For Christmas, my son got me a lovely necklace. It is a silver pendant showing the golden ratio.

What is that and why would I wear something like it? Well, to me, the golden ratio is a testimony to God’s perfect design.

The golden ratio is a perfectly symmetrical relationship between two proportions. Numerically, it is about a 1:1.61 ratio, and it is most easily represented by increasing square sizes, beginning with two squares that have sides that are 1 unit in length, while the next square has sides that are 2 units in length. The increasing squares will have sides the length of the sum of the previous two squares.

Mathematically, this ratio is closely related to the Fibonacci sequence, where each term is the sum of the previous two (1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21…). Then you can see an increasing spiral that moves from the smallest squares to the larger ones.

Like this:

Historically, the golden ratio has been used in architecture and design because its proportions are pleasing to the eye.

But to me, the most compelling examples of the golden ratio are found throughout creation.

We see this perfectly increasing spiral formation in a nautilus shell. Cauliflower exhibits the same orderly proportions, too. And it is even seen in the ratios of the intricate webbing within delicate dragonfly wings.

Did all this perfection occur randomly? That is hard to believe. Whenever we see order in the world, we should think of design. In fact, the more I study science, the more I see that there is an underlying foundational order to the universe. There are laws that the heavens obey. There is a noticeable pattern to the construction of the atoms within all the elements in the periodic table.

If you really want to see a wonderful animation of all of this, take a look at this video here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkGeOWYOFoA

You see, to me, all this points to a Designer. One who spoke all of creation into being. Glorious mathematical structures not only display beauty and artistic perfection, but they also point us to a Creator-God!

And THIS is why I love my necklace!

The post God’s Design in Nature and the Golden Ratio first appeared on Sherri Seligson.

A tiny handprint.

You see, just a few weeks ago (no judging as to how long it took me to clean!) my daughter-in-law and 1-year-old granddaughter came from out of town for a visit. This toddler handprint was an instant reminder of that.

But it was more. It got me thinking. How could an “organized smudge” evoke such an emotional response from me? It’s because that handprint belonged to someone specific…someone to whom my heart is attached.

And when I see it, her sweet face comes right to mind. I think of her reaching up to me to be picked up. I remember her little hugs.

There is another One whose handprints cause me to instantly stop in my tracks, changing my countenance almost immediately. I see these prints on things in creation. You see, when God makes something, his handprints are all over it. What he crafts is covered by his unique “organized smudges.”

So when I step outside to get the mail and suddenly see a lovely rainbow stretching across the sky, I stop in my tracks to marvel at it. As I observe the awesome complexity in creation when I look into a microscope, I am taken aback that my God spoke this into being. When I see a sunset, with its glorious colors, my heart soars at the design behind how white light bends and creates this mosaic of color.

A handprint.

What a magnificent thing. It’s a connection to the individual who left it. And in the larger scheme of things, it is a testimony to God’s creative power!

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To help you understand all the science-y stuff, let me give you an example from a (hypothetical) kitchen. Let’s say a person once spent lots and lots of time baking bread. This was in an effort to produce a good, healthful, relatively inexpensive food for her family. She went a little overboard and bought stoneware loaf pans, a grain mill to grind multiple grains, and lots of yeast and vital gluten to make the bread come out soft and fluffy. These tools were used to feed her family for a few years. But then things got super busy. She found herself not having much time to devote to baking. The family became busier and busier, and the kids were growing and moving out. Two of them identified that they had an intolerance to gluten.

Thus this (hypothetical) mom stopped baking bread. Yet if you go into her kitchen today, you would find remnants of this once-used activity. There’s a neglected grain mill and some baking pans stored in the back of the cabinet collecting dust. They once served a purpose in this kitchen but they now no longer do. They are a vestigial part of the kitchen body.

They’re like our appendix.

People think some parts of the human body, like the appendix, are no longer useful. They think it is a vestigial organ. By definition, a vestigial organ or body part is something that once served a purpose within the body but is no longer useful.

According to evolutionary theory, unnecessary parts are a negative thing for organisms, hindering their ability to survive. That’s because it takes precious energy to maintain something that serves no purpose. So any organisms that happen to be born with smaller unnecessary parts will better survive as compared to those with larger ones. As they pass on the genetics for smaller unnecessary parts to their offspring, the next generation will do the same, and eventually that non-useful part is no longer there.

But living organisms are NOT like that hypothetical person’s kitchen!

It turns out that the structures in the human body that are considered non-useful actually serve important purposes. The appendix was once embraced as a vestigial organ – thought to be a remnant of a time before people evolved when the diet our “ancestors” had was filled with rough, leafy foliage. But thanks to scientific advances, we know the human appendix has lymphatic tissue which indicates it has a job in the body, serving important roles in the immune system.

Similarly, the coccyx – or tailbone – is sometimes called a vestigial structure, suggested to have been a tail in an evolutionary human ancestor. The coccyx is located at the lower end of our backbone. Scientists now know that it serves an important purpose for humans. Several ligaments and muscles are attached to it in order to provide structural support for the body to work well.

Evolutionary scientists like the idea of vestigial organs. They think these organs once served a use, but through the evolution of creatures that came before humans, these organs lost their purpose. Since they were no longer “needed” as organisms evolved, those organs started to decrease in size. Eventually, as humans continue to evolve, these organs would disappear. It seemed to make sense to them and fit their purpose.

However, thanks to scientific research, we are seeing that there is indeed purpose for all these structures. Of course we can survive without them, but we wouldn’t survive as well. For example, I can live without my pinky on my hand, but my grip would not be as strong without it. These organs can be removed and the person survives, but that is not a measure of function!

As more and more “unimportant” structures in nature are being found to have purpose and function, the idea of vestigial organs as a support for evolutionary theory is becoming less and less valid in the scientific community. Indeed, everything created by God is useful. God, in His infinite wisdom, is the perfect designer and everything He creates is important!

The post Everything Created is Useful (In Praise of Vestigial Organs) first appeared on Sherri Seligson.

“Oh, taste and see that the LORD is good! Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him!” Ps. 34:8 Have you ever wondered why we are able to taste things? Most reasoning goes that taste helped humans test food to determine if it was poisonous or inedible. Bitter or sour tastes indicated something potentially bad to eat. Sweet and salty tastes were signs of food rich in nutrients which would be good things to eat.

Yet scientists are discovering that our sense of taste is way more complicated than the 5 basic senses of sweet, sour, salty, bitter, and savory. First, our taste buds are complex organs with numerous sensory cells. These cells are connected to many different nerve fibers. When a chemical substance (food) enters the mouth, it comes in contact with the taste bud nerve cells and activates the cells that are wired to receive that specific chemical. The nerve cells then pass that information on to the brain so we can process and identify a specific flavor.

But there is more to the story.

Sugars, minerals, proteins, salts, and acids in foods are some of the trigger chemicals to get those taste buds firing! But most foods are made up of a combination of different tastes. Therefore, a specific flavor we might identify is really a combination of different sensations. And those sensations go beyond the tongue. They involve a whole symphony of senses, including smell, texture, and even temperature!

For example, things you might consider hot or spicy are not even direct taste sensations. They technically are pain signals sent by the touch and temperature-sensing nerves. So when you eat a super spicy taco, the nerves in your mouth are telling your brain you are in pain. If you LIKE spicy foods, your brain interprets that pain as enjoyable and fun! It’s kind of like the muscle pain we feel as we play a sport or work out.

Humans have a virtually limitless flavor palette. Half of your sensory cells and nerve fibers are specialized to react to only one taste, and they let the brain know the intensity of that taste. So far, scientists have been able to determine the brain can identify about 10 levels of intensity. That’s how you can identify whether something is a little salty or extremely salty!

The other half of your taste sensory cells are able to react to several of those 5 basic tastes, each having varying levels of sensitivity to the basic flavors. So a particular cell might be most sensitive to sweet, then sour, then salty and bitter, while another cell might be most sensitive to salty, then bitter, and so on.

You identify a complete flavor experience once all the sensory cell profiles from different parts of the tongue and mouth have been stimulated, sending their messages to the brain which combines the information and processes it.

So assuming the 5 basic tastes, 10 levels of intensity, and a huge number of taste-combination cells, there can be up to 100,000 different flavors that our brain can identify. Combine that with the senses of touch, temperature, and smell, and the numbers of flavors increase exponentially!

That goes well beyond the requirement for identifying if something is poisonous or good to eat. Why do we need to have such a rainbow of flavor combinations?

Well, tastes are very often associated with emotions. Think about the phrases “a bitter pill to take,” “sour grapes,” or “sweet nothings.” They all help us to express emotions of joy, pleasure, or sadness.

Science is finally helping us to see how our ability to taste works so we can better understand that connection, but the Psalmist who wrote the verse below already understood that:

“How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth!” Ps. 119:103

Indeed, as we learn more about ourselves and the world around us, we get a clearer picture of how God created us. He gave us a vast organ system to be able to identify the myriad of flavors in the world, not only for us to know what is safe to eat, but also for us to be able to better express ourselves and communicate to each other how we feel.

The post Our Sense of Taste and Praising the Lord first appeared on Sherri Seligson.

You have given him dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under his feet, all sheep and oxen, and also the beasts of the field, the birds of the heavens, and the fish of the sea, whatever passes along the paths of the seas.

Did you catch that last phrase? The paths of the seas.

These verses caught the interest of Matthew Maury, a retired naval officer who worked in the Depot of Charts and Instruments office in the mid-1800s. He realized that, like rivers, there must be great currents of water moving throughout the oceans

With that in mind, he studied sea charts and log books, plotting the great Gulf Current that comes out of the Gulf of Mexico and pours into the Atlantic. This great “path” is 40 miles wide and 2,000 feet deep! Maury also identified the Japanese Current, California Current, and several others.

This information was valuable to the sailing ships of that century, enabling them to utilize those currents to move them across the oceans more efficiently.

Today, thanks to satellite imaging and more sophisticated devices, we are able to more accurately track ocean currents. I recently came across this amazing video showing the major known currents (paths) of the oceans throughout the world.

You can find it here: https://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/perpetual-ocean.html

Isn’t that fascinating?

Indeed, Matthew Maury is celebrated as the mind behind the discovery of the oceans and their movements. But Psalm 8:8 shows us that the Word of God is indeed timeless and filled with truth!

The post Superhighways and Freeways in the Ocean? Absolutely! first appeared on Sherri Seligson.

How To Write a Lab Report – Apologia

Over the years, many parents have asked me exactly how their students should be doing lab reports when they complete a science experiment. There are several helps out there, but I am so excited that we have just completed a very helpful YouTube video that goes through each of the sections of a lab report (both for middle/high school and even college).

It walks you through each step and explains how to include information in each of the sections. Additionally, you can download a written explanation along with THREE sample lab reports, showing how to do a report on different types of experiments.

Here is the video link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FR28zf2Aiwo 

And here is the link to the downloadable PDF: http://homeschool-101.com/write-lab-report/ 

Happy Science!!

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The earth rotates on its axis at a speed of 1,000 miles per hour at the equator!

So even though you might think you’re not moving right now as you are sitting to read this, you are actually moving at great speed in relation to our solar system.

Now the earth’s rotation is critical to the survival of every living thing on the planet. You see, our sun radiates visible and invisible energy.  Some of that energy is necessary to power all forms of life on earth, while other portions of that energy can harm life. Thankfully, our atmosphere protects us from much of the harmful solar rays. But the energy that is important to sustain life actually makes up a small part of light’s spectrum. And it is interesting that this useful energy is the portion of light that is visible to the human eye.

Visible light is necessary for the chemical reactions of life. It drives photosynthesis, which is the foundation of nearly every food web on earth.

But life cannot tolerate continual solar energy. Too much sunlight and the harmful radiation of gamma rays, x-rays, and other wavelengths can kill living tissue. Too little light and there is not enough to drive the required food production in plants and algae. We need a specific amount…kind of like baby bear’s porridge. It cannot be too hot or too cold, but just right.

Well, it turns out that the speed of the earth’s rotation is just perfect to create an ideal environment for life.

In fact, if the earth spun at 1/2 of its present rate, daylight hours and nighttime darkness would each be twice as long as they are now. That means during the excessively long days the plants would burn up from too much exposure. At night, the temperatures would drop so low that anything surviving the daylight hours would freeze.

So you can think of our planet as being on a rotisserie spit…like a chicken…slowly turning around and around as it is evenly heated.

What a perfect design to support life!

The post The Earth’s Rotation and Rotisserie Chicken (a Testimony to God’s Perfect Design) first appeared on Sherri Seligson.

A face only a mother could love!

If most people were asked to draw a quick picture of a fish, they would likely draw a torpedo-shaped creature with some fins, an eye on either side of its head, and a mouth at the tip. And for the most part, they would have pretty accurate representation. But there are some fish species in the world that don’t fit into this general shape. Flatfish, like flounders and halibut, take the fish design world and turn it on its ear.

You see, when young flatfish hatch, they look like most other fish. They appear to be tiny bullets, swimming up in the water column. But when it is time for them to mature, they go through a transformation that is both cool and creepy. In fact, flatfish puberty makes the human teenage-years look like a piece of cake!

John D. Batten [PD]

When a flatfish begins to mature, the bones in its skull twist and move around. One eye starts to MIGRATE from one side of its head to the other side so that it has two eyes on the same side of its face. The fish starts to swim in a tilted manner. Additionally, the newly eye-less side of its body bleaches out, while the double-eyed side takes on a patterned coloration so that it blends with the ocean bottom. At the completion of this metamorphosis, the flatfish no longer swims in the water column but settles out to the floor. This way, the colored, two-eyed side faces up, and the blind, bland-colored side faces down. Its transformed head and body enable it to live this way, feeding as a bottom-dweller for the rest of its life.

So we can say that flatfish are extraordinary creatures.

But they help us understand more. Flatfish create a stumbling block for evolutionary theory. Evolutionary theorists try to explain how and why these assymetrical organisms came to be. They think that today’s flatfish evolved from bilateral (commonly shaped) fish. Yet they have a hard time explaining what drove those fish to evolve from a perfectly good torpedo shape to a re-formed sideways pancake, and they didn’t have any examples of fossilized transition organisms.

In recent years, scientists tried to explain flatfish evolution by comparing them to fish fossils found in a petrified coral reef in Italy.1 The fossils had asymmetrical skulls and one eye on the top of the fishes’ faces. They appeared to be pre-flatfish, somewhere between regular fish and modern flatfish.

But there is one problem.

These newly-discovered fossils are found in the same rock layers as the fish they should have evolved into! These “pre-flatfish”, then, are not really evolutionary transitions. If they were, then according to evolutionary theory they should have been found in rock layers lower than modern flatfish. So how can we explain the fossils in Italy?

Well, there is a great diversity among flatfish species, with some fish families exhibiting a right-migrating eye, others exhibiting a left-migrating eye, and still others with eyes migrating in either direction! These fish have internal genetic mechanisms that make them asymmetrical on the inside from birth, even though they appear symmetrical when they are young. Metamorphosis and “face transformation” is just a regular part of life for these guys. That means we should expect to find specimens that were fossilized during transition or even species with a different form of eye migration. That doesn’t prove they are transitions between symmetrical fish and asymmetrical fish.

What we can say is that flatfish are truly unique creatures that are part of the vastly diverse group of ocean organisms in the world.

1Friedman, M. 2008. The evolutionary origin of flatfish asymmetry. Nature. 454: 209-212

The post Migrating Eyes and the Fascinating World of Flatfish Design first appeared on Sherri Seligson.

But I noticed something interesting.

Plain-old bending light or something more?

We weren’t the only ones doing this. Each night, almost all the folks from our hotel would gather down by the dock or beach or balcony in order to watch the harbinger of the end of the day. They brought their beach chairs, iced drinks, and cameras, indicating that this event was planned and anxiously awaited.

I started to think about that. Everyone loves a good sunset. It is beautiful! Red, orange, yellow, and even purple colors the sky as if it has been painted. Cell phones come out, people take silhouette-shots of themselves or they wait for a sailboat to glide by as that big yellow ball meets the water.

Why do we act like that?

Well, first of all, think about what a sunset is. The sun isn’t actually setting in relation to where we are, rather, the Earth is spinning on its axis and is turning away from the sun. As we are viewing it at more of an angle, the light it is emitting begins to bend through a greater part of our atmosphere and reflect off dust particles in the air, off of clouds, and off of the water. That’s why sunsets are often more colorful than sunrises. At the end of the day, there is more dust in the air from wind movement (due to the sun heating up the air at daytime) and even from the activities of animals and people. There’s just more for light to bend and bounce off of.

So when people take time out of their day to walk outside and stare at the sky for a few minutes, think about what they are looking at. Is it simply light bending and bouncing around lots of gases and dust so we can see its different wavelengths?

Animals don’t take the time to watch it. Why do we?

I think that is because we are seeing MORE. We aren’t just looking at the physical parameters of light. Yes, there is some sciencey stuff going on, but we are marveling at its beauty. We have the ability to identify things that are beautiful, going beyond what kinds of light waves enter our eye.

There’s definitely more going on than just light waves… I mean…look at it!

We have the capacity to appreciate it.

Now, whenever I see “something more” than pure science, I have to believe that there is “some ONE more.” There is really no evolutionary advantage to admiring a gorgeous sunset. We are created to enjoy God’s glorious creation as it gives testimony to His greatness.

Many animals in the world aren’t able to see (think worms and snails), and of those that can, many cannot see color. But even IF they can see color, they don’t have the capacity to enjoy and appreciate it.

We have that “something more” because God desires to know us and have relationship with us. So science in itself is not enough. It is a means of helping us to better know our Creator. That’s why I love studying our world so much!

As I was watching the sunset last night and realizing these things, I wanted to start jumping around and telling everyone what I was thinking. WE ARE BEAUTIFULLY MADE TO ENJOY BEAUTIFUL THINGS! They are made as a testimony to God’s glory!

Hopefully, next time you see a sunset and start to gasp at the colors, I hope you will think about why you are in awe.

The post Our Appreciation of Bending Light and God’s Handiwork first appeared on Sherri Seligson.

Romans 12:4-5 “For just as we have many members in one body and all the members do not have the same function, so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another.”

But what does that really mean? Why use that analogy? And are there more important members than others?

I sometimes feel that way. There are times when I feel like a lowly portion of the body. And I NEVER have felt like I am one of the “important” parts. Those must be reserved for people who are doing fabulous work all over the world and are well known and have written tons of books, right? They are the lungs, liver, heart, stomach, and other vital organs.

But me…most days I feel like the appendix. A tiny little thing that goes unnoticed, and the body DEFINITELY can live without.

Have you ever felt that way? As moms, we often feel that in the realm of the global Church, we are a tiny little thing that goes unnoticed, and the body DEFINITELY can live without us. We feel we aren’t really doing much for the greater body.

But think about it. When Romans says we are members in one body and all do not have the same function, that means we are all given a unique function. And if God gave us that function, wouldn’t He in his omniscience give us the best function for us to do? And if it wasn’t an important one, why would he give it to us? Why would he give it to anyone?

Each part of the body is necessary.

Think of the appendix again. Many evolutionists consider it a vestigial organ, a useless “leftover” of our evolutionary past. Until recent years, the appendix was thought to serve no real purpose.

But as science is advancing, we are learning that this little organ plays an important role in our immune system. For one, it behaves as a storage for good bacteria. So when a person gets a digestive illness, the appendix can repopulate it with good bacteria again.

This situation can often happen when we need to take a course of antibiotics for a sickness. The medicine will reduce all bacterial populations, good and bad. And those good guys living in the appendix are less likely to be affected, so they can reboot the digestive system.

Granted. You CAN live without your appendix. But you also can live without your arms and legs, without your spleen, without a good portion of your colon, or part of your liver, or minus a kidney. But that doesn’t mean those organs and body parts aren’t important. Their presence helps make the body thrive!

And all body parts need each other.

1 Corinthians 12:12 “For even as the body is one and yet has many members, and all the members of the body, though they are many, are one body, so also is Christ.”

When a person walks, they need to utilize so many of their body parts. The legs (bones, muscles, and nerves) and the arms have to move in a coordinated fashion. The brain is constantly sending out messages to them. The eyes keep watch for obstacles, and even the inner ear plays a part, keeping our balance. Without the tiniest of calcium nodules there, called ossicles, we couldn’t keep our balance, and we would have a difficult time walking. You see, all these components are needed to work together for us to do something as simple as take a few steps forward.

Psalm 133:1 “Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brothers to dwell together in unity!”

What a great analogy. Each part of the body, big and little, grand and humble, is important and serves a greater purpose than an individual role.

We see this when the body is injured, too.

When one part of the body becomes injured, what does the rest of the body do? It works to heal the injury. It sends blood with special cells to stop the bleeding. It sends food and chemicals to support the rebuilding of muscle and skin. It sends them to heal bone. That is because the body is FOR itself. It functions better if all of its parts are working. This interconnection reminds us that we should all be FOR each other, too.

If you are feeling like the appendix in the body of Christ today, rejoice! You have been given an important role. Whether it is to encourage thousands or to make a salad for your family, you are doing a God-given job that has kingdom impact. You are raising your children to be character-filled and to boldly go into the world and serve others. You are building others up as you spend your time in prayer. You are building relationships with others in your church or neighborhood as you bring over a casserole or give an understanding hug.

You are an awesome appendix!

Not in the limelight. Quietly doing your day-by-day job. And serving the greater body of Christ as you do it.

Helping members of our body makes us all STRONGER.

AND… when we do this, we are being a light to the world. This is not the way the world usually works. People want to be on their own. They are only concerned for themselves. But we are a body, called to build relationships with each other. That builds us all up. We won’t look like the rest of the world. And that is a good thing. We are showing them that God’s ways are better than man’s ways.

So go on and be an awesome appendix today! I know I will try to “appendix well,” too!

The post In the Body of Christ, Why Do I Always Feel Like the Appendix? first appeared on Sherri Seligson.