Beauty, a Reason to Believe in God?

Danmark · Post by **Danmark** » Thu May 14, 2015 10:21 am

Morality in homo sapiens and other animals is easily explained by godless evolution.
But what is the evolutionary explanation for our appreciation for beauty?

The affirmative for this debate is that our appreciation for beauty is evidence for the existence of a god who endowed us with that trait.

The negative:
Evolution or other natural process explains our love of beauty.

acapiz · Post by **acapiz** » Thu May 14, 2015 10:32 am

This is a good question, Danmark.
Let me be blunt here, the golf at Sawgrass last week was overshadowed by this moment.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWi4BC3Z-CQ
Do you want me to tell you why? Mankind has acute senses that will always appreciate the best examples of it's kind, be it apple, horse or female/male or parts thereof. This is a primal trait and it appears ludicrous when overdressed into aesthetics.

Think of the power of beautiful women past/present and it is scary. Beauty opens doors? Nothing to do with religion or morality. In fact it has to do with the opposite.

Danmark · Post by **Danmark** » Thu May 14, 2015 10:44 am

It makes sense, from the point of view of evolution, that asymmetry and other deviations from "normal" would be seen as ugly or as a reason to avoid mate selection. Such deviations may signal poor genetics. But does that negative, or avoidance strategy explain our appreciation for beauty? Or beauty in a landscape or object?

If, and only if, you have forgotten what ugly looks like:
https://www.google.com/search?q=ugly+ma ... CAYQ_AUoAQ

squint · Post by **squint** » Thu May 14, 2015 12:18 pm

A material approach can only take a person so far.

The world, the universe and all that is in it is vibrationally beautiful. The mind is satiated, satisfied to explore thereIN.

Ecclesiastes 3:11
He hath made every thing beautiful in his time: also he hath set the world in their heart, so that no man can find out the work that God maketh from the beginning to the end.

It can be difficult to understand that what we perceive externally exists within us all and that we are connected to all life. Nature and creation does speak, internally. It needs no explanations.

We are connected to the grid. It's charged in ways, positive and negative, on many levels and many frequencies.

Scriptures liken or LINK mankind to creation in many parabolic/allegorical fashions. These are internal pictures, inviting us to take the plunge therein.

Imagine yourself sitting at a table, and every subjective detail about you and your experience with life and engagements down to the least thought is carved out on the vibrational grid and is laid out for view. What kinds of treasures would you have to share? How can these internal treasures be enhanced? How can they be diminished? How can they be protected? What are they, really? Or is it all nonsense and the only meaning is what is external?

A strict materialist is highly charged on the outside of the cup. But that is not everything that is or everything that exists in other folks sights. Such bullying external views are what lead our world into dead end manipulations and rigid materialism, consumerists, exploiters and exploited constantly moving to one way or the other. Like a snake waiting to strike it's prey or be consumed himself by the mongoose. Constantly wrapping ourselves with LIES to fool and to take advantage.

It is good to try to take those types of mantle's off the the mind. But it is not so good when trying to engage the external materialistic forces. The external forces of nature so to speak. Even the dances of the snake and the mongoose are hinged in them internally. They do what they do by their nature and their awareness, their requirements in the subjective external world.

The external man is a natural deceiver invoked by his invisible internal nature. He is blind, but thinks he see's and must see, sense and move with everything external and externally tangible.

Some term this creature as one governed only by the 5 senses. Or as again, scriptures may define as "his god is his belly." And such tend to lean towards ingestion of others. These move with force and domination in the external world, forcing and imposing their external demands. Hoarding and denying everything to the inner man. The biggest liars and killers move by external nature to the top of the food chain. Look around you. That is who is at the top and who rules YOUR external world. You may think you have a place therein, but you only exist because the more dominant external men allow you to live as it suits them.

Natural born killers in heart.

The internal beautiful nature is a neglected creature. A weaker vessel. One that puts off a far different frequency vibration. The external man must be put down or put off to engage therein but he is a hard man to take down.

Paul describes this situation thusly:

"But as then he that was born after the flesh persecuted him that was born after the Spirit, even so it is now."

This is the struggle of every person, not of one person against another, but of we against ourselves. We are advised to not let that man of the flesh dominate the spirit. In the final analysis there is no hope for the flesh man. His fate resides as a pile of dust. And he will take the world down to the ground with himself. His nature as a dust man requires this and he can do no other. He must destroy and he will. No appeals will satisfy this beast. He is insatiable.

There is no person who is one or the other.

We are all both.

"For if a man think himself to be something, when he is nothing, he deceiveth himself."

I prefer the sitting in the chair of no-thing. It's a more honest seat if no-thing else.

OH, lookie, I found a treasure there! How precious in my sight.

Danmark · Post by **Danmark** » Thu May 14, 2015 1:16 pm

squint wrote: A material approach can only take a person so far.
....

Yes, it can only take us to the border of speculation. Outside of a 'material approach' everything is speculative. That is the essential problem religion presents. Once we venture beyond the material, the empirically observable, there are no limits to what we can conjecture. There is no way to tell the difference between goblins and gods.

It can be difficult to understand that what we perceive externally exists within us all and that we are connected to all life. Nature and creation does speak, internally. It needs no explanations.

I agree that everything is connected, tho' some connections are extremely attenuated. The difficulty of perception is actually impossible when the thing one hopes to observe does not exist except as a concept in the speculator's mind.

Imagine yourself sitting at a table, and every subjective detail about you and your experience with life and engagements down to the least thought is carved out on the vibrational grid and is laid out for view. What kinds of treasures would you have to share? How can these internal treasures be enhanced? How can they be diminished? How can they be protected? What are they, really? Or is it all nonsense and the only meaning is what is external?

I don't know what you mean by "vibrational grid." This is the second time you've used this modifier. I also don't know what you mean by "vibrationally beautiful." Yes, to answer your question. It is quite literally non-sense.

A strict materialist is highly charged on the outside of the cup. But that is not everything that is or everything that exists in other folks sights. Such bullying external views are what lead our world into dead end manipulations and rigid materialism, consumerists, exploiters and exploited constantly moving to one way or the other.

Not at all. Values exist just as concepts and opinions exist. A 'strict materialist' can and does have values, but they based on a foundation of reality rather than speculation. A materialist or naturalist has values beyond the material world. He can love and appreciate beauty. He is not mislead by the speculations of Paul and others. Remember, Paul and the early Christians were dead wrong. They thought they were living in the end times. See Matthew 24 in general and 24:34 for the prediction about when - 1900 years ago. This is where speculation on what might exist beyond the natural leads one to, false beliefs.

BTW, I failed to see how you addressed the OP question about how our appreciation of beauty may be evidence for god.

acapiz · Post by **acapiz** » Thu May 14, 2015 1:28 pm

Danmark: Or beauty in a landscape or object?

The human is programmed to like nature. Waterfalls have always fascinated us, moonlight, shadow, rock shapes etc etc. When it comes to gathering shiny round white pebbles we are back to our primate ego-centric selves again. This is us playing mind games with ourselves. The human primate can build up 'beautiful' emotional links with other humans based on a long period of reinforcement, again natural and something a swan can do, just as easily . It is to do with our social groupings and pairings. We are programmed in a positive mind set, generally speaking. We like humour and frivolity, but we also elevate horror and pathos.

Danmark · Post by **Danmark** » Thu May 14, 2015 1:36 pm

acapiz wrote: Danmark: Or beauty in a landscape or object?

The human is programmed to like nature. Waterfalls have always fascinated us, moonlight, shadow, rock shapes etc etc. When it comes to gathering shiny round white pebbles we are back to our primate ego-centric selves again. This is us playing mind games with ourselves. The human primate can build up 'beautiful' emotional links with other humans based on a long period of reinforcement, again natural and something a swan can do, just as easily . It is to do with our social groupings and pairings. We are programmed in a positive mind set, generally speaking. We like humour and frivolity, but we also elevate horror and pathos.

Thank you, but this is descriptive, not explanatory. What was the evolutionary advantage in appreciating beauty? WHY do we appreciate beauty?

acapiz · Post by **acapiz** » Thu May 14, 2015 1:56 pm

Danmark: What was the evolutionary advantage in appreciating beauty? WHY do we appreciate beauty?

I will leave this subject to others, Danmark. I really do believe that this is a direct result of our evolutionary skill sets of dissernment. Many creatures have these. We can pick ripe fruit, we can pick up subtlety. This is important for a primitive primate. We know '40 shades of green'. We know poisonous from not. We can recognize our own race more easily than other races. All this makes us a finely tuned evolutionary being, and nothing more, and nothing special. How do bumble bees find flowers?

squint · Post by **squint** » Thu May 14, 2015 2:10 pm

Danmark wrote:
squint wrote: A material approach can only take a person so far.
....
Yes, it can only take us to the border of speculation. Outside of a 'material approach' everything is speculative. That is the essential problem religion presents. Once we venture beyond the material, the empirically observable, there are no limits to what we can conjecture. There is no way to tell the difference between goblins and gods.

It does make for an interesting side topic. I'd find christianity (not in the conventional sense of the term) and buddhism bear strikingly similar constructs in these regards. It is not unfamiliar territory for buddhists to come into contact with creatures invisible of the not so good kind, and to even co-habitate and entertain with same in their mind/body. They are actually far ahead of the curve in understandings in this arena imho. But of course external materialistic science is entirely clueless in this arena. And even in these various schools of thought in buddhism these ventures have created various rifts and internal doctrinal conflicts in the system.

I might even speculate that where there are intrusions and disruptions in that space it creates problems to a different form of intelligence that we are not externally aware of, and that these disruptions can even invoke some severe problems in the arena of the operations externally, in our external world. Early christianity was a form of this disruption which resulted in all kinds of crazy reactions in our world system.

Let's just say there are doors, internal and external, for simplicity sake. Some will not or can not see or perceive inner doors. Doesn't mean they aren't there. Doesn't mean they can't be opened or closed.

It can be difficult to understand that what we perceive externally exists within us all and that we are connected to all life. Nature and creation does speak, internally. It needs no explanations.

Dmark wrote:I agree that everything is connected, tho' some connections are extremely attenuated. The difficulty of perception is actually impossible when the thing one hopes to observe does not exist except as a concept in the speculator's mind.

Certainly the questions of what one finds or hopes to find or does not and discounts entirely comes into question.

Imagine yourself sitting at a table, and every subjective detail about you and your experience with life and engagements down to the least thought is carved out on the vibrational grid and is laid out for view. What kinds of treasures would you have to share? How can these internal treasures be enhanced? How can they be diminished? How can they be protected? What are they, really? Or is it all nonsense and the only meaning is what is external?

Dmark wrote:I don't know what you mean by "vibrational grid." This is the second time you've used this modifier. I also don't know what you mean by "vibrationally beautiful." Yes, to answer your question. It is quite literally non-sense.

I've speculated on this subject prior. It's no scientific mystery that life puts off low energy vibrational or frequency fields, and that some people can be and are more sensitized than others to these fields, details and accuracy notwithstanding. And I would go further to say that there is an immense amount of recordation therein contained. We just have difficulty reading the hard drives of information. BUT we are somewhat equipped to do so by nature. This is in the hand of the holders rather than the blunt instruments of external science, which again can only take it so far. We have to understand that we are a part of it to tune in. And this is an internal door.

It is not uncommon for 'trance like' conditions to be engaged by various individuals. Biblical texts are filled with such accounts. They called them prophets. Their reality is that they engaged a different field of information and recordation. Again, a fascinating side discussion. And not one that everyone is fit to engage or is even interested in. I am.

A strict materialist is highly charged on the outside of the cup. But that is not everything that is or everything that exists in other folks sights. Such bullying external views are what lead our world into dead end manipulations and rigid materialism, consumerists, exploiters and exploited constantly moving to one way or the other.

Dmark wrote:Not at all. Values exist just as concepts and opinions exist. A 'strict materialist' can and does have values, but they based on a foundation of reality rather than speculation.

My observation is that any values are essentially internal, but the priority is directed externally, in the 5 sense arena by science and materialism. I don't think they have a whole or complete picture of the essential constructs nor will they ever. And the approach may very well be the end of us all. This external man has unleashed the power of external destruction and even has his finger on the trigger as we speak and will use it to his own advantages, which end is destruction.

This is also the very real allegory of excitation of our outer man put forth before our external eyes to see, and the sights are meant to horrify us to our core.

Dmark wrote: A materialist or naturalist has values beyond the material world. He can love and appreciate beauty. He is not mislead by the speculations of Paul and others.

What you may perceive as misleading can just as easily be a misled perception of your own making as well. Depends on what you expect to hear or what you have been sold by someone else. I find Paul entirely fascinating and honest in his dissections of mankind. And his results and findings simple and personally 'testable' for accuracy. Just as I might find a buddhist seer could lead me into paths unknown prior, were I open to it.

Remember, Paul and the early Christians were dead wrong. They thought they were living in the end times.

That is all dependent on levels or ways of understandings. We have crossed this ground before. You and I will derive entirely different sights of these matters based on the assumptions that we approach the topic matters with. I don't make the mistake of thinking that Jesus was only addressing people. You do. There is the base line of our differences in sights, previously delineated.

See Matthew 24 in general and 24:34 for the prediction about when - 1900 years ago. This is where speculation on what might exist beyond the natural leads one to, false beliefs.

I am familiar with your particular pet holding on this subject and can only say that it's limited and not encompassing what is being conveyed whatsoever. IN fact it's not even close to accurate. It's a limited disposition of input used to derive a false conclusion and nothing more.

Nothing personal, but there is much more to see in these matters. Much much more.

Dmark wrote: BTW, I failed to see how you addressed the OP question about how our appreciation of beauty may be evidence for god.

Some may term it a higher intelligence order in the life force frequency realm. A collective intellect. Some may term it the collective consciousness of creation.

I'm probably OK with either definition.

I personally don't believe that consciousness in singular or collective created itself, and that it will point to a higher intelligence order.

Divine Insight · Post by **Divine Insight** » Thu May 14, 2015 3:31 pm

Danmark wrote: What was the evolutionary advantage in appreciating beauty? WHY do we appreciate beauty?

I think it misses the point to think that every single trait we have must have been an evolutionary advantage. Any trait that doesn't threaten your life can survive. It doesn't need to actually contribute to your longevity to be passed along.

Also the very concept of "beauty" can, and often is, highly subjective. It's also very abstract in that it can have many different meanings.

For example, simplicity is often deemed to be "beautiful". Our brains like to make sense of things, the simpler things are, the easier they are to understand and make sense of, especially when "making sense" to a brain means, "easy to put into a category".

A perfect circle, or a perfect square, or a perfect triangle are far easier to recognize and understand than arbitrary shapes. For example, the most beautiful face would be one that has very few "blemishes". So "perfection" is a type of "beauty". And this is because perfect is simpler than perfect.

The same it true with abstract thought. A "beautiful" equation in mathematics is one that is very simple and elegant. I monstrously complex equation is seen to be "ugly" even if it actually works well. In this sense "elegance" is "Beauty" because elegance is simpler.

In fact, if you want to look at it from the point of view of the evolution of a brain this could explain why we are attracted to "beauty". Brains that could readily reduce things to simplicity are the brains that survived. And those would be brains that "appreciate beauty".

So if you "must" have an evolutionary advantage to appreciating beauty this would probably be the best explanation. It's a simple explanation and therefore a beautiful one.