The Geometry of Christianity

Mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot, who died last October, was hailed for his work with fractals. He noticed that in nature, small parts often resemble the whole. Therein lies the lesson for the day.

Psalm 104 is a hymn of praise to God as the Creator of the world. As verse 24 says, "O Lord, how manifold are your works! In wisdom you have made them all."

Okay, but did God design the world before actually doing the creating? Can you picture God seated at a drafting table with a protractor, compass, triangle and T-square, plotting what the world and all that's in it would look like?

Probably not, because the notion of God at a drafting table is too anthropomorphic; it pictures God too much like one of us instead of as the Supreme Being to whom all power belongs.

But there's another reason that image doesn't work: Where in this world that God created does God seem to have used a protractor, compass, triangle and T-square? Or, to ask it another way, where in nature do we see straight lines, exact triangles, perfect circles and other standardized shapes? Nowhere. As mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot, a man we'll tell you more about in a moment, put it, "Clouds are not spheres, mountains are ...