Drunken Philosophy: An Aesthetic Argument For God's Existence

[@ray.lozaaa]

this is what i needed at this late hour 🤞🏼

[@dannylad1600]

I still don't get where God is supposed to come into this? Our brains have just evolved to appreciate things that appear to be elegent, like all the things we see in nature. Things tend to appear elegent/ beautiful because ultimately the second law of thermodynamics has played out. There's also a study by Alan Turing that explains how things like a zebras stripes or a tigers patterns are developed by following scientific mathematical principles which i think is also linked to chaos theory. Many people will agree that these are some of the most majestic looking animals on the planet.

[@randomfarmer]

I think God comes into it since we need some reason to conjecture why the universe exhibits beauty if not to conform to the tastes of a conscious creator. Put simply: if the universe arose by random chance, surely there's every chance it'd just be bland and sterile. The appearance of 17 fundamental particles for instance seems arbitrary, it seems contrived in a sense; it seems (perhaps) that some conscious entity put the whole thing together rather than just being a phenomenon that arose randomly.

[@dannylad1600]

@@randomfarmer personally I think the beauty argument scientifically is explainable. Basically how the second law of thermodynamics plays out means certain things like lifeforms will keep reducing in entropy while increasing in complexity if the conditions are right. And a typical human brain has evolved to release feel good chemicals like endorphins when processing such images. As for the second part of your argument which is essentially the fine tuning argument, this can't be answered scientifically mainly because science doesnt know how the universe came about. I believe Chris Hitchins said it's the strongest argument for the existence of God.

[@randomfarmer]

I guess you're right. Though i was diving a bit deeper for something other than the fine-tuning argument. I wanted to say that the universe, in terms of its basic properties, exhibits a predisposition to beauty and complexity. In itself, this is unusual. Science isn't equipped to answer why this is, so we must rely on philosophy. ​@dannylad1600

[@jamessorrel]

What about the argument that our sense of beauty is adapted to the environment in which we evolved? Organisms would survive better if they took pleasure in the environments in which they lived. That's a counter-argument. Not saying I'm an atheist btw. I'm a polytheist. But I feel like that's a good counter to the aesthetic argument. The hard problem of consciousness is probably the most robust argument against materialism imo Have you read the New Comment on Crowley's Book of the Law? He goes into his metaphysics there. You might find it very interesting.

[@skwills1629]

The Aesthetic Argument is Not Really even About if We Find Something Specific Beautiful. I don't even Think The Aesthetic Argument is a Good One but I Really dislike How Modern Atheists tend to Not Understand the Actual Arguments.

[@skwills1629]

The Aesthetic Argument is Actually about Why We Find Anything Beautiful or Why We'd even Need an Aesthetic Sense as it is Not Strictly Speaking Needed for Our Survival, and Points to a Higher Nature than just Baser Matter.

[@jamessorrel]

@@skwills1629 I think the aesthetic argument is a specific case of the consciousness argument. You can get into what a sense of beauty is exactly in itself. Physically there tends to be certain patterns of arousal or relaxation resulting from the perception of something seen as beautiful. Evolutionarily, you could say that the sense of beauty evolved to help people find suitable environments etc. But the "sense" of beauty refers to the act of perception or consciousness in itself I think. So beauty is a case of the consciousness argument.

[@randomfarmer]

It's not bad. I'm inclined to agree with it. I'm not a fan of my own argument (in total fairness), I just wanted to see what other people thought of this idea.

[@skwills1629]

@@jamessorrel - The Tube Oh Yew won;t Let Me Answer but short Monitered Rey Plies. I Don[t Know WHy Tube Hetes Meee Sew.