More Evidence of Plant Communication

The evidence that plants engage in complex communication is growing. The first scientific studies on this were published in 1983, demonstrating that willows, poplars, and sugar maples warn each other of insect attacks via chemical signals, and nearby undamaged trees begin "pumping out bug-repelling chemicals to ward off attack" ("How Plants Secretly Talk to Each Other, "Wired, Dec. 20, 2013). These studies were quickly "shot down as statistically flawed or too artificial," and research largely stopped until a few years ago. But new experiments show that when bugs chew leaves, plants release chemical signals into the air, and 40 different studies now confirm that other plants detect these airborne signals and ramp up their production of defense mechanisms in response (Ibid.) Richard Karban, University of California professor, says the debate now is not over whether plants can sense one another's biochemical messages, but about why and how they do it. Ted Farmer of the University of Lausanne recently discovered that plants transmit information "with electrical pulses and a system of voltage-based signaling that is eerily reminiscent of the animal nervous system." Plants respond to bug attacks by producing poisonous chemicals, by reducing the nutritional quality of its leaves, by enticing predatory insects that kill herbivores, and in other complex ways. Since the scientists conducting the experiments are evolutionists who believe in blind "natural selection" as the product of alleged dog-eat-dog competition in nature, they are puzzled by their findings. "Why should one plant waste energy cluing its competitors about a danger?" they ask. The simple answer is that the facts of science don't fit the evolutionary "theory." The first question they should ask is how could all of this amazing intelligence and symbiosis between dumb plants and insects have evolved from nothing by blind chance? The logical answer to that, for those who aren't self-incarcerated in a Darwinian prison, is that it is the product of breathtaking Intelligence. There is not enough light in creation to save a man, but there is enough light to leave him with no excuse for disbelieving in God. "Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them. For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse" (Romans 1:19-20).

(Friday Church News Notes, January 17, 2014, www.wayoflife.org, [email protected], 866-295-4143)

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