Comment by Gaytor on June 7, 2010 at 12:14pm

I find this to be fun. Evangelicals will tell you that the world was made for us! They are generally self-centered and reject life everywhere else. In the book the Case for the Creator Lee Strobel makes an argument for non-existence of life anywhere else based on our "perfect" "fine-tuned" conditions here. All righty then.
If beauty proves that god exists, maybe the claimant can explain why we find this, or this, or hundreds of other sites that missed or will never see but are none-the-less, beautiful.
Conversely, does this image, or this image disprove gods existence? There are those that find both of those images beautiful.
Beauty is subjective. If you use a subjective argument to establish proof of god, then you have only proven that the view of god is subjective and not absolute. The door is left open that the god does not absolutely exist and so it's a failed argument. Those making an absolute claim will need to show absolute evidence and not simply make a subjective argument.

Comment by Timothy Gentle on June 7, 2010 at 2:23pm

Thanks for the input! The thing is I hear so often that the beauty defies random fluke. And it drove me crazy. My own mother telling me all the time that doctors and scientists are becoming christian because they don't believe it's fluke.

Comment by James on June 7, 2010 at 11:50pm

The claims that the beauty and 'fine-tuning' around us proving a God, only proves that the individual is ignorant to the scientific explanations for diversity and the very forming and 'evolution' of our globe. It is often stated that Earth just happens to be perfect for life... Well that is true, but it hasn't always been so, and large parts of the planet are quite inhospitable for our form of life.

I also hate the the arrogant explanations of everything being there for us. The sky is blue so that we find it pretty. Flowers are there for us to smell and look at. The Earth seems perfect for us, so it was made for us. The sky is blue because of the way our atmosphere scatters the light from the sun. Flowers are made to attract insects in order to pollinate the flower and grow seeds in order to grow more flowers. The reason that we fit the conditions of the Earth is because we evolved on this Earth. Had conditions been slightly different, a different form of life may have evolved to match those conditions. This removes the 'special treatment factor' for the human race. But these facts don't render a flower or sky less beautiful. In fact, the truth that this all wasn't handed to us on a silver platter and that things didn't have to be as they are, but are none-the-less, makes me feels a greater appreciation for this world.

Comment by Gaytor on June 8, 2010 at 12:49am

Through my teen years I battled some depression, the usual teen kind. Seeing the beauty of a cloud of life in general could bring me a smile in the midst of that negative thinking. It makes it even more beautiful to me as an adult when I understand that most of the things that I considered beautiful, like the colors of a plant, the dance of a bird, etc, serve a practical function as well.

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