Butterfly Evolution Hatches Magical Story

Butterflies magically arise, fly around the world
after surviving asteroid strike that killed dinosaurs.

 

When scientists have no opposition, they get lazy. Darwinists are among the laziest scientists of all. They already enjoy membership in a totalitarian regime, so they never have to debate a creationist or a believer in intelligent design. They have millions of Darwin Years to play with. As a result, they make up stories with reckless indifference, treating evolution like a god. Watch one do it with butterflies.

Before we look at what an evolutionary biologist says about butterflies, think of how many aspects of a butterfly should be a challenge to Darwinian evolution:

• Egg to caterpillar
• Caterpillar to chrysalis
• Metamorphosis: from chrysalis to butterfly. This is like melting down a Model T and watching it fly out as a helicopter.
• Navigation by Earth’s magnetic field for thousands of miles on paper-thin wings
• Navigation with a sun compass and by the stars
• Accurate biological clock
• Aerodynamically-efficient powered flight in an insect weighing about a gram
• Ability to detect a mate from miles away by sense of smell
• Articulated limbs, sexual reproduction, digestion, metabolism, and all the organ systems needed by a living animal
• A radical change in all the systems between caterpillar and butterfly
• Instincts and behaviors coded in genes (how, no one knows)
• Smell detectors on antennae and feet to find the exact species of plant for egg laying over miles
• The proboscis: an all-purpose tool for sucking nectar that coils into a circle when not in use, formed of two half-tubes the butterfly knows instinctively how to assemble.
• Wing scales with nano-scale photonic crystals that can intensify light with structural color
• In some migrating species, a “Methusaleh generation” that can last 3-5 times longer than prior generations
• The ability for a Methusaleh butterfly to fly 3,000 to 6,000 miles to a precise target it has never seen
• Millions of individual monarch butterflies from different starting points able to assemble on the same specific trees thousands of miles away

This is just a partial list. Some of these feats are covered in Illustra Media’s documentary Metamorphosis: The Beauty and Design of Butterflies. In one part of the film, PhD philosopher of biology Paul Nelson and PhD biologist Ann Gauger challenge Darwinian evolution directly with the facts of metamorphosis: i.e., without a programmed plan to emerge out the other side with all new parts, including new sexual organs for producing the next generation, a chrysalis is like a casket. How could Darwinism ever accomplish a feat like that? Watch this newer video from Illustra about butterfly wings, and this other short one about the monarch butterfly’s stunning journey.

Tossing Out All the Design With Darwinian Magic

Now, prepare to watch an evolutionist proudly attribute all of this to Darwin’s Stuff Happens Law. Where did butterflies come from? They arose.

How butterflies conquered the world: a new ‘family tree’ traces their 100-million-year journey across the globe  (The Conversation, 15 May, 2023). With a yawn and the comfort of knowing his academic will not question his evolutionary ideas, Matthew F. Braby launches into his explanation of how butterflies evolved. Braby, an associate professor at Washington National University, flush with funds from Australian research councils, has no fear of being shamed or laughed off the stage. He has a D-Merit Badge. He doesn’t have to face questions. He doesn’t even have to think.

How old are butterflies, and where did they evolve? And perhaps more importantly, how and when did they reach the isolated continent of Australia?

Answers to these simple questions have baffled scientists for decades. Until recently we had very little idea when butterflies evolved, and hypotheses concerning their place of origin were largely educated guesses.

Ah, he reassures his readers, now we have knowledge. Now we have precise understanding of how stuff happened. With fake precision in his Darwin Years numbers, curiously juxtaposed with a high perhapsimaybecouldness index, off he goes, solving the old mystery of how butterflies evolved.

In recent years, however, several studies have indicated butterflies most likely arose sometime during the Cretaceous period, when dinosaurs dominated the Earth. Now, an international collaboration (of which I am a member) has placed the time of origin much more precisely: 101.4 million years ago, give or take 1.2 million years.

These early butterflies were different from nocturnal moths, their ancestors. They flew during the day, rather than at night, and were attracted to brightly coloured flowers for their rich nectar.

They arose. In the crystal ball of his deep time imagination, he witnessed them flying during the day. He even knows what color flowers they visited. Funny; no other human being lived in that era, according to the Darwinian scheme, but Braby gives an eyewitness account.

Fake Visualization with Pizzazz

The centerpiece of his article is a dazzling circular phylogeny of butterflies, with the art of visualization giving his story an air of authority. Its credibility depends on a dubious assumption that similarities prove relationship. “This tree of life was assembled with DNA from 2,244 species representing all butterfly families and 92% of genera,” he says. Looks impressive. He has them all connected as if they all had a common ancestor. One problem: there are very few fossil butterflies. So out of the 19,000 species known, only 11 fossils have been found.

Underlying the analysis were 11 rare butterfly fossils, without which the analysis would have been impossible. Butterflies are rarely preserved in the fossil record, and those that are preserved are frequently difficult to identify.

These fossils served as calibration points on the evolutionary tree. Once the tree was calibrated researchers could then estimate the timing of key events in butterfly evolution, starting with their origin.

Braby and his colleagues calibrated the phylogeny. Isn’t that an example of scientific rigor? Well, divide 11 into 19,000. He calibrated his table based on less than 6/100ths of a percent. But worse: since the fossil dates and the diversification dates are both based on the assumption of evolution, this is like calibrating a clock to itself. It’s like the joke about the clock tower mechanic who set the clock tower time to his wristwatch, but then set his wristwatch to the chime on the clock tower.

Once butterflies had become established in Central and North America approximately 101 million years ago, they quickly diversified alongside their plant hosts over the next 25 million years, with the last two families (Riodinidae and Lycaenidae) evolving around 76 million years ago. By the time dinosaurs were wiped out 66 million years ago, all six modern butterfly families had arrived on the scene.

And so all the dinosaurs went extinct by the asteroid impact, but dainty little butterflies with paper-thin wings got through it to adorn our gardens and amaze biologists with the creative power of random mutations and natural selection. Any questions? Braby doesn’t hear any, so he feels gratified.

Did Braby answer any of the challenges to Darwinian evolution listed above? Not one! He’s living in a Darwin Fantasyland, where chance works miracles given millions of years. Isolated from challenge, he and his colleagues have free rein to tell just-so stories to impressionable students in Australia, just as other Darwinians do all over the world.

A century ago, in the days of the Scopes Trial, Darwinians were crying for equal rights to teach their views. It wasn’t fair to expect them to ditch eugenics and racism and teach that God created humans. They wanted equal time! And like the Nazis, once they got their foot in the door, they kicked their critics out and locked the door behind them.

Welcome to the corruption caused by Big Science and Big Media establishing a totalitarian dictatorship.

Got real science? Illustra Media has some. Enjoy some facts, common sense, and wonder:

Source: The John 10:10 Project, where many more videos like this can be enjoyed in the “Awesome Wonders” series.