Seed Pods?
That is what Richard Dawkins in his
book, The Blind Watchmaker, very plainly tells us we are. He writes that we
exist to preserve the very essence of human life, our DNA. And, it is not the
other way around. We are as the fluffy seed pods of willow trees that catch the
wind and make their way through the world with the purpose of their DNA replicating
to grow and produce more willow DNA so that the blueprint for willows will
continue on into the future.
It all makes very good sense scientifically. I see the
allegory he creates and had found no fault in his
presentation of natural selection as the cornerstone of evolution. Some molecular biologists like Behe, however, claim there is a whole lot more going
on at the molecular level that does not so neatly follow the scenarios
evolutionary biologists set forth.
I don’t even have a problem with the claim
that all life proceeded from a common ancestor (even Behe affirms this). It would seem common sense for God to use a single raw material to fashion
the springboard of life. And I can agree with Dawkins that man is not the
center of the universe. Perhaps God did create our world as a
means to preserve and perpetuate the precious building blocks of life in seed
pods. Perhaps we and all life are serving as his storage system to be
retrieved at some future point, i.e. the new heaven and the new earth.
But in the end, I see the seed pod as a symbol of choice. If you choose to be a seed pod and nothing else – and let’s
be clear about this for Dawkins and many other scientists and philosophers see
man as only biological with a mind that has misfired into consciousness — then
you are forfeiting any claim to a spiritual nature. This includes any
nonrational attributes such as “love, beauty, truth, grief and meaning.” These attributes are nonempirical, they
cannot be scientifically analyzed. It also means that you forfeit any moral responsibility
for what you do on earth for how can a seed pod be held accountable?
Which brings me back to the imagery. Jesus tells many
stories comparing people who have made choices to be without God to weeds or
chaff, or even seeds that have failed to bear fruit. He tells us that they
wither and die and will be burned. It strikes me as so ironic that someone like
Dawkins who views God as a delusion would champion man as a seed pod.
