Mr. Scientist, Please Go Create A Seed.

Many years ago, when Laurie and I were pastoring in a rural suburb, I talked to a farmer one day. I remember nothing about that conversation except one thing. Apparently, we were talking about God, the world He created, scientists, and evolution. He said, bringing his thumb and forefinger together, “They can’t even make a seed.”

Great point and simply stated. Spoken by a farmer who obviously doesn’t “follow the science.” But how would a biologist respond to the farmer’s statement? The honest answer would be, “No, we haven’t. We can’t. We don’t know how.”

It astounds me continually that evolution is promoted almost everywhere you look. I just don’t understand why people so readily accept that theory without question. Let’s return to that lowly seed, the seed without which there would be no self-sustaining plant life on earth. How did that seed come into existence?

Here’s part of the answer the Scientific American offers:

“The remaining question is why this complex union took place roughly 1.6 billion years ago. One suggestion is that local conditions may have made it more beneficial for predators of cyanobacteria to stop eating and start absorbing, due to a scarcity of prey and an abundance of sunlight. ‘When the food runs out but sunlight is abundant, then photosynthesis works better to support an organism,’ Bhattacharya notes. And from that forced union a supergroup of extremely successful organisms—the plants—sprang.”¹

You will notice that “one suggestion” (Although people will receive it as fact) is that it was “more beneficial” for the predators of cyanobacteria to “stop eating and start absorbing” because photosynthesis works better when sunlight is abundant. And from a “forced” union, a supergroup of organisms “sprang.”

Presto chango, it just happened. Evolution, realizing how photosynthesis works, figured it out. Or the predators of cyanobacteria did. Wearing the eyeglasses of Mr. Darwin, everywhere one looks, evolution is present. Of course, it is. There is no other scientific answer.

Well, my question is, if things as complex as cells and thus seeds evolved by time plus chance plus genetic mutation, why can’t scientists, with all their knowledge, expertise, and high-tech equipment, make a cell or a seed? Let’s get cracking, people. It may have taken “nature,” or “evolution,” or “cyanobacteria predators” a billion years to figure it out, but surely you could engineer that relatively quickly, right?

Guess not.

While we’re at it, perhaps we should ask why scientists haven’t been able to create life even though they claim—maybe it’s only suggested—that it just spontaneously sprang up. I mean this first, springing-up thing must be the simplest of simple organisms, right? No, not really. It turns out that a cell is extraordinarily complex. How did that first life-like thing spring out of the primordial pool after a lightning strike? We don’t know. Just—bing! There it is. In the beginning, we are told, there were carbon atoms and other elements necessary for life. Mix it all up. Add a billion years and a lightning strike.

Well, we can’t create them here at all. So, perhaps they spontaneously generated on Mars. That sounds more probable. We can’t manufacture them here with all of our resources, so it makes more sense that they combobulated on a planet with an atmosphere that is 95% carbon dioxide, 2.8% molecular nitrogen, and 2% argon, with trace levels of water vapor, oxygen, carbon monoxide, hydrogen and other noble gases.²

Maybe there is a special lightning on Mars.

Cyanobacteria predators.

Finally, brilliant scientists have come up with this answer: Life on earth came from somewhere else in the solar system or universe, where it apparently began spontaneously, and survived a fiery entrance into the earth’s atmosphere.

We are one intelligent evolved species, aren’t we?

Well, not so evolved that we aren’t fools.

“The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’ They are corrupt. They do abominable deeds. There is none who does good. Yahweh looks down from heaven upon the children of humankind to see whether there is one who has insight, one who cares about God” (Psalm 14:1–2).³

Looks like the only truth in this whole mess is in the words that God has spoken.

No surprise there.

However, we were all fools once. So, there is hope for the lost scientist. Paul, after a list of sins, wrote, “And some of you were these things, but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God” (1 Corinthians 6:11).

Come to Jesus, scientist, and please continue to unravel mysteries. But if you’re searching for a way that life spontaneously generates, you will the truth in only one place.

¹https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-first-plant-evolved/

²https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Mars

³All Scripture references are from The Lexham English Bible Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press. (2012).

Gif courtesy Bing images.