You have much food for thought in this thread, but I'm going to touch upon one aspect that resonated with me.

Your Dad kissing the baby and loving it so much. As I read it, I wondered if you felt jealousy and then you confessed to a twinge of jealousy because he was your Dad after all.

Well, perhaps it is as if you are the seedlings (the growing step in human evolution).
Most of us know that the farmer loves the seedlings as well as the harvest, but it is somewhat different, so perhaps in your dream the farmer is God and is represented as your Dad.
The baby is the harvest of the next step of our humanly trials and tribulations...
I know I'll feel jealous of the leaps the future generations will have over us. I believe in my heart that it may feel to us old-timers as if we had been cheated and less loved or less blessed by the success or health or knowledge of mystical things that future generations will excel in. Like God the father loves them more than us, when in reality he loves us the same, but we hadn't matured in body or spirit enough to reach that level. (Like our ancestors may be the seeds.) Much like loving a treasured seedlings (that's us) because of the promise of the much loved harvest it will bring.

This is just my opinion, I'm speaking of this from my gardening experiences. Oh the care I give to the seedlings to help them mature and produce the veggies from the harvest.

Growing and learning and being able to combine the beliefs with the actual science of life is the knowledge that will eventually bring nay-sayers and us all to our successful potential combination and utilization of spirit and flesh working together to reach whatever goals we humans are supposed to reach in the generations to come.
A seed to a fruitful plant or An acorn to a tree.
I hope this made some sense.
tree treehug