OUR FAMILY RECENTLY VACATIONED at the Atlantic coast. Our children had a blast playing in the waves and soft sand for hours each day. While keeping our eyes out for big seashells and sharks’ teeth, we also enjoyed a new challenge of micro-shelling. Talk about peeking into a whole new world! These shells are perfect in every way. They’re only a fraction of the size!
Dr. Jason Lisle is an astrophysicist who researches issues pertaining to science and the Christian Faith. He recently published a book entitled Fractals: The Secret Code of Creation. Within the first pages, I learned more about mathematics and what God has done with numbers than I ever thought possible. A fractal is a set of numbers... 2, 4, 6, and on and on into infinity. They can also be within much more complicated sets, including addition, squaring, or multiplication. The photo you see is a more complex set of numbers called the Mandelbrot set put to color with computers. You can find fractals all throughout Creation: they are found in mountains, rivers, and trees; fractals can be found in the chambered nautilus shell and the streak of lightning across the night sky.
Dr. Lisle suggests a few things I find to be amazingly compelling. First, numbers cannot evolve. The number 7 could not have come from a number 3. Second, only the Christian worldview brings any answers to the question of the origins of information, including numbers. The third point is the most intense and humbling. Our Creator’s infinite-ness is truly beyond our comprehension. The beauty and precision He uses to run our universe are so much higher than we can imagine or comprehend; it simply staggers the mind. Last of all is this reality: our God—the One holding every single proton, neutron, and electron in place across the universe—remembered you and me from before He set all things in motion.
Just like the micro-shells and fractals show, God is in and behind all of life infinitely!
As always, may you find joy in the simple things. This is Marlin with Plain Values magazine. Learn more about our work, and subscribe, at plainvalues.com.
Fractals