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Its logical structure is essentially as
follows:
There are compelling reasons for considering beauty to exist in
a way that transcends its material manifestations
According to materialism, nothing exists in a way that
transcends its material manifestations.
According to classical theism, beauty is a quality of God and
therefore exists in a way that transcends its material
manifestations
Therefore, to the extent that premise (1) is accepted, theism is
more plausible than materialism
Points 2, 3 and 4 are relatively un-controversial, and the
argument is formally valid, so discussion focuses on the
premise(1). .
Suggested reasons for accepting the
premise
The principal arguments for the premise are:
We have a strong intuition, especially when in the presence of
great art or extreme natural or human beauty, that the beauty is
real and transcends its material manifestations.
Although such intuitions are not always correct, they are strong
enough prima facie evidence that very compelling arguments to
the contrary would be needed to cancel them out.
Creative artists generally experience their efforts to create
great art/literature/music in terms that assume the objective
existence of beauty, albeit mediated by their subjective
experience.
Although one can make plausible evolutionary explanations for
finding beauty in potential sexual partners and in healthy
animals that might be food or predators, the experience of
beauty is much wider than these categories and includes visions
of things for which there can be no direct evolutionary
advantage (like clouds seen from aeroplanes, or images from
telescopes).
Scientists, especially physicists, have found that mathematical
beauty is a very useful guide to a valid theory.
It is very difficult to speak of beauty in a coherent way
without assuming its objective existence, albeit mediated by
highly subjective and cultural factors.
Suggested reasons for disputing the
premise
Our intuitions may be mistaken.
Creative artists may be mistaken or culturally conditioned.
Given that important brain circuits have evolved for detecting
beauty in potential sexual partners, food or prey, they may be
"misfiring" to detect beauty in other places. The evolution of
the brain may create this impression as a byproduct of its main
function.
Ordinary language is not always a reliable guide to objective
reality.
Beauty does not actually exist in the observed object or scene.
Instead the sense of beauty exists within the observer, as does
the sense of "transcendent" beauty.
Philosophical Criticism of the Argument
Critics have labeled the variant of Argument based on the level
of beauty (as per Swinburne above) as a seeing the world in an
overly optimistic fashion, incapable of seeing the ugliness as
well as the beauty. Joseph McCabe, a freethought writer of the
early 20th century, questioned the argument in The Existence of
God, when he asked whether God also created parasitic microbes.
Bertrand Russell questioned it in a similar fashion, stating
that he was "unable to see any great beauty or harmony in the
tapeworm." H. L. Mencken stated that humans have created things
of greater beauty when he wrote, "I also pass over the
relatively crude contrivances of this Creator in the aesthetic
field, wherein He has been far surpassed by man, as, for
example, for adroitness of design, for complexity or for beauty,
the sounds of an orchestra." More recently, Richard Dawkins
dismissed the Argument as "vacuous", claiming that "[i]f there
is a logical argument linking the existence of great art to the
existence of God, it is not spelled out by its proponents." |
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