Baobab Tree - Why Did God Create a Tree Designed to Survive a Drought?

by Broken Promises 7 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  Broken Promises

  I was watching a brilliant David Attenborough documentary on the island of Madagascar. It's an island east of the African continent, divided in two by a mountain range, into a wet, rainforest half and a dry, desert-like half.

  In the dry part of the island, grows the baobab tree. It is a tree which grows in several continents which experience low rainfall, including Africa, Australia, and the Arabian Peninsula.

  It's unique in the sense that its trunk can hold up to 120,000L/32,000USgallons of water, growing up to 30metres high.

  

  So it raises the question, if God created the earth to be a Paradise, where there'd never be a drought, why were these trees created with the ability to store water? Why don't ALL trees do the same?

  ps. More information on the baobab tree can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adansonia
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  WontLeave

  You've fallen into the trap of Creationists. The Bible never claimed God created every species, but only says "kind". Nutty Creationists who reject speciation and genetic drift muddy the waters. They're every bit as unscientific as the Evolutionists who extrapolate speciation and genetic drift into humans coming from amoeba.

  There, now I can get attacked from both dogmatic sides about how I "don't understand" and am misrepresenting their beliefs.
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  TD

  Good question.

  --Not nearly as big as the baobab tree, but adeniums form a pretty impressive caudex too:

  

  Another good question is why plants that occupy the same niche on different continents look alike

  For example, this is Euphoribia. It is native to Africa and Asia:

  

  And this is cactus. It is native to North and South America:

  The average person gets confused on the difference between the two, yet they are not related at all. (Not in the same family or order.)

  In evolutionary theory, this is called "convergence" and there are many, many examples of it.
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  PSacramento

  The world is the way it is because it can be no other way.

  Evolution is part of the creative process of God, we see it all around us in nature, in the universe, that which reveals to Us the nature of God.

  The fact that we can observein in nature the evolutionary process menas that it is part of nature and as such, part of God's ongoing creative process.
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  charlie brown jr.

  Maybe he gave trees freewill too knowing they also would turn on him.

  Good Question BP!
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  Philadelphia Ponos

  So it raises the question, if God created the earth to be a Paradise,

  The Bible never says God created the earth as a paradise. It says he created a garden that was a paradise and place Adam in it.
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  Broken Promises

  PP,

  That's a good point. Afterall, when Adam and Eve was thrown out of Garden of Eden the outside world was apparently much harsher.

  But then, why not create the earth as a paradise? Why have thorns and thistles (and bloodsucking insects for that matter)?
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  TD

  The Bible never says God created the earth as a paradise. It says he created a garden that was a paradise and place Adam in it.

  Yes, that's a reasonable view.

  The JW's however have taught in the past (Not sure if they still do) that the entire earth was once at least a temperate if not a semi-tropical climate and that this did not change until after the flood.

  Examples like the Baobab tree, Adeniums, Cactus, Euphorbia, etc. are one example of how this ulitimately violates the 'Design = Designer' argument, which is embarrasing for a group like the JW's who advocate it.