Excerpt:
Last summer, I had the privilege of attending lectures by one of the scientists featured in the upcoming Illustra Media documentary, Metamorphosis. Dr. Paul Nelson explained the science behind this unique argument for intelligent design theory, and I’ve been waiting with bated breath for the film’s resease ever since!
The intelligent design argument presented by the film (which I understand isn’t discussed until the third part) is the enormous problem that insect metamorphosis poses for the theoretical neo-Darwinian descent pathways. In plain language, neo-Darwinism claims that random genetic mutations coupled with natural selection acting over greats spans of time are responsible for a caterpillar’s physical ability to transform into a butterfly. There’s an insurmountable obstacle for this alleged process, however.
When it enters the pupa phase, in which it forms a hard chrysalis around itself, the caterpillar’s body totally liquefies. Subsequently, an entirely new body plan is constructed from this chemical soup, and what emerges from the chrysalis is absolutely nothing like what went in. Now, according to neo-Darwinism, mutations that equip an organism for such a spectacular metamorphosis are cumulative. The mutations that dictate chrysalis formation would come first. Next would come mutations that cause body-liquefication. Next would come—uh-oh—do you see the problem here? If a caterpillar goes into a pupa stage without the necessary genetic information to build the new body structure and GET OUT OF the pupa stage (an “escape plan,” if you will), it would simply die inside the chrysalis, never to emerge. Thus, there is NO ADVANTAGE for natural selection to act upon, and the process of metamorphosis could never evolve. What would be needed here is for the caterpillar to acquire ALL the mutations necessary for the pupa phase and ALL the mutations necessary for the architecture of a survivable adult body plan AT THE SAME TIME. Based on what evolutionary biology teaches about how mutations accumulate, this simply isn’t going to happen. This is a case of all-or-nothing that argues strongly for intentional, intelligent design.
If you want to see the first three in the series, look here:
- Unlocking the Mystery of Life (DNA)
- The Privileged Planet (Fine-Tuning and Habitability)
- Darwin’s Dilemma (Fossils)
Melissa is a graduate student at Biola University, studying for the Master of Arts in Science and Religion. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in biology and worked in biotechnology and pharmaceutical research for five years after obtaining her undergraduate degree. She has spent more than a decade studying the science and philosophy pertaining to the origins debate and is also currently working toward her certification in general Christian apologetics from Biola. She directs The Woodlands chapter of Reasonable Faith and welcomes opportunities to speak and teach on scientific apologetics.
She also is a homeschooling mom, which is the best kind of mom.
WINTERY KNIGHT 
I think that caterpillars / butterflies are one of the ways God mocks athiests.
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Melissa’s analysis is sadly lacking. The pupa’s body does not “totally liquefy”. Cells called imaginal cells remain intact, as they have been since they formed earlier. These cells are like the ‘stem cells’ you hear about that can differentiate into many different types of cell. They consume the remains of the cells that have died and build the new body.
Cumulative mutations does not mean that mutations are accumulated historically in the same order that they affect a change in development of the body. For example, a mutation that happens a million years after the last mutation could change the gene regulation network that drives the very early development.
As a result of these misconceptions, Melissa’s argument in favor of intelligent design is undercut.
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Well, I don’t think her argument is undercut just because you speculated about what might happen. We need to see this actually working in a lab.
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Hi WK,
Here is a good place to start:
Heterochrony in limb evolution: developmental mechanisms and natural selection.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19130597
So, yes, we do understand a good bit about this kind of evolutionary change affecting development. Of course, I can’t wait to see the ID alternative working in a lab as well. I hope it is more than “Gosh ain’t they purty!”
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David vun Kannon,
You have a unique way of presenting your ideas. You tend to make extremely general and vague statements and then post links to articles that appear to have a dubious connection at best with the discussion at hand.
It is as though you think that by throwing a lot of big words around and posting links to pro-evolution studies you can intellectually intimidate people into checking their common sense at the door and believing whatever it is you are trying to say.
Exactly how does the heterochrony study prove butterfly evolution? The abstract to the article you posted didn’t mention anything about butterflies or metamorphosis. It seems to be primarily concerned with limb development and analyzes turtles and bats. Since you think this article demonstrates butterfly evolution, break it down for me and give me a point A to point B description of how this applies to butterflies.
//Of course, I can’t wait to see the ID alternative working in a lab as well. I hope it is more than “Gosh ain’t they purty!”//
This concept is illogical on its face. ID states that some biological structures were intelligently designed in history, and as such wouldn’t be able to be demonstrated in a lab in the same way that an unguided process would be able to be demonstrated.
Let me illustrate what I am trying to say. Imagine that 10,000 years from now some people find the Mona Lisa painting. Person A says, “How elegant! How beautiful! Clearly some great artist painted this!” Person B replies, “No, you nitwit! This is clearly the result of an unguided process! In fact, if you go the lab and squirt some paint in a particular way at the wall, you will get a painting that, in some weird abstract way, vaguely resembles this! And here are some additional just-so speculations about how something in the distant past made this, IDiot!”
SInce person A cannot bring the original artist back to the lab (although he could draw a replica of the painting himself) he cannot prove intelligence in that way. Nevertheless, someone claiming that an unguided process caused something to exist should be able to demonstrate that assertion in a laboratory setting, since the process is unguided. To prove intelligence you would have to use the same techniques that we use in things like the SETI program, by searching for information and complexity that natural, random processes cannot create.
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Hi WGB,
There is a limit to what you can accomplish in a blog entry, or a blog comment. If I want to talk intelligently about metamorphosis, I google it, wikipedia it, and read what I can _before_ writing anything. I try to share links that will save time for the folks I’m talking with.
The heterochrony review answers part of WK’s concern that I’m just speculating, and we haven’t studied this stuff in the lab. We have. If we haven’t inserted changes into a fly genome to change it into a form that develops into a caterpillar, we should fund more science!
“illogical on its face” – um yeah, that is why ID isn’t science. You might notice that SETI isn’t mainstream science either. SETI also explicitly accepts that it can only find intelligence that resembles us. ID does not accept that it can only find designers, intelligent agents, like ourselves. I think one of ID’s big failures from a theological perspective is exactly this “God in the image of Man” problem.
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A quick note on checking your common sense at the door – happens a lot in science. We’re talking about areas such as the Big Bang and the evolution of metamorphosis in which we have no experience and our intuitions fail regularly. Science prefers (as a rule of thumb) the simpler hypothesis. It might be that the universe is best described by rules too complicated for us to grasp. Our current explanations are just very good approximations.
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DVK,
//A quick note on checking your common sense at the door – happens a lot in science….//
I couldn’t help but think of this quote when I read your message:
“Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural. We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover that materialism is absolute for WE CANNOT ALLOW A DIVINE FOOT IN THE DOOR.”
Richard Lewontin, “Billions and Billions of Demons,” The New York Review of Books, January 9, 1997, 31.
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Not sure where you think the Lewontin quote fits in a discussion of intuitional failure. Are you claiming that the quantum nature of matter and energy, the absolute speed of light in all reference frames, the interconvertibility of mass and energy, Heisenberg uncertainty, wave-particle duality, etc are effects of a scientists precommitment to materialism??? I’m sure that things which rely on these effects, such as GPS and DVD players, work – even for Christians.
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David,
I’m not a biologist, so forgive my ignorance. When you say “For example, a mutation that happens a million years after the last mutation could change the gene regulation network that drives the very early
development,” what do you mean? For a mutation to be conserved for a million years, doesn’t it have to be expressed and confer some kind of selective advantage for the organism? Are you proposing some kind of pre-adaptation or exaptation by which a mutation that does something else useful in the organism is then coopted by the metamorphosis process to do something very different? If so, then what did you have in mind? For instance, what were the genes and proteins involved in metamorphosis involved in before they became involved in metamorphosis? I’m sure this is in the literature somewhere, so could you point me to a good review? I have library access through Duke, so I should be able to get all the major journals (and the vast majority of the minor ones!).
-Neil
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Hi Neil,
Merely this, and remember, this is just an example to show that mutations, though cumulative, do not have to arrive in the genome in the same order as the stage of development they affect.
When I say “after a million years” I’m setting the stage with a genome that has been stable – no mutations getting fixed permanently for a million years. Now a variation comes along in an individual that affects a gene in the GRN of the early development of the organism. The fact that this is the last mutation does not stop it from changing a very early part of the development cycle.
An example in primates is how much adult humans resemble baby chimps. The general area is called heterochrony, meaning some change in timing in development. As a hypothesis to explain the origin of metamorphosis in insects, see http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10519548
In a sense, the genes for metamorphosis have always been involved in metamorphosis. Building up and tearing down tissues on the way to building the adult body is an ancient and active part of insect development, and our own fetal development. Programmed cell death (apoptosis), reabsorption of the cell remains, and new cells getting built.
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This seems like another “just so” Darwinian narrative. “Just so” stories don’t really accomplish anything, since anyone can come up with an ad hoc explanation to explain away anything.
What evidence do you have that something actally happened to change the gene regulation network? What kind of mutation would this be? Which gene? And can we replicate this type of thing in other insects and see similar results? For that matter can we undo the mutation in the butterfly and turn it back into a regular caterpillar?
Furthermore, it seems pretty obvious to me that one simple mutation wouldn’t be enough to pull something like this off. Which mutations were needed for the imaginal cells and chrysalis formation? And how did the butterfly develop the navigation systems for flight and migration?
And btw, I’m still waiting for your answer on what you think caused the Big Bang.
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Hi WG,
I wasn’t saying that one mutation to a GRN was responsible for the evolution of metamorphosis. I was giving an example of how mutations accumulate but can effect different points in the developmental sequence.
I do want to reply to your post over at my blog, but the quick answer is I don’t know. If all of our physical dimensions, including time, started their existence at that point, then there is no meaning in the phrase “before the Big Bang” and meaningful causation as well. I think think this is Stephen Hawking’s basic position, that ‘before the Big Bang’ is something like ’91 degrees North latitude’ – you can string the words together, but they don’t refer to anything real.
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David vun Kannon,
// the quick answer is I don’t know.//
Thanks for your honesty and candor. If I may, I’d like to ask a few followup questions.
1) If you don’t know what caused the Big Bang, how can you definitively rule out that it wasn’t caused by a divine Being?
2) Would you agree that the scientific fact that the Universe had a distinct beginning is consistent with what is written in scripture, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the Earth”?
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Hi WGB,
1 – I don’t. But it seems you haven’t really grasped what I was saying about how the word “cause” becomes meaningless when used with “Big Bang”. Our normal time dimension is not a pure constant thing upon which you can write tick marks for each second, back to the Big Bang and beyond. There is no “t minus ten seconds and counting” during which God (or some other process) could ignite the Big Bang.
2 – I agree it is consistent with some understandings of the verse, such as “In the beginning, God created all the mass-energy of the Universe, including everything we see in the heavens, and that which would eventually become the Earth billions of years later.” But so what? I don’t try to learn science from the Bible. Does the Euphrates flow out of the Garden of Eden? I’m sure it feels good for a person of faith (as I was for 25 years) to be able to align some part of their scriptures with the real world. But eventually, faith is based on what isn’t alignable with the real world. If the saved sent back text messages from heaven, and the damned from hell, it wouldn’t be faith to believe.
No one is going to build an experiment that proves that Jesus Christ is part of a triune godhead, existed external to the universe, or acheived an eternally valid sacrifice for those that believe, to save them from damnation. Given that fact, the idea that the Big Bang and Gen 1:1 look kinda the same if you squint at just the right angle is not a high priority to me.
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DVK,
//There is no “t minus ten seconds and counting” during which God (or some other process) could ignite the Big Bang//
Well, I respectfully disagree because we don’t know what type of reality exists outside of our Universe. I agree that OUR time dimension has no prior moment to t=0 at the Big Bang. But when I ask what happened prior to the Big Bang I am referring to metaphysical time.
The way I think of it is like this. Let’s say that you and I create our own MMRPG, which has a dimension of time. Let’s say that for every second in our Universe 30 seconds go by in the MMRPG universe. (So if people play the game for several real time hours they would go through several virtual days in the game, kind of like Everquest used to be.)
Now suppose that two computer controlled NPCs in the game become artificially intelligent and self-aware. They began to speculate that their world is somehow designed by another intelligence. Even though they technically couldn’t ask what happened before t=0 in the virtual online world because that concept would make no sense to them, WE would know that there would be a greater reality in which causal events DID occur prior to t=0 in the online world.
Interestingly enough, William Lane Craig discusses this issue with Hugh Ross in the blog posted on this website (William Lane Craig meets the Reasons to Believe panel). WLC speculates that our Universe is a type of clock for metaphysical time. You can hear that part of the discussion starting at the 1 hour 27 minute mark if you’re interested.
//? I’m sure it feels good for a person of faith (as I was for 25 years) to be able to align some part of their scriptures with the real world//
It’s really weird that you and I appear to be opposite images of each other. I was a non-believer for the first 25 years of my life (raised in a secular home) and then became a believer. We also appear to have very similar educational and career backgrounds.
//Given that fact, the idea that the Big Bang and Gen 1:1 look kinda the same if you squint at just the right angle is not a high priority to me.//
It seems to me that the physical sciences support the God hypothesis more than they support the materialist hypothesis. Some might even say this evidence is compelling (for example the teleological argument which convinced people like Antony Flew). Theists have an answer for the origin of the Universe, the apparent design of the Universe and the origin of life. Materialists really have no answer for these mysteries and must rely on faith that someday some viable materialist explanation will be discovered.
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Hi WGB,
If I understand you correctly, you are saying that you think our universe is embedded in another space, lets call it The Mind of God. I think that is a fine speculation, but I don’t know of any evidence for it. Of course, if there were evidence for it, it would be physical, material evidence, which would only point to our universe being embedded in another, physical universe – not what most of us would call the Mind of God.
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DVK,
//I think that is a fine speculation, but I don’t know of any evidence for it.//
Fair point. But we don’t have the scientific technology to make any measurements or observations outside of our Universe, so really any hypothesis is a speculation. I think its fair to say that there is some greater reality out there, because something caused our Universe to spring into existence.
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The hypothesis you describe isn’t even one of the top few being considered by evolutionary biology. The problems for metamorphosis are so serious, the more honest evolutionists have given up on the Natural Selection solution altogether and have begun inventing stories about cross-species hybridizaitons, etc. to account for it. I would refer you to the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 106, Number 47. Also, See Nature Volume 401.
Oh, and the use of the word “liquefication” came from a secular journal.
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http://www.pnas.org/content/106/47/E131.full.pdf Is a good reference trashing that idea, in the same issue of PNAS. File Williamson’s idea of velvet worms hybridizing with insects in Aisle 7, “Crank Science”, next to Sewell on 2LoT.
But notice that Williamson’s idea is actually a very direct challenge to the Darwinian ideas of descent with modification – and he still gets published in PNAS! How did that happen?
I have no trouble with liquefaction, just the adverb totally. Some cells continue to exist and these cells rebuild the body to the adult plan.
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Oh, and you are correct that mutations don’t HAVE to accumulate in a specific order. But metamorphosis is a very peculiar case. Why would you need any instructions (complete or partial) for a viable adult body plan before a full set of plans for pupation? Seems pretty far fetched. Besides, the suggestion that so many necessary mutations could be preserved, flying under the selection radar for such a long span of time is highly speculative…at best.
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I agree metamorphosis is a peculiar case, but by comparing different species (not just Monarch butterflies) we can learn some things. First, not all metamorphosis is the same. There are simpler models of development where the building of a cocoon is simpler or skipped. There are species that go direct from egg to adult with no metamorphosis at all. The take away message is that it is possible to vary middle of the developmental program after the beginning and the end have been worked out successfully.
Here’s a real just-so-story. Imagine a fly that lays its eggs on the underside of leaves (a relatively safe place). No stretch of the imagination, there are real insects that do this. The fly has a complete developmental program already built and working, from egg to adult. Now along comes one or more changes in the developmental program that push the development of the mouth parts and gut forward, compared to, say, the outer shell, wings, and legs. An example of heterochrony, again easy to imagine. Now the larval fly is hanging by a functioning mouth, and starts sucking nutrients from the leaf. Could this be an advantage to the fly? Yes. More food early in life, stronger healthier fly, more children.
Soon the flies with sucking larvae take over the population. Of course a larvae that can’t move will eventually suck up all the nutrients around where it was laid, and now it is stuck. It has to grow up. Or a new round of heterochrony mutations come along that push forward the growth of rudimentary limbs. Now the larvae can move around enough to munch on more of the leaf, and get bigger.
At this point in the just-so-story, we are almost at the point of modern caterpillars. How did we get there? We took a working animal, and played a little bit with the order in which different parts developed. These changes led to plausible selection advantages. So there is no “insurmountable obstacle”, in your words, in metamorphosis.
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