Delicate beauty, intelligently created
By Elizabeth Prata
SYNOPSIS
Observing the mathematical beauty of shells and other natural forms, I connect Fibonacci’s spiral to divine design. Once a nonbeliever, I come to see creation’s harmony as evidence of God’s intelligent artistry.
I love shells. I wrote about that yesterday in Treasures from the Sea: Praising God’s Wonders on Every Shore.
I was teaching my students the /sh/ digraph in school and shells is one of the words. The children and I got to talking about shells and beaches. They love shells too. Here is another short meditation on the natural world and the Creator.
I lived for two years on a sailboat, sailing from Maine to the Bahamas and back, twice. That was fun. To keep occupied, I broadened and deepened my interest in the natural world and focused that interest on shells and the animals that lived in them. I learned how to spot the animals’ habitat based on how the shell was designed. Intertidal mollusks vs. rock clinging mollusks or digging mollusks.
The one thing that attracts people to shells, though, is their beauty. And how they are designed. Did you know that a univalve (one-shell mollusk) is born with a tiny apex attached to itself? As it goes thru life it grows the shell around itself. But it grows the shell in a pattern that has a defined ratio, and this ratio is consistent throughout the mollusk world, and also the natural world. Ferns grow at the same ratio.
 |
| EPrata photo |
The Italian mathematician Leonardo da Pisa, or AKA Fibonacci, discovered this. He also introduced the decimal system to Europe, replacing the Roman Numerals in the 1200s (thank goodness!) Mollusk shells grow in a logarithmic spiral manner, always. Since the mollusks don’t have a brain that tells them to grow this way, and since the logarithmic consistency is carried over to other natural elements such as the pine cone and the sunflower and a snowflake, proponents of Intelligent Design use Fibonacci as a basis for the argument that the world that has been externally designed by a Master Intelligence.
We know that ‘intelligence’ not as an intelligence, but as a Person: God.
In any case, shells are exquisite, and a joy to discover as you walk the beach.
Then God said, “Let the waters teem with swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth in the open expanse of the heavens.” 21God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarmed after their kind, and every winged bird after its kind; and God saw that it was good. 22God blessed them, saying, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.” 23There was evening and there was morning, a fifth day. (Genesis 1:20-23)
In fact, as a non-Christian as I was then, it was studying the oceans, currents, and shells that got me thinking about the fact that these all seem so interretlated, so delicately beautiful, so poised with mathematical beauty, that there must be a creator. This makes sense because Romans 1:20 says,
For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, that is, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, being understood by what has been made, so that they are without excuse.
It really is obvious that this workld is made by a Creator, it didn’t just explode out of nothing to have the debris settle with such variety, interdependence, and beauty. Big Bangs don’t care about beauty, they just bang.
I’m grateful the LORD above all chose to make the universe, the planets, the earth, animals, and people. I am more glad He drew me to Him so I can know his invisible power and attributes. I don’t worship the created world, but I appreciate it and I worship the One who did.
