Recently our team spent a couple of days chasing after these seemingly hypersonic and nimble little creatures hoping to catch them if only for a couple seconds within the frame of our high speed digital video camera.

By God’s grace we got some of the most spectacular footage and we wanted to share some of it with the readers of our blog to build the anticipation for our upcoming film on birds. (NOTE: That what you are about to watch is at approximately 1/10th speed which means that 20 seconds of video represents only 2 seconds of real life).

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High-speed video of Hummingbirds

As you experience the awe of how the tiny bird maneuvers at such high speeds, consider by comparison how man was unable to achieve winged flight for many thousands and thousands of years. Not until the turn of the 20th century did we finally (and when measured against what we see in the video, quite clumsily in my opinion) defy gravity using a carefully manufactured giant apparatus. And over 100 years later our best designs today are still crude by comparison. There remains not a single piece of man-made engineering anywhere that rivals the features of design in this tiny seemingly nuclear powered biological life form.

And yet what is almost as remarkable, but far less impressive, is the ideas that float around pop culture that regard the origin of all animals – including the hummingbird – as having come about by the chance coalescence of matter and chemicals organizing themselves. What makes these claims so unbelievable is that they depend on as-of-yet undiscovered natural forces that no one can pinpoint. And what about the fact that these notions offer blind chance the meritorious credit for doing something that the best collective minds throughout all of history have yet to come close to mimic. They consider that random luck is a better builder of advanced design than man, despite the so many trillions of unplanned experiments we witness which demonstrate in the laboratory of life that randomness never creates designs; it just destroys them.

Illustra Media’s How Life Works, is our ambitious goal to continue our legacy to produce visually stunning documentaries filled with examples of phenomenon in nature that defy any kind of Darwinian explanations with the hope to restore the credit of creation to the Creator.

By the way, if you are so led we would be utterly grateful to have you join our team and help us in our effort with whatever financial assistance you can offer.

This is how I felt this morning over my bowl of Puffins and almond milk as I pondered the persistently eccentric debate regarding the existence of…. well, the existence of ID peer-reviewed articles. (Oh yes, if there were Geek Town I’d be mayor. Which didn’t the almond milk substitution in my breakfast cereal already betray that fact?)

For those who have never Wiki searched what exactly a peer-reviewed article is, it is a self regulating process used within an industry/discipline for insuring that published works follows accepted standards of quality.  Scientific journals employ networks of scholars to referee the articles submitted and blow the whistle on any that do not conform to the strict standards of the scientific community thereby barring their publication.

So how can there possibly be a debate about something that is immediately verifiable?  Either ID proponents can point to published peer-reviewed articles or not and that should settle it, right?

The Discovery Institute has done just that for many.  Noteworthy in fact is the celebratory milestone achieved just recently where the 50^th pro ID peer-reviewed article was published ( For a list of all 50, go to http://www.discovery.org/a/2640 ).

And yet there is a different reality, parallel to this one, interwoven throughout the blogosphere.   Lauri Lebo who has made a career of passionately covering the ID / Darwinism debates is one of those who stands bravely in defiance of fact and has boldly affirmed an absolute denial of the existence of any ID peer reviewed articles.  See for example:

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We are left to only speculation as to why someone who is so close to the Darwinism / ID debate continues to ignore the putative existence of these articles. But unlike so many,  I am not so quick to criticize.   For whatever the reason she may have I nonetheless can’t help but to appreciate the advent of this kind of “scientific imagination” where with childlike wonder one can begin to explore and immediately experience a fresh new world unencumbered by the restrictive confines of facts and data.

So for those who are less inclined to jettison the ballast of hard data in their voyage to discover truth, then the matter is settled and they can progress  on toward the other aspects of the Darwinism / ID debate.   Others like our dear friend Lauri, however, have much more freedom to debate WHATEVER they want.   All journeys begin with a single step, and so it would seem some end there as well.

By:  Tyler Geffeney

Click here for full audio: Pastore show audio (or you can right-click and save to computer)

With captivating photos, this ebook offers a largess of information that will enhance your understanding and appreciation of butterflies.  Paul Nelson and Ann Gauger explore the riddle that metamorphosis poses, and highlight the immense biological engineering that must take place inside a chrysalis. The ebook also titillates with an historical look at the role butterflies played in Alfred Wallace’s intellectual journey.  The 19th century evolutionary biologist realized that these remarkable creatures carried the unmistakable imprint of intelligent design.

To order your FREE copy click on the book icon above.

EVOLUTION NEWS AND VIEWS

Metamorphosis:  The Beauty and Design of Butterflies.

The event will be held at the historic Plummer Auditorium in Fullerton, California.  It is open to the public.  For more information visit: http://www.illustramedia.com/premiere/

On April 26, our production team finished their work on Metamorphosis: The Beauty and Design of Butterflies.  The documentary was 15 months in the making and explores the extraordinary life cycle of these remarkable insects—and why the only reasonable explanation for their origin is an intelligent agent.  Metamorphosis was filmed in Mexico, Ecuador, and two of the leading research centers in North America—Butterfly World (Ft. Lauderdale, Florida) and the McGuire Center for Lepidoptera (University of Florida).  It features the first extensive MRI images of a caterpillar’s transformation, inside a chrysalis.

The DVD version of Metamorphosis is scheduled for release on June 15.  The Blu-ray version will be available on July 6.  Premiers for the film are being planned throughout the country.  Dates and locations will be posted on this website.

If you are interested in knowing how you can help support the production of Metamorphosis, contact Illustra Media.

Japanese actors were hired to record and replace all of the English voices.  The end product is a seamless, compelling presentation—if you’re fluent in Japanese.  If you aren’t, you can watch it with English subtitles.

This newest translation is the 11th international version of The Privileged Planet.  Throughout the world, the documentary continues to be a very popular and effective presentation of the evidence for intelligent design revealed through astronomy and cosmology.

For more information, contact us through this website.

Lad wanted to film a caterpillar hatching from an egg, growing, and then emerging from a chrysalis…so for starters, he had to secure a supply of freshly laid monarch eggs and plenty of milkweed (the only plant monarch caterpillars will eat).  Lad contacted The Monarch Program, a non-profit research organization in San Diego.  There, he purchased four milkweed plants and eight new eggs.  Over the next four weeks, he watched, photographed and raised to adulthood, seven beautiful monarchs.  It was quite an adventure.  Here’s his first-hand account of the experience:

I set up the gear in the corner of our family room.  Lights, cameras, tripod, macro-lenses, plants, the works.  Then, I waited six days for the eggs to mature.  After several nights of getting up at midnight and 3AM to check on the “kids,” they all ended up hatching within two hours of each other.  The big day was three-ring circus.  I was trying to guess which egg would hatch next so I could get it into position for filming.  While I was taping the action on one plant, two eggs would crack on another.  When the morning ended, I had filmed two excellent hatchings–including the part where the microscopic caterpillar devoured the empty egg shell.  As I was soon to find out, that was only an appetizer.

For the next eight or nine days, the caterpillars did little else but eat and grow.  They entered the world measuring about 1/32nd-of-an-inch, and ended up being as long as my index finger. I had to make two additional trips to San Diego for more milkweed plants.  Each morning, I’d get up and take role call to be certain everyone was present and accounted for.  Most of the time, I’d be missing two or three of the caterpillars, so my wife (who gave them all names) would start searching.  We found one guy climbing on the ceiling.  Another, was inching his way up my tripod leg.  Sometimes, they’d be crawling along the floor.

When friends would visit, they’d want a tour.  Everyone got a big kick out of what was going on.  One little boy asked if we did this type of thing all the time.   We watched eating, molting, crawling, climbing, the formation of chrysalises, and seven glorious emergences.   Through it all, I never tired of observing this miraculous process of metamorphosis.  A caterpillar looks nothing like a butterfly.  Yet, in a matter of weeks, it transforms into a beautiful winged insect.  Science is still trying to understand the entire process.  It’s often referred to as “butterfly magic.”  I agree.

On Sunday November 7, we took our final monarch into the backyard and released him to the world.  My wife had named him, “Billy.”  She shed a tear as he flew away.  I felt a little misty, myself.  I never would have imagined we could become so emotionally attached to an insect.

Lad’s excitement about watching and photographing butterflies is contagious.  Between eggs hatching, caterpillars molting, and butterflies spreading their wings for the first time,  we could go on and on describing the sheer wonder of these magnificent creatures.  Their life-cycles are compelling evidence of intelligent design.  We’re anxious to share this evidence with you.    Metamorphosis is scheduled for release in the Spring of 2011.