A recent ‘intelligent design’ blunder proves that science is still the biggest problem for religious apologetics

For all the challenges facing religious apologetics in the internet age, science remains the biggest. One can debate the sophistication of theodicies, the challenges of religious pluralism, and the place of religion in our technological future, yet apologetics still brings all its power to bear in making science its greatest failure. There is no real reason why this should be so; one needs only to read Newton’s Principia Mathematica, or the works of Boyle, Faraday, Clerk-Maxwell, and others to find reasonable models for harmony between science and religion. However, the (predominantly American) apologetics machine, with its creationism/‘intelligent design’ (ID) obsession, has decided that warfare with science is the only course of action.

We may choose to turn the volume down and go about our business, but one recent blunder coming from the ID PR machine may be the greatest error yet made by these apologists. Step forward Dr Casey Luskin, a veteran of the ID/creationist Discovery Institute. A geologist by training, he spends most of his time attacking evolution and genetics. This may strike us as curious, but apologists have never had the slightest problem venturing outside of their fields, partly because their religious congregations are perfectly happy for them to do so. This geologist has published very few peer-reviewed scientific articles but is readily received as an authority in biology by ID adherents and their creationist counterparts. He has, however, exposed the immense cracks in their system by horrendously misreading a recent article.

In April 2025, an article cataloguing the complete sequencing of various ape genomes and comprehensively comparing them with the human genome was published in Nature. The data is immense, as are the references, and it is not easy reading for the layperson.

Modern genomics allows for comprehensive data analysis and is based on bioinformatics, which allows us to curate and analyse data in a specialised manner. Since the completion of the Human Genome Project in 2003, the world of genomics has changed completely. Evolutionary biology has since become a booming science thanks to a massive data revolution; scientists can extract DNA and sequence genomes in the field with a handheld device for less than $1000. NASA astronaut Kate Rubins even sequenced the genomes of microbes on the International Space Station in 2016 with a handheld MinION device developed by Oxford Nanopore Technologies.

Genomics as a science was born in its current incarnation only 30 years ago and is now leading biology into its biggest revolution since the 1950s. This Nature paper, remarkable for its accomplishments in comparative genomics, is typical of the revolutionary atmosphere in current biology.

Those of us in genetics who read it were interested and pleased to have more data on ape genomes. What the paper does not say is anything new or landscape-changing about the relationships between humans and apes. At the very least, it certainly does not overthrow the accepted evolutionary relationship between them. Indeed, some thought this paper might even quieten the creationists for a while. What no one expected (though perhaps we should have) was that Luskin, on behalf of the Discovery Institute, would fallaciously trumpet this paper as undeniable proof that humans and chimpanzees are not as genetically similar as previously claimed. Luskin wrote multiple articles on his blog championing this as a turning point both in genetics and for the evolutionary paradigm itself.

Luskin has been exposed for his fallacious, if not outright dishonest, approach before. YouTuber Dave Farina’s review of his work has been viewed over one million times, and his exposé of this incident also went viral. As Farina and others have pointed out, there are various ways of comparing genomes. This paper did indeed find ‘greater divergence than previously estimated’ by some measures, but this does not negate the old 98-99% similarity found by another measure, i.e. comparing nucleotide sequence identity. Even the other measures, while lower, still find overwhelming overlap.

The article itself never says that we were wrong about our similarity to chimps or that anything has changed in our fundamental understanding of the relationship between them and us. Luskin, however, spent a long time shouting as loudly as he could in articles, interviews, and podcasts that the traditional ~1% difference figure had been disproven, but in doing so, he conflated entirely separate measures of genomic likeness. This is also not how the Nature authors presented their paper. Regardless of the measure used, however, and as noted above, we are still overwhelmingly genomically similar to chimps, not to mention other apes.

Nevertheless, the ID and creationist machine declared victory over common ancestry. Because of uncritical swallowing of this, as well as deep scientific illiteracy, creationist ministries across the world repeated this falsehood wholesale. Whilst the scientists got on with their work, knowing nothing had fundamentally changed, the religious apologists celebrated loudly over the hill and told their crowds that evolution had been dealt a huge blow.

This proves many things. Firstly, the immense scientific illiteracy of the apologists. Secondly, that none of them properly read the scientific literature. Certainly, those who have parroted Luskin have been shown not to have read it themselves to check the findings. Thirdly, it showcases the failures of IDers/creationists when they step outside of their own fields. A serious geneticist would never have made their mistake. Fourthly, it shows how terrible IDers/creationists are at critical thinking. Even if one paper ‘proved’ their point (and in this case it doesn’t anyway), they would trumpet it without a second’s hesitation while failing to balance it against masses of other research. Cherry picking is one of the creationist’s favourite hobbies.

Finally, it reveals that the apologists in the ID and creationist movements have no respect or regard for religious scientists who disagree with them. There are hundreds of religious scientists working in professional research who get on with their work, publishing research and contributing to their field, without giving creationism or other such pseudoscience a moment’s thought. These scientists are immensely more qualified than those in the ID crowd. Their voices should carry great weight among their fellow religionists, yet the latter barely regard them at all.

Luskin’s error was a self-inflicted black eye for the churches, ministries, and individuals that entertained it. As it happens, around the time of this ‘controversy’, I was speaking with a very prominent religious apologist who is also an academic and mentioned ‘a recent science blunder for religious apologetics’. He immediately frowned. ‘Is this the Luskin thing?’ I nodded, and he sighed. There are plenty of religious people, including scientists, out there who are aware that this was indeed a blunder. I waited, with very little hope, to see if the apologists would realise their error and try to save face. Of course, they didn’t: Luskin and the rest continue to parrot pretty much the same old refuted claims. But then what else should one have expected from fundamentalists?