Evolution is defined as change in allele frequency in a population over time. It is not a single event but a slow process which often needs a long period of time to be observed. Speciation may be the incidental result of this process of change over time but it is not the purpose of it, nor is it required for evolution to be occurring.
It doesn't seem to matter to a Creationist that observable examples of evolution in progress, in other words, examples of observed change in allele frequency in the population over time, can be found throughout nature, because they will simply dismiss it by redefining evolution as the childish notion of a sudden change of one species into another. So, for example, evolutionary changes in Australian feral domestic cats will be dismissed as, "But they're still cats!"
In fact, feral domestic cats are not the only species that can be observed evolving in Australia where a combination of the founder effect, genetic drift and natural selection in the unique Australian environment are causing introduced species to diverge from their ancestral species. In the following article, Bill Bateman, Associate professor, Curtin University, Perth, Western Australia, describes a number of examples of observable evolutionary change.
Creationists who have been fooled into believing that evolution is a theory in crisis and biologists are abandoning it in favour of their childish superstition including magic and a supernatural entity should note the complete lack of any evidence for that idiotic notion. The article describes evolutionary changes and the causes of them which are entirely consistent with the scientific Theory of Evolution. No-where are magic or supernatural entities invoked to explain the observations.
With the exception of only a few, relatively minor, changes to our genome, such as loss of skin pigmentation and changes to hair and eye colour, and the ingression of Neanderthal and Denisovan genes, non-African humans differ little from the first Homo sapiens to venture out of Africa, where they had evolved as a tropical species. Today, humans are the only Great Ape to live outside of the tropics.
And yet we have managed to live in northern climates with shorter days in winter and sub-zero temperatures in which the earliest members of our species would probably not survive a night without special measures.
With our physical and physiological makeup differing so little from our African forebears, what has enabled us to survive in these hostile conditions to which we were so mal adapted? The answer is that an additional layer of evolution is operating alongside genetic evolution - memetic, or cultural, evolution - so-called gene-meme co-evolution.
Memetic evolution has taken us from the bands of hunter-gatherers huddled round a campfire and sheltering in caves and rock overhangs, to a modern urbanised, hi-tec species living in centrally heated buildings or dressing in warm clothing and entirely dependent on science and technology for our survival. Put us naked out in the open on a cold winter night and few of us would survive, let alone thrive, and survival without cloths and shelter would be impossible on the arctic tundra even in summer.
In the following article, reprinted from The Conversation, Laura Buck, Lecturer in Evolutionary Anthropology, and Kyoko Yamaguchi, Senior Lecturer in Human Genetics, both of Liverpool John Moores University, explain how we and our cousin species, the Neanderthals adapted to the very non-African conditions they found themselves in.
The article has been reformatted for stylistic consistency; the original can be read here.
By analysing the genomes of more than 2,800 individuals who lived in Europe over the last 10,000 years, scientists at the Institut Pasteur, Université Paris Cité, the CNRS and the Collège de France, in collaboration with the Imagine Institute and The Rockefeller University, USA, have traced how the European human immune system has evolved over that period. The increase in frequency of most of the mutations that are advantageous in defending against pathogens were dated to after the Bronze Age, 4,500 years ago.
The scientists also observed that most of the mutations conferring a higher risk of developing inflammatory disorders have become more frequent over the past 10,000 years, suggesting that there is an evolutionary trade-off between greater immunity and greater risk of auto-immune, inflammatory disorders.
This trade-off, is, of course, something that we would not expect to see if the immune system had been improved by an intelligent designer, unless the designer malevolently intended us to suffer from auto-immune conditions.
The evolutionary explanation for this is simply that most of the benefit of a strong immune system manifests in childhood and early adulthood, before the individual has been exposed to environmental pathogens and built up a library of antibodies, and before they have had chance to produce offspring, when selection pressures are thus higher, whereas most of the detriment of auto-immune inflammatory conditions tends to occur in later life, after the individual has reproduced, when the selection pressure is thus much lower.
The research has just been published open access in the journal Cell Genomics.
The research and its significance are explained in a news release from the Institut Pasteur:
Unlike creationism which, because it depends on magic and unproven, unfalsifiable magic supernatural entities, is incapable of making falsifiable predictions, the Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection (TOE) predicts that, from the same starting point, the same environmental changes will produce the same or very similar phenotypic changes, such as that recently reported for populations of lizards in Puerto Rico.
A paper recently published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS), reports on a case of parallel evolution between populations of the Puerto Rican crested anole, Anolis cristatellus, where unconnected populations in urban areas have evolved very similar adaptations to an urban environment compared to those living in a forest environment. The paper reports the findings of a team of researchers led by assistant professor of biology, Kristin Winchell, of New York University (NYU), NY, USA.
The NYU news release explains the research and its significance:
A supporter of President Donald Trump, seen wearing a QAnon shirt, is confronted by Capitol Police officers outside the Senate Chamber during the invasion of the U.S. Capitol
Credit: AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta
It's probably hard for rationl people to understand why some people fall for such ludicrous conspiracy theories as the QAnon hoax that Donald Trump was fighting the Satanic cannibalistic paedophile ring led by Hillary Clinton and Barak Obama that is secretly running the 'deep state', or that the 2020 election was stolen (apparently without leaving a trace of evidence that would stand up in court). The same fruit loops have also been convinced that the odious liar, crook, serial adulterer, and incompetent narcissist, Trump was send by God to fight Satan and that God had told various self-appointed 'prophets' that Trump would win by a landslide in 2020, so he must have done really.
As it became more and more apparent just how badly Trump lost, being the only presidential candidate in American political history to lose the popular vote twice and that Joe Biden had won it by a record margin, so the conspiracy theories became more and more lurid.
So why do some credulous fools fall for these unlikely theories, usually involving vast secret conspiracies such as the entire scientific community together with all their technical and administrative staff and everyone involved in publishing scientific books, periodicals and papers, or senior military leaders and heads of government of even hostile states, together with their advisors and civil service?
In the following article, reprinted from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license, Daniel Jolley, Assistant Professor in Social Psychology, University of Nottingham, UK and Anthony, Lantian, Associate Professor in Psychology, Université Paris Nanterre – Université Paris Lumières, France, explain the psychology and the social causes of this gullibility and readiness to believe the patently absurd. The article, the original of which can be read here, is reformatted for stylistic consistence.
As is entirely predictable from the Theory of Evolution, the SARS-CoV-2 virus that has caused the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, has mutated to produce an even more infectious version - a subvariant of the Omicron variant, given the variant name XBB.1.5 and nicknames 'kraken', under the suggested new protocol of naming significant variants after Greek mythological creatures instead of letters of the Greek alphabet..
This appears to have originated in the USA where a large number of people have resisted getting vaccinated due to the politically-motivated antivaxx campaign by the far right supporters of failed president, Donald Trump,. Trump declared the pandemic to be a hoax and COVID-19 to be a mild illness, early on in the pandemic, when he was out of his depth and panicking over how to cope with the emergency. Having acted out of spite and motivated by racism and a desire to expunge his achievements, Trump had stupidly dismantled the contingencies for just such a pandemic put in place by his hated African-American predecessor, Barak Obama.
Inhibited from doing so by his narcissistic personality disorder, Trump was then unable to admit he got it wrong and his cronies in the Repugnican Party and the evangelical white Christian sects set about campaigning against any measures to mitigate the effects of the pandemic, including establishing the QAnon cult to promulgate disinformation.
The upshot is a high degree of vaccine scepticism in the USA with a significant majority being vaccinated - a recipe for producing lots of new variants in the unvaccinated population which will then find a niche in the vaccinated population, if they can evade the antibodies.
But is this variant anything to be overly concerned about?
In the following article, reprinted from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence, Dr. Grace C Roberts, a research fellow in virology at the University of Leeds, assesses the risks from this new variant for the world in general and the UK in particular. The article has been reformatted for stylistic consistency. The original can be read here.
The ‘kraken’ COVID variant XBB.1.5 is rising quickly in the US – here’s what it could mean for the UK
The heavily mutated omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, was first detected in late 2021.
Due to the many mutations in the spike protein (a protein on the surface of SARS-CoV-2 that allows the virus to attach to our cells) omicron was able to quickly become the dominant SARS-CoV-2 variant. These mutations allowed it to bind to respiratory cells more tightly than previous variants, rendering it more infectious.
Owing to the dominance of omicron, thanks to these mutations, the past several months have seen the emergence of many subvariants of omicron (scientists have identified more than 650 to date).
The latest variant to worry health professionals and virologists alike is XBB.1.5, nicknamed “kraken” by a group of scientists that has been naming new variants after mythological creatures to make the virus’ evolution more accessible to the public. Here’s what we know about it.
XBB.1.5 is a derivative of the XBB variant of omicron. XBB was never designated as a variant of concern by the World Health Organization because data shows that, while XBB’s mutations enable it to evade our immune systems better than previous omicron subvariants, it doesn’t appear to be causing an increase in infection rates.
In addition to the mutations that XBB.1 has, XBB.1.5 also carries a mutation called S486P in the spike protein region. Preliminary laboratory studies, yet to be peer-reviewed, have shown that, similar to XBB.1, XBB.1.5 is less sensitive to antibodies acquired from vaccination than previous variants XBB and BQ1.1. So it’s very good at evading our immune response.
The same preprint showed that XBB.1.5 was able to bind to ACE2 (the receptor the virus uses to infect our cells) more strongly than these earlier variants. This is the characteristic that made the original omicron variant so infectious and so dominant.
Having first been detected in October 2022 in the US, XBB.1.5 has spread rapidly in the country and is now responsible for around 28% of all new infections. Elsewhere, XBB.1.5 has been detected in at least 23 countries, including the UK. But according to the most recent data, it accounts for only 4% of COVID infections in England.
Given what we’re seeing in the US, it’s likely that XBB.1.5 will become the dominant strain in the UK and Europe in time. But as there are always differences in populations (for example, vaccination rates and social behaviour) it’s hard to predict exactly how things will play out.
XBB.1.5 is rife in the US, but not in the UK and Europe at this stage.
Though some of XBB.1.5’s characteristics are concerning, the real-world infection data is not showing an overall increase in infections or deaths globally or in the US (where XBB.1.5. is rife) at present.
It’s too early to tell whether infections from XBB.1.5 are more severe than previous variants, however experts agree that there is no evidence at this stage that it poses any higher risk than variants that have come before it.
Experts also agree that vaccination will continue to protect against serious disease and death from XBB.1.5.
With a new variant, there’s always the risk it will affect clinically vulnerable people more severely. Older people and those with conditions that affect their immune systems mount weaker responses to COVID vaccines, so are less protected than the “healthy” population. This means variants that spread more easily or can better evade our immune system may be more likely to infect these people if they’re exposed.
So, while COVID continues to circulate, it’s best to take extra precautions when meeting vulnerable people such as wearing a mask, washing your hands thoroughly, ventilating the space that you are in (or even meeting outdoors), and not meeting them at all if you are ill.
Published by The Conversation. Open access. (CC BY 4.0)
It almost goes without saying that for a Creationists to claim intelligent [sic] design at work with these new variants is a tacit admission that their beloved creator god is malevolently designing ways to ensure its virus continues to make people sick and die and to disrupt economies indiscriminately across the world. That Creationists prefer us to have this view of their god rather than accept the science of evolution by mutation and natural selection betrays a hidden political agenda behind Creationism that requites people to distrust science and be misinformed about it.
A rice field in Bengal, India. Rice is a staple crop for billions of people, but it has proved difficult to bring high-yield hybrid rice strainers to farmers. UC Davis scientists have developed a method to propagate hybrid rice as cloned seeds, reducing costs for growers and allowing them to save improved seed from season to season.
Getty Images
A paper published a couple of weeks ago should have been a major embarrassment to Creationists who believe the Bible tale that a perfect, supremely intelligent designer designed all the plants and animals of the world for mankind.
If that were the case, why have a team of scientists at UC Davis managed to improve the rice plant - a basic staple in the diet of many people.
In fact, of course, the rice plant, like all human crops and just about every domestic animal, has been improved immeasurably in the few tens of thousands of years since humans transitioned from hunter-gatherers to cattle-herders and farmers.
Epicurus (341-270 BCE)
Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?
If they had been intelligently designed, especially by an omniscient, omnipotent god, they would be perfectly fit for purpose already with no room for improvement. The fact that they aren't, should suggest to Creationists that there is a problem with their notion, since there was self-evidently no omniscient, omnipotent intelligence involved.
Human domestic animals and cultivated crops have been produced by selective breeding, and now genetic engineering, from the wild types that evolved without a plan and fitted only for maximising the number in the next generation. Nothing, and no-one bred wild rice, wild cattle, wild corn or wild sheep for human consumption or ease of harvest and storage. We did that from whatever starting point the natural processes of evolution had provided.
To anyone who understand it, it presents what amounts to the Epicurus Paradox all over again.
The research and its significance is explained in an article by Andy Fell in UC Davis News:
A picture taken on September 6, 2021, shows the reconstruction of the face of the oldest Neanderthal found in the Netherlands, nicknamed Krijn, on display at the National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden.
Bart Maat/ANP/AFP Via Getty Images
The idea of common origins of related species is a fundamental part of the Theory of Evolution, supported by both countless examples of nested hierarchies and the science of cladistics.
Creationists need to resort to unproven claims of common design, to explain the same or closely similar structures and processes being found in related species. In contrast to the scientific explanation of observable evidence of natural processes with no plan, no intent and no magical mysteries, Creationists need to invoke an unproven, unexplained and unfalsifiable magic supernatural entity, claiming this to be the better of the two for no other reason than that their mummy and daddy believed it and it makes them feel special.
Just such an example of the evidence of common origins has recently been published in Nature Ecology & Evolution which shows that both modern Homo sapiens and Neanderthals had the same rapid evolution of the organisation of the brain that is believed to be responsible for high levels of cognitive ability.
The fact that this is present in two closely related species is highly suggestive that it was present at least in their last common ancestor. It also suggests that Neanderthals had a level of cognitive ability on a par with modern humans.
The research and its significance is the subject of an article in The Conversation by three of the researchers, Professor Stephen Wroe, University of New England, Armidale, NSW, Australia; Dr. Gabriele Sansalone, Institute of Marine Sciences, National Research Council, Messina, Italy, and Professor Pasquale Raia, Department of Earth Sciences, Environment and Resources, Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II, Monte Sant’Angelo, Naples, Italy. That article is reprinted here under a Creative Commons license, reformatted for stylistic consistency. The original article can be read here.
A paper published last month in the American Society for Microbiology's Journal of Bacteriology would be a double embarrassment for Creationists if they were capable of understanding its implications.
The authors, a research team led by Cari Vanderpool and Sabrina Abdulla of the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology (IGB) and the Department of Microbiology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois, USA, have shown how the virulence of the pathogenic bacteria, Salmonella, is controlled.
The bad news for Creationists is that:
It shows that if this system was designed by an intelligent entity, that entity intended to make people sick, because that's what it does.
It involved control of a system known as the type III secretory system, which is related to and very similar to the Type II secretory system that biologists believe was the evolutionary ancestor of the bacterial flagella that Creationist dogma insists was intelligently designed because it couldn't have evolved.
Embarrassingly for Creationists, when their divine malevolence wanted to improve the ability of one of its pathogens to kill salamanders, it used a method that Creationists deny exists. It increased the amount of genetic information, not by magic like creationists believe genetic information gets created, but by using one of the methods evolutionary biologists know creates new genetic information naturally, without magic or supernatural entities - so-called 'jumping genes'.
'Jumping genes' or transposons, are pieces of DNA that have the ability to copy and paste themselves into new parts of the DNA, often carrying genes with them. In so doing they add new information into the genome and replicate any genes they carry with them. These copies of genes can them mutate without loss of function because the originals still exist, or as in the case of this fungal pathogen, they can augment the activity (and the virulence) of the original gene.
The fungal pathogen is Batrachochytrium salamandrivorans (Bsal) which infects the skin of salamanders, killing them. This is of course an example of beneficial mutations (from Bsal’s point of view), since Bsal produces more copies of itself the more salamanders it can infect.
Creationist mode:
The discovery of these jumping genes and their role in increasing the virulence of Bsal was made by a team of scientists led by the MRC Centre for Medical Mycology at Exeter University, Devon, UK. Their findings as published, open access, in Proceeding of the National Academy of Science (PNAS).
The Exeter University news release gives the details:
A fungus that infects salamanders contains multiple copies of the same “jumping genes”, scientists have discovered.
Jumping genes, called transposons, can “copy and paste” themselves and impact the organism.
Most organisms have some repeated parts of their DNA, some of which are jumping genes, but this can be harmful – and mechanisms exist to prevent or limit this.
However, the new study – led by the MRC Centre for Medical Mycology at the University of Exeter – finds a possible evolutionary advantage of these jumping genes in a fungus called Batrachochytrium salamandrivorans (Bsal).
Not only did they find different versions of these jumping genes repeated multiple times in Bsal’s genome – but the gene in question appears to have duplicated another group of genes that play a role in how severely it affects infected fire salamanders.
Bsal and related fungal species infect amphibians worldwide, and have been responsible for more than 90 extinctions. Bsal infects the skin of salamanders and newts and causes severe wounds.
It emerged in Asia, where many newts and salamanders have some tolerance, but it has spread to Europe and is causing European salamander populations to decline.
Using new sequencing technologies, we found that Bsal has undergone a genome expansion compared to related species – that is to say, it now has a bigger genome with more genes and also more of these ‘jumping gene’ transposons.
If you think of an organism’s genome as a blueprint, transposons are like having many identical pages, and sometimes, during the process of copying and pasting, other parts of the book are also copied.
It appears that this copying and pasting caused by repetitive jumping gene transposons has also amplified some skin-destroying genes. Having more of these skin-destruction genes allow the fungus to destroy the skin of salamanders more quickly, making it more deadly.
Theresa Wacker, first author.
Medical Research Council Centre for Medical Mycology
University of Exeter, Exeter, UK.
Most organisms have a few jumping gene transposons. In humans, they typically make up less than 1% of the genome, and we have controlling mechanisms to prevent this from rising.
In Bsal, repeated jumping genes make up about 19% of the genome. Transposon jumping genes can interfere with regular gene function and cause problems for the organism – but for Bsal this seems to be outweighed by the advantages.
This kind of gene repetition is probably more widespread in nature than we currently realise.
If, as appears to be the case, it confers an evolutionary advantage for the pathogen by making it more virulent, it’s not clear why this isn’t much more common.
Dr. Rhys A Farrer, lead author.
Medical Research Council Centre for Medical Mycology
University of Exeter, Exeter, UK
The new study found the ability of jumping gene transposons to copy and paste themselves contributed significantly to this expansion. The team are now doing further research.
Senior author Dr Rhys Farrer said repetitive DNA, including jumping genes, is sometimes referred to as “junk” DNA.
The study’s finding shed new light on the evolution of a major amphibian disease, and Dr Farrer called it a “paradigm shift” in terms of identifying repetitive genome content as a driving force behind its pathobiology.
The team's findings can be read in the journal PNAS:
Significance
Batrachochytrium salamandrivorans (Bsal) and its closest relative B. dendrobatidis (Bd) are fungal pathogens that threaten amphibians globally. Pathogenicity in vertebrates by species of Batrachochytrium is thought to have emerged from nonpathogenic and saprobic relatives over millions of years through gene expansions of secreted proteolytic enzymes families. Using deep nanopore sequencing and comparative genomics, we discover that Batrachochytrium genomes have undergone a repeat-driven expansion characterized by flanking repetitive elements enriched around pathogenicity genes, genes with signatures of positive selection, and genes upregulated during infection. These genomic features are the hallmarks of two-speed genomes that have to date only been described in plant pathogens. These discoveries shed new light on the evolution of fungal pathogens of vertebrates driving global declines and extinctions.
Abstract
The origins and evolution of virulence in amphibian-infecting chytrids Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd) and Batrachochytrium salamandrivorans (Bsal) are largely unknown. Here, we use deep nanopore sequencing of Bsal and comparative genomics against 21 high-quality genome assemblies that span the fungal Chytridiomycota. We discover that Bsal has the most repeat-rich genome of the Chytridiomycota, comprising 40.9% repetitive elements; this genome has expanded to more than 3× the length of its conspecific Bd, with autonomous and fully functional LTR/Gypsy elements contributing significantly to the expansion. The M36 metalloprotease virulence factors are highly expanded (n = 177) in Bsal, most of which (53%) are flanked by transposable elements, suggesting they have a repeat-associated expansion. We find enrichment upstream of M36 metalloprotease genes of three novel repeat families belonging to the repeat superfamily of LINEs that are implicated with gene copy number variations. Additionally, Bsal has a highly compartmentalized genome architecture, with virulence factors enriched in gene-sparse/repeat-rich compartments, while core conserved genes are enriched in gene-rich/repeat-poor compartments. Genes upregulated during infection are primarily found in the gene-sparse/repeat-rich compartment in both Bd and Bsal. Furthermore, genes with signatures of positive selection in Bd are enriched in repeat-rich regions, suggesting these regions are a cradle for the evolution of chytrid pathogenicity. These are the hallmarks of two-speed genome evolution, and this study provides evidence of two-speed genomes in an animal pathogen, shedding light on the evolution of fungal pathogens of vertebrates driving global declines and extinctions.
If this is intelligent design, the designer can't be regarded as benevolent, since the purpose of the fungus, and then of the modifications the team found, appears to be to make salamanders suffer and die.
The mechanism of the mutations is one which biologists already recognise as one of the methods by which information can increase in a genome.
This is an example of a beneficial (to the fungus) mutation since, by increasing its virulence, it is increasing the number of copies of the duplicated genes in the genome of the next generation compared to the normal compliment of genes.
The scientists are entirely dependent on the Theory of Evolution to explain why this mutation has increased and spread in the species genome. There is no suggestion in their findings that magic creation is a better explanation.
All in all then, a paper that Creationists will wish had never been published and which they are almost certain never mention inside their cult's echo chambers if they want to remain members.
A characteristic of Trumpanzee cultists, is their almost complete dependence on conspiracy theories to sustain their patently absurd belief in Donald Trump as some sort of divinely inspired saviour sent by God to engage with Satanic figures running the 'Deep State'.
These Satanic figures are, of course, because the only important things that happen in the world, happen in America, Democrat politicians, scientists and billionaires such as Bill Gates, led by Hilary Clinton, Barak Obama and assorted cannibalistic paedophiles. The conspiracy Trump was fighting gets ever more lurid, the more preposterous it becomes.
The 'Paedophile Deep State' conspiracy of course involved all the election officials in states where Joe Biden won in 2020, because they helped 'steal' the election from the rightful winner, Donald Trump, and all the judges who refused to overturn the result on the 'spurious' grounds that Trump's advocates could not find any evidence to support their claim, other than Trump's claim that he won really.
Another aspect of this 'Paedophile Deep State' conspiracy is the belief that the COVID-19 pandemic was fake and a pretext for injecting people with mind-controlling vaccines developed by Bill Gates, or as an excuse to stop people going to church, or that wearing face coverings was an attempt at population control because people can't breathe properly with a face covering and die of asphyxia. Of course, government health officials like Anthony Fauci, America's leading epidemiologist, were part of the conspiracy and faked the statistics such as the case numbers and deaths.
The third aspect of Trumpanzeeism is the belief that demands by black people to be treated the same as white people by the police is a conspiracy by political extremists such as anti-fascists [sic], to deprive white Christians of their rightful position as the middle and upper class of a stratified society. A society in which the poor (and Black) only have themselves to blame, welfare is a scam whereby the white middle class is robbed through taxation to subsidise fecklessness and drug dependence, and health care should be preserved for those who can afford to pay for it, the way God intended, in White Christian America.
And we shouldn’t forget the notion that Mexicans are all drug-dealing criminals and rapists who want to destroy America.
But just holding whackadoodle beliefs is itself harmless. What is harmful is the antisocial behaviour that can come from holding them, such as discouraging people from getting vaccinated against a lethal virus, encouraging them to attend super-spreader events where social distancing and wearing face coverings were seen as a disloyal political statement, and such as trying to overthrow a democratic government in a violent insurrection.
Previous research has shown that holders of conspiracy theories are more likely to indulge in criminal activities and other anti-social behaviour and less likely]y to conform to prosocial norms, often regarding laws and social norms as part of the conspiracy.
But there is some hope that at least the more anti-social consequences of holding conspiracy theories, such as those adhered to by Trumpanzees, according to the results of an interesting study by four researchers at the Leibniz-Institut für Wissensmedien, Tübingen, Germany, led by Lotte Plummerer, a PhD candidate.
As described in Psychology Today by Craig Harper Ph.D.:
A three-dimensional image of a cancer cell's nucleus obtained by Dr. Faltas and his team shows the APOBEC3G protein (green) inside the nucleus (blue).
In a stunning example of unintelligent design, an enzyme that Creationists have to believe was designed by their putative omniscient designer god to protect us from the viruses it designs to make us sick, also causes cancers. Whether this is evidence of malevolence or incompetence is difficult to say, if you believe the Creationist claims. What it can't in all honesty be presented as is evidence of supreme intelligence and omnibenevolence.
Fortunately, people who understand evolutionary biology don't need to concern themselves with those sorts of questions because they know a mindless, utilitarian natural process like evolution is not a sentient entity and therefore has no intent. Arms races such as that between our immune system and viruses is entirely predictable, as is the example of trade-off between protecting against viral infection and causing cancer. The only test of effectiveness is in the number of descendants that survive to reproduce.
The role of the enzyme, called APOBEC3G, which protects human cells against retroviral attack, in promoting cancer was discovered by a team lead by researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine who used a preclinical model of bladder cancer to investigate the role of the enzyme in promoting the disease and found that it significantly increased the number of mutations in tumour cells, boosting the genetic diversity of bladder tumours, making it harder to treat and hastening mortality.. They have published their findings in the journal Cancer Research, sadly behind a paywall.
The Weill Cornell Medicine news release gives details:
Figure 1. Morphological comparison of the aboveground parts of M. kirishimense and M. humile:
(a-c) M. kirishimense, (d-e) M. humile, (f). M. humile f. roseum (color variant of M. humile). The arrowheads indicate spreading sepals.
Photographed by Masayuki Sato (a), Katsumi Iwahori (b), Shuichi Kurogi (c), Shin Terui (d), Kazushige Uemori (e), and Kenji Suetsugu (f).
Giving the lie yet again to Creationists' absurd claim that the Theory of Evolution (TOE) is being increasingly rejected by mainstream scientists and is about to become the first scientific theory to be replaced by a superstition based on magic and an unproven supernatural entity, Bronze Age Creationism, scientists in Japan have discovered that what was thought to be a colour variant of a parasitic plant, is in fact a new species. They have suggested how this new species could have evolved from the parent species.
The new species is the rosy pink form of the parasitic plant known to science as Monotropastrum humile. These plants as found throughout the woods of East and Southeast Asia and have lost their ability to photosynthesise, depending instead on the hyphae of soil fungi which are themselves in a symbiotic relationship with other plants. These soil fungi connect to the roots of other plants and help breakdown organic molecules in the soil into nutrients the plans can use. In return the plants supply the fungi with the sugars they produce in their leaves. Monotropastrum humile however, is a free loader on this system and not only takes the nutrients but also the sugars, while giving nothing in return.
But it's not this parasitic relationship which is under consideration here, but the newly-discovered status of the rosy pink form, which close examination and 20 years of study have shown to be a different species. The Kobe University scientists who identified it as a new species have named it M. kirishimense, after Kirishima, in Kagoshima Prefecture, Japan, where it was first found growing.
Figure 1: Cryo-electron tomography provided insight into the cellular structure of a newly cultured Asgard archaeon illustrated here. Remarkable are the extensive actin cytoskeleton filaments (orange) in the cell bodies and cell protrusions, as well as the unique cell envelope (blue).
The problem with Creationism, and the main reason it is rejected by evolutionary biologists and an overwhelming majority of other scientists, is because it requires its believers to not only believe in magic and unproven supernatural entities, but also to believe demonstrably false dogmas. They also believe the Theory of Evolution (TOE) is being increasingly rejected by mainstream scientists in favour of their evidence-free Bronze Age, magical superstition.
For example, one absurd dogma is that it is impossible for complexity to increase by an evolutionary process because this needs an increase in genetic information and the Second Law of Thermodynamics [sic] forbids it. It does nothing of the sort, of course, as anyone who understands the 2LOT and genetics will tell you. The Creationist cults work hard to ensure their dupes understand neither.
A casual and unintentional refutation of these absurdities was provided a few days ago by a team of researchers at Universität Wien and Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule (ETH) Zürich, who cultivated a special archaeon, a member of the Asgard archaea, and examined it in microscopic details, noting that it contained unique cellular characteristics suggesting that it could be the evolutionary link to more complex forms such as animals and plants.
The more we look at the Universe and the more detail we see, the more majestic it becomes. In the words of the late, great carl Sagan:
How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, "This is better than we thought! The Universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant?” Instead they say, “No, no, no! My god is a little god, and I want him to stay that way.” A religion, old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the Universe as revealed by modern science might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths.
Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
And another quote from Carl Sagan, referring to the famous photo of Earth seen as a tiny pale blue dot from beyond Pluto, because one is never enough:
Ann Druyan suggests an experiment: Look back again at the pale blue dot of the preceding chapter. Take a good long look at it. Stare at the dot for any length of time and then try to convince yourself that God created the whole Universe for one of the 10 million or so species of life that inhabit that speck of dust. Now take it a step further: Imagine that everything was made just for a single shade of that species, or gender, or ethnic or religious subdivision. If this doesn’t strike you as unlikely, pick another dot. Imagine it to be inhabited by a different form of intelligent life. They, too, cherish the notion of a God who has created everything for their benefit. How seriously do you take their claim?
Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space.
What would Carl Sagan have made of the images now coming from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST)? The final one in the following article is of a segment of sky a fraction the size of a full moon. Tens of thousands of points of light in it each represent a single galaxy. Each of those will contain upwards of half a trillion stars, around each of which there is a good chance of a planetary system and possibly an Earth-like planet orbiting.
Are we so arrogant as to assume this was all made just for us and that a mind-reading creator god scrutinises this one small pixel, watching to see if anyone touches their genitalia, loves the wrong person, works on a Sunday, gets pleasure from sex or has the temerity to question what the priests tell us and to think for ourselves?
The article is by Colin Jacobs, Postdoctoral Researcher in Astrophysics, and Karl Glazebrook, ARC Laureate Fellow & Distinguished Professor, Centre for Astrophysics & Supercomputing, both of Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Australia, lookt at how the JWST images have blown us away over the past year, revealing a Universe never before seen in this stunning detail. It is reprinted here under a Creative Commons license, reformatted for stylistic consistency. The original can be seen here.
A paper published recently contains so many casual refutations of Creationist claims that it's hard to know where to begin.
First, and perhaps most obviously, is the age of the fossil, although that isn't relevant to the paper in question, which is about what it ate, not when it lived. Microraptor zhaoianus is one of three known species in the Microraptor genus previously dated to between 125 and 113 million years ago - over 100 million years before Earth was created, according to YEC superstition.
Secondly, there is the evidence of feathered theropod dinosaurs, supporting the idea that birds evolved from feathered dinosaurs and were not created as is, by magic.
And thirdly, there is the assumption by the palaeontologists that evolution is the explanation for the observations, giving the lie to Creationist claims that scientists are increasingly rejecting the TOE as the best explanation for the observable evidence, in favour of a Bronze Age origin myth with no supporting evidence and dependant on magic and an unproven supernatural entity.
The paper, by a team lead by Professor Hans Larsson of Redpath Museum, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, describes a fossil discovered at Liaoning, China, in the early 2000s. It is of Microraptor zhaoianus, with the fossilized remains of a small mammal's foot in its stomach.
In a fascinating analysis of how the Christian notion of the 'soul' evolved to suit local political needs and to pander to popular demand, Professor Philip C. Almond,
Emeritus Professor in the History of Religious Thought, The University of Queensland, explains how Christian ideas about the soul have changed since the notion was adopted from the Greek Platonists in the late second century CE, the idea of an immortal soul being absent from both the Old and New Testaments. Until then, Christians had used the Hebrew notion of a human being a single entity composed of both spiritual and physical parts.
For 'spiritual' parts read 'magic ingredient' making it alive. In fact we can see remnants of the lack of belief in immortality in verses such as this The following bible verses that seem to have escaped the editors' notice and been included in the modern editions.
From the Old Testament from a time when ideas of God's omniscience hadn't formed and death was seen as the end:
Man that is born of a woman is of few days and full of trouble. He cometh forth like a flower, and is cut down: he fleeth also as a shadow, and continueth not.
And doth thou open thine eyes upon such an one, and bringest me into judgment with thee? Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? not one.
Seeing his days are determined, the number of his months are with thee, thou hast appointed his bounds that he cannot pass; Turn from him, that he may rest, till he shall accomplish, as an hireling, his day. For there is hope of a tree, if it be cut down, that it will sprout again, and that the tender branch thereof will not cease. Though the root thereof wax old in the earth, and the stock thereof die in the ground; Yet through the scent of water it will bud, and bring forth boughs like a plant.
But man dieth, and wasteth away: yea, man giveth up the ghost, and where is he? As the waters fail from the sea, and the flood decayeth and drieth up: So man lieth down, and riseth not: till the heavens be no more, they shall not awake, nor be raised out of their sleep.
Job 14:1-12:
So I reflected on all this and concluded that the righteous and the wise and what they do are in God’s hands, but no one knows whether love or hate awaits them.
All share a common destiny—the righteous and the wicked, the good and the bad, the clean and the unclean, those who offer sacrifices and those who do not.
As it is with the good, so with the sinful; as it is with those who take oaths, so with those who are afraid to take them.
This is the evil in everything that happens under the sun: The same destiny overtakes all. The hearts of people, moreover, are full of evil and there is madness in their hearts while they live, and afterward they join the dead. Anyone who is among the living has hope — even a live dog is better off than a dead lion!
For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing; they have no further reward, and even their name is forgotten.
Ecclesiastes 9:1-5:
Clearly, the idea that it didn't matter how you lived your life as it made no different in the long run, was not what the church authorities needed the masses to believe. What they needed was the ability to promise a reward for good behaviour, unquestioning obedience and compliance with dogma, which the dead couldn't complain about and couldn't report back to the living and reveal that it was a false promise and what they'd been sold was a pig in a poke.
So, the idea of an immortal soul was pinched from the Greek Platonists and inserted into Christianity, complete with the idea that the soul doesn't have a gender.
The following article is reprinted from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence and reformatted for stylistic consistency. The original may be read here:
The evolution of mammalian spermatogenesis. The image illustrates a sperm cell and the evolutionary relationship of mammalian species covered in the study.
Illustration: Florent Murat (icons partly adapted from Murat et al., Nature 2022, 10.1038/s41586-022-05547-7 | CC BY 4.0)
News that scientists have now shown how spermatogenesis in mammals is the result of a rapid evolutionary process and that mammals share many of the same genes, indicating common descent, as predicted from the Theory of Evolution (ToE), should come as a shock to Creationists fooled into thinking that the ToE is being increasingly rejected as the best available explanation for biodiversity and much else in nature, if only they could take their hands away from their eyes and read about it.
In fact, as this research shows, the ToE is fundamental to understanding biology and interpreting what can be observed.
The research was carried out by an international team of researchers led by Prof. Dr Henrik Kaessmann from the Center for Molecular Biology of Heidelberg University. The results are reported in Nature.
The research and its significance is explained in the Heidelberg University press release:
Wild chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii) in the Issa Valley, Tanzania, within the region of the East African Rift Valley.
In an interesting example of how science constantly revises what it thinks it knows and changes its mind when the information changes, and quite incidentally, routinely refutes Creationists claims, a team of researchers from UCL, the University of Kent, and Duke University, USA, has found what they believe is evidence that bipedalism evolved in remote human ancestors because they walked upright in trees, rather than because they abandoned the trees and took to living in open, relatively treeless savanna. This is the reverse of that is commonly accepted.
Briefly, the scientific consensus was that climate change led to a reduction of the African forests and left the ancestors of the hominins stranded in open savanna and isolated from their forest-dwelling cousin, the ancestral chimpanzee, where they evolved upright walking and the hominin foot, while retaining much of the upper body of their chimpanzee cousins with whom they shared a common ancestor. This suggested that they brachiated in trees using their arms an upper body, while they walked upright on the ground.
However, by observing a troupe of modern chimpanzees living in the Issa Valley of western Tanzania, within the region of the East African Rift Valley, the scientists noted that 85% of the time they spent walking upright was in trees, rather than on the ground. The Issa Valley is what is known as 'savanna-mosaic’ – a mix of dry open land with few trees and patches of dense forest, much like the environment it is believed the earliest hominins inhabited and in which bipedalism evolved.
Dartmouth researchers report octopuses have high numbers of molecules linked to advanced cognition.
Photo by Pia via Pexels
An international team of scientists lead by researchers from Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, USA and the Max Delbrück Center in Germany, believe they are a step closer to understanding how intelligence evolved. The key is the occurrence of microRNA molecules. These are small RNA units that are not involved in making proteins but regulate the expression of proteins. They tend to occur in highly specialised cells such as the neurones in brains.
MicroRNAs are found in are found in brain tissues of mammals and other vertebrates, especially humans, and now, for the first time in an invertebrate, in the two species of octopus examined in this study.
Octopuses are known to be highly intelligent, able to use tools, solve problems and engage in creative play, so the occurrence of microRNAs in these creatures as well as humans is highly significant.
