God, Nature, and The Golden Ratio

The Golden Ratio

“Mathematics is the language with which God has written the universe.”Galileo Galilei

“God created everything by number, weight and measure.”Isaac Newton

“A mathematician, like a painter or a poet, is a maker of patterns.” G.H. Hardy

God reveals Himself to us in a couple of different ways. One is through the special revelation of the Bible, and God also communicates to us through the general revelation of creation.

Psalm 19:1-4 declares, “The heavens proclaim the glory of God.” The Creator designed the universe so that His many invisible attributes would be “clearly seen” in the things He made, so that we are “without excuse” (Romans 1:20). For example, the Fibonacci sequence demonstrates that God used mathematics in creating beauty and balance in nature.

The Fibonacci sequence is a series of numbers that follow a set pattern that goes like this: 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, 233, 377, 610, 987, 1597, 2584… and so on to infinity. The Fibonacci sequence follows a simple formula: 0 + 1 = 1, meaning that each number in the sequence consists of the sum of the two numbers before it.

Fibonacci numbers have an interesting property. When you divide any one number in the sequence by the number before it (i.e., 89 ÷ 55 or 233 ÷ 144) the resulting numbers are very close to one another. In fact, after the 10th in the series, it becomes fixed at 1.618. This number is known as The Golden Ratio. By mapping this sequence and connecting the dots, you create a spiral shape, as shown below.

The Golden Ratio

The Fibonacci Spiral, or Golden Spiral, curves outwards in direct proportion to the Fibonacci Sequence and reflecting The Golden Ratio — for every quarter turn the spiral makes, it gets wider by a factor of 1.618. Artists and architects believe The Golden Ratio, also known as the Divine Proportion, is the most aesthetically pleasing shape to the human eye. Thus, it’s found in paintings, sculptures, and buildings.

We can see this same spiral pattern throughout the natural world, from the smallest microcosm to the largest macrocosm. You can spot The Golden Ratio in the swirl of a galaxy, the arch of an ocean wave, the tail of a seahorse, the shell of a snail, the petals of a flower, the bracts of a pinecone, and innumerable other places in nature. You can even find The Golden Ratio in the helix of your DNA, in your fingerprint whorls, and in the cochlea of your inner ear.

The fact that so many unconnected animate and inanimate structures are shaped according to a specific mathematical formula is one of the clearest proofs that they have been intelligently designed. Such recurrences of the same geometric pattern, no matter the size, make sense in light of a common Designer. Just as you can identify the work of a painter by his style, you can find the signature of our Designer in all aspects of His creation. So you could say, The Golden Ratio is the fingerprint of God.

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