Talk:Argument from beauty

	This creationism related article has not received a brainstar for quality. Please consider expanding the article appropriately. See RationalWiki:Article rating for more information.

Quote

"...the perception of beauty is a psychological phenomenon that is easily described in terms of evolutionary principles and neurological models of sensory processing." Isn't that just a tad reductionist? How do we explain e.g. the Mona Lisa from evolutionary principles? --AKjeldsen^Godspeed! 06:08, 17 December 2007 (EST)

One popular view of art/music is that they are display adaptations much like the peacock's tail. There are other species that produce visual and auditory stimulations to pick up females. The bowerbirds for example the male constructs elaborate nests that he places colorful objects in with a pattern. Females will select males based on the color, number and distribution of these nest decorations. Whales produce complex songs that females analyze to determine mating partners. There are many other examples. The specifics of why certain things are "art" and certain things are "not art" can be species dependent and would relate to honest signaling with in that species and the sometimes arbitrary development of opposite sex preferences. 75.161.54.187 11:46, 17 December 2007 (EST)

I cut the following text because it just seems bizarre here (or anywhere, for that matter):

Objection #1: Sexual intercourse must be enjoyable, otherwise, no one would bother doing it.

Without an orgasm, sex is no longer a positive experience, but merely the removal of a negative experience, like relieving the bladder or scratching an itch. If sex evolved the same way hunger, thirst, itching, or the need to pee evolved, then sexual desire would not exist, and it would simply be a steadily increasing ache caused by blood continuing to pool in the pelvic area until forced out by muscular contractions, which may be the case for many animals that rut.

Objection #2: Subtract the pleasure, and sex becomes an uncomfortable, inconvenient, and altogether disgusting act. Adaptation is the answer.

It is the mind-boggling intensity of the pleasure of orgasm, all out of proportion to any counter-forces such as "inconvenience" or "uncomfortableness" or "disgust" that indicates it must be a "bonus" thrown in by the Creatrix because She loves us.

ħuman 14:26, 4 November 2008 (EST)

Blue bottle flies

are 'beautiful.'

They carry diseases.

Therefore this argument stinks.^{— Unsigned, by: 212.85.6.26 / talk / contribs}

Flowers

Flowers stink. Not all of them, but certainly some lilies, irises, and paperwhite narcissus. That is all. Alec Sanderson (talk) 12:48, 22 May 2014 (UTC)

Irony

So they say sex is bad, but then try to prove God using the female orgasm? Wow...--TemplarJLS (talk) 08:54, 12 September 2014 (UTC)

Richard Swinburne's Argument from Beauty

A contemporary British philosopher of religion, Richard Swinburne, advocates a variation of the argument from beauty from his book, The Existence of God:

"God has reason to make a basically beautiful world, although also reason to leave some of the beauty or ugliness of the world within the power of creatures to determine; but he would seem to have overriding reason not to make a basically ugly world beyond the powers of creatures to improve. Hence, if there is a God there is more reason to expect a basically beautiful world than a basically ugly one. A priori, however, there is no particular reason for expecting a basically beautiful rather than a basically ugly world. In consequence, if the world is beautiful, that fact would be evidence for God's existence. For, in this case, if we let k be 'there is an orderly physical universe', e be 'there is a beautiful universe', and h be 'there is a God', P(e/h.k) will be greater than P(e/k)... Few, however, would deny that our universe (apart from its animal and human inhabitants, and aspects subject to their immediate control) has that beauty. Poets and painters and ordinary men down the centuries have long admired the beauty of the orderly procession of the heavenly bodies, the scattering of the galaxies through the heavens (in some ways random, in some ways orderly), and the rocks, sea, and wind interacting on earth, 'The spacious firmament on high, and all the blue ethereal sky', the water lapping against 'the old eternal rocks', and the plants of the jungle and of temperate climates, contrasting with the desert and the Arctic wastes. Who in his senses would deny that here is beauty in abundance? If we confine ourselves to the argument from the beauty of the inanimate and plant worlds, the argument surely works."

Someone help me refute this variation.^{— Unsigned, by: 131.91.7.2 / talk / contribs} 19:20, 22 October 2015 (UTC)

I'll give the thing a once-over and post my thoughts when I get a chance. Please don't forget to sign your posts with four tildes ("~~~~") so's we can tell who posted what in the discussion pages. :) ℕoir LeSable (talk) 19:32, 22 October 2015 (UTC)