Origins - The Secret Code of Creation

the beauty of God's creation surrounds us even in ways we didn't know existed dr. Jason Lisle shows us this through fractals a mathematical phenomenon of intricate and repeating patterns in a step-by-step demonstration dr. Lisle explains this marvel and how it points to God's complex design for our universe coming up next on today's edition of origins the secret code of creation with dr. Jason Lisle [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] hello my friends and welcome to origins my name is Don Chapman it's a privilege to be your host during this program we showcase interesting guests who present evidence from science along with other important facts validating the truth of creation and the accuracy of the Bible today's guest is dr. Jason Lisle he has a PhD in astrophysics from the University of Colorado and before that he had an undergraduate degree in physics and astronomy from Ohio Wesleyan University where he also minored in mathematics and on today's program were actually talking about one of his favorite areas of math dr. Lisle welcome to origins thanks thanks for having me on so you love to do math I do yeah and I hope after today you'll love it too okay well we have an interesting title the secret code of creation I love secrets are you gonna reveal one I am yes there is a secret code that God is built into math we don't think about God creating math a lot but we think I've been creating animals and planets and things like that but God's responsible for math as well I want to show you one of the secret codes that God is built into math that was only discovered really in the 1980s I have to tell you this is really fascinating I'm excited all right well we need to start with some of the kind of mundane details but then we'll get to the good stuff so stay with me all right we need to start with sets a set is a collection of elements with a common property defined and so for example in mathematics you can have certain sets of numbers and some numbers will be included in the set and other numbers will be excluded from the set so for example you might have the set of even numbers and and in that set you're gonna have those numbers that you see there but you're gonna have the other ones that are excluded that makes sense and of course you could have the set of negative numbers in which case a different set of numbers would be included and others would be excluded now those ones are easy because you can tell just by looking at the number whether it belongs to the set or not we're going to deal with a set that you can't tell just by looking at the number you have to do a little bit of thinking and it's called the Mandelbrot set now the Mandelbrot set is the set of all numbers that obey this particular formula that we have on the screen there whereby it's the that the number in question is C C is the number that we're checking to see if it's a part of the mental broad set and then Z is another number it's actually Z as a sequence of numbers so you have Z 1 z2 z3 we just call that Zn and when that other numbers if it gets larger and larger and larger then that means C is not part of the amount abroad set but if the sequence of Z's stays small then C is part of the mental broth set it sounds very complicated so I'm gonna give you two quick examples here just so you can see how this works all right so we're gonna ask is the number 1 part of the Mandelbrot set and so in this case C is equal to 1 and we stick it into that little formula Z squared plus y now now the first Z always starts as 0 and so we're gonna initially have 0 squared plus 1 which is 1 1 yeah and so you that becomes the new value of Z then and so we stick that back in the formula and now we have 1 squared is 1 plus 1 is 2 that's pretty easy and then we stick that back in 2 squared 4 plus 1 is 5 and so on and we stick that back in and 5 squared okay 25 plus 126 and we stick that back in 26 squared big number plus well an even bigger number and so you can see what's happening with the value of Z there it's getting bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger right and so that means the number C is not the number 1 is not part of the Mandelbrot set because the same point is too big exactly the number the the sequence of Z gets gets large let's try one other example here because I know it's a little tedious let's try negative 1 is negative 1 part of the malla broad set and so we'll put that in the formula so that's going to be Z squared minus 1 right and that's going to equal negative 1 initially and so we stick that negative 1 back in now negative 1 squared would be positive 1 minus 1 is 0 0 yeah so we stick that back in and we have 0 squared minus 1 is negative 1 stick that back in and you see that you see what's happening there you go 0 is 1 so it stays small so is the number negative 1 part of the Mandelbrot set answer is yes it is it is because it stays small you got it and we can of course we can do that with any other number you can check and see whether any number belongs to the Mandelbrot set there's one other complication and then it starts to get really cool the amount of watts that also includes what are the so called imaginary numbers I hate that term because they're they do exist they're there they're real in that sense but an imaginary number is the square root of a negative number and that's a little bit hard for us to understand but the the so-called weary v8 it by a lowercase I that's the imaginary number that when you square it you get negative one and they do exist it's just that they that's just a name imaginary and people say well how could that be because how could you have a number squared equaling a negative because we know that a positive number squared gives you another positive number we know that a negative number squared gives you a positive number imaginary numbers can't be zero because zero squared is zero so how do you have a number that's that's not negative not positive and not zero and that's a little tricky for us but if you think about it when you were a kid you probably thought negative numbers didn't make any sense how can you have less than zero right but you get a little older you get a bank account suddenly negative numbers make a lot of sense and so it's the same way with these imaginary numbers and they again they do exist it's just most adults don't have experience with him and so they're a little counterintuitive the way you can think about this is if you have the number line here positive numbers will be to the right of zero negative numbers would be to the left of zero you can think of imaginary numbers being sort of above zero it's not to the right it's not positive it's not for the left it's not negative and it's not zero okay and so we'll put the imaginary numbers along this other axis and you can multiply them by different numbers get a whole sequence of imaginary numbers and you can also have what are called complex numbers where they're off axis they have a real component which would be sort of their exposition and an imaginary opponent which would be their Y position and so you can you can represent on a plane with its real component and it's an imaginary component and the Mandelbrot set also includes these complex numbers now we already checked some numbers we found that one is not part of the Mandelbrot set if we detect zero we'd have found that it is part of the mellah broad set we checked negative one and found that it is because the sequence of Z stayed small and if we check these other values we'd find that negative two is negative three is not and so on and so forth and we could check the imaginary numbers as well and we would find that some of them are some of them are not I'm looking is there a pattern here is there some kind of patterns of the model brought set and one way to discover this is to plot them on this number plane and so for example we'll plot all the numbers that do belong to the malla broad set we'll plot them in black and so we found that these ones do belong to the Mandelbrot set and the ones that are not part of the malla brats that make them a bright color like red for example and we'll see that as we plot more and more of these a shape develops now of course they'd be tedious to go through all of these but computers don't mind and so we will run the computer and we'll have it check all these different points and we'll we'll find lo and behold as we plot more and more points a shape develops and the shape is not probably what you would expect and this is the shape that develops and so let me go to the board and we'll take a look at the shape and so what we have here is actually a map of those points that belong to the Mandelbrot set all the points that belong are in black and the points that do not belong to the mellah but set are in red and points that are very close to being on the matter brought set but are not quite on it our color that's kind of a bright yellow color so it gives it really you can actually see the shape quite a bit better there and so it's a really interesting shape you have the what's called a cardioid feature here that kind of heart shape and you have these little circles that grow off of it perfect circles what I'm centered right on negative one just centered right there the shape has really interesting mathematical properties which we'll take a look at here for example you can see this this circle branches off into sort of three there's one stem and then two branches right so it's three and then this next one down you see one two three four five on the next one is seven and then it goes on nine eleven thirteen all the odd numbers all the way down to infinity odd infinity apparently isn't that wild each one has one more has two more spikes than the previous and on this side you have all the numbers they even sand the odds it branches off into four and so on so it knows how to count somehow which is rather remarkable and even more than that it knows how to add because if you take the five here and three there five plus three is eight low and behold that's exactly how many you have in that middle one every one of them is that way every one of them has the number that's the addition of those two in between it so it's really rather remarkable but one of the things I find really interesting about this shape is if we zoom in on this little spike out here you can see there's a little bump on that on that spike if we zoom in on that lo and behold it's another one it's another version of the original you can see it's got that same cardioid shape here and it's got the circle and so on and it's got it it's a little different it's got some extra spikes growing off of it we zoomed in on a spike and we got a baby that's got extra spikes growing off of it and you'll notice it has a little bump on it too well let's see what that is and well lo and behold it's yeah and so how about that it's it's amazing it seems to repeat indefinitely and of course if you look there what do you see well there's another one and apparently this continues infinitely and so a shape like this that repeats itself on smaller and smaller scales is called a fractal and it sort of means broken it's kind of like a broken shape really but it's really remarkable very beautiful who would have guessed that a map of that very simple formula Z squared plus C gives you this incredibly complex and beautiful shape amazing and I thought what we do is explore some of the aspects of this we're gonna go down in this valley here and take a look at some of the interesting aspects of this map of the mantle broad set for example when we go off here you can see over here we've got what they call the valley of the seahorse's and you can see why they do look a little bit like seahorse it's kind of upside down seahorses there and of course the colors are arbitrary I can make the colors anything I want but the shape I did not make and you did not make it's it's the shape is discovered as we find which points belong to the set we find if we zoom in for example on this valley of the seahorses incredibly complex shapes now what you're seeing here because because this is kind of a bright color over here that means it's very close to the Mandelbrot set so what's happening is this black points are coming out and forming a very fine thread that's Wiggly and it's sort of infinitely Wiggly and it Wiggles around like that and so every place that's bright it's close to a point that's black is just some of them are smaller than a pixel even so all we're doing here is zooming in on this map of which points belong to the Mandelbrot set and who knew there would be such a beautiful shape that the Lord has built into numbers remarkable and as we zoom in on this shape you see this wonderful spiral pattern I found you can zoom in on the center of that to your heart's content and it just keeps going on and keeps going infinitely and it gives us a little window into the mind of God because human beings did not create this shape this is something that we discovered as we had computers determine which points belong to the Mandelbrot set so let's go off axis and zoom in on these threads of this kind of spider web spider web structure and we'll find that these wet these webs are made up of more spider webs amazingly and again it kind of repeats itself and then you have this you know a bright spot there a bright spot there and in the middle you have kind of a structure look at that look what's in the there it turns out it's another baby Mandelbrot said amazingly and of course now it's got this extra stuff growing around it because we zoomed in on a spiderweb and you can see there's all kinds of extra spider webs growing around the amount of rot set there rather remarkable of course it's got a little baby to that you can see there on this spike so isn't it phenomenal that is if that shape would unbelievable yeah yeah and this was of course this was an amazing discovery back in the 1980s is when these were these shapes were discovered so let's go back into the valley of the seahorse's we went to the right to the seahorse's last time let's go to the left should they call the valley of the double spirals and you can see here these wonderful galaxies type spiral shapes and it's a double spiral and by that I mean it's actually two threads around each other if you follow this thread around all the way around like that you can see there's one in between them say this thread and this thread are the same this thread this thread are the same so it's - it's a double spiral and and we go into this thing and we when we see all kinds of interesting structure we see the spiderweb type spirals we see more galaxies type spirals and we see I call them bowties look like a little bowtie there in the middle and if we zoom in on that bowtie if you find it goes from two to four and if we go and even more it will go to two you know 16 and so on and right in the middle another baby Mandelbrot how about that and it's rotated a little bit because we zoomed in on a spiral and so it's spiraled around many times but basically this is this is connected to the original shape by a very thin in infinitely Wiggly black line that connects to the original so it's remarkable the intricacy of the shape and of course you could spend you could spend a lifetime exploring this map and it's infinitely complex so you'd never run out of things to discover even this is something that no human being sat down and painted now I think I'm gonna make a bump here and no no this shape is built into numbers by the creator of numbers it's built into math by God remarkably so let's go over here what we call the valley of the elephants this is a fun one and you can see why they call it that once we get a little bit closer it looks a bit like a series of elephants marching along one after the other you see that yeah they have even a trunk and their trunk kind of curls up like that and so I thought well that's kind of interesting let's zoom in on this curly trunk and see what the elephants look like up close and this is a single spiral because you can see it this this strand is the same as all of them there's not another strand in between so it's a single strand a single spiral and we zoom into then we find spiderweb type structures and we find galaxy spirals and we find bowties but this time the bowties are made up of a single spirals as to the double spirals again the baby seems to inherit the properties of the parent that it grows off of interestingly and if we go down into the middle you find lo and behold another baby Mandelbrot set isn't that remarkable it is and who would have guessed that that would be there yeah and so again anything that repeats itself like that is a fractal there's other kinds of fractals but this is one of the ones that this is the one that I first learned about and so it's the one the one that I like to share with people so again it's really just remarkable what we can learn from this shape so let's give a little bit of thought then what does all this mean that's what we need to think about you know we needed to take a break Jason then this is fascinating I'm anxious to see the application of this and where it does on me we'll be right back don't you go away [Music] [Music] we are back with dr. Jason Lisle Jason you've introduced something that kind of has a semester eyes here on the set we're talking about fractals we're talking about numerical formulas and and and somehow when you graph them it becomes an amazing thing that God has done a thing of beauty absolutely and just maps of these very simply defined sets when you map them and see which points belong you get a shape that is infinitely complex that has a tendency to repeat itself on smaller and smaller scales and actually gets more complex as you go in right man-made objects you know things that we build they get simpler as you go in are we peeking into the mind of God I think that's exactly what we're doing because the numbers I think our reflection of the way God thinks about about quantity and so I'd like to think a little bit about this what does all this mean what causes the beauty in fractals what causes the complexity in fractals and of course I'm gonna suggest that God is responsible for that not everyone agrees with me on that of course there are those people who reject the existence of God but I want you to you know think through how would this make sense in an atheistic worldview I don't think it would make sense at all what causes the beauty in fractals is it is that the man-made color scheme now I admit I chose the colors in terms of and of course I mean oh we changed the colors a few times just to keep things interesting but it that doesn't make it that's not really what makes it beautiful I think that can enhance the beauty of it a bit but I've plotted it in greyscale and it's still beautiful the shape is intrinsically beautiful and human beings didn't make the shape no did the computer create the beauty well again the all the computer did was run that formula it just did quickly something that you and I were doing for the first couple points I mean you could do that by hand it would take forever but you could do it by hand the computer just does it quickly it didn't create the beauty it's merely discovers it yeah it just didn't create Beauty any more than a microscope creates bacteria the microscope allows us to see the bacteria efficiently and the computer allows us to see the shape efficiently did people make this shape no no human being sat down and said well I think I want to draw kind of a heart shape here and then a circle here and I'll make it repeat infinitely now take an infinite amount of time to create something that's infinitely complex in fact as a matter of history people were surprised when the shape was discovered now you wouldn't be surprised by something that you yourself made that wouldn't make any sense the beauty appears to be built into built into math now what causes the complexity in fractals not only they beautiful they're very complex they repeat infinitely they have these mathematical properties they can apparently add and things like that remarkable did the computer create it well again the computer just plotted it because we could do it all by hand theoretically did human beings created again we were surprised by this it's not something that we created did the formula create it well I found by experience you can change that formula and you still get other these other types of fractals and so the formula that really created the formula simply reveals it the formula reveals this complexity that appears to be built into math so again the beauty and the complexity somehow are built into numbers by the creator of numbers and that's remarkable so what is math math is the study of the relationship between numbers okay well what are numbers you know it's funny some of these things that we think well what are numbers it's hard to define what is the number it's hard to find that I looked through a number of different dictionaries that I think probably the best definition that I found is that numbers are a concept of quantity a concept of quantity a concept of course is something that exists in the mind and numbers are conceptual they exist they're there their way of thinking yes about quantity they're abstract in nature numbers are not something that's physical like this desk where I can touch it and feel it and knock on it so on numbers are abstract they they they're they don't they're not made up of atoms they exist in the mind now people say well I can write down a number here's the number three well that's not really the number three that's a representation of the number three because if you write down the number three and then I destroy that number three doesn't cease to exist does it no no no people don't you know suddenly can't one two four yeah exactly just it's an instance of a number it's a representation of it so written numerals are not numbers they're representations of numbers laws of math or conceptual the relationship between numbers is not something that again is physical that you can touch and everything it's something that exists in a mind so where do these laws of mathematics come from that govern the relationship between numbers the fact that two plus two equals four and it does that in Europe and it does that in United States it's the same everywhere why is it that we have the same laws you have different civil laws in Europe than you do the United States different speed limits and things like that laws of math are not like that did laws of math you've all and the answer is of course not I mean it doesn't make any sense to think well two plus two equals four today but millions of years ago two plus two equal three and it evolved in the fourth it's way numbers don't evolve number seven has always been the number seven it didn't evolve from three or four or something like that you didn't say there absolutely there are absolutes absolutely absolutely absolute were they created by people well again numbers weren't created by people and then and people said well we created the notation sure we created the notation no doubt about that and but in terms of the actual concept we did not we did not create it's there two plus two equal what yeah I mean two plus two equal four before human beings discovers right and so of course it's not something that we're creative people do they come from the universe well the universe is physical the universe is made of atoms and numbers we decided our conceptual they exist in a mind and all the universe is in the mind and so they can't have come from the universe I'm gonna suggest they stem from the mind of God and in fact the the properties of the laws of mathematics make sense in light of the fact that they come from the mind to God because laws of mathematics are conceptual they exist in a mind the mind of God they're universal they apply everywhere why because God is sovereign over the entire universe and so his laws govern the entire universe they're invariant meaning they don't change with time it's not like two plus two equals four today sure but on Fridays all bets are off no they're the same throughout time because God does not change with time he's beyond time and their exception --less because you see God is sovereign over everything there's nothing that escapes his will and his mind and so for that reason laws of laws of mathematics have these properties and we we all believe that we all know that but that only makes sense if they exist in the mind of God if they're an expression of the way God thinks about quantities so God's thoughts our conceptual law thoughts our God is omnipresent God does not change with time God is sovereign the characteristics of God and his thinking makes sense of what we find in numbers and so you see somebody who rejects the existence of God has a pretty bad dilemma on his hands The Naturalist the one who says no nature's all that there is there is no God because he has to explain two things first of all he has to explain the fact that laws of mathematics are conceptual they exist in a mind but laws of mathematics existed before people and therefore it can't be a human mind and so the Nattrass has the problem he's gonna say well laws of mathematics are something that people created no no the planets obeyed laws of math long before you know human beings in the secular view millions of years before human beings came around so laws of math existed before people which means they can't be from a human mind and yet they are conceptual meaning they come from a mind and so you see the naturalist has a horrible dilemma on his hands he he knows on the one hand they're conceptual but in his view the only minds that exist are the minds of human beings and other physical creatures yeah exactly and so you see it just doesn't make sense in an atheistic worldview it only makes sense in the Christian worldview that we should have these laws that exist in the mind of God that are expressed in the world that we observe and when we do mathematics what we're really doing is we're thinking God's thoughts after him yes we're actually repeating and it's in a sense what God has thought about about about that's always been good sign yeah it really is yeah it really is this is amazing to me I've done over 200 origins shows you've taken me to a place we've never gone suppose that I'm sitting here as a naturalist how would I respond to what you've said you know most of them haven't really thought about that most natural ists have not thought about why it is what what is mathematics most you know most people will think about that why it's something you learn in school and it's useful and it's practical but what is or our laws math and they had to be their conceptual they're not material and they've existed before man existed right and they're universal and yes and they don't change with time now how does the naturalist account for that I want to suggest you the naturalist cannot account for that there is no secular explanation for this and when you think about it you know in the world of biology in the world of geology you got creationists and evolutionists right you get creation biologists evolution biologists you got creation geologists you got evolution geologists when it comes to mathematics there's only creationists I realize that there is no such thing as evolutionary math Wow and so although the Darwinists can invoke evolution natural selection and whatever over millions of years to account perhaps for the variety of organisms we see on earth II that won't work for something like the mallow broad set because that existed and it doesn't with time it's always been as it is today because God's thoughts have always been as they are today I have to tell you this is one of the most amazing and fascinating proofs for the existence of God that I've ever heard and it seems to be almost the one that the other side hasn't thought enough about to even have a way to refute it yeah I don't think there's any response to this I think it's bulletproof really God is always he's always accurate the the depth of his intelligence is beyond what we can plummet but the beauty is there at the same time that's one of the amazing things to me about God that's right and you've given us an amazing picture of that yeah I hope that we've given people just a little glimpse a little glimpse into the mind of God folks I think today we peaked into the mind of God and when you get there you know there was one thing God's thinking he thinks he created you he's the god of creation an incredible God a credible mind of God and he is due is that he created you and he wants that to be your world you too I hope you'll trust God you'll put your faith in Him and you'll believe in him like never before and I hope you'll join us again soon here on origins and until then god bless you you origins is made possible by the faithful prayers and financial support of you our cornerstone family

Channel: Cornerstone Television Network

Views: 19,237

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Id: HcVcATp_txQ

Length: 26min 29sec (1589 seconds)

Published: Mon May 16 2016