NOT BY CHANCE - The Warrior's Journey®
Insignificance

NOT BY CHANCE

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NOT BY CHANCE 

The Common Baron Caterpillar, native to India and Southeast Asia, is a master of camouflage. Even when you know he’s sitting there on a mango leaf, it’s still difficult to find him.  

The Baron’s effective camouflage is a combination of color, design, and texture. Naturally, it’s the exact same color as the leaf. And shortly after it hatches, it develops a yellow line down its back – which looks just like the center vein of mango leaf. But there’s an added feature of its camouflage. Extending laterally from its body are green, pine needle-like structures. These create a “fading effect” which erases the appearance of any distinct outline of the caterpillar. So, the caterpillar blends in perfectly with its background. It’s really quite ingenious. 

How did the Common Baron Caterpillar get these design features which make it invisible to predators? Well, if you accept the common mantra of Darwinism, these features are “adaptations.” What does that mean? Well the word “adaptation” is misleading. And I think it’s meant to be so. It gives the impression that the caterpillar has the power to change its own appearance to blend with its surroundings, i.e. adapt to its own environment. 

Yet geneticists know this is pure nonsense. All living things can only alter their appearance if their already-existing genetic information empowers them to do so. Any new changes would require a re-engineering of its genetic code, and no organism has the power to alter its own genetic code.  

The only way to effect new genetic information into their DNA is by means of genetic mutations. Mutations are genetic copying mistakes in our DNA and they are almost always hurtful to an organism. They produce deformities, departures from what is already perfect. And genetic mutations are purely random. Nothing guides them. In Darwinian evolution there’s no purpose, plan, or guiding principle.  

What about natural selection? Natural selection is nothing more than a “weeding out” process that will tend to eliminate any organisms with genetic deformities. Organisms with genetic mutations are less fit for survival. Thus, natural selection kills them off. The result? No net evolution.  

This is why we have so many examples of “living fossils” – living plants and animals which also appear in the fossil record. And though these fossils are dated hundreds of millions of years old (e.g. the horseshow crab, nautilus, cockroach) they are identical to what’s alive today. This demonstrates that no change has taken place within the basic kinds of plants and animals. 

How, then, did the Common Baron Caterpillar take on the very same color and yellow vein as the mango leaf? That genetic information was obviously programmed into it to generate those features. It was performed by a super-intelligent Being. 

When I ordered a camper for the back of my Dodge Ram pickup a few years ago, there was no guessing on the color. To get the color of the camper to match the color of the pickup, the camper dealer had to get the Dodge manufacturer’s color specifications. Otherwise, there’d be no match. 

And matching the color of the caterpillar to the mango leaf required specific genetic information which only an intelligent Creator could program. Otherwise, the caterpillar would have no camouflage – something its survival depended on. 

What do we see when we look at all living things? We see a consistent pattern of complex design features. Birds are designed for flight. Fish are designed to swim, eat, and reproduce in water. Cats of all sizes are designed to pursue and kill prey.  

An atheist once told me that he saw nothing but chaos in the universe. Chaos? All matter is arranged in atoms and subatomic particles. There’s order and symmetry everywhere. There are laws and forces that govern everything in the physical realm. How else could we have a Periodic Table in which all elements have a specific atomic weight and radioactive elements have precise and predictable half-lives? This is not chaos. 

And when we delve into the biosphere, millions of super-high-tech machines confront us everywhere. Even at the level of a bacterium, we see complex and well-integrated structures. By the time we reach the level of human beings, the complex arrangement and harmonious working of the brain with all the body’s organs is mind-boggling. 

So, think about it. Would a God who’s put such genius and aforethought into designing us, then leave such fabulous creatures up to the whims of chance? Would God execute such an ingenious plan to create us and have no plan for our life on earth – and into eternity? Not a chance. 

“Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you,” God told Jeremiah (Jeremiah 1:5). In the Scripture David wrote, “All the days ordained for me we written in Your book before one of them came to be” (Psalm 139:16). “For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans for your wellbeing and not for calamity, plans to give you a future and a hope” (Jeremiah 29:11). 

Every moment of our existence was planned and foreseen by God. If we have trusted Christ for salvation and entrusted our lives into His hands, then He is relentlessly and masterfully working all the events of our lives together to bring about His eternal glory and our eternal good (Romans 8:28). 

PRAYER: Dear Father in Heaven, You are the author of order, not confusion. Help me to understand that Your infinite and multifaceted wisdom is incorporating everything in my life – the painful and the pleasant, the successes and the failures – into a wonderful redemptive plan. Help me to trust in Your power, wisdom, and love to save me eternally. Amen. 

 

(Information from: https://www.odditycentral.com/animals/this-caterpillars-camouflage-is-on-a-another-level.html


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