A Monarch butterfly. Image courtesy of Kenneth Dwain Harrelson, Wikipedia. Butterfly evolution is a mystery for Darwinists.
Joel Kontinen
Butterfly evolution has been a mystery for Darwinists. How can an animal change into an entirely different form during its brief life? Now, Donald Williamson, a retired zoologist who worked at the University of Liverpool, UK, thinks he has found the solution.
According to Williamson, hundreds of millions of years ago an animal that does not live through a larva stage, for instance a grasshopper or cockroach, hybridised with a velvet worm. He suggests that butterflies are the descendants of this hybrid. They live through the stages of both ancestors.
This is typical Darwinian storytelling that has nothing to do with real observable science. It resembles Ernst Haeckel’s discredited ”Biogenetic Law” (“ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny”).
Williamson’s colleagues take a very critical approach to his hypothesis. Georg Mayer, a specialist in velvet worm development and taxonomy at the University of Jena in Germany, says that caterpillars do not even resemble velvet worms. Genetics does not support Williamson’s view, either.
New Scientist concludes its article on butterfly evolution by stating that the evidence does not support Williamson’s theory. Actually, his view does not fulfil the scientific criteria for a theory so it would be more appropriate to call it a hypothesis.
Butterflies are evidence of very intelligent design. Their Creator has seen fit to let them live in two distinct forms during their brief life. Instead of chance, their life speaks of teleology. In other words, they have been programmed to change from a caterpillar to a butterfly.
Source:
Holmes, Bob. 2009. Did two species mix to make butterflies? New Scientist 2723 (26 August)
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20327234.900-did-two-species-mix-to-make-butterflies.html
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