What Can We Learn From God’s Creation?
PIGEONS find their bearings by using clusters of magnetic crystals in their heads and necks. Certain fish produce electricity. Several varieties of birds remove excess salt from the seawater they drink. Some shellfish have cavities that can be filled either with water to dive or with gas to surface again.
Yes, whether he realizes it or not, whenever a man uses a compass, generates electricity, designs a submarine, or desalinates seawater, he is in fact just imitating God’s creation.
Indeed, God’s creation has so many lessons for man that it sometimes is called “the book of nature.” For example, bionics is a branch of science devoted to a practical application of systems found in creation. These include airplane wings with features like those of birds, submarines shaped like dolphins, and concrete structures designed like human bones. But is technical knowledge all that “the book of nature” has to offer?
No, it sometimes provides practical lessons of a moral nature too. Referring to the ant’s instinct for diligence, for example, the Bible book of Proverbs admonishes: “Go to the ant, you lazy one; see its ways and become wise. Although it has no commander, officer or ruler, it prepares its food even in the summer; it has gathered its food supplies even in the harvest.”—Proverbs 6:6-8.
However, ethology, a science claiming to draw lessons from animal behavior, has its limitations. Human behavior cannot be put in exactly the same category as that of animals. Noteworthy differences, such as language and an infinitely more sophisticated thinking process in man, must be taken into consideration. As one scientist put it: “We are not just smarter apes.” Our minds “make us qualitatively different from all other forms of life.”
Moreover, there are some questions that a close study of creation alone can never answer. These include: Does life have a purpose? Does God exist, and if so, does he care about us? Let us now see if such questions can be answered.
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Creation Had It First: Sonar
Bats are equipped with a system somewhat similar to a sonar, enabling them to locate and follow the movements of their prey by sending out sounds and analyzing the echoes. But a certain moth (the dogbane tiger) has a jamming signal that sends out waves similar to those of its adversary. Upon receiving the signal, the bat, not having enough time to analyze whether it is an obstacle or not, systematically avoids the moth.
Professor James Fullard, of the University of Toronto, Canada, expressed his admiration, saying: “The amazing thing is the sheer volume of information processing and profound neurological decisions handled by both the bats and the moths, using a very limited number of nerve cells. They exhibit a degree of economy and sophistication that could be the envy of human aerial warfare strategists.”
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Creation Had It First: The Diving Bell
About the beginning of the 16th century, Leonardo da Vinci is said to have invented a diving apparatus. But a certain spider named Argyroneta aquatica already had a perfect system for breathing under water. As Andrée Tétry explains in her book Les outils chez les êtres vivants (Tools Used by Living Beings), this spider “settles in slow-moving streams among submerged aquatic plants and weaves among them a fine horizontal network, loosely held in place by a multitude of threads. Returning to the surface, . . . the spider, with a sudden jerk, catches an air bubble in its water-repellent abdominal hairs. . . . Down the spider goes again and sets the air bubble free underneath the network of silken threads. The bubble then rises to form a slight bulge in the net.” By repeated trips, the spider accumulates enough air to spend the day under its bell, where it eats the prey caught during the night. Concerning this, Tétry adds: “Man’s diving apparatuses, therefore, correspond with the most specialized types observed in nature.”