The Symphony of Creation

A skeptic once approached Rabbi Akiva and asked, "Who created this world?" Rabbi Akiva answered, "Hashem." The skeptic challenged, "Show me clear proof." Rabbi Akiva responded by asking, "What are you wearing?" The man replied, "A garment." Rabbi Akiva asked, "Who made it?" The man replied, "A weaver." Rabbi Akiva said, "I don’t believe you. Show me evidence." The man stumbled, and then Rabbi Akiva said, "Just as a house tells of its builder, a garment of its weaver, and a door of its carpenter, so the world tells of Hashem, who created it." (Midrash Tanchuma)

...And how do we come to love and fear Him? By contemplating His wondrous works and creations, large and small, and seeing His boundless wisdom. This naturally leads one to love, praise, and long to know the great name. As Maimonides describes in "The Laws of the Foundations of the Torah": "When a person reflects on His works and His wondrous creations, see the endless wisdom in all that He has created, will develop in love, praise, and a yearning to know Hashem. There is a sea turtle living peacefully on the coasts of Brazil. Every two years, these turtles travel at their own pace, 2,250 kilometers, to Ascension Island—tiny islands difficult for us to even spot on a map. The turtles instinctively know the location of the islands to lay their eggs and then return to Brazil. The seaweed, devoid of flowers and fruits, sinks into the ocean depths every evening and knows the exact time when dawn breaks.

For two hours in the dark, it rises to the surface at dawn in precision, accurate to a minute or two. The mosquito, although small, contains a heart, stomach, intestines, blood vessels, and nerves. When it bites our skin, comparatively, it’s like drilling a hole in a thick wall.

It feeds on our blood, which is why we respond by attempting to kill it. To avoid this, mosquitoes have the ability to fly up to 4 kilometers per hour. They are created with minimal weight so that we don’t feel them when they land on us. During the bite, they inject a painkiller into our body, and only when they fly away does the anesthetic effect fade, leaving us to realize the bite and try, often in futility, to eliminate them.

The mosquitoes are small, yet their size and weight proportionate to a mosquito are equivalent to a chicken’s relationship with a four-ton elephant. Yet, each microbe, comparable to a dog versus a mouse in size when seen by a bacterium, can play soccer on the point of a needle - with 500 bacteria fitting on the head of a pin. Countless microbes are present everywhere—in soil, air, and sea—even though we only see them under a microscope. This bacterium, composed of different perfect organs and a mass of atoms working in sublime harmony, knows its place and function.

Sightseeing bees find a field of flowers and communicate this to their peers through dance. The speed of their dance indicates the distance to the field, and the dance form acts as a compass. Movements from bottom to top mean to head toward the sun, while top to bottom suggests moving in the opposite direction. Even on a cloudy day, the bee's radar knows the sun's position. Interestingly, bees are not attracted to flowers visible to us but through their perception of ultraviolet rays brightening the flowers.

Bats enjoy feasting on moths. How do moths, whose ears are closed to worldly noise, stay safe from such predators? They hear only one sound—the sound of their predator, the bat. Other butterflies avoid birds by extending a wing with a large open eye design that frightens small predator birds, mistaking it for the eye of a larger predatory animal chasing the small bird. The butterfly creator "faked" a large bird's eye, scaring away the little bird pursuing the butterfly to devour it.

Water spiders create a floating sphere-like nest using their threads, attaching it to an object underwater. The spiders then surface, capturing air bubbles in the hairs on their lower bodies, diving with the bubble to release it beneath the nest. This ingenious process repeats until the nest fills with air, creating a nursery to raise their young, protected from threats above water. From where does this weaving skill, engineering prowess, and aerodynamics come?

A female moth emits a silent signal only picked up by a male partner from great distances, with scientists failing to create artificial odors to disrupt this transmission. Conversely, the cricket rubs wing parts or legs together, vibrating 600-ton air masses. The female hears the call from half a mile away. Both the silent female moth and noisy cricket communicate and broadcast. With its talents, humanity developed miraculous devices—telephones and radios—for immediate communication but remains limited. The dragonfly preceded us, causing our envy until the moment our brains might evolve into personal radios.

Concentrated on a computer game onscreen from our sofas, we are unaware of the fierce inner immune system battle raging within. Constantly, our bodies stand prepared as fortified entities enduring various assaults, from simplest wound to the most advanced weapon—foreign bodies, antigens, invade us. An advanced network of antibodies develops in specialized cells of the spleen and lymphatic tissues ready to activate at any time. The antibody precisely matches the attacking antigen, confronting each weapon as an individual war front, manufacturing specific defense ammunition exclusively effective against it. This tactic remains unmatched by any military genius, fighting a defensive war against each adversary simultaneously.

At the screen, a battle for survival ensues within us—healthy or ill, alive or not—unbeknownst to us as it unfolds. Our enjoyment of the onscreen action is facilitated by a complex device; lens-iris, retina, and pupil all work in harmony. The retina consists of nine separate layers, all together as thin as paper. The innermost layer holds 30 million rods and 3 million cones, all precisely aligned relative to each other and the lens. The lens adapts its size as needed. We possess two eyes to allow for stereoscopic vision, forming a spatial image.

The optic nerve transmits the image to the brain’s recognition center, where the image is reinterpreted from upside-down to its real form and dimensions, using millions of nerve fibers conveying to the brain. All of this allows us to see in color, moments relaying feelings from heat to light. While sitting watching the display, your mom brings snacks. Your hand tosses snacks to your mouth, which opens and closes as needed. The tongue maneuvers the snack as the jaws move and teeth grind with saliva blending in, starting chemical processing.

Meanwhile, the stomach secretes digestive juices for food breakdown (miraculously, the stomach doesn't digest itself). The liver produces bile, channeling into the intestines in the quantities needed for each food type, and the intestines finish digestion. Processed food travels through thousands of tubes to each body part, each pipe delivering exactly what’s needed. Who is the analyst and technician operating this system? Not me, my focus is on the game, snacks only appear as a side note.

The ear, partially composed of four thousand delicate arches intricately maintained, captures and conveys sounds to the brain, from thunder roars to orchestra tones, and animals hear even higher frequencies than humans, with greater accuracy. People's intelligence has developed devices detecting a fly’s movement from afar. Why are animal ear cells more developed than human's? Why did human ear development stop at the essential point for survival, unlike in animals? Was there foresight expecting humans to invent tools meeting their intellectual needs, unlike animals missing creative intellect, which nature provided its audibility and acuteness in place?

Books on the brain, genes, DNA and RNA, the heart, and more captivate readers in modern physics and biology. And from humanity’s "small world" back to the vast cosmos: the distance to the sun is 150 million kilometers, fitting Earth perfectly. A shorter gap would cause the oceans to vaporize, a global bonfire ensues. If the sun was farther, we'd become icy masses. Daily, comets rush at us up to 60 km per second, only Earth’s protective atmosphere keeping us safe. A thin ozone layer shields us from short-wave sun rays, filtering only small amounts bearable by our eyes and bodies against ultraviolet rays. Mercury always faces the sun; one side is barren from heat while the other remains frozen.

This fate awaited Earth had it rotated every 240 hours, burning by day and freezing by night. Our current 24-hour rotation is perfect. Earth's 23-degree axis tilt grants seasons. A differing degree leads to water accumulating at the poles as ice mountains, turning equatorial zones into massive deserts.

If air was 50% oxygen, thunderstorms could ignite all lush jungles, but our air is 21%, ideal for breathing and food combustion. Energy burns out carbon, expelled from the lungs, absorbed by carbon-dependent plants. They break it into carbon for their bodies, creating sugar, fibers, flowers, and more. They also produce oxygen, releasing it back, enabling breath and idea proliferation for plants. Perfect coordination indeed. Even Earth's gas methane helps move hydrogen to the stratosphere, preserving air's oxygen-rich lower atmosphere balance. Methane comes from beetles releasing specific gases as a byproduct.

Scientist Luck Olok noted, "Biology investigates beetles on earth. Researchers noted certain methane releases but didn’t see its significance." Other scientists researching upper atmosphere methane overlook beetles' role altogether. Observing invisible connections. How do you know this? Acclaimed scientists like Professor Katzir, Dr. Y. Cohen, G. Galit, and A. Heller wrote "Thoughts," K. Frisch's bee research and Morrison's "Man is Not Alone," gathering uncounted facts vetting creation and guiding the universe’s evidence.

Realization dawns; this whole cosmic concert led to recognizing the Creator—concluding that the world’s intelligence and logic mathematically demonstrate a God-directed universe? Not necessarily, God's existence can't be proven. Logic wouldn’t constrain our free choice. Rambam discusses "The path to His love and fear," not proving God's existence.

Some see, understand, and feel; others don't. Why doesn’t logic realize a cat jumping on pianos doesn’t create Chopin, that no burst printing house creates encyclopedias, or cosmic traffic accidents create this wondrous world happenstance? Tired now, let’s visit tonight's concert for Beethoven's Heroica.

Hear it and admire its creator's genius. No thanks, I don’t understand music. Heard Heroica once, finding it merely noise, not the grand creation others treasure. Did we swap roles?