond into archaic ancestors; similarly, Y-chromosome diversity indicates many lineages. Our human genome tells a far more complex story: long periods of evolution in isolation, multiple migrations, re-mixing, and interbreeding with related hominin species.

The same applies to other species which creationists mythology insists are the descendants of a small number of survivors of the same genocidal flood. Few living species show evidence of such a narrow genetic bottleneck, which would probably have resulted in far too much inbreeding resulting in extinction for most of them.

All non-African humans today are descended from the major “Out-of-Africa” (OOA) migration(s) of Homo sapiens. As populations moved into Eurasia, they interbred first with Neanderthals, then with Denisovans. Underlying all this, there is also the possibility of genetic contributions from even earlier human migrations (e.g. H. erectus) into the ancestors of Neanderthals, Denisovans, or earlier modern humans. Given the evidence that hominin populations often interbred when they came into contact, it would be surprising if there were no admixture between H. erectus (or similar early lineages) and the predecessors of Neanderthals and Denisovans (often thought to include H. heidelbergensis or H. antecessor).

Refuting Creationism - 242-Million-Year-Old 'Transitional' Lizard Fossil

Agriodontosaurus helsbypetrae reconstruction

Image credit: Bob Nicholls

Agriodontosaurus helsbypetrae fossil (BRSUG 29950-14) in its sandstone matrix.

September: World's oldest lizard | News and features | University of Bristol

Here is yet another fossil that will give creationists a lot to think about. It’s a fossil of the earliest known lepidosaur — the group that includes lizards, snakes, and the tuatara of New Zealand. It is ∼242 million years old and was found in a sandstone deposit in Devon, in southwest Britain. It was picked up on a beach in Devon in 2015, and has been examined by a team from the University of Bristol.

At that age it is very close to the stem of the order Lepidosauria. However, it already displays some “advanced” features, and some of the assumed primitive features are already absent.

One of the primitive features often discussed is the lower temporal bar — a bony rod running between the cheek and the jaw hinge—which is present in the tuatara but absent (“open”) in modern lizards and snakes. This opening gives greater flexibility to the skull, allowing more motion for feeding. Also, many modern lizards have palatal teeth (teeth on the roof of the mouth) which help grip prey.

The fossil skull (from Agriodontosaurus helsbypetrae) has no skull hinge and no palatal teeth, but it does have an open lower temporal bar. In other words, this is a transitional species: it has a mosaic of primitive and derived traits—a pattern Darwin predicted, but which creationists generally dismiss. To creationists, fossils are often denied, mischaracterised, or claimed to be “just as they were created a few thousand years ago.” But this specimen is clear evidence of evolutionary change.

Meanwhile, the evidence of fossil ages—dating back hundreds of millions of years—refutes the idea of a young Earth (~ thousands of years), which cannot be reconciled with the geological, biological, and radiometric data.

None of that undermines the real discovery: an early lepidosaur with a mosaic of features lived in what is now Devon, UK, in the Middle Triassic, about 242 million years ago. As always, in rational enquiry, solid evidence must take priority over magical or mythological claims.

Refuting Creationism - How Rodent Thumbnails Allowed Them to Be So Successful.

Thumbnail of the kangaroo rat.

Rafaela V. Missagia et al. (2025)

Most rodents have thumbnails instead of claws. It might help explain how they took over the world. | EurekAlert!

The discovery that ancient rodents evolved a thumbnail in place of a claw helps explain why they are the most successful mammalian order on the planet. That small anatomical change opened up a whole new range of ecological niches, triggering an explosive radiation of new rodent species.

This fact alone should worry creationists who cling to a child-like understanding of science. Their favourite avoidance tactic—when pressed for an example of evolution—is to retreat hastily down their rabbit hole with the familiar cry: “Ah! But that’s not real, ‘macro’-evolution. That’s just variation within a ‘kind’.”

Of course, creationists are consistently reticent about defining what they mean by “macro-evolution,” or explaining how the processes that supposedly produce it differ from those of normal evolution. In scientific terms, evolution is simply a change in allele frequencies in a population over time. There is no separate mechanism for “macro” versus “micro.”

So here’s the awkward question for them: was the evolution of the thumbnail from a claw a case of “macro-evolution” or not?

According to the new research, led by Rafaela Missagi of the University of São Paulo, Brazil, with collaborators from the Field Museum of Natural History (Chicago, USA), Northwestern University (Chicago, USA), and the Natural History Museum (London, UK), this change was pivotal. It allowed rodents to diversify into countless species—just as the elongation of bat fingers into wings enabled bats to radiate into hundreds of species. Crucially, in both cases no “new structures” were created from nothing; existing ones were repurposed.

This sort of question usually sends creationists scurrying for cover, chanting Bible verses as they go.

Unlike creationist dogma, which collapses under this kind of scrutiny, the new findings provide yet another vindication of evolutionary theory. Evolution predicts that when a new function arises, it can open up new ecological opportunities, leading to rapid diversification. Not because there is a plan, but because natural selection now has something new to work on.

Wonderful Planet - Scilly Isles Cameras Reveal Life In UK Coastal Waters

Scilly Isles cameras give glimpse of ‘natural’ UK waters - News

Reef habitat type.

Photo: Dr Owen M. Exeter.

This post is a bit of a change from my usual fare, where I’m busy pulling apart the pseudo-science of creationism with its reliance on magic and one ancient book of myths from a small Bronze Age tribe. Today, instead, I want to share something more uplifting: a glimpse of the rich and colourful life thriving in Britain’s coastal waters.

The footage comes from the Isles of Scilly, a protected area lying just off the tip of Cornwall in the far southwest of Britain. Thanks to the Gulf Stream, these islands enjoy a climate that feels almost Mediterranean — a rare treat for the UK!

A team from the University of Exeter’s Centre for Ecology and Conservation set up remote cameras around the islands to see what they could capture. This was a proof-of-concept project designed to test new ways of monitoring coastal ecosystems. The results didn’t disappoint. Their findings have just been published open-access in the Ecological Society of America’s journal Ecological Applications.