This post will feature some brilliant cut and paste, and two unlikely opponents. (Or, after you read, perhaps not so unlikely, as they seem to flatly contradict each other). Why cut and paste? I'm to damn lazy to actually write it out myself.
Now...
"If you wanted to invent an imaginary life cycle that could never happen by evolution, you would be hard pressed to invent one that would beat that of the moths and butterflies. The caterpillar stage goes through life eating voraciously, then he stops eating and changes into the mummy-like, immobile phase of his life cycle called the pupa or chrysalid. Some prepare for this stage by covering themselves with a cocoon, others hide in the dirt while still others hang suspended with tiny hooks from a pad made with silk which they have extruded and glued to a tree. Doing this, they put the principles of velcro into practical use long before human scientists were able to perfect the technique.

In the pupa stage the lepidoptera often resemble a tough little brown sack. Inside the sack, the caterpillar's organs break down into a sort of a liquid from which the wings, legs, eyes, etc. of the moth or butterfly are then constructed. The process is called metamorphosis.

Think about it. After the first caterpillar had turned to liquid, could it have waited millions of years for a fantastic series of mutations to use the liquid to build a beautiful creature that could fly? It is because the instructions for the transformation are already written in the DNA that the transformation takes place before the liquid rots. The change usually takes just a few days or weeks!

How much change is there?

- The caterpillar typically crawls in on three pairs of legs attached to his thorax and three more pairs on his abdomen. After the transformation, he flies off on two pairs of new wings so you may not even notice that he has just three pairs of legs instead of the six pairs he came in with.

- He goes into the pupa stage with a body consisting of 13 segments, but flies off with a new body of 10 segments.

- Before the caterpillar becomes a pupa it has six simple eyes on each side of its head. The butterfly or moth flies off with two compound eyes and usually one pair of simple eyes.

- The short antennae of the caterpillar are replaced by longer antennae.

- The caterpillar comes in without any organs for sex and reproduction, the butterfly/moth flies off with them.

- After the strong chewing jaws of the caterpillar turn to liquid, a sucking mouth is formed which has a long tube to insert into flowers. The tube coils up when not in use.

(1998 Encyclopedia Britannica, on CD). Groliers Multimedia Encyclopedia, 1988, Butterflies and Moths).

These are just some of the outward changes which can be easily observed. Inside are hidden a new nervous system and the muscles, glands, and what not that are necessary for the butterfly to fly and function! In addition, the two long and complex glands which the caterpillar used to extrude silk are absent after the transformation.

Evolutionary theory teaches that all living things were developed by chance mutations which introduced small random changes in DNA programs. To be accepted by natural selection, the theory maintains that these changes had to offer some survival advantage at every stage. Think about it. How could all this have happened in a sack full of liquid before it rotted? Actually, all the stages are written in the DNA and there is good evidence that they have always been there!

The Stages of Life

- Egg,
- Caterpillar,
- Pupa
- Butterfly,

If the caterpillar had, long ago, developed directly into a moth with no pupa stage in between and had left a lot of intermediate fossils to prove it, true believers in evolution might have found some way to explain away the fact that a better protected animal had evolved into something more vulnerable. But such fossils have not been found. The moth seems to have always had the amazing life cycle it has today.

As you read the literature and observe nature, search for suggestions as to how accidental mutations could write the thousands of lines of DNA code which would gradually program each of the very different stages of the life of the moth and keep them all coordinated. Good luck!

To my knowledge no way has ever been discovered, or even suggested, by which mutations could modify the DNA, to produce the complex programs for all four of the moth's greatly differing and but perfectly coordinated stages. It is not because of the evidence that most evolutionists, believe that it came about by mutations and natural selection. There is no such evidence. It is because their world view excludes the other alternative. Show these same people a simple mortar and pestle made by a primitive people, and they will immediately recognize that they were produced by intelligent beings. Things that are obviously made to work together just don't happen by chance. "

And Now...

"Someone has said, "The chicken is an egg's way of making another egg!" In the case of the butterfly, things are not that simple.

A thinking person who really wants to believe in evolution must choose between some very discouraging choices. He can:

- Believe that caterpillars evolved first, and somehow survived without reproductive organs for however many millions of generations it took for the butterfly, the only part of the life cycle capable of sexual reproduction, to evolve.

- Believe that the caterpillar, or another of the earlier stages, evolved first, complete with reproductive organs, but lost them later.

- Believe that the more complex flying stage with the sexual organs evolved first and the simpler crawling stages evolved from it later.

- Believe that some completely unknown, and imaginary kind of super mutation wrote the entire DNA code for all four life phases (egg, caterpillar, pupa, and butterfly) all in one shot. so that there would be no necessity for reproductive possibilities in any stage but the last.

No way exists for any known types of mutations to account for any of these possibilities. Neither is there any evidence that the Lepidoptera ever lacked any of the stages which they have today..

The problem for evolution is not "What color moths would be left if those of the other color had been eaten?" It is "How could the egg, caterpillar, pupa and butterfly have developed in the first place?" I have personally read many books which defend amoeba to man evolution using the example of moth populations changing from a lighter to darker color, and claiming that these color changes are a wonderful example of evolution taking place. However, I cannot remember ever having read a single evolutionary author who ventured a suggestion of how evolution could possibly account for the development of the completely different, but completely coordinated phases of the life cycle in the first place.

Before the existence of any detailed knowledge of DNA, if one really wanted to believe in evolution, the theory might have seemed to provide a plausible explanation of how either a caterpillar or a moth might have evolved. However, to coordinate four completely different phases of life, which include the fantastic change that takes place in the pupa from the sexless caterpillar to the moth with its reproductive capacity, seems to be miles beyond anything that the random mutations could make in the DNA instructions. "

One example twasn't meant to completely discredit evolution-just shed some light on it's problems.

so....
1) homeobox genes are incredibly intricate.
2) there currently appears to be a dearth in the fossilization record of very delicate larvae.

i don't think that these discredit evolution. i also shy away from the "god must have done it" explanation based upon these conclusions. however, yes, evolution is not fully apparent in the fossil record.

some fascinating readings may be garnered from the theories of heat shock protein mutations resulting in the "bottleneck" evolutionary trends. if anyone would like a recap, i'd be happy to take a stab at it.

I don't get it. What's your point?