How and why are we here?

On the one hand is Evolution that says a speck of dead matter sprang into life, grew, divided, and after innumerable years evolved through a series of unguided accidents to result in the millions of species, including humans, that exist today. Evolution is now taught as proven fact and has itself taken on many aspects of being a dominant religion.

The Creator God revealing himself is a dominant theme throughout the Old Testament. The New Testament is then securely fastened to the creation theme by the first chapter of John that explains the Word (Jesus Christ) was the One who did the creating. One of the major differences between Christianity and other religions is this matter of the Creator communicating to his human creatures.

The goal of "Creation Corner" is to offer some creation evidence to believers in evolution who are open minded enough to investigate the alternative. A secondary goal is to help reinforce the faith of those who are already Christian believers.

Perhaps the best way to add credibility to one’s arguments, and to convince others, is to use information outside of one’s own persuasion. That is why about 95% of the information that follows is from the "other sides" material, from evolution supporting sources.

(Italics, bold or underlining may be added to many of the quotes)

(1) Psm 95: 3-5; 115:3-8; 135: 5, 15-18; Isa 44:all; Jer 10:2-15

(2) (Job 33:4,; Pro 4:4; 7:2; Rom 6:23, Jn 1:3-4

(3) Rom 1:20

(4) Acts 17:24-25

(5) Acts 14:15

(6) Rev 14:7

Some general information about plant complexity may be of interest before we get into specifics.

"When the earth is dry,…the roots turn toward moister ground, stretching, as in the case of the lowly alfalfa plant, as far as 40 feet, developing an energy that can bore through concrete…A study of a single rye plant indicates a total of over 13 million rootlets with a combined length of 380 miles. On these rootlets of a rye plant are fine root hairs estimated to number some 14 billion with a total length of 6,600 miles."

For more information we go back to "The Secret Life of Plants"…"Darwin found that a sundew can be excited when a piece of thread is laid on it weighing no more than 0.078 of a grain. A tendril, which next to the rootlets constitutes the most sensitive portion of a plant, will bend if a piece of silk thread is laid across it weighing but 0.00025 of a gram.

And isn’t it remarkable that all of the cells work together as one unit - one tree?

We learn more about plant cells. "As the root burrows its way down, the stem aspires upwards…And the final result of the growth of the stem is different; green leaves spreading to the light. It is curious that its (the stem) cells behave differently from those of the root, for all came originally from the same beginning, the same single cell, in fact. Indeed, this is the greatest riddle of biology: what causes cells to differentiate."

"The Secret Life of Plants" relates what may be another riddle. "…as far back as 1600 a Flemish chemist, Jan Baptista Helmont, had planted a willow sapling in a clay pot containing two hundred pounds of oven-dried soils and for five years had given the tree nothing but rain or distilled water. When Helmont removed the tree and weighed it he found it had gained 164 pounds whereas the weight of the soil remained approximately the same. Helmont wondered if the plant had not been able to turn water into wood, bark, and roots."

So accurate are alpine flowers about the seasons, they know when spring is coming and bore their way up through lingering snow banks, developing their own heat with which to melt the snow."

We have to wonder, what tells these plants, hidden under snow, that spring is coming? How did these plants know they needed to evolve the needed specialized heat capability? After all, other plants don’t have heat making capabilities.

The author sums up quoting Raoul France’, a Viennese biologist, "Plants which react so certainly, so variously, and so promptly to the outer world, must… have some means of communicating with the outer world, something comparable or superior to our senses."

What is going on here? Botanists can’t figure out how from one beginning cell comes, leaves, stems, and roots. Darwin saw a brain in plants? Plants that are a compass? Plants that see? Plants that predict the weather? Sensitive to a minute weight of 0.00025 of a gram? Plants that make needed heat so they can push through snow? Means of communication comparable or superior to ours?

Is the plant world more complicated, more organized, than we have realized?

What about the soil that they grow in. A little bit of information from the book "Tales from the Underground" may be of interest. "Step out into the backyard,… push your thumb and index finger into the root zone of a blade of grass, and bring up a pinch of earth. You will be likely holding close to one billion individual living organisms, perhaps ten thousand different species of microbes, most of them not yet named, cataloged, or understood. Interwoven with the thousands of wispy root hairs with the grass would be coils of mircoscopic , gossamer-like threads fungal hyphae, the total length of which would best be measure in miles, not inches.

That’s just in a pinch of earth. In a handful of typical healthy soil there are more creatures than there are humans on the entire planet, and hundreds of miles of fungal threads.

Within a dimension of about one square yard, they (graduate students) typically uncover billions of mircoscopic roundworms called nematodes, anywhere from a dozen to several hundred of the much large earthworms, and 100,000 to 150,000 insects…and that’s in addition to the astronomical numbers of fungi, single-celled bacteria and protozoa, and other creatures that don’t faill into these major groups."

Sir David Attenborough, a fellow of the Royal Society, is a widely acclaimed British television producer and the author of many books explaining Natural Science. Because his books support evolution, this writer feels his observations and conclusions are therefore all the more striking.

The Introduction portion of his book, "The Secret Life of Plants", contains some startling statements. "Plants can see. They can count and communicate with each other. They are able to react to the slightest touch and to estimate time with extraordinary precision…They take other organisms captive and use them for their own purposes."

Wait a minute. See, count, communicate, time with precision, take captive! Surely Sir David is exaggerating. How could mere plants do any of that? How could plants, that have no consciousness as do animals, do all of those things? Where would come the knowledge, the information, the decision making ability?

Let’s look at Attenborough’s studies to learn more.

"The seeds of a cheese plant…….develop in spikes of a thousand or so…..When they ripen and fall, they scatter widely over the floor and almost immediately germinate. Green worm-like shoots slowly writhe out of them and begin to extend across the ground,….the hub of which is the bole of the tree that still supports their parent. It seems almost miraculous that they should all, in some way, know where to go. They do because, like all plants, they can sense the light."

"But they, unlike most shoots, do not seek it. They are programmed to avoid it and they head for the nearest shade…..If they fail to find a tree trunk within six feet or so, then they run out of their (seed) fuel and die, exhausted. But if one encounters a vertical surface within that distance, it suddenly changes. Instead of seeking shade, it seeks the light. It begins to climb upwards. Small round leaves spring out…….and they, at last, produce food. With this new fuel supply, it climbs more strongly."

So Sir David sees programming(1) as part of the makeup of these tiny shoots. Isn’t that remarkable? Furthermore, most plants seek light, but these instead seek shade. Until they reach a vertical surface, when they change completely and now seek light. Rather strange behavior for these plants without consciousness. Where did the programming come from? Where does this knowledge of when to change and seek light come from?

Please resist the temptation to quickly dismiss our researchers assertions by thinking, "Plants can’t see, they don’t even have eyeballs".

Instead consider for a moment that it is well known blind people develop a heightened sense of sound and their fingers develop a more sensitive sense of touch. In that respect, they are being helped to ""see" by things that are not eyeballs.

Reading the writings of the famed deaf and blind Helen Keller one is struck by the revelation that she "saw" a lot despite the fact her entire seeing system, eyeballs and all, was completely useless.

So if we expand our definition of what "seeing" is, considering what it accomplishes, then the assertions by researchers that plants can "see" becomes more acceptable.

By now the reader is probably realizing that plants are not the simple structures we usually consider them to be. Interesting to look at, certainly needed in our world, but hardly worth giving much thought or attention to. Yet they are not so simple after all.

Discover magazine had an article they titled, "Talking Plants" that contained more startling plant information.

"Ian Baldwin…and his colleagues are using chemical sensors to investigate plant communications; cries for help, invitations, even warnings, each in the form of odor molecules…The harder biologists look for these signals, the more they find.

Scientists have known for some time that plants can activate powerful defense systems…. When a caterpillar bites into a leaf, for example, the plants recognizes compounds in the insect’s saliva and initiates a chemical defense. Many plants produce toxins (nicotine works well) to kill the insect, as well as compounds that slow down or stop the invader’s ability to digest the plant.

Should that fail, there is a second line of defense. A tobacco plant under attack also releases a blend of airborne chemical repellents…. When they [the researchers] combined the specific chemicals into a paste and smeared it on the stems of plants that had not yet been attacked, hawkmoths avoided laying eggs on them."

Baldwin wanted to find out whether tobacco plants had more defense mechanisms. The researcher made a paste of some of the chemical defenses. He glued the eggs of hawkmoth caterpillars to the undersides of the plants that had the paste. Sure enough, three of the compounds emitted by tobacco plants seemed to attract the predator that would eat the hawkmoth eggs, thus protecting the plant from hatched out moths.

"By realeasing certain volatiles, a plant can reduce the number of herbivores attacking it by as much as 90%. …Chemical signaling is normal. This kind of communication is normal. I think it is probably going on all the time, all around us."

So there you have it. This researcher sees plant communication when the plant releases chemicals that seem to call predators to take of something that would harm the plant. There is more.

"In 1988 Marcel Dicke and his collegues at Wageningen University in the Netherlands offered evidence that plants under insect attack could enlist help from the enemies of their enemies. Dicke found that when spider mites attack lima bean plants, the plants release a chemical SOS that attracts another mite that preys on the spider mite."

Interestingly it seems only being under attack triggers the SOS’s. "Mechanically damaged plants do not produce the cues; most likely, [because] elicitors in the saliva of the insect cant trigger the plant to produce the right molecules [that do the signaling]. "Today, Dicke says, the scientific community agrees that plants talking to their bodyguards is likely to be a characteristic of most, if not all, plant species."

Don’t you like the vivid way the researcher put it, "plants talking to their bodyguards"?

To continue. "For example, when caterpillars feed on corn, tobacco, and cotton, the beleaguered plants produce airborne chemicals that attract parasitic wasps. The chemical cries for help are quite specific, attracting only the wasps that lay their eggs in the type of caterpillar infesting the plant."

One researcher, Consuelo De Moraes from Pennsylvania State University says this, "Plants are not just saying, "Yes, I am damaged", they are also saying specifically who is damaging them. It is such an intricate and fabulous system."

"Plants can also time the release of different signals to have different effects. Parasitic wasps hunt during the day, for example, so that’s when infested plants release their SOS. Plants time the emissions of repellents as well. In studies of commercial tobacco, De Moraes and her collegues found that caterpillar-infested plants release a chemical blend at night that seems to discourage night time moths…

The idea that plants can signal insects has long made sense to scientists. But the concept that plants can communicate with other plants has not…

Time, persistence, and good science have changed attitudes [about plants communicating to other plants]. Several months ago Dicke helped produce a special issue of the Journal Biochemical Systematics and Ecology filled with papers on plant-to-plant communication…

Over the last 19 years, in various experiments, researchers say they’ve caught willow, poplar, alder, and birch trees listening to their own kind and barley seedlings listening ot other barley seedlings. In each case, damaged plants,…sent out signals that seemed to jump-start the defenses of undamaged plants nearby. Researchers are also testing soil to see if plants release chemical warnings from their root systems."

The article also had a side note on modern day agriculture that I have to include for organic gardening enthusiasts, "Farmers now rely on heavy pesticide use because domestic plants, which have been bred for high yield, have often lost their native chemical defenses and cannot call out for help. A wild cotton plant, for example, can emit up to ten tmes more airborne emissions that summon parasitic wasps to attack infesting

caterpillars than a hybrid can."

So there you have it. Researchers have studied plants that:

• Can see.
• Can activate specific chemical defenses.
• Can call up insects that eat the insects threatening them.
• Can time their signals and defenses to match their predators habits.
• When attacked seem to signal their peers so they can increase their own defense mechanisms.

As we ponder which is true, evolution or creation, we have to ask, did all of this intricate and specialized behavior evolve from unguided chance or does it seem that some sort of intelligent, carefully thought out design was involved?

The segment is now attached only by a small hinge. The caterpillar next spins silken threads across the hinge between the segment and the rest of the leaf. As the silk dries, it contracts. This first hoists the segment into the air and then brings it down on top of the caterpillar. Now, working from beneath, the caterpillar makes a short slit at right angles to the cut edge of the segment. It pulls one edge of this across the other so creating a pleat. This converts the segment into a tiny dome. The whole process takes a couple of hours. As a result of all this ingenious labor, the caterpillar can nibble away at the leaf surface beneath, safe from the eyes and beaks of hungry birds."

Could a lot of thought gone into protecting this caterpillar specie? The tiny creature

• makes a cut of an exact length,

• then stops,
• retreats,
• then makes another cut of an exact length,
• leaving a small "hinge" portion uncut,
• weaves thread that is designed to contract as it dries,
• makes a short slit,
• makes a pleat,
• pulls one edge across,
• and finally ends up with its protective dome.

Isn’t this remarkable behavior? Where did all the necessary knowledge come from? Was it a series of false tries and accidents over millions of years that finally resulted in the exact sequence of meticulous carpenter work that is required?

Sir David tells us about a plant that captures prey. "Marsh pitchers grow only on…isolated sandstone plateaus in south-eastern Venezuela…where there is little or no soil and the processes of decay...proceed very slowly, many plants have to supplement their diet with the bodies of insects."

"The marsh pitcher’s trap is a very simple one. It’s foot-long leaves are curled lengthwise and joined a the margin to form a tall vertical tube. At the top, the tip of the midrib flares into a reddish-rimmed hood that carries a great number of nectar-producing glands. The abundant rains keep these trumpets filled with water. If they were topped up to the very brim, they might be so heavy that they would be in danger of bursting, or…toppling over.

But this does not happen. The seam joining the margins of the leaf is not fastened along its entire length. It stops an inch or so below the upper rim and the resultant vertical slit acts as a safety overflow. One species has a ring of small holes encircling the tube a little below the upper margin and these too act as overflows.

Flies and mosquitoes, attracted by the sweet fragrance of the nectar, alight on the hood. As they explore the plant in search of more nectar, they tend to move down into the tube. But this is covered with long, slippery, downward-pointing hairs. Losing their grip, ;the insects slop downwards. That worsens their situation, for they descend to a section of the tube where the walls have no hairs at all but are smooth and waxy. Down they slide until they tumble into the water. Unable to get any purchase on the surrounding walls, they drown. Bacterial decay then dissolves the tiny corpses and the marsh pitcher absorbs the resulting soup."

Imagine that. An inch or so from the top is a needed safety overflow. Slippery downward sloping hairs carry insect prey down until the sides are smooth further accelerating their down ward slide into the waiting water where they drown and the plant’s bacteria turn them into nourishing soup to support the plant. Pretty ingenious? Are we looking at a designed system here? It seems so to this writer.

There are several species similar to the marsh pitcher including eight species of trumpet pitcher found in the southeastern United States.

"The bucket orchid is one of the most interesting of all plants. The front of the flower is formed by two small wings. These serve as signposts. Behind them hangs the little bucket that gives the plant its name.

When a flower opens, two small glands on the stem connecting the bucket to the frontal wings secrete a liquid that drips down and fills the bucket to a depth of about a quarter of an inch. The flowers now give off a sweet heady perfume.

Each of the twenty or so species of bucket orchids has its own brand of scent. Although human nostrils cannot distinguish between them, little iridescent bees that live in these forests certainly can. Each species of orchid attracts its specie of bee."

We might wonder, Why would each specie of orchid need its own scent? Surely under evolution wouldn’t the same scent do for all twenty species? Our scientist author answers"

"It is only the male bees who respond to the orchid. Its smell seems to excite them greatly and when a flower opens there will soon be several male bees buzzing around it in an agitated way. Before long one will land on the...bucket and make his way to a rounded pad that rises from the rim at the base of the short stem connecting the bucket to the front of the flower.

From this pad he scrapes an oily substance which he packs into pockets on his back legs. This is not a food. It is an ointment that he will use to attract females during his elaborate courtship rituals - which is why each specie needs its own special brand.

What a perfect match up! Twenty different orchid scents corresponding to twenty bee species. It seems that getting this ointment is critical to the courtship and survival of these twenty bee species.

How did the first 100% evolved bee even know it had to go this one orchid source unique to it only? How did the orchids know they had to develop a unique scent, different from that of their nineteen sibling orchid species, so as to attract their own special bee specie? Which came first, the orchid or the bee? Doesn’t logic say all twenty orchids and all twenty bee species had to happen at the same time, which would be extremely unlikely under the evolution scenario?

What could this deep nectar possibly be for? What evolutionary force created it? Wait long enough and the answer will arrive on the wing. A species of moth visits the orchid…Its tongue, coiled up like a watch spring, begins to fill with blood, and as it does, the pressure forces it to straighten out. It grows to be 16 inches long, far longer than the moth’s entire body. The moth snakes its tongue down the tube until it reaches the sweet nectar, it buries its face in the flower, and as it does, its forehead rubs against pollen grains. When the moth is finished with its drink,…and flies away with the pollen smeared over its head,…The pollen on its forehead brushes off on the new orchid, where it can fertilize that flower’s eggs."

So there you have it. An orchid with a 16 inch deep shaft and a tiny moth that somehow has a corresponding 16 inch tongue, far, far longer than the moth’s entire body. As a result of their relationship, the orchid pollen is distributed to make new orchids. Does this seem incredulous to you? Does this seem to you something that happened by pure accident? Could this be an example of what we are told to do; look around and see intelligence, see a creator?

The author continues, "It may be hard to believe that a pair of species could be so tightly linked together, and yet nature is filled with such intimate partnerships,…Life consists for the most part of a web of interacting species, adapted to one another like a lock and key."

If you can look around and see lots of locks and keys do you think maybe there was a master locksmith involved somehow?

Sir David Attenborough thinks so and tells us about it.

"There can be no question, however, as to the most spectacular of all these hunting plants. It is, surely, the Venus flytrap…..It too is a rosette a few inches across. It has narrow green leaves that at the end are prolonged into two reddish, kidney-shaped lobes on either side of the midrib. The outer margin of each lobe is fringed by a line of spikes and, just beneath them, there is a band of nectar glands. The open face of each lobe carries a few isolated bristly hairs."

An insect, attracted by the nectar or the red coloration can crawl around on the surface of a lobe with impunity, provided it doesn’t touch one of the bristles, for they are triggers.

Sir David then explains two items that at first glance might appear as inefficiencies, but are really very cleverly designed features. Notice:

"Why should the plant require its victim to touch a hair trigger twice in quick succession? In order that the leaf is not made to close by a inanimate object such as a blowing leaf falling on to it. And why are the marginal spikes not set closer together? Because an insect below a certain size will not provide enough sustenance to compensate for the energy spent in digesting it."

We are now confronted with some questions of logic. Where did the intelligence come from that arranged things so that only a beneficial size insect will operate the complex mechanism? Doesn’t it seem that somewhere along the line a decision was made, "it must be at least this size and nothing smaller"?

Moreover, it is evident the plant is able to count off twenty seconds. Furthermore that it is able to count one, then two, then ZAP! also seems evident. Is there counting or time keeping ability in a bolt of lightning, a blob of algae, or a seething ocean? So where did this knowledge and ability come from?

If we dissect a Venus Fly Trap plant, or one of its seeds, will we find the knowledge somewhere in the plant or a seed? Would we find an apparatus that counts off seconds? If we can’t find them, where are they and how are they passed on to each succeeding generation? Could a higher intelligence be at work here?

We have studied the following main points:

• A single rye plant is amazingly complex, having 13 million rootlets comprising 380 miles. It’s fine root hairs total 6,600 miles.
• An average apple tree is not simple either, containing some 25 quadrillion cells; all functioning together.
• There is a compass plant.
• There is a weather plant.
• An alpine flower develops its own heat to melt spring snows.
• One plant is programmed to avoid light - until it reaches a vertical surface; then it seeks light.
• Two authors have demonstrated plants can "see".
• Plants can call up insects that eat the insects threatening them.
• Plants activate precise chemicals to fight off predators.
• Plants can time their defenses to match the habits of their predators.
• Plants seem to signal nearby plants of an attack so they can reinforce their own defenses.
• A moth caterpillar performs exacting carpenter work to construct it’s protective dome.
• Marsh pitchers have a necessary water safety overflow.
• The scents of 20 different bucket orchids supply a needed mating substance for 20 bee species.
• An orchid with a 16 inch deep shaft depends on a tiny moth with a 16 inch tongue to spread its pollen.
• We are told by an evolution supporter that nature is full of such "locks and keys".
• The Venus Fly Trap plant can count.
• The Venus Fly Trap plant can measure twenty seconds.
• Its two trapping lobes snap together, after counting and timing, at a speed of 1/3 of a second.
• Its snapping mechanism is electrically driven, although researchers don’t know how it is done.
• The insect prey of the Venus Fly Trap plant has to be a certain size before the system traps them.

Are all of things we have just studied more logically the result of:

Evolution that admittedly is:

mindless,

purposeless,

accidental chance?

Or more logically the result of:

planning,

design,

a Creator God?

Which one makes more sense to you?

(1) "The Secret Life of Plants" by Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird, published 1973 by Harper and Row, New York.

(2) "The Private Life of Plants" by Sir David Attenborough, published 1995 by Princeton University Press, Princeton, JJ.

(3) "Introductary Botany" Linda R. Berg, Ph. D, published 1997 by Saunders College Press, division of Harcourt Brace College Publishers.

(4) "Botany for Gardeners" by Harold William Rickett, published 1957 by The MacMillan Company, NY.

(5) "Evolution - the Triumph of an Idea" published 2001 by" Harper Collins Publishing, inc., NY, 10022.

(6) "Tales from the Underground" by David W. Wolfe published 2001 by Perseus Publishing, Cambridge Center, MA 02142.