As we are in the season of Fall, the landscape gives us ample thoughts to contemplate. At this point in the year, the trees don't need the leaves anymore because they aren't producing fruit, so they fall. If the trees would have kept the leaves, it would make the trees vulnerable to be felled by winds and snow that are coming soon.

The leaves fall and become fertilizer for the seeds that the trees have dropped during the summer. Also, the leaves are not needed any longer for shade. The leaves are useless on the trees and very useful on the ground.

Let's go back a few steps. In Spring the flowers blossom in beautiful colors to attract bees and flies to pollinate the trees. Then the flowers are not needed, and they wither. The fruit appears in green color until it's ripe and ready for consumption. Then the color changes to an attractive color. Every type of fruit has its distinct color, yet when they are unripe, they are all green. Why? Because when the fruit and the seeds within them are unripe, they want to camouflage and be unattractive to eaters. Once they are ready, they turn to beautiful and distinct color to entice humans and animals.

The fruits protect their seeds in various ways, so the seeds stay in existence and are not consumed. The orange has bitter seeds, the watermelon's seed is not bitter but is slippery and easily falls to the ground, and the peach and plum's seeds have extremely hard shells. Today, because we throw everything away in the garbage, many seeds don't reach fertile soil. In places that are not urbanized, these features still come to great use.

Not only fruits have purposeful designs, everything else does too. Take the dandelion flower; it is colored a bright yellow to attract insects to pollinate it, yet when it changes into a seed-ball it becomes colorless, and now needs only the wind to disseminate its seeds.

Every type of fruit and plant has its distinct design to attract pollinators, to produce fruit that is edible and attractive, to protect its seed, and, in its unique way, produces mechanisms to make sure that their seeds are disseminated for further offspring.

There is infinite wisdom in creation that undoubtedly points to a creator. There is so much plan and purpose in every feature of nature. The above is only what we see with the naked eye. When we go into observing the microscopic world of cells, DNA, and the atomic world, it becomes many times more astonishing. The creation testifies on its Maker.

Even atheists don't deny the astonishing plan and purpose that we see in everything in nature. Their claim is that the plants and seeds “themselves” create these mechanisms for survival and only the fittest survive.

It is true that these mechanisms are for survival and procreation, but it's unacceptable to say that they did so themselves. Plants and fruits have DNA to store an infinite amount of data, but we don't see any way that they can pick up and learn this data by themselves. How would a tree know if their mechanisms for seed dissemination works or that it needs to adapt a new mechanism? Also, why do they all need to create unique systems to survive? If it's just about survival, they should all adapt similar mechanisms and choose only the most effective ones.

When we marvel at the harmony and design of the world, we want to melt away and just be part of this great plan and Planner. “How great are Your works, G-d! You have made them all with wisdom!”

Comments? munger@jaketv.tv.