“When I look at your heavens, the creation of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have set in place . . .” Psalm 8:3 (GW) Most people believe that in the olden days, fingerprints were an unknown. However, fingerprints were used in the Babylonian Kingdom as a signature. That’s 4000 years ago! They were not the only ones! It’s baffling!
The same is true with creation. There too can be found God’s fingerprint all over our world and beyond our galaxy. It’s a mathematical evidence that can be seen everywhere in the universe; and as it is everywhere, the odds of random chance is impossible. Only an intelligence could have done so.
Take, for example, the Golden Ratio. The Golden Ratio is a mathematical constant that is manifested in a myriad of shapes and patterns. It is evident in microscale structures unseen to the bare human eyes, like DNA and the magnetic spins of some molecules, as well as in enormous structures found in living and non-living things.
The Golden Ratio is most famously associated with a sequence of numbers known as the Fibonacci sequence. Although the sequence was noted by East Indian mathematicians as early as 500 AD, it was most famously reported by Leonardo Pisa (now known as Fibonacci) in the 12th century. Fibonacci realized, specifically through his study of the growth of a rabbit population under ideal circumstances, that there is an order in nature, a sequence of mathematical numbers that have no end in sight. His most famous work, the Liber Abaci, reports the following sequence of Fibonacci numbers: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, 233, 377… It may look complicated, but it actually isn’t. The pattern between the numbers is as follows: if you take a number in the series and add to it the previous number in the series, you will get the next number in the series, i.e. 1 + 1 = 2; 1 + 2 = 3; 2 + 3 = 5; 3 + 5 = 8 and so on.
In addition, if you divide any number in the Fibonacci sequence by the previous number in the sequence, the answer you will get will become closer and closer to (converge around) a single number. The larger the number you use, the more decimal places you will have and the the more accurate your approximation to that number will be. This single number that the answers converge around is known as the Golden Ratio, and which is approximately equal to 1.61803398875. As an example, let’s take the last two numbers listed above in the Fibonacci sequence, 233 and 377. If you divide 377 by 233, you will get 377/233=1.61802…Dividing 34 by 21 will give you 1.619…And dividing 144 by 89 will give you 1.6179, etc.
The Golden Ratio is not just unique to the Fibonacci sequence, however. If you were to randomly choose any two numbers and create a sequence of numbers using the same pattern used to generate the Fibonacci sequence, then dividing each number in the sequence by the previous number will still approach the Golden Ratio. For example, instead of starting with 1 and 1 as in the Fionacci sequence, you could start with 7 and 9. The number pattern would be 7, 9, 16, 25, etc., thus adding the first two numbers together to get a third number, and then the second and third number to get the fourth number, etc. Then if you were to divide 16 by 9, etc., your answer would always approach the Golden Ratio! (To learn more about the Golden Ratio, feel free to check out the surprisingly-well written article about it on Wikipedia.)
That pattern is revealed all over creation. It can be found in the human ear, as well as in a DNA molecule or in galaxies, comets, seed patterns such as sunflowers, dandelions and daisies, as well as hurricanes and tornadoes. The proportions in these examples follow the Golden Ratio. The same is true with leaves around a plant’s stem. This too follows the Golden Ratio. Flower petals follow this ratio as well, as do many other parts of Creation.
That ratio that we are talking about is pleasant to the eye, and it’s little wonder that so many artists follow it in their creations. Take, for example, the works of Leonardo da Vinci, Monet, Renoir, Vermeer, Van Gogh, etc.
What amazes me is that this ratio is even stored in the DNA. Its helical pattern is 21 Angstroms wide and the length of one full turn in its spiral is 34 Angstroms in length. (For reference, there are 10 billion Angstroms in a meter, and roughly 3 billion Angstroms in a foot.) If you look at the list of Fibonacci numbers given above, you will find the numbers 21 and 34 amoung them!The DNA is a long spiral of the Golden Ratio!
This is not by chance, either. There is a reason that the Golden Ratio appears constantly in nature. The fraction denoted by the Golden Ratio is known as an “irrational number” — meaning it cannot be represented as a simple fraction. However, the Golden Ratio is also a mathematical phenomenon as it is ‘the most irrational of all irrational numbers’. (For more information, google ‘the Hurwitz Inequality and the Golden Ratio or check out this video). It is because of this extreme irrationality that the Golden Ratio is such an ideal number for natural processes, such as seed packing as demonstrated here.
Some may say that this is random, but given that the Golden Ratio is all over nature and even in our own DNA, it is just not possible to say that it is random. There is no denying it! Just like the uniqueness of our fingerprints cannot be denied, we cannot deny that the Golden Ratio is the master work of a brilliant, all-knowing creator.
Unlike some, we both love math and this ratio amazes us. We have no doubt that this evidence is left from our Heavenly Father: “Since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them.” Romans 1:19 (NIV) Isn’t this amazing!
Donovan and Rob Chaffart
(To access the entire “Why I am a Christian” devotional series, please click here.)