In Defense of Nature

When I appeared on Virginia public television in 1994 to discuss my nature-friendly gardening, the interviewer asked if I were “a fanatic”. Only recently has my way of gardening become seen as necessity rather than kookiness. Unfortunately, much erroneous information exists in the public realm. Writing in defense of nature—based upon my decades of documenting, and gardening within, the natural world—I provide people with the empirical knowledge they need to care properly for the environment.

Saturday, November 16, 2024

PART ELEVEN

Listing of Scientific Names of Organisms Mentioned in the Text

Sachem butterfly at Lantana in the author's yard.

ANIMAL

INSECT

Ant—Family Formicidae

Damselfly, Aurora—Chromagrion conditum

Beetle, Red Milkweed—Tetraopes tetroph

Bug, Large Milkweed—Oncopeltus fasciatus

Butterfly, Monarch—Danaus plexippus

Butterfly, Sachem Skipper—Atalopedes campestris

Butterfly, Variegated Fritillary—Euptoieta claudia

MAMMAL

Ass (Donkey)—Equus africanus asinus

Bear, American Black—Ursus americanus

Cougar—Puma concolor

Cow—Bos taurus; Ox—usually, a castrated adult bull (Bos taurus)

Deer—Family Cervidae; Deer, White-tailed—Odocoileus virginianus; Elk—Cervus canadensis; Moose—Alces americanus

Dog—Canis lupus familiaris

Lion—Panthera leo

Man—Homo sapiens

Raccoon, Common—Procyon lotor

Sheep—Ovis aries

Tiger—Panthera tigris

Wolf—Family Canidae

MARINE

Oyster—Family Ostreidae

REPTILE

Black (or Eastern) Rat Snake—Elaphe obsoleta obsolete

PLANT

Black Knapweed—Centaurea nigra

Daylily—Hemerocallis spp.

Fleabane, Common—Erigeron philadelphicus

Fleabane, Daisy—Erigeron annuus

Lantana—Lantana camerata

Lily, Easter—Lilium longiflorum

Milkweed, Common—Asclepias syriaca

Rose, Cultivated—Family Rosaceae

Strawberry, Domestic—hybrid between Fragaria virginiana and Fragaria chiloensis, two different species native to the Americas

Violet, Common—Viola sororia

The Nature Revelation: God Exists

The Bible Declares It; Evolution Confirms It

THE END

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PART TEN

Addendum—A Basic Explanation of Evolution

Before Virginia became overpopulated with White-tailed Deer, the author was able to grow an abundance of yellow daylilies.In 2024, these plants demonstrated their will to live, despite being fed upon continuously by deer, by trying to regrow leaves—and in the end, a single blossom—in an unsuccessful effort to perpetuate their kind.

Evolution is a complex explanation of how life forms have changed over time. A common misconception is that it informs us of how life began on Earth, but it does not.

What it does do is explain how populations of organisms become modified over generations, leading to a diversity of organisms, some of which can be quite different from their original ancestors. The driving force behind this biological concept is known as natural selection.

The biological unit of heredity that can change how an individual looks, behaves, and/or how its body works, is known as a “gene”. At its simplest, evolution is about adaptation to one’s environment by way of gene mutations that allow helpful survival traits to be passed on to subsequent generations. It’s a wonderful manner in which to perpetuate life as environmental transformations occur on a physically evolving planet. Of course, it means that the planet is changing biologically as well.

Some folks would argue that the interconnectedness of organisms, as—for example—in the dependence of flowers upon pollinators such as bees to help them reproduce, speaks to “spontaneous creation”. The fallacy here arises due to folks making the mistake of looking at the world as it is today, and assuming it has always been the same. It hasn’t.

Evolution—which fossils corroborate—is the process of life forms going from simple to more complicated. Thus, the first plants were not flowering plants dependent upon insects, but ferns and other primitive plants that could reproduce themselves by self-developed spores.

By the time the much more-intricate flowering plants arrived on the scene, insects not as advanced as bees—such as flies and beetles—existed that could pollinate them. Although bees get the lion’s share of the credit for pollination by insects, numerous other kinds of these creatures assist flowering plants to reproduce, even to this day.

To many people, perhaps especially scientists, evolution killed God. However, this view is wrong, as shown by this treatise. The natural world works perfectly and logically, its function being to perpetuate life in all its wondrous diversity of forms.

Indeed, a life force (which can be described as a push or pull upon an object) exists inside every organism, pushing or pulling it in various directions throughout its life. Unlike in physics, where a force is an external agent capable of impacting a body, the life force is an internal agent comprising an extremely strong will to live.

My decades of careful nature observations have revealed to me the stubbornness of this force. I’ve witnessed how animals, and even plants, fight to live, even when death—so seemingly feared by all—is inevitable.

The poet, Dylan Thomas, wrote:

Do not go gentle into that good night,

Old age should burn and rave at close of day;

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

[https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46569/do-not-go-gentle-into-that-good-night]

But my mother’s experience tells me differently. I don’t believe there is a “dying of the light”, and I hope you won’t either. I don’t believe the life force within each and every organism is extinguished, but rather that it continues on in the universe. Do not fear death; my mom didn’t, and now, neither do I. We are simply “going Home”.

After a summer of continuous feeding by deer upon the daylilies in the author’s yard, these plants—that could not maintain leaf growth to sustain themselves—began to bloom (almost stemless) in mid-fall. It was a last-ditch effort to perpetuate life, should they die, by making seeds. But with cold temperatures and few, if any pollinators active, the plants’ valiant efforts were in vain, though clearly illustrating the life force within that does not surrender easily.

Friday, November 15, 2024

PART NINE

Final Thoughts: Overpopulation of Man a Damning Problem for Eden

In the 21^st century, the population of the Monarch Butterfly dropped drastically, thanks in large part to the loss of Common Milkweed, its most important food source. Farming, with its use of pesticides, and development of land, along with a growing societal intolerance of “weeds”, denied Monarchs the chance to perpetuate their species.

You now know that the Bible tells us that all creatures were to go forth and multiply (Chapter One) so that the Earth—unique in all the universe, as far as we know—could then function in a self-sustaining manner for man and all of God’s other creatures.

Because the planet was mostly uninhabited, there was plenty of space for all life forms, including man, to fill at that time. But even then, for this system to work properly, populations of every creature had to be kept limited in number relative to each other, which is why a system of checks and balances existed, even for humans.

Before modern medicine came along, injuries and diseases shortened the life spans of both children and adults, and giving birth was fraught with peril for women. But once man figured out how to rather successfully get around these limiting factors, the Earth began to become overwhelmed by his numbers. Many circumstances nowadays point to the validity of this statement, such as the extinction of other life forms as humans have taken over their space, and the pollution of land, sea, and air as too many people live their lives.

Perhaps a more obvious proof is the depletion of natural foodstuffs, bringing about the need to create artificial ones, such as imitation vanilla, imitation crab, and imitation shrimp. Most telling of all is the talk of now using insects as an animal protein source.

The Earth is in a state of rapidly failing health, and is moving inexorably to the point of no longer being able to provide the essentials necessary for our existence. We would be wise to heed a quote from Lao Tzu, an ancient Chinese philosopher and writer, who warns us, “If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading.” Do we really want to continue upon our current path that will inevitably lead us to the end of the road for mankind?

[https://www.learnreligions.com/laozi-the-founder-of-taoism-3182933]

It's easy enough to comprehend the “prescription” that has come to us from the Bible for how man is to survive upon the Earth because it’s so logical. God does not just expect humans to coexist with other organisms upon the Earth; He demands it. Like it or not, we cannot change how His system works, which tells us that an overpopulation of humans is a damning problem for the Earth (Eden)—and ultimately, us.

As more and more land becomes covered in buildings and pavement, less and less land is available for wildlife habitat. The children’s book, What Did the Tree See? (written by Charlotte Guillain and illustrated by Sam Usher [Wellbeck Editions, London 2020]), brilliantly brings home this fact in words and pictures: “I [the oak tree] looked at the sky as planes roared overhead, the hedgerows were gone and the meadows were dead. But still children came and they sat in my shade, they climbed on my branches and happily played.”

TOMORROW, PART TEN:

ADDENDUM—A Basic Explanation of Evolution

DISCLAIMER:

Thursday, November 14, 2024

PART EIGHT

Epilogue: Why You Should Believe This Treatise

If nonnative plants, such as this Black Knapweed, fare better in your yard than native plants, allow them to grow! A healthy alien plant that provides food is far more valuable to wildlife than an ailing native plant struggling to survive, or worse yet, barren ground.

From time immemorial, man has felt that there was more to life than his physical manifestation upon the Earth. Throughout the ages and in every culture, man has expressed a belief in his own immortality.

Is this preoccupation with life after physical death just the result of man’s hope to avoid the finality that appears to be the fate of all living things? Or could it be our intuition that we really do possess an indestructible soul that lives on once we depart our bodies, and we inherently sense this truth?

As stated at the beginning of this treatise, I have never concerned myself with religion or even pondered much whether we would somehow live on following death. Yet when my mother died in my home in 1993 as I held her hand, I experienced what I truly felt to be a departure of her “soul”.

Several minutes before she stopped breathing, her eyes opened briefly, and then reclosed. I immediately sensed that only her body remained and that she herself (the essence of what comprised who she was) had just left. I cannot explain why exactly I felt as I did, other than to say that—for some reason—my mother just did not seem to be “in there” anymore. Her body seemed lifeless, even though it was still breathing air in and out.

Having never before watched someone die, and never having given much thought to the actual process of dying and what it might mean for one’s soul, I certainly cannot offer any explanation for why I should have felt what I did. However, about two weeks prior to my mom’s death, something else had occurred which, in retrospect, lends credence to the idea that a person has a soul that would indeed leave the body to go elsewhere.

My mother had cancer and I was her sole caregiver during the final year of her life. About two weeks before she passed (how appropriate a word for what I experienced), I walked into the room where she had been bedridden for many months and noticed a strange look on her face. She was staring off into the corner of the room in front of her.

I asked what she was looking at, and she told me her family was telling her it was time to “come home”. Ever the scientist, I wanted more details so I could understand what was happening. Although she herself was still “all there” mentally, I could not help but wonder if this was simply an hallucination as the cancer infiltrated her brain.

So, I inquired who was there in front of her. The answer astounded me. She saw her long-dead father and mother, as well as her brother who had died as a child from scarlet fever, a leading cause of death among children in the early 20th century. She did not see her still-living brother; she saw only the members of her immediate family who had all died a long time ago.

If, indeed, we are more than just the sum of physical parts that make up our being, and we each possess a soul (or some sort of spiritual aspect to who we are) that really is immortal, my mother’s experience makes perfect sense. How incredibly loving is the thought that the members of her family, who had already moved on, would come to her as her physical body was giving out so she would not fear going “home”.

Throughout my life, my mother had made clear that death was not something she wanted discussed in her presence. For as long as I can remember, she had been terrified of death, the result, I believe, of losing her brother when she herself was a mere child.

In fact, the association of flowers with funerals so impacted her that she absolutely hated flowers inside the house. One day my father brought home a lovely white Easter lily, and she screamed at him to get rid of it—a scene I’ll never forget because her angst so clashed with the serene beauty of the blossom.

Yet, less than two weeks after my mother saw her long-departed family, she met her end without the least bit of fear—a truly miraculous feat, considering that throughout her illness, her impending death was not something I could discuss with her. Her last words to me were in a tone of total acceptance as she stated very matter-of-factly that she was “going now”.

I then asked if she wanted me to get a priest, as we had been Catholic and she had gone to church up until she was too ill to attend anymore. She chuckled—in a derisive manner, no question about it and much to my surprise—before answering no. She seemed confident that no religious “fuss” was necessary. And that is just as I would expect it should be.

The Dalai Lama XIV is quoted as saying, “This is my simple religion. No need for temples. No need for complicated philosophy. Your own mind, your own heart is the temple. Your philosophy is simple kindness.”

[https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/34322-this-is-my-simple-religion-no-need-for-temples-no]

Religions function as a way for man to feel connected to God in communion with other folks, but perhaps a better way to find God is via the appreciation of nature, the holy gift that not only makes our physical lives possible, but also attests to God’s existence. It took almost two decades after my mother’s dying days for me to experience my nature revelation, but when I did, it was astonishing to see how well it meshed with my mother’s end-of-life experiences.

Still, you may be skeptical of the nature revelation that God exists. However, you should not be skeptical of the information about the natural world contained in this book, which is real and vitally important to the future of mankind.

Each person must recognize how much his own life is contingent upon the proper functioning of the environment that depends completely upon the existence of wildlife. Only then will people understand the absolute necessity of altering their lifestyles as necessary to live simply (with as small an impact upon the Earth as possible) so that we allow plenty of room for wildlife to continue to coexist with us.

Individuals must also speak out and set examples by their own behaviors (such as landscaping in a more natural manner) to those who are afraid or unwilling to make the changes necessary to sustain life on Earth in these modern times.

My hope is that you will see this treatise as a beacon, a guiding light to salvation for all life on Earth. I also hope that you will take to heart the words of thirteen-year-old Anne Frank (the young Jewish girl who wrote a diary during the two years she and her family were hiding from Nazis): “How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.” Indeed. Let us all get started immediately.

A small artificial pond in the author’s front yard provides a “home” for amphibians (such as frogs) and many kinds of aquatic insects, as well as drinking and bathing water for all kinds of wildlife.

TOMORROW, PART NINE:

Final Thoughts: Overpopulation of Man a Damning Problem for Eden

DISCLAIMER:

Wednesday, November 13, 2024

PART SEVEN

Conclusion—Nature, Man, and God: The Trinity for Life

A fallow field full of wildflowers supports a huge variety of critters essential to our own lives but is viewed by most folks as a wasteland of “weeds” (unwanted plants).

The natural world is currently viewed by most people as if it is expendable. This happens, unfortunately, when people become more “civilized” and thus no longer directly interact so much with nature. Over time then, they lose touch with how essential it is to their lives.

Indeed, a goodly fraction of people feel that if land is not developed or somehow utilized by humans, then that land is wasted. They see no value whatsoever in land conserved mainly for the benefit of wildlife.

But, if you don’t landscape in a manner that mirrors the natural world and supports an abundance of wildlife, you are turning a blind eye towards the appropriate relationship of man to nature. God gave the planet Earth to man, and in its God-given (i.e., natural) state, it served as a pristine haven that provided a source of nourishment for the body and soul.

Man was not required to change, modify, or “correct” in any way this holy gift. All he had to do was to take care of this wondrous benefaction by living by the rules that governed it. In other words, he had only to obey the laws of nature.

Is all of this to say that we should not use our ingenuity to live with less hardship? No, it is not. However, we do need to transform our lives to live more simply. To accomplish this change, we must first humble ourselves so that we may determine what is truly meaningful and necessary for our existence upon the Earth. Then we can more easily implement how best to both fit in with, and impact less, the natural world.

For example, by keeping our immediate environment in a more natural state, as we should, we would cause less air, water, and soil pollution because there would be less mowing, weed-whacking, and leaf blowing. By limiting our use of energy to that which is truly vital to our wellbeing, such as heating homes in the dead of winter or cooling them during summer heat waves, we would conserve natural resources and curb harm to the environment.

Yes, this is a call to live less extravagantly, but not less comfortably. Sensible limitations are neither too burdensome nor too restrictive, especially when you consider how much they lessen your impact upon the planet. If everyone took better care of the Earth, scientists wouldn’t need to figure out how to get people to Mars and then somehow create a habitable environment on a celestial body not at all conducive to human existence.

Today, too many folks think wrongly about the natural world and about how to live their lives in relation to it. This attitude must change, even if you do not believe that God exists. It is simply common sense to conserve resources, and to follow the dictates of Mother Nature, if you will.

Be inspired by nature to live in harmony with it and you will find peace of mind. The nature revelation of God’s existence is hard to dispute: Nature, man, and God are inextricably entwined, making up the trinity for life not only to exist, but to persist.

Man’s development of the environment should always take the needs of wildlife into account by leaving natural areas nearby.

TOMORROW, PART EIGHT:

Epilogue: Why You Should Believe the Thesis of This Treatise

DISCLAIMER:

Tuesday, November 12, 2024

PART SIX

Chapter Four: The Final Evidence That God Exists

These leafy Common Fleabane plants will degrade partially or completely by the beginning of spring and will need to re-grow. So, what is the point of coming up in the fall, a full six months earlier than they can develop fully and flower? Answer: They are a sign of thoughtful consideration by a loving and caring God.

You may wonder how the proof of God’s existence presented in this treatise is distinct from Creationism and/or Intelligent Design. Basically, these two “theories”—or explanations, if you will—ask folks simply to believe a supreme being brought about the universe and everything in it, but they offer no real authentication that shows this assumption to be valid. The Nature Revelation, on the other hand, serves as a testament to what anyone can personally confirm for himself by way of direct observation of the natural world.

Supporters of Creationism see the scientific theory of evolution as problematic due to a lack of fossil-record completeness, or because of other things that are difficult to verify fully (such as more-complex life forms having arisen from much simpler ones, or life arising from non-life). However, evolution is based upon actual physical evidence (such as fossils) and well understood laws of physics and chemistry that allow the aging of soils, etc., that cannot be denied. Reality is the final arbiter of truth.

Evolution is simply a way to explain the documentation available from hands-on research, even if it’s insufficient to answer every question we might have. But that does not necessarily signal it’s wrong, in and of itself, nor that it says anything about whether God exists, or not.

If God has all eternity to experiment, who’s to say He didn’t just get the ball (the Earth) rolling (by creating it) and is watching patiently to see how things go? Mankind does not need to know exactly how life began or why, but that doesn’t mean we can’t do our best to understand the world, and even the universe, around us in terms of what we know to be physically real.

The primary focus of Intelligent Design, besides expressing concern about evolutionary theory not fully explaining the origin of life and its continuing progression towards a huge variety of life forms, is that nature is complicated, and therefore a designer (God) must be involved in its creation. However, the fossil record does show successively more-intricate life forms with the passage of time; it’s a physical record of life on Earth that attests to this reality of simple to more complex. Thus, it’s hard to definitively argue that you can’t get complexity in nature without a god, although—of course—the fossil record does not necessarily imply this wasn’t the blueprint of a god.

In other words, evolution, Creationism, and Intelligent Design explanations of life on this planet consist of conjecture, not hard-and-fast proof. Only the tenets of the nature revelation put forth previously in this treatise provide genuine evidence of the existence of God.

That said, a singular example in temperate regions of the natural world upholds the idea of an empathetic and caring God—the existence of biennial plants, a type of plant that starts to grow roots, stems, and leaves from seed in the late summer/early fall of the year.

At that time, the biennial (sometime called a short-lived perennial) puts forth a very short stem, and leaves that normally form a rosette at ground level. These leaves invariably degrade to some extent over the winter, if they are not first eaten by herbivorous animals. By spring, when warm temperatures encourage the plant to resume growing, it must grow new leaves and then the flowering stalk(s) to produce seeds for the next generation. When it has accomplished its “mission”, the plant dies.

Botanically speaking, no reason justifies a plant starting to grow as the end of the normal growing season is approaching. Producing leaves that may be eaten or turn to mush by spring, and having then to grow yet more leaves when warmth returns, seems a waste of energy.

If this “strategy” for success of a biennial were truly advantageous, there wouldn’t be far fewer biennial species than perennial and annual ones. So, what is the point of growing over the course of two different growing seasons? There can be only one reason, and that is to supply food for wildlife.

Herbivorous mammals (such as deer and rabbits) that remain active during winter face the difficult task of finding food when there is no fresh growth to be had and cold temperatures are pushing them to find ever more sources of sustenance to maintain their core body temperature. Biennial leaves serve as a source of fresh food. Also, in spring some kinds of insects (such as bees) respond quickly to rising temperatures, coming out of hibernation when a variety of very early-blooming biennials can feed them with nectar and pollen.

Biennials do not really get an evolutionary advantage over perennials and annuals to perpetuate their own species, making their existence an irrefutably valid proof of thoughtful consideration—by God.

The chewed-off leaves of Common Fleabane attest to wildlife use of biennial plants.

Two species of fleabane in the author’s yard provide nourishment to tiny bees from very early spring to early fall, as Common Fleabane blooms are followed by those of Daisy Fleabane.

TOMORROW, PART SEVEN:

Conclusion—Nature, Man, and God: The Trinity for Life

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