One of my interests in life is having imaginary debates in my mind with atheists about why there really is a God and why they should revert from their beliefs. Weird I know, but fun for me to try and think of reasons, and maybe also on a deeper level to prove to myself that God exists and that his word is true. One recent thought I had about proving there is a God came from my dog of all things…. He had just come in from being in the woods and I had to brush out the burrs and stick tights that he had all over him. I got to thinking about the burr and it dawned on me that even this little annoying thing could in some way prove God exists. How? Well, I got to thinking about the special structure of the burr (the plants seed) and how it is specially “engineered” to cling to fur so that the plant can spread its seed to other places. With this in mind, the obvious question is how the plant’s seed got to be this way. If a person did not believe in God, then they would probably argue that it is evolution or something similar as to how it obtained the structure it has. So, this spawns a series of questions that I would throw out to the atheists:
1 Why would the plant want to, or even care about spreading its seeds? You must be saying that the plant has a desire, a thought process or even an emotional state in order to want to spread it’s seeds because there is no direct benefit to the plant to do so.
2 How did the plant know there were animals walking around that it could attach its seeds to? Does the plant have some type of eyes or special sensory device to know that there are animals and even more, know that animals have hair & fur?
3 How did the plant know how to engineer its seeds to stick to hair & fur? It must have some high level of intelligence to be able to engineer its own seeds to be able to have a Velcro type exterior shell that could stick to many different surfaces.
4 Now consider other seeds like the maple tree’s seed and how it is specially engineered like a wing and is able to fly down like a little helicopter to a new location. So do these trees have a degree in aerodynamics? Or consider some seeds that need fire in order to be released like the seeds of the Jack Pine. How did this tree know there was going to be fires and then be able to engineer a pod that would only open upon intense heat from a fire?
So, for me it is painfully obvious that plants themselves should not be given the credit for the special ways in which they populate the earth unless you have some sort of clear answers for the questions above. It’s clear to me that God is proven in even in little annoying things like the burr and I hope this little blurb sticks in your the next time you have to remove a bunch of these from your jeans after walking in the woods, and remember that God is proven in even in the small annoying things.