Butterflies: the Death and Resurrection Theory

I recommend the following one-hour documentary:

Metamorphosis: The Beauty and Power of Intelligent Design, explores compelling evidence for intelligent design as revealed through the life cycle of butterflies.

The transformation from caterpillar to chrysalis to adult butterfly defies Darwinian evolution through random variation and small gradual steps. In fact, some evolutionary biologists have called the process of metamorphosis "butterfly magic." That's not surprising, given that inside the chrysalis, the cells of the caterpillar break down into a chemical soup. Then new cells – butterfly cells – form from the molecular components. In just a few days, these cells are reassembled into an adult butterfly that has virtually no resemblance to a caterpillar, a process which defies evolution. 

I work as a teacher's aide in a kindergarten in a public school. At age 5 and 6, girls love butterflies. They wear butterfly shirts, have butterfly hair clips, and love to chase after butterflies on the playground when they happen to flutter by.

Maine butterfly. EPrata photo

As adults, we often stop what we are doing and watch a butterfly alight on a flower. We might not stop to smell the roses, lol, but we usually stop to admire a butterfly. There's something magical about this little insect, something colorful and worth pausing in our day to wonder about.
Butterflies exist on every continent, except Antarctica. The come in all colors, some quite vivid, and some, transparent as glass.

Source

We know that the moth is mentioned in the bible, moths come out at night, and destroy in secret. God likened Himself to a moth once. In Hosea 5:12 God said "But I am like a moth to Ephraim, and like dry rot to the house of Judah". Barnes Notes says of the verse,

"Therefore I will be unto Ephraim a moth - Literally, "and I as a moth." This form of speaking expresses what God was doing, while Ephraim was "willingly following" sin. "And I" was all the while "as a moth." The moth in a garment, and the decay in wood, corrode and prey upon the substance, in which they lie hid, slowly, imperceptibly, but, at the last, effectually."

But what of the butterfly? It specifically is not mentioned in the bible, but a similar kind of transformation is.

Vintage butterfly drawing: The Graphics Fairy

We all know from first grade science, that a caterpillar is born from an egg. It is "very hungry." It munches its way through a couple of weeks of leaf eating, and then spins a chrysalis. It tucks itself into the chrysalis, and unseen by human eyes, it transforms itself into a butterfly, emerging in fully winged glory two weeks later.

Until recently, scientists did not know exactly what went on inside the chrysalis. Now that they do, they are astounded, and scrambling to defend evolution. Even if scientists find a way to defend evolution, they have to come up with theories that have amazing twists and turns to explain this process. Why?

"Metamorphosis" Pixabay Free pics

Evolution does not support that an animal completely disintegrates, where every cell commits suicide in an orderly fashion as it were, and then re-forms to emerge as a new animal. Survival of the fittest says that if the caterpillar had turned into cellular soup once, the animal would have died out. Its caterpillar brain did not say, "Oh, let's commit suicide because I know that I'll re-form into different cells later!" To put it simply.

So scientists are asking,

Are Butterflies Two Different Animals in One? The Death And Resurrection Theory

Here's a dangerous, crazy thought from an otherwise sober (and very eminent) biologist, Bernd Heinrich. He's thinking about moths and butterflies, and how they radically change shape as they grow, from little wormy, caterpillar critters to airborne beauties. Why, he wondered, do these flying animals begin their lives as wingless, crawling worms? Baby ducks have wings. Baby bats have wings. Why not baby butterflies?
His answer — and I'm quoting him here — knocked me silly.
"[T]he radical change that occurs," he says, "does indeed arguably involve death followed by reincarnation.
What he's saying is, while a moth appears to be one animal, with a wormy start and a flying finish, it's actually two animals — two in one! We start with a baby caterpillar that lives a full life and then dies, dissolves. There's a pause. Then a new animal, the moth, springs to life, from the same cells, reincarnated.

Now...here's a question. Why is it a 'crazy, dangerous thought'? Christians know it is dangerous for the unsaved to ask this because the unsaved already know that God is real in creation, for He has made it plain to them. (Romans 1:18-19). To allow one's mind to drift into holy territory is dangerous to them because to them it is enemy territory. So satan causes them to suppress that thought.

Dangerous thoughts: poster outside City Lights Bookstore,
San Francisco. EPrata photo

One does not usually see them express creation thoughts in print on liberal websites. But this is how powerful the butterfly's transformation is. It pushes through the chemical fog in the unsaved's brain to pop up unwanted and uninvited.

Yet look how hard satan pushes back. The scientist who sees plainly that the butterfly defies evolution, came up with a theory as to why. You see, according to science, the explanation is that two different animals mated in the distant past. From the same article:

According to this theory, long, long ago, two very different animals, one destined to be wormy, the other destined to take wing, accidentally mated, and somehow their genes learned to live side-by-side in their descendants. But their genes never really integrated. They are sharing a DNA molecule like two folks sharing a car, except half way through the trip, one driver dissolves and up pops his totally different successor. Driver No. 2 emerges from the body of driver No. 1.

Um...okaaaay. Or, God.

The migration of the Monarch Butterfly is another wonder.

What Mysterious Cloud Over St. Louis Turned Out to Be

A mysterious cloud that appeared on weather radar over southern Illinois and Central Missouri last week turned out to be a swarm of monarch butterflies. Meteorologists from the National Weather Service analyzed the shape-shifting cloud that was moving toward Mexico to figure out what exactly it could be. “We think these targets are Monarch butterflies.,” the National Weather Service said in a Facebook post. “A Monarch in flight would look oblate to the radar, and flapping wings would account for the changing shape!” With the mystery solved, the fine folks at the NWS wished the butterflies “good luck and a safe journey” on their trip south for the autumn and winter.

What a delight to ponder our God as Creator. He is magnificent and powerful.

With my great power and outstretched arm I made the earth and its people and the animals that are on it, and I give it to anyone I please. (Jeremiah 27:5)