You see a butterfly, how it is nicely painted. You just see duplicate in both the wings. Just like an artist paint nicely, it is painted. So we think it is coming out of nothing. This is our foolishness. Here is, that it is coming out of the jnana-sakti (God’s power of knowledge). But God’s jnana (knowledge) is so wide that simply by His desire, simply by His will, it can be executed. These are the things to be studied.
Sri Caitanya-caritamrta, Madhya-lila 20.245-255
by His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada
New York, December 16, 1966
“What an achievement — artistically, scientifically, musically, inspirationally! The film is a stunning and convincing case for intelligent design.”
David F. Coppedge
Author & Lecturer
Butterfly Swarm Buries Darwin
July 25, 2011, Creation Evolution Headlines — Billions of butterflies, flashing their gossamer wings with brilliant colors, have swarmed over Darwin, leaving him unable to breathe. Figuratively, that is. Illustra Media’s new documentary Metamorphosis, just released on Blu-Ray last week, leaves little room for Darwin’s theory, while making a powerful case for intelligent design. The film is already being hailed as a masterpiece.
Featuring some of the most beautiful footage of butterflies and their amazing life cycles from egg to caterpillar to chrysalis to flying insect, with information and music to match, Metamorphosis breaks new ground in butterfly research. Animations based on MRI imaging of a chrysalis show for the first time how organs are broken down and rebuilt inside within ten days.
Electron micrographs zoom in on the antennae, compound eyes, legs and wings of butterflies. Stunning close-ups of egg-laying, caterpillar molts, chrysalis formation and emergence show phenomena rarely witnessed by non-scientists. The story of the Monarch butterfly migrations to Mexico is told with some of the most wondrous shots ever made of millions of butterflies flying through the air in remote mountain forest colonies only discovered in the 1970s.
Metamorphosis presents 46 minutes of fascinating science about butterflies before asking how such natural wonders could come about. By then, the photos and information have laid such a strong foundation of intelligent design, the arguments against Darwinian evolution are almost academic.
But they are well stated: neo-Darwinism cannot account for the origin of two body plans (caterpillar and insect) in the same genome, in a process that destroys one and rebuilds it into another. It would be like a car encasing itself in a garage, recycling its parts, and emerging as a helicopter. That whimsical analogy is actually an understatement, explains philosopher of biology Dr. Paul Nelson, because the butterfly is even more complex.
A caterpillar entering a chrysalis is entering a casket unless it has a plan and a coordinated process to emerge out the other side. Most of the caterpillar’s tissues are consumed and reconstituted into organs that have no analogue in the caterpillar. Developmental biologist Dr. Ann Gauger adds that an guided processes like evolution, with no ability to foresee a goal, cannot account for one body plan, let alone two.
The message of Metamorphosis, though, does not end on a negative note – the bankruptcy of Darwinian theory. Nelson and Gauger show that butterflies present a positive case for intelligent design. The only cause capable of reaching an end goal is intelligence, they say. That the end result is an object of great beauty, an aesthetically pleasing butterfly, its wings painted like works of art, is icing on the cake.
Metamorphosis includes the expertise of lepidopterist Ronald Boender, entomology department head Thomas Emmel and biology professor Richard P. Stringer along with Nelson and Gauger. In the Bonus Features, Dr. Emmel, who has visited the Monarch colonies in Mexico every year for over 20 years, answers many additional questions about butterflies, and viewers can take tours of three American butterfly houses.
The original orchestral score by Mark Lewis includes voices of world-class African-American singers; the pieces can be enjoyed separately in the Bonus Features as conert pieces. The film is available on DVD and Blu-Ray at the Metamorphosis the Film website, where visitors can watch a 4-minute preview.
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