On the Not So Mysterious Butterfly Evolution

 As a biologist, I can come up with a reasonable scenario to explain evolution of particular traits seen in lifeforms. But I have only been able to imagine how things could have come into being when they are macroscopic. Microscopically, I and most of the scientific community can offer no explanations as to how certain life molecules and structures came into being. I'm referring to such things as DNA, RNA, ribosomes, histones, flagella, viruses, mitochondria. There are much more but these are the ones that I've attempted to explain to myself and I've not been successful. If you want to knock Darwinism, you would do best to stick with the microscopic.

I came across a video of someone who used the metamorphosis of the Monarch Butterfly to show that a creator must have designed this lovely creature. It as a very compelling presentation but when I started imagining a more conventional explanation, I knew that my faith in Darwinism (macroscopically) was restored.

This is what I imagined:

At first there was an organism kind of like a beetle. This beetle evolved wings and went about its business depositing eggs on the forest floor. The larvae that hatched from those eggs evolved front limbs that enabled them to grab onto surfaces like a nutritious leaf. Those limbs duplicated and eventually we end up with a caterpillar. The caterpillar, like many insect larvae before, undergoes a metamorphosis into the final adult form; i.e., the butterfly.

Because the caterpillar and the chrysalis both have the same DNA as the butterfly, they can be mutated into whatever the environment requires to keep the species going. There may be any number of stages to an insect's life but the adult butterfly can experiment with all manner of crazy modifications in an attempt to be "one up on" changes to the environment.

Although the caterpillar, eating Milkweed sap, can set up the chrysalis right then and there, it prefers to leave the host plant and go to a nearby non-living structure to pupate. Recently, through a Google search, I found out that the reason for not pupating on the Milkweed is that, once born, the butterfly starts eating the remains of its chrysalis AND that of any other Monarch Butterfly that is close by. To avoid this, the caterpillar seeks a non-living substrate (non-living because pupating on a plant may attract predators).

Now, in support of a Creator God, how the heck did the first flagella arise? Yes, it could have evolved from a simpler cilia but the evolution of the cilia is no less mysterious. The day AI figures this out, is, for me, the so-called singularity.

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