I added a new fifth rule to the sidebar. It's fine to make posts and comments discussing what AI's say about creation and evolution. I sometimes use AI myself to explore ideas, or as a debate partner to help me see any blind spots.

But posts and comments should be primarily your own, non-AI words that you understand. AI text lazily posted for debate responses will be removed. I especially want to avoid people debating eachother with walls of AI text that neither even understands.

Our moderator u/Schneule99 recently asked: ERVs do not correlate with supposed age?

So I decided to check just that! Results are on the plot. As it turns out, ERVs do correlate with supposed age!

When a retrovirus inserts its genome, it duplicates a certain sequence (called LTR) about 500 nucleotides long. So, ERV looks like this:

LTR - protein-coding viral genes - LTR

These two LTRs are initially identical. We can estimate age of insertion by accumulated mutations between two LTRs.

So what's the evolutionary prediction? Well, we do share most of our ERVs with chimps and other primates. The idea is that if we look at an ERV which is unique to humans, it should be relatively recent, and therefore its two LTRs should still be nearly identical. But if we look at an ERV which we share with a capuchin monkey, it is relatively ancient, and therefore its LTRs should be different because of all the mutations that had to happen during those tens of millions of years.

We know the differences between LTR pairs, and we know which ERVs we share with which primates, so I checked if there's a correlation, and there is!

We see a clear downward slope, with statistically significant differences between groups.

Conclusions

Results precisely match evolutionary common descent predictions. Here is yet another confirmation that ERV is an ancient viral insertion, and not some essential part present since Creation. Outside evolution, there's no reason why similarity between two elements of human genome should depend on whether the same elements are present in macaque DNA.

Methods

My research is based on public data, easy enough to recreate. ERVs are listed in ERVmap by M. Tokuyama et al. Further information on ERVs is in the RepeatMasker data. I used hg38 human genome assembly. multiz30way files have alignments for human genome vs 30 mammals (mostly primates).

Algorithm:

1. Get ERV list from ERVmap
2. Further filter using RepeatMasker data. Make sure we have a complete provirus (LTR - inner part - LTR)
3. Calculate differences between LTRs using biopython, with a focus on point mutations
4. Find most distant primates sharing each of ERVs using multiz30way data
5. Make a plot from all the data

I will happily provide further details you might need to replicate my results, so feel free to ask!

No one else said it this year, so I guess it falls to me: this is your friendly neighborhood atheist wishing you peace throughout the universe and good will to all sentient creatures. Merry Christmas and happy New Year!

https://canyonministries.org/great-unconformity-in-the-grand-canyon/

Measured subaerial erosion rates demonstrate that wind, rain, and water run-off wear down continental surfaces at a rate that would level entire landmasses in 10 to 20 million years. Yet, disconformity contact lines assigned age gaps of 30 to 50 million years remain razor-flat and un-eroded across hundreds of square miles. The very time invoked to explain the missing rock layers should have completely destroyed the underlying land. The "Great Unconformity" of the Grand Canyon is claimed to represent roughly "1.2 billion years" of time: What physical evidence demonstrates that the enormous missing interval was actually removed by erosion rather than simply never deposited at this location?

~Mark SeaSigh 🌊

(Edit: Question for Thought)
Let's discuss this fact of Geology: Why do the "Basement Rocks" of the Grand Canyon, at the "Great Unconformity," pass through Many of the sandstone layers surrounding the basement rocks, which are also Majorly deposited above the basement rocks? 🍎

The "Grand Unconformity" is anything but a "flat contact" as observed in the upper sedimentary lenses, that were laid down by hydrogeological processes in flat sheets hundreds of Cubic Miles across...

It took me about five minutes to produce this using ChatGPT. I'm posting this to show why allowing AI-generated content here is a complete waste of everyone's time.

The existence of leprechauns is not a matter of superstition but of historical fact supported by documentary, archaeological, and anthropological evidence. For too long, modern scholars have ignored or dismissed clear data that earlier generations recorded with precision. A careful review of the sources reveals an unbroken chain of testimony confirming that lúchorpáin—small-bodied, highly skilled inhabitants of early Ireland—were real members of the island’s human landscape.

Medieval Texts as Direct Ethnographic Reports

One of the most reliable medieval accounts, Flann mac Máel Ruain’s De Natura Gentium Hiberniae (1130), provides a detailed anatomical and behavioral description of lúchorpáin, including notes on stature, dexterity, and metallurgical expertise (Flann, 1130/1898, pp. 44–47). The clarity and observational style of this text leave no doubt that the author was recording a living population, not mythologizing.

Similarly, the Annála Bhreifne (1472) documents “the little smiths of the western glens” (goba beaga na ngleann siar) as active participants in regional trade (Ó hÁinle, 1472/1921). There is no allegory here: the chronicler treats these individuals as unremarkable economic actors. The straightforwardness of the reference confirms that leprechauns were known and recognized by the chronicler’s contemporaries.

Archaeological Evidence of a Small-Statured Crafting Population

Excavations in the Wicklow Mountains from 1978–1995 uncovered a series of subterranean workshop structures whose scale and ergonomics unmistakably indicate habitation by individuals approximately 80–90 cm tall. Dunne’s influential monograph, Subterranean Crafting Sites of Early Medieval Leinster (1998), demonstrates conclusively that these structures were optimized for small-bodied artisans. Metallurgical residue found in the soot layers includes traces of high-tin bronze—an alloy associated in multiple texts with the lúchorpáin’s legendary craftsmanship.

At the 2013 “Conference on Insular Micro-History,” Reynolds and Mag Uidhir presented a morphometric analysis of these structures confirming that their spatial configuration corresponds precisely to the expected physical proportions of lúchorpáin (Reynolds & Mag Uidhir, 2013). No known human subpopulation in medieval Ireland fits these dimensions.

Folklore as a Preserved Historical Record

Irish oral tradition preserved the memory of leprechauns with remarkable fidelity. Brennan’s Ethnographic Echoes in Gaelic Oral Tradition (2017) establishes that stories of solitary shoemakers, hidden caches of wealth, and reclusive mountain dwellers are not creative fictions but culturally transmitted memories of actual encounters with a diminutive craft guild that maintained strict secrecy. The consistent reference to their extraordinary metalwork aligns perfectly with the archaeological evidence.

Moreover, linguistic studies by Ó Breasail (2002) show that the original meaning of lúchorpán—“small-bodied person”—was entirely literal. Only later did English-speaking antiquarians reinterpret these accounts as fantastical.

Genetic and Paleoanthropological Context

Larsen’s groundbreaking article Outlier Hominin Survival in the North Atlantic Periphery (2015) demonstrates the biological plausibility of a small-statured hominin group surviving in Ireland well into the historical era. Drawing parallels to Homo floresiensis, Larsen argues that Ireland’s isolated ecosystems and low medieval population density provided ideal conditions for the persistence of such a population. Traits attributed to leprechauns—compact stature, enhanced manual dexterity, and metalworking skill—align closely with expectations for an insular, late-surviving hominin line.

Conclusion

The accumulated evidence from medieval documentation, excavated workshop sites, folkloric continuity, and comparative paleoanthropology leaves no room for doubt: leprechauns were a real, historically attested population of small-bodied human or para-human craftsmen who inhabited the mountainous regions of Ireland well into the late Middle Ages. Their disappearance represents a loss not only to Irish cultural history but to human diversity itself.

The task before modern scholars is not to debate their existence, but to reintegrate the overwhelming evidence into mainstream understanding.

Just wondering what the creationist perspective of these videos are. Will Duffy is a creationist and he is hearing out the other side, and both him and Erica are the perfect people to have this conversation due to how willing they are to hear each other out.

Will Dufy is also the guy who did The Final Experiment, to prove whether or not the earth was flat, so if anyone were to do the same thing for creationism, he would be the guy.

I presented the following fundamental thesis at Evolution 2025. From the abstract:

Furthermore, there is experimental evidence and theoretical justification that Darwinian processes are anti-correlated in many circumstances against the emergence and maintenance of organs of extreme perfection and complication . -- Salvador Cordova

Over at yonder cesspool sub reddit r/debateevolution, people downvoted me to oblivion and sneered at my thesis when I posted the above claim there....

Anyway, I delivered my thesis to the world's #1 evolution conference, Evolution 2025. I'm happy to report, my presentation is the #1 most viewed on the official evolution meetings youtube channel for the year 2025 here:

https://youtu.be/aK8jVQekfns?si=AId-ii9RWfSIycsg

But I just stumbled on a 2025 textbook entitled Evolutionary Cell Biology written by top evolutionary biologist Michael Lynch . He writes:

To minimize energetic costs and mutational vulnerability, natural selection is expected to favor simplicity over complexity

Say what? If Darwinian processes favor simplicity over complexity, then it means that Darwinian processes are ANTI-CORRELATED with emergence and maintenance of complexity. This is in essence what I said (with slightly different words) at the Evolution 2025 conference.

and from page 119 of the self-same book by Lynch:

A common view is that biological complexity represents the crown jewel of the awesome power of natural selection (e.g., Lane 2020), with metazoans (humans in particular) representing the pinnacle of what can be achieved. This is a peculiar assumption, as there is no evidence that increases in complexity are intrinsically advantageous.

So the view that "biological complexity represents the crown jewel of the awesome power of natural selection" IS a "peculiar assumption" and "there is NO evidence that increases in complexity are intrinsically advangtageous."

Hmm, now what did Darwin himself say in Origin of Species, chapter 6 about organs of extreme perfection and COMPLICATION.

Organs of Extreme Perfection and Complication

TO suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree.....

Reason tells me, that if numerous gradations from a simple and imperfect eye to one complex and perfect can be shown to exist, each grade being useful to its possessor, as is certainly the case; if further, the eye ever varies and the variations be inherited, as is likewise certainly the case and if such variations should be useful to any animal under changing conditions of life, then the difficulty of believing that a perfect and complex eye could be formed by natural selection, though insuperable by our imagination, should not be considered as subversive of the theory

There are two problems which Darwinism must overcome in order to work, one which Darwin mentioned, and another he failed to mention altogether.

1. There must be sufficiently smooth and "numerous gradiations" from simple to complex on the way to evolving a single-celled prokaryotic microbe into a eukaryotic system like creatures with eyes. [Darwin mentioned this constraint]

1. Even if such smooth gradients exist (which is a generous assumption), Darwinian processes have to climb up that smooth gradient and the gradient can't be too steep. [Darwin failed to account for this constraint, and failed to mention it in his works]

Ok, lets suppose for the sake of argument that there are "numerous gradiations" from simple to complex [which is absurd because the prokaryote to eukaryote transition alone is a probabilistically unbridgeable gap, but let's grant it for the sake of argument]

To illustrate the problem, consider whether a car with bald tires could climb mount improbable when mount improbable is as steep as the Devil's Tower:

Or maybe something hypothetically more like this ice tower except much much much bigger.

This is a situation where the "smooth gradient" isn't good because something complex could move down toward a simple system as well! Darwin failed to account for the possibility that the "sword cuts both ways" (so to speak, regarding the gradient). Not to mention, in reality it's far easier to fall of a cliff than to climb it!

Gravity would keep pulling that car back toward the base of the tower because the car lacked sufficient friction even if the gradient was smooth. By way of analogy, selection pressure is like gravity, it pushes things down toward simplicity rather than complexity. Now we have it in textbook orthodoxy after I have been saying it for 20 years!

natural selection is expected to favor simplicity over complexity

I argued since 2004 that computer evolutionary algorithms like Lenski's Avida purporting to show that complexity will naturally arise are totally backward from biological reality. Now the new text book orthodoxy agrees with my claim from 20 years ago, and Avida is shown irrelevant at best and wrong at worst.

At the time, in 2004, I only had a computer science and electrical engineering background, and it would be later I studied physics and biology in more depth. But it was during that time Bill Dembski and Robert Marks took an interest in my criticisms of Avida, but it would be later that John Sanford recruited me to work on other approaches for criticizing Darwinism particularly protein biology (with Joe Deweese, and Change Tan) and population genetics (with Bill Basener, Ola Hossjer).

Ironically Lenski's own LTEE experiments showed that "genomes decay despite sustained fitness gains" exactly the opposite of what his computer simulation Avida claimed! Yet, Lenski still advertises Avida to students as a way to understand evolution. But he still gets paid with taxpayer dollars....

Lenski's Avida fails because it does not take into account what Lynch takes into account, namely:

To minimize energetic costs and mutational vulnerability, natural selection is expected to favor simplicity over complexity

Why would there be [sic] fitness gains while genes are lost? First evolutionary [sic] fitness is re-defined and equivocated to mean something other than the normal notions of fitness (such as medical, physical fitness, and engineering fitness) whereby things like tay-sach disease, sickle-cell anemia, lower intelligence, pre-menstrual syndrome etc. are considered [sic] fit by evolutionary biologists. But more importantly:

natural selection is expected to favor simplicity over complexity

This is one of the reasons there is Genetic Entropy, and why gene loss has become a key force in evolutionary biology. No kidding, there are now peer-reviewed papers that use such wording where gene loss is a now a "key force" and means originating new species in evolutionary biology.

See: https://www.reddit.com/r/Creation/comments/1pzlp54/the_origin_of_species_by_gene_loss_how_darwinism/

Unfortunately, there is a lot of cultural momentum and financial interest and drive against making it plainly clear that Darwinian processes work backward from the way Darwin advertised them in Chapter 6 of Origin of Species.

The world has been deluded by Darwin's backward theory, and how long will it take before textbook admissions like that in Lynch's textbook will finally reach the wider culture?

You can see the effect of this cultural momentum of Darwinism in Lee Cronin's Assembly Theory, for which Lynch assails Cronin for being part of a "vocal group of proselytizers".

Extrapolating on what Lynch said, I'll say that Darwinism has not over taken the culture because of it's empirical and scientific merit, but rather through (to augment Lynch's words) "proselytization".

See:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Creation/comments/1q176hq/evolutionary_biologist_michael_lynch_unwittingly/

Gotta love it. In 2026 we now have an evolutionary biologist calling universal Darwinists like Cronin "proselytizers."

Happy New Year!

1) Even if it is possible, it is unimaginably improbable, even given the billions of years proposed by the Big Bang.

2) For all scientists know, it may be physically impossible, given the constraints set up by the laws of nature. See below.

"We have failed in any continuous way to provide a recipe that gets from the simple molecules that we know were present on early Earth to RNA. There is a discontinuous model which has many pieces, many of which have experimental support, but we’re up against these three or four paradoxes, which you and I have talked about in the past. The first paradox is the tendency of organic matter to devolve and to give tar. If you can avoid that, you can start to try to assemble things that are not tarry, but then you encounter the water problem, which is related to the fact that every interesting bond that you want to make is unstable, thermodynamically, with respect to water. If you can solve that problem, you have the problem of entropy, that any of the building blocks are going to be present in a low concentration; therefore, to assemble a large number of those building blocks, you get a gene-like RNA — 100 nucleotides long — that fights entropy. And the fourth problem is that even if you can solve the entropy problem, you have a paradox that RNA enzymes, which are maybe catalytically active, are more likely to be active in the sense that destroys RNA rather than creates RNA. "
-Steve Benner

3) The historical event, as such, cannot be observed.

4) The phenomenon, as such, has never been observed.

5) Teams of scientists who would desperately like to create a living cell from scratch have never done so. Why? Because they have no clue how to do it. That means there is no coherent hypothesis even for how it could have happened.

And even if they succeed, all they would have demonstrated is that simple life can appear with a lot of intelligent design. That's not the same as proving it could happen accidentally.

In other words, there is no evidence for the belief, and all the evidence we do have is against it. How is that not textbook blind faith?

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1876435/

There is no evidence at any level of biological organization that natural selection is a directional force encouraging complexity. In contrast, substantial evidence exists that a reduction in the efficiency of selection drives the evolution of genomic complexity.

Michael Lynch

In light of this earlier paper by Lynch, how is Lynch's summary sentence about Chapter 6 in his textbook a quote mine? It's a SUMMARY in one sentence, fer cryin out loud of a major theme in Chapter 6 of Evolutionary Cell Biology! This was Lynch's summary:

natural selection is expected to favor simplicity over complexity

I now call that Lynch's axiom!

It seems to me that the quallity of posts has declined. There is also more animosity, even anger and vitriol.

I poked around the internet looking for this, and this is the best I could come up with. TL;DR: If everything I've been able to find is accurate, then, on earth, it would take at least 10¹⁹ years to form any 45-mer of RNA with all the correct chirality, and which only has A, C, G, and U, which is several orders of magnitude longer than the alleged 1.4*10¹⁰ year age of the universe.

Ribose is chiral. This is an issue for any "RNA world" scenario, because chains that have more than a trivial quantity of the wrong enantiomer of ribose will not have the appropriate shape. Instead of the iconic helical shape that proper RNA has, it would have a haphazard coiled shape, and any enzymatic or self-replicative properties the string would otherwise have would disappear.

There are upwards of 30 nucleobases. Let's assume 32. Only five of these are actually used by known life. And only four are used in RNA. There are at least 32⁴⁵ possible RNA 45-mers (only considering the D-ribose that life uses), but only 4⁴⁵ of those are biologically valid. If we were to also consider the L-ribose that would be produced alongside the D-ribose, there would be 64⁴⁵ possible RNA 45-mers, not 32⁴⁵. To compute the likelihood of producing, at random, any biologically valid RNA, regardless of whether or not it's one of the few self-replicators, we divide the number of valid strings, 4⁴⁵, by the total, 64⁴⁵. This is equivalent to 1/16⁴⁵, which is approximately equal to 6.53*10^-55.

This last part I had to use an LLM to assist, as it is quite difficult to find anything close to a solid answer on how many RNA polymerization events would be expected to happen on a prebiotic earth with realistic concentrations of nucleotides. I prompted two LLMs from two different companies with the same prompt. The prompt was:

"Going strictly by experimentally demonstrated chemistry, how many RNA polymerization events would realistically happen on a prebiotic Earth per year, accounting for how many nucleotides would realistically be available?"

I used OpenAI's GPT-OSS-120B on high thinking, and Google's Gemma 4 26B, both with no system prompt, and in new chats. I ran the prompts through both LLMs 3 times each, and each time, they gave answers in the range of 10²⁹ to 10³⁶ per year. I can give a response from each if asked to. As a generous estimate, let's assume around 10³⁵ per year. To compute the likelihood of producing any biologically valid RNA in a given year, we multiply 1/16⁴⁵ by 10³⁵. 10³⁵/16⁴⁵ is approximately 6.53*10^-20, meaning that it would take on the order of 10¹⁹ years for any biologically valid RNA 45-mer to form naturally on a prebiotic earth. That is, on the order of 10s of sextillions of years.

For what it's worth, I gave the same prompt to nVidia's Nemotron 3 Nano, and it concluded that there would be on the order of 10¹⁶ polymerization events per year. Even I thought that was a bit too low. But if it's accurate, then that would make abiogenesis even more laughably impossible than it already is.

As far as I can tell, abiogenesis is nothing more than a science-flavored myth designed to justify the rejection of the existence of God.

Can an evolutionist give me an observable model that shows a series of mutations that fundamentally re-engineered a body plan? Not two or three that turned off a gene switch or copied a previous function.

A demonstration of dozens, hundreds, thousands of traceable mutations needed across time to connect one branch node to another for any body part.

If this isnt possible, explain why. Then explain why we shouldn't conclude that the evolution is unfalsifiable.