When Rocks Rock
A theological insight from our new mineral exhibit
Last night was the launch event for the Rand Mineral Exhibit at the Biblical Museum of Natural History. The collection, donated by Jonathan and Anne Rand of Teaneck/Jerusalem, is simply breathtaking. These are not the regular minerals that you might see on exhibit in stores - these are collector’s items of extraordinary beauty. Pictures simply do not do justice to the detail in them, and I encourage everyone to visit and see them in person!
Jonathan Rand described his assembly of the collection, and I discussed some of the minerals which appear in Tanach and the historic challenges of identifying them. I also spoke about how minerals are an amazing example of the wonders of the natural world, from which Judaism enjoins us to draw inspiration and faith. But it was my youngest child, age thirteen, who pointed out something fascinating to me afterwards that I would like to elaborate upon.
There’s lots of striking beauty in the natural world, some of which we exhibit at the museum. There are birds with dazzling colors like our eclectus parrots, and amazing feather displays like our peacock. There are chameleons with incredible patterns and color-changing abilities, such as our specimen pictured below. There are flowers and fruit that are beautiful and fragrant.
In all these cases, however, there’s a reason why the creature or plant looks this way, which benefits the animal or plant. It serves some kind of evolutionary advantage. This can be either in terms of survival (such as with chameleons and camouflage) or reproduction (such as birds impressing potential mates, or flowers and fruit attracting creatures that will pollinate them or spread their seeds). We can (and should) marvel that God created a universe in which the laws of nature produce such a result (as I discuss in my book The Challenge Of Creation), but it’s still clearly something that has an actual benefit to the animal or plant.
But what about in the case of minerals? In the case of their formation, it can be argued that by definition they add atoms to themselves in a repeating manner. But there is no actual advantage to the mineral per se, and certainly not with regard to their colors and how they refract light. These are entirely incidental results of how their molecules arrange themselves and refract or reflect a wavelength that is notable to human eyes. The incredible beauty of minerals is simply a result of the raw laws of how the atoms arrange themselves.
We could easily imagine a universe in which there was no such phenomenon. But God created a universe in which energy not only is converted into matter, and matter no only arranges itself into complex entities like galaxies and the incredible miracle of life, but also into objects of extraordinary beauty which serves no purpose other than to grant us the ability to marvel at them! What a wonderful world.
כִּי שִׂמַּחְתַּנִי יְהֹוָה בְּפׇעֳלֶךָ בְּמַעֲשֵׂי יָדֶיךָ אֲרַנֵּן
“For I will rejoice, O God, in Your deeds; I will exult in the work of Your hands” (Psalms 92:5)
