Tag Archives: Luna Moth

The Physical Immortality of Man, Part Two

18 Feb

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By Mike McGee

In Part One of this two-part series, at https://mcgeepost.com/2014/02/16/the-physical-immortality-of-man-part-one/ we followed the life-cycle of bacteria and of a simple insect, the Luna Moth, through complete cycles, paying attention to the details of the process. We demonstrated the role of living DNA and the genome in the replication of each stage in the life of the moth. Now we’re going to review these general principles to make sure we are clear and that you understand what was said in Part One. After this review we will move into the specific realm of human life. Continue reading →

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The Physical Immortality of Man, Part One

16 Feb

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By Mike McGee

The purpose of this discussion is to demonstrate scientifically that man is an immortal being. By this statement I mean that the known and proven scientific evidence shows that the physical body of each man is immortal. You and I and all the rest of us are at the least many thousands of years old. We have lived continuously all this time without death.

This statement is limited to the physical body of man. I will be using physical science to demonstrate a physical fact. The discussion does not at all touch on the consciousness of man, or the spirit or soul of man, or the awareness we all have of the world around us. You will find no theology here, and we are not going to look at the “afterlife” or “many lifetimes” as part of the proof of our own immortality. Continue reading →

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DNA and the Cycle of Life, Part Two

18 May

From www.mcgeepost.com .Copyright © 2013 Michael H. McGee. All rights reserved. Please feel free to share or re-post all or part non-commercially, hopefully with attribution.

In Part One of this series we followed the life-cycle of a simple insect, the Luna Moth, through one complete cycle, paying attention to the details of the process. We demonstrated the role of DNA and the genome in the replication of each stage in the life of the moth. This Part Two will make a lot more sense if you take the time to read Part One before going further.

Where in the life-cycle of the Luna Moth is death? It’s going to be hard to wrap your head around the answer to this question. The common answer is that the adult moth dies. The scientific explanation defies the normal logic of life and death, beginning and end. Here we’re going to analyze the meaning of the simple story of the moth; then move on to more complex matters you need to know about.

Each cell of the moth contains DNA in its nucleus. For each moth the DNA, the genome, is identical in each cell of that particular moth. This genome contains a full set of chromosomes, which are all the building instructions and inheritable traits of an organism. This genome is alive and a part of the tissue of the moth. Indeed, it carries in its living tissue the very definition of the moth, and the full living memory of how to conduct each of the stages in the life-cycle of the moth. (Reference: My earlier blog “DNA and Memory.”)

If the double helix DNA strand ceases to live for even a moment it will fall silent, and will not retain the memory of how to build any part of the moth’s structure. So when you squeeze a caterpillar until the green goop splatters, or squash moth eggs under your foot, the DNA in the structure is actually dead, and cannot any longer participate in the life-cycle.

Yet the life-cycle of the Luna Moth goes on, creature after creature and year after year. Most of us look at life and death as the beginning and the end. The egg hatches, and after several stages produces an adult moth, which dies. Yet when we scientifically examine in detail the various stages of the moth’s life, we can come to only one conclusion. There is a part of the moth that does not ever die: its living genome.

When philosophers look at life after death they tend to exclusively look at the death of the adult organism, and opine whether there is any physical or spiritual continuity after the death of the adult. They’ve been looking for life in all the wrong places.

A scientist must consider visible and provable facts as the standard for determining the correctness of observations of any physical process. Up to now scientists have been in denial about the continuity of life, ignoring what is right under their noses. The stages in the life of the Luna Moth are factual, clear, and observable, and no scientist can disagree that these stages are exactly as I have described them. Even better, these stages are simple in the moth, and therefore easy to analyze if you are looking at them without any preconceived notions.

The earlier posed question was: where in the life-cycle of the Luna Moth is death? The proper scientific answer is: nowhere. The life-cycle of this moth is continuous, and life never ends as we go from generation to generation. Death is only a by-product; irrelevant, one might say, from the point of view of the genome. The genome never dies.

Of course some moths do not mate before they die, and caterpillars and eggs and pupae are squashed and otherwise die. For all these who do not complete the life-cycle, death is the end and they have no further existence. There are thus many who die without continuity; yet many more do complete the life-cycle and carry on the unending cycle of life for generations to come.

So we see the eggs, the larvae, the pupae, and finally the adult moth. So the adult moth engages in “adult behavior” of a sexual nature. During mating the living DNA in the sperm from the male is ejected from its phallus across an open space into the body of the female, where it enters her genital chamber. For the moth the open space may be only a millimeter or so, yet the sperm, laden with living DNA, is definitely outside the physical structure of either moth.

Thus the only time in the life cycle of the moth when the living DNA crosses an open space outside the body is during mating. The sperm then sits in this open space, inside the female genital chamber, until the eggs, containing the living DNA of the female, are laid by the female.

“The eggs do not become fertile at the time of copulation. The eggs get fertilized as they pass through a mix of male sperm, seminal fluids and ‘glue’, stored in the female’s body. This immersion/fertilization takes place as the female expels/deposits the eggs.” http://www.silkmoths.bizland.com/Actiaslunarearing.htm .  (This site contains a wealth of detailed information about the Luna Moth.)

Each sperm is a single cell, yet it is alive in every scientific sense of the word. The DNA genome it carries contains memory or information identical to that of every other genome in the body of the male moth. Each egg is a single cell which is equally alive. It contains within itself memory or information identical to that of every other genome in the body of the female moth.

Thus it is clear that the life of a Luna Moth is unending (unless interrupted by outside factors such as a dear reader squeezing a caterpillar until green goop flies everywhere). The place where the unending continuation of life occurs is in the passage of living sperm across an open space during reproduction, to join together with the living eggs.

It may even be said that the death of the adult moth following mating is irrelevant to the carrying on of the unending (not quite eternal yet close) life of the insect species known as the Luna Moth, actias luna. The cycle of life is complete and ongoing, without the intrusion of death, when one examines the reproductive act rather than focusing on the fate of the adult moth.

This showy yet commonplace six-legged insect has been gifted by nature with unending life. One could almost call it immortality, yet such an appellation would be an exaggeration. It is most likely that the life which is present in each phase of every Luna Moth is hundreds or thousands of years old, and will continue unabated through another hundreds or thousands of years into the future. It’s rather remarkable that Nature would give such an unlikely creature such a long unending life-span. Yet there you have it.

There is no death for these insects, the ones who make it through their entire life-cycle. The living DNA which is passed on during reproduction contains all the memories and instructions to guide the insect through its next rather identical series of changes from egg to adult moth. The cycle of life for these creatures is continuous and unending, according to accurate scientific observation.

There are hundreds of thousands of different insects and other crawling and buzzing creatures whose life-cycle is marked by sexual reproduction and unending life. The defining moment for each is the movement of a living DNA genome across an open space to meet with another living DNA genome. There is always an open space to be traversed. Life persists and continues unabated across the open spaces.

There is no death for any of these lowly creatures, except when they get stepped on or lose their habitat or are unable to breed.

In the next essay we will take you to places you probably didn’t think you could go. Stay tuned!

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DNA and the Cycle of Life, Part One

15 May

From www.mcgeepost.com .Copyright © 2013 Michael H. McGee. All rights reserved. Please feel free to share or re-post all or part non-commercially, hopefully with attribution.

“Life is specified by genomes. Every organism, including humans, has a genome that contains all of the biological information needed to build and maintain a living example of that organism. The biological information contained in a genome is encoded in its deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA).” http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/About/primer/genetics_genome.html (2004).

I intend to demonstrate, using only scientifically valid information, that we remain continuously alive over many generations, even hundreds or thousands of years. Mystics and theologians have throughout history claimed to know the truth about Man as a being who lives beyond the boundaries of our lifetimes.  They argue based on philosophy and faith, and make no claims of scientific validity.

Give me a chance to show you the science. You’ll be surprised and convinced as this accepted mainstream scientific analysis unfolds. The answer is not what you think.

Since this is a complicated subject, let me start off with a little birds-and-the-bees story. It will seem long because there are a lot of pictures, yet there’s not too much reading to do. If you need a better understanding of DNA, please look at my older blog entries entitled “DNA and Memory.” If you want the complex science of DNA, look at the link highlighted above.

When I was young, among other things I collected insects, especially butterflies and moths. My favorite insect was the Luna Moth. The story of the Luna Moth will demonstrate how DNA is the active player in the passage of generations. It has been well established by science that the instructions for the development of each stage of life for each organic being are encoded in the memory of DNA. The double-helix strand of living tissue is contained inside each cell of the Luna Moth and every other being, including humans. We need to start with a clearly explainable insect model before moving on to the human experience, which is more complex.

I’m going to describe the complete life-cycle of the Luna Moth, starting with the showiest part of the process. The adult Luna Moth is large and strikingly beautiful, with lime-green yellow-trimmed wings spanning up to four and a half inches (11.4 cm) across, with long trailing green hindwings. Here’s a picture of the beautiful adult moth. You can see why I liked them and still like them.

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So we see the adult moth. Now let’s go through to the next stage in the life-cycle of this elegant creature. Stay with me. Each of these wonderful, yet common, Luna Moths is around only for a very short time. The adults cannot eat, since they have no mouths or other digestive structures. They emerge as adults solely to mate. For this purpose they have only about one week. They tend to hide in the day and move about at night. There is something eerie and ghostlike about their movements. They flit from the gloom into the light, and back into the gloom once more; not unlike humans in their travails.

The male shown above has feathery antennae which sniff out pheromones from female moths. The two come together and mate, as is shown in the X-rated picture below. During mating the living DNA in the sperm from the male is ejected from its phallus into the body of the female.

WP2.Luna Moth Mating

As we shall see, the only time in the life cycle of the moth – or a human being for that matter – when the living DNA crosses an open space outside the body is during mating. For the moth the open space may be only a millimeter or so, yet the sperm in its journey is definitely outside the physical structure of either moth. The sperm quickly enters the genital chamber of the female moth and embeds its living DNA in the living egg sac of the female, which contains her own contribution of DNA for the next generation.

Once they mate, the male moth has no further raison d’etre. He flies off like a leaf falling from a tree in autumn and is never heard from again. The female moth flies around until she finds the right spot and lays her eggs. Then she shrivels within a few days like a tulip in a vase. Due to the lack of a mouth to eat, it may be said with scientific certainty that the beautiful creature that flies through the air is only a transitional stage, no matter how we may love it.

Thus all that remains after the transition of the living DNA across the open space between the two moths are the extremely small eggs shown below. Each is self-contained and a little larger than the head of a pin. Each of these self-contained living eggs contains the entire living DNA from the two mating adult moths. No further instructions are needed to continue the life-cycle of the Luna Moth. Life continues, full and complete, uninterrupted.

WP3.Luna Moth Eggs

The eggs hatch without further ado in about ten days. A wormy little caterpillar crawls out of the egg case and leaves the shell behind:

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Its goal is to find food. Unlike the adult moth, the caterpillar has a voracious appetite. Since the eggs are laid by the female only on the leaves of suitable food plants, the little caterpillar can go right to work on the edge of the nearest leaf. The only instructions it needs in order to do its job are completely and unerringly remembered by its DNA. Over a period of about 25 days it eats and grows and sheds its skin five times (not four times or six times), until it becomes a rather majestic mature caterpillar:

WP5.Caterpillar

At some point, the mature caterpillar finds itself overcome by a desire to leave its body and become an entirely different being. Internal changes are already underway to facilitate this transformation. The instructions in the memory of its DNA are very precise as to both the timing and the behavior, and always generate the same outcome.

The caterpillar begins to spin a web of silk to enclose itself. The outward appearance of the caterpillar is sloughed off as if it never existed. What is left is a hard brown pupa, which once again contains all the DNA memory of the caterpillar, albeit in an altered physical form:

WP6.Luna Moth Pupa

After about two weeks a summer pupa, following its own inner instructions from its DNA, breaks open and an adult Luna Moth emerges, full and whole and without blemish, ready to spread its wings and fly away. The brown case of the pupa is discarded. The life-cycle for this one individual insect is now complete:

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It’s easy to see this transition as a commonplace event, since it’s an everyday activity of moths, and there’s no drama in the ordinary. Yet the very precision of both the timing and the physical structures involved in the changes are nothing short of extraordinary.

And these precise changes in the cycle of life are repeated perhaps millions of times over each year by individual moths. And for hundreds or thousands of years these precise and exact changes have been repeated, perhaps modified slightly over time by Darwinian evolution.

Here’s the question: Where in this cycle is death? Is there ever a time when there is absolutely no life present? The living DNA is passed from generation to generation with sufficient vitality to produce exactly the same life-stages in each cycle of the existence of the Luna Moth.

In the next essay we will explore these far from commonplace questions.

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