O LORD, what a variety of things you have made! In wisdom you have made them all. The earth is full of your creatures. Psalm 104:24
A friend sent me an email that addresses the attention God paid to numbers when He created the world. It began with God’s use of the number “7” (meaning “perfection”) in the hatching of eggs:
- The canary in 14 days
- The barnyard hen in 21 days
- The ducks and geese in 28 days
- The mallard in 35 days
- The parrot and the ostrich in 42 days
The email then moved from eggs to legs, comparing the design of the elephant, horse and cow. I read that, to rise from the ground, elephants’ four legs all bend forward, horses use their front legs and cows rely on the strength of their back legs.
I wasn’t too sure how that proved the cleverness of God, especially after I watched a video of an elephant rising—his front ankles, not his knees, bending forward. However, the next part of the email fascinated me. It dealt with the numerical qualities of fruits and vegetables.
- Each Watermelon has an even number of stripes on the rind
- Each Orange has an even number of segments
- Each Ear of Corn has an even number of rows
- Each Stalk of Wheat has an even number of grains
- Every Bunch of Bananas has on its lowest row an even number of bananas, and each row decreases by one.
At that point, I was ready to jump in my car, speed to the local supermarket, fill my cart with whatever of the aforementioned produce I could find and have a counting party. But as I continued reading, two plus two wasn’t adding up to four. “The waves of the sea roll in on shore twenty-six to the minute in all kinds of weather.”
It just so happened that I was reading this email from the beach in Mexico. You know, where the waves roll in. So, I watched. And counted eighteen seconds elapsed between the first and second wave. Then sixteen. Do the math. There’s quite a difference between 26 and 3.5. It was time to research the truth of this email.
Starting with eggs, the extensive list proved that not all egg-hatching is divisible by seven. For example, pigeons take 10-18 days and pheasants, 24 days. Then I checked out the fruit. Some watermelons, for example, have no stripes. As for the orange? Well, unless nine is an even number, this isn’t true, either.
On Google, atheists had a field day with this information. Sadly, Christian enthusiasts, eager to validate intelligence in design, were passing on this fruitless data as if it were Gospel. Sermons were created from it. Facebook fanatics were copying it.
Stop! Stop! I wanted to scream.
God doesn’t need us to make up “facts” to support His cleverness in creation. We are surrounded by his work. Look at animals. Fruits and vegetables. The ocean. Human beings. All demonstrate the brilliance of One with a mind-blowing imagination. No extra addition is necessary. God. Is. Enough.
And that, Readers, is my two cents worth.
Revelation 4:11 reminds us of the attitude we should have towards God’s handiwork.
You are worthy, O Lord our God, to receive glory and honor and power. For you created all things, and they exist because you created what you pleased.