05/07/2008
11Then God said, “Let the earth produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants, and fruit trees on the earth bearing fruit with seed in it, according to their kinds.” And it was so. 12The earth brought forth vegetation: seed-bearing plants according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed in it, according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good. 13Evening came, and then morning: the third day.
When British settlers first encountered the tomato in the new world, they believed it was poisonous due to its resemblance to another known poisonous plant. However, once it was discovered that it was not. The tomato has enjoyed much popularity. Yet the debate lingers on. Is the tomato a fruit or vegetable?
If you define a fruit as the fleshy substance surrounding the seed of the plant, then the tomato is a fruit. If you define a vegetable as that growing on the ground or on a vine (not a tree) and not sweet (like most fruit), then the tomato is a vegetable.
Yet, no matter how you classify the tomato, we can be sure that it was created by God.
In such simplicity as a few words, God commanded the earth to bring forth vegetation. Note that when they were created, they were commanded to have seeds. And not just any seed, but seed “according to their kinds.”
What exactly does this mean: “According to their kinds?”
Well, simply stated, it means that an orange tree will not produce an apple seed. An orange tree will always produce an orange with an orange seed.
Now there is an interesting thing to note here. Over the last century, we have produced such fruit as the tangelo (a cross between a tangerine and grapefruit), the pluot or aprium (a cross between an apricot and a plum), and most corn. What I want to emphasize here is the difference between hybridization and evolution.
Hybridization means that a new variety may be produced by the cross-pollination of types of plants. This is not the same as evolution. Evolution states that over time, the species will spontaneously mutate into something new. Hybridization means that new forms of a plant may be produced but the change is always within its “kind”.
Take corn for instance. The corn we know is a highly hybridized plant. It is said that if corn were to be left to nature, that the variety of corn we know would become extinct within a generation. The reason is, we have hybridized corn to produce massive amounts of seeds (corn kernels) and when the cob would fall to the ground, the great number of seeds competing for nutrients in the soil would choke each other out.
All farmers would agree that corn as we know it is far better than its ancestor, maize. But it is only better because of human intervention and when that intervention stops, corn will revert to its former state. It will reproduce “according to its kind.”
Some may call this hybridization “micro-evolution.” I don’t like that term because it gives credence to macro-evolution. Rather, I believe that we can acknowledge the effects of hybridization and that it remains in the constraints of its own kind. For instance, we could never cross a wheat plant with a chicken. The “kinds” are too drastically different.
God created all things with an order, allowing for variation within that order. But make no mistake, that there are boundaries which cannot be crossed naturally. Scientists may fuse jelly-fish DNA with a Chimp, however, this sort of thing would be impossible in the wild.
The first
creation was time
The second creation was truth (not excluding visible light)
The third creation was space (or three dimensions of geometry)
The fourth creation was land and sea
The fifth creation was vegetation
As we examine the chronology of creation further, it will become quite clear that the order of creation was not a mistake or accident of nature, but a planned, organized, and intelligent design. The Creator had the end in mind before the beginning. Just as a car designer has in mind a complete, functioning automobile before he sets pen to paper, our Creator had in mind a complete, functioning ecological system with us at the center, before He even began.
Jeff Justus
Cleff Publishing
www.cleffpublishing.com
©2008 Cleff Publishing, all rights reserved.
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