Arguing the Affirmative: RANDAL THE CHRISTIAN
Arguing the Negative: JOHN THE ATHEIST
Randal’s Opening Statement
In his book Climbing Mount Improbable, atheist Richard Dawkins recounts an exchange he had with his daughter Juliet (then six) when she pointed to some flowers beside the road: “I asked her what she thought wildflowers were for. She gave a very thoughtful answer. ‘Two things,’ she said. ‘To make the world pretty, and to help the bees make honey for us.’”[62]
Juliet’s response is interesting for two reasons. To begin with, there is her innate penchant to find teleology (purpose) in the natural world—wildflowers are for helping bees. But I’ll focus on her other point, the belief that the wildflowers add an objectively beautiful complement to the world. This belief depends on the assumption that objective aesthetic value exists—an assumption that has been shared by most philosophers throughout history. That is, most philosophers have agreed with Juliet’s intuition that things like wildflowers really make the world objectively more beautiful than it would be otherwise.
If you disagree and think that beauty is merely in the eye of the beholder, then you are a victim of the modern age. Perhaps you think that beauty is rooted in subjective individual preference or social convention. That’s a popular idea borne out of the observation that standards of beauty are, to an extent, reflective of our personal taste and cultural formation. But this observation is quite irrelevant. Even if our perception of that which is beautiful is shaped by preference and culture, it doesn’t follow that that which is beautiful is constituted by preference and culture.
Despite the fact that the world evinces brokenness and pain, it is also awash with beauty of dizzying intensity. Some of it, like Juliet’s wildflowers, is found in the natural world. I remember the experience of snorkeling in the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. The ride out to the coral shoal was memorable enough with the sunlight sparkling like a million diamonds on the azure tropical waters. But that was nothing compared to what I found beneath the waves: bright, vivid coral and teeming schools of fish with colors so vibrant they looked like they’d been painted by a kindergarten class gone wild.
There is also great beauty of human artifice. Think for instance of the haunting choral glory of “Agnus Dei” being performed in a grand medieval cathedral. Try to envision the soaring angelic voices rising and weaving in and out of centuries-old stone vaults and columns while candles silently flicker in the adjoining chapels, casting an ethereal glow over the sanctuary.
For centuries people have believed that such experiences represent an encounter with objective beauty. It is a curious dogma of modernity that dismisses the visceral experience of beauty we have in these moments as really nothing more than a reflection of our own subjective preferences. On the contrary, the beauty of the reef is as objective as its properties of mass and shape. Thus, the reef would exemplify that objective beauty even if human beings had never observed it. Similarly, the haunting majesty of a performance of “Agnus Dei” would remain even if the people sitting in the pews were deaf or asleep or unable to appreciate anything of greater musical sophistication than The Ramones.
Dawkins demurs. In response to Juliet’s proclamation of the beauty of the wildflowers, he comments, “I was touched by this and sorry I had to tell her it wasn’t true.”[63] How does he know this? Because in his view, objective beauty cannot exist. After all, if an atheist admits the existence of objective aesthetic valuation—or what philosophers have called the beautiful—he is forced next to explain what the beautiful is such that it can be exemplified in things as diverse as tropical fish, wildflowers, and a sublime performance of “Agnus Dei.”
Needless to say, the beautiful that befuddles the atheist fits comfortably within a Christian metaphysic. In his fourth way (one of five arguments for the existence of God), Thomas Aquinas points to the fact that things have a graded participation in objective qualities like goodness and beauty. The theist offers a metaphysical ground for those objective values in the one creator God insofar as things reflect his goodness and beauty. Thus it is with good reason that we sense awe when encountering truly beautiful things like the fish and coral of the reef, the wildflowers of a meadow, or a performance of “Agnus Dei.” In the same way that we see the sun’s light sparkling on tropical waters and illuming the world below, so we see the light of God shining on, in, and through his creation.
John’s Opening Statement
Randal’s intention here is to argue for the existence of God from the supposed existence of objective aesthetic beauty.
For me, this is simple. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. It has to be. There is no beauty in the world at all, just as there isn’t anything ugly either. There is no color or sound or taste or smell or pain in the world. All that exists is raw, uninterpreted stuff. There are objects having certain shapes, objects that are made up of certain particles reflected in the periodic table of elements, and objects that are made of molecules and atoms. There are also wavelengths originating from moving objects or particles emitting from them. So seeing is dependent on a beholder. Hearing is dependent on a hearer. Smelling is dependent on a smeller. Tasting is dependent on a taster. Pain is dependent on nerve endings that send messages to brains. Even when there is a beholder, if we could see and hear the whole electromagnetic and sonic spectra, all we would be able to see and hear is white noise. Would Randal say white noise is beautiful?
What we find beautiful is largely based on our biology and thus explained by evolution. Just consider what the various animals in the world may think is beautiful. Take dogs for instance. Their olfactory senses are extremely sensitive. I saw a program in which a bloodhound was given the scent of a particular man and subsequently found the seat where that man had sat among thousands of seats in a huge stadium. But guess what smells wonderful to these dogs? Butts. Smelly, stinky butts. They stick their noses in them—especially butts of other dogs. It must smell really good to them, beautiful that is, even though with their sense of smell it must be extremely bombshell-busting strong. The silvertip grizzly bear’s olfactory sense is seven times stronger than that of the bloodhound! Most all human beings with our much weaker sense of smell think that smelly butts are putrid. So is there objective beauty or not? I think not. It depends first of all on which species we’re talking about.
Some dolphins, whales, and bats use echolocation to navigate and track prey by sending out sounds or waves and then receiving them back. At night many snakes use infrared organs to detect warm-blooded prey. Sharks and electric eels can detect electric fields generated by other animals in the water. Hammerhead sharks can detect half a billionth of a volt! Some birds and worker bees can detect the geomagnetic field and use it as a built-in GPS system to navigate their worlds. Jumping spiders can see not just three, but four primary colors. They have what is called tetrachromatic vision. The fourth color they see is ultraviolet light, which actually appears like an entire extra spectrum to them. Mantis shrimp can see even more, since they can see what jumping spiders see, but they also see polarized light. The animal kingdom has plenty of creatures whose senses go far beyond what we can experience. And so they almost certainly have a different sense of what is beautiful than we do. What then becomes of Randal’s claim that there is objective aesthetic beauty?
When it comes to human beings, there is a neurologically based condition called synesthesia in which stimulation of one sense leads to involuntary experiences in a second sense. People with it see sounds, hear colors, and taste smells, or they smell colors, hear smells, and see sounds, depending on the person. Basically their wiring is different from most of the rest of us. Different? Yep. If we were all wired that way we would have a different sense of beauty, even as humans. There are other human conditions that exemplify this fact. Beauty is biologically based even when it comes to human beings.
Among the human species, beauty is largely culturally relative as well, even if we all agree that some things are beautiful. At best all Randal can claim is that human beings agree on that which is objectively beautiful. I suppose all dogs do too, and all mantis shrimp. So? Life on our planet originated and then evolved from a universal common ancestor. When human beings evolve into another species, then what will become of Randal’s claim? Basically Randal must show that evolution is false to make this argument, but he’s not doing that.
Randal’s Rebuttal
John’s argument can be summarized like this:
There are three basic problems with this argument. First, there is a difference between liking something and finding it beautiful. For example, I generally prefer classic rock to classical music even though the latter is typically much more beautiful than the former.
Second, you cannot use the fact that people disagree with each other (and dogs) over which things are objectively beautiful to support the conclusion that nothing is objectively beautiful. It is absurd to reason from the fact that black widow spiders eat their mates to the conclusion that objective moral values don’t exist. Similarly, it is absurd to reason from the penchant of canines to sniff butts to the conclusion that objective aesthetic values don’t exist.
Finally, I accept neo-Darwinian evolution. But Darwinism is a theory of biological origins, not aesthetic valuation, and thus it is irrelevant to the topic.
John’s Rebuttal
I too have gone snorkeling. I did so off the coast of Cancun, Mexico. I too was amazed at what I saw. It was absolutely beautiful in the crystal-clear waters of the Caribbean Sea. I would suppose every human being would agree. So? It appears to me that Randal has never given a moment’s thought to the fact that beauty is biologically based. Otherwise he would not have bothered making this argument.
Human beings have evolved to behold that which we do. And so it stands to reason that as a species we agree on what is beautiful. But it says absolutely nothing about what is objectively beautiful. We can even imagine the existence of an evolved species of aliens who visited our planet who would certainly see our world differently than us with their different sensory inputs.
Nature contains nothing but raw, uninterpreted stuff. So for Randal to say that something is beautiful even without a beholder makes no sense at all.
The bottom line is that Randal cannot get this argument off the ground. With no objective beauty comes no argument to the existence of his particular god.
Randal’s Closing Statement
John reasons from the premise that humans evolved to the conclusion that objective aesthetic facts don’t exist. But the conclusion doesn’t follow. If it did, then John would also have to accept that objective physical facts don’t exist, and he clearly wants those. It isn’t Darwinism that keeps him from recognizing objective aesthetic facts. Rather, it is his dogmatic and misbegotten commitment to atheism.
John’s Closing Statement
Beauty is an emotional feeling we get when looking at, tasting, hearing, or smelling some physically existing thing that is pleasant to us, nothing more. Randal cannot even conceive, much less produce, one thing that all species think is pleasant, so his argument to God’s existence from beauty cannot get off the ground.