In Defense of Nature

 PART SIX

Chapter Four: The Final Evidence That God Exists

ALL TEXT AND PHOTOS © 2024 Marlene A. Condon

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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