Category: Plants
Speaker: Ian Taylor
Tags: worldview, devotional, flowers, creation science, christian radio, creation moments, ian taylor, biblical proof, today’s creation moment
Dung beetles may not be a very pleasant subject, but after all, someone has to do the housekeeping. So God created what man has classified into 30,000 species of dung beetle. Many will form their finds into a ball about the size of a croquet ball and roll it home for the wife and kids. Others tunnel beneath a find and set up housekeeping there.
A purple flower in Borneo, however, cuts into the productivity of one of the tunneling species without giving it anything in return. This flower smells, not like a rose, but like dung. It relies primarily on this dung beetle for pollination. Studies show that most other pollinators will examine the flower, but perhaps put off by the smell, won't attempt to pollinate it. But the dung beetle is a successful pollinator as it searches the flower for food. The flower's unpleasant odor seems designed to do nothing other than fool the beetle into pollinating it. It apparently offers the beetle nothing.
It would be nonsense to say that this flower designed this strategy to attract a beetle able to pollinate it. It would be just as silly to say that the impersonal forces of evolution designed this deceptive plant. Only an all-powerful, all-wise Creator could have designed this relationship, which intricately weaves together needs and abilities to make the whole creation work!
Isaiah 40:28
"Hast thou not known? hast thou not heard, that the everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary? there is no searching of his understanding.”
Prayer: Dear Father in heaven, give us more wisdom and understanding, that we may be more like You. In Jesus' Name. Amen.
Ref: S. Milius, “Stinking beauty betrays dung beetles,” Science News.