Is Beauty good evidence for God?

Give me a minute to describe a scene for you.  Near a little mountain community called Valle Crucis, the Watauga River descends rapidly for about a quarter of a mile.  Within that stretch the river spills over natural dams and squeezes between large boulders to form deep pools of cold clear water.

In those pools (most of the time at the very bottom) trout hold still, waiting on their next meal to come rushing into their feeding lanes.

Several days ago I stood near one of those deep pools in hopes of tricking one of those trout into believing that the imitation fly floating into their watery home was not an imitation.  And on that particular day I was successful on several occasions.  The biggest success was an 18 inch rainbow.  (Don’t worry, I released it along with the rest I caught that day.)

Admittedly, most of what I just wrote was me bragging about catching a nice fish; a shameless effort to make my friends jealous.

But there is another point… I hope.  Standing there in the river, having just released the rainbow, I watched it blend seamlessly into to the water like a chameleon.  Then I looked up at the colors of fall all around me.  The river, the rocks, the multicolored trees created a scene no artist could fully capture.  I can only describe it as beautiful.

Which leads to the other point.  For centuries philosophers, theologians and artists have argued that the reality of beauty is a legitimate and convincing argument for the existence of God.  The theory is that the existence of beauty, the intricate, compelling symmetry we find in everything from biology to mathematics to music is strong evidence that there must be a creator.

However, many would say that the argument doesn’t hold water.  Richard Dawkins, a prominent atheist, has made the counter argument.

I have given up counting the number of times I receive the more or less truculent challenge: 'How do you account for Shakespeare, then?'  (Substitute Schubert, Michelangelo, etc. to taste.)  The argument will be so familiar, I needn’t document it further.  But the logic behind it is never spelled out, and the more you think about it the more vacuous you realize it to be.  Obviously Beethoven’s late quartets are sublime. So are Shakespeare's sonnets.  They are sublime if God is there and they are sublime if he isn't.  They do not prove the existence of God; they prove the existence of Beethoven and of Shakespeare.  A great conductor is credited with saying: 'If you have Mozart to listen to, why would you need God?' (The God Delusion, Mariner Books: 2008, p. 110)

I tend to agree with Dawkins.  The fact that there is beauty in our world is not convincing proof that God exists.  Beauty (symmetry, balance, harmony) could be the natural result of evolutionary development apart from God.  The simple fact that beauty is there does not mean that God is there.

Besides, when you argue for the existence of God based on the reality of beauty, then what do you do with all that is not beautiful?  Much of what we see all around us is not beautiful.  It is ugly! 

The ugliness of hunger and abuse and oppression and injustice is real and it does not inspire a sense of transcendence and reverence.  It inspires a whole different set of sensations that encompass everything from helplessness to guilt.

But here’s my question (and I guess an argument to which I invite your response).  How does Dawkins know that Shakespeare’s sonnets are sublime?  How do human beings intuitively know what is beautiful and what is not?  How is it that we have the innate ability to recognize beauty?  If we are simply part of the natural development of the universe then we should have no real point of reference.  Right?

Why should a blooming rose inspire a totally different sensation than hair growing out of somebody’s nose?  Why should we know that a child smiling is beautiful but a child starving is not?  In fact, if Darwinian evolution (with no greater purpose) is all there is, then some of the most atrocious injustices in this world… starvation, brutal oppression and disease are simply natural (and healthy) examples of the survival of the fittest.

But we all know that we do have a point of reference, don’t we?  We are all appalled by the injustices of this world.  We all grieve over starvation, homelessness, abuse in all forms; the list goes on and on.  And I would argue that the innate understanding that some things are beautiful and some things are ugly, that some things are inherently good and some things are inherently bad, that some things are just and some unjust has been infused into our DNA.  The question is, who did the infusing?

I have great respect for my friends who do not believe in God; who have, to this point, been unable to embrace the possibility of a dimension outside of the one in which we now live.  Many of them have given “spirituality” more thought than a lot of religious people I know and have simply arrived at a different conclusion.   

But I respectfully disagree with those friends.  I believe deeply that there is a creator, we call that creator God.  I believe that God has given us the intuitive capacity to know what is and is not beautiful, good and just.  I do not know of any other viable explanation. 

The next time I’m fishing or walking through the woods or watching the sun set, I will see beauty and recognize it.  I can only conclude that I will see beauty because there is a beautiful God.

Thanks for reading with an open mind.